This is a fictional story. All names, places, and viruses are used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, past or present, are intentional.
If you haven’t read from the beginning, please start at Chapter 1 here.
***
Due Date: 83 days away
The idea that we’d come up with a way for everyone to get tested, the way we’d once believed, seemed like a joke. Like someone on the Titanic saying, “Don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen. We have a carpenter in the back building boats for everyone.”
There were no tests, not enough anyway. Not enough to be meaningful. We weren’t even trying to produce them. There wasn’t enough time for that. What good would they do anyway?
“Yep, you’re sick. Nope, we can’t do anything about it.”
That’s what we assumed about everyone. That’s how we were operating.
The masks just reminded us.
And I felt invincible behind mine, like a guy wearing sunglasses looking where he shouldn’t. At first, they’d told us masks were a bad idea. That never made sense to me because doctors always wore them, even before the virus. But we took them at their word in the beginning. A month into it, they changed their stance and encouraged us to start wearing them. Going out to the store, even the gas station then, I wore mine. Without work to keep my routine, I stayed up later and slept in more. But I felt invincible.
It was a strange mesh of emotions. On the one hand, more people than ever were testing positive. But was that because more people were being tested? That was the number they never released, even though it seemed easier to track that number. And then we had guys like Travis, dying without even a fair trial. Did he have the virus? We’d never know.
On the other hand, we’d stopped caring. We wore the masks to look precautious, because by then we’d get more looks if we didn’t wear one. Thanks to our governor and the regulations he implemented, Kentucky reported the lowest virus fatalities of any of the states. But we’d stopped caring. I’d stopped caring. Even with Travis’s death trying to make me care. Even being out of work.
But we still worried.
Unloading food from Aldi, Jerry called me.
“How you holding up?”
“We’re all right. You?”
I piled two more pounds of frozen, ground beef into the freezer.
“Chris called me back in.”
He paused.
“He has us running service. For On Call situations only. Nothing crazy.”
“Is Dale…”
I trailed off, before rephrasing. “How’s that going?”
“I got about halfway through filing for unemployment before he called.”
“Ah, I hadn’t thought of that.”
Liz scrunched her eyebrows together like she wanted to know what we were talking about. She could overhear my side of the conversation from the living room.
I mouthed the word unemployment to her. She shook her head. Probably too many syllables.
“It’s worth looking into,” Jerry said. “A friend of mine got a job as an assistant manager at a restaurant right before all this. She only got two days into training when they told her to go home. Now, between what she’s collecting and the stipend they’re continuing to pay her during furlough, she’s bringing home more than I was making when I was here full-time.”
“Huh, that seems… I guess I didn’t know I could collect it right now. I downloaded some of the forms after Chris’s first meeting with us a month ago. I haven’t done anything else with it.”
Jerry asked me a couple questions about a few specific accounts. From what I could tell, it sounded like some of our larger customers were still running like normal. And then he told me why he really called.
“Listen, buddy, we’re going to keep installs off a little longer.”
I made eye contact with Liz again. She couldn’t know why.
“Chris told you this?”
“He’s having me call everyone now.”
I was trying to wrap my head around what he was telling me. I knew it could be longer than a week. I figured it might be less too, but maybe more.
But Chris brought Jerry back? Before me? And he had Jerry call me?
“If a man were to pray for you, how might he pray?” Jerry asked.
I had to think about it for a second. I left the last bag of pantry food on the floor and stood up.
“You know, before Shepherd was born, I never worried about him being healthy. I took that for granted. Even with Kenneth having a chronic illness. I just wasn’t worried. This time around, I’m praying for that. I was praying for that before all—”
I rolled my eyes around the room.
“—before all this.”
“Yeah,” he said.
I walked into the bedroom and lowered my voice a bit.
“And the second thing would be to pray that Liz isn’t worried. It’s like they say: ‘Happy wife, happy life.’ I don’t actually believe that, but I do think if she’s going into this, with this new baby on the way, if she’s not scared, I’m fine.”
I turned around and saw Liz behind me. She’d followed me into the room.
I gave her a restrained smile.
“I’m not worried about Liz,” I told Jerry, looking at Liz. “The bad part—or, I should say, the difficult part—is she’s pregnant. The good part is, she’s pregnant. They’ll take a ventilator right away from some 80-year-old to give it to her.”
I could hear him staring at me through the phone.
“I’m only half joking. But I am worried about being worried, if you know what I mean.”
After I got off the phone with him, Liz asked why I came into the bedroom.
I told her I was trying to say, “Unemployment.”
“You didn’t talk about Travis?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t think either of us know how to talk about it.”
“Well, we could use the money,” she said.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Yeah, well, that’s why he called. I guess I’m going to be off a little… longer.”
I tried not to make it a big deal.
“But you still have vacation, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s just like time off,” I said. “I think.”
I put my hand on her stomach. I didn’t do it often. She never liked when anyone else did. I didn’t want to push my status as an exception to that rule.
“We’ve got a ways to go,” I said. “And it is weird being off. I can only get so many groceries. What are we going to do with all this newfound time?”
I couldn’t tell if she remembered me saying that before. She probably liked it that way.
But then she responded, and I knew she remembered.
“Look into filing for unemployment?” she said.
