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: 122 days away
“Quite a weekend, huh? Did you hear about the guy yesterday?”
Jerry said it like I should’ve known who he was talking about it.
“No, what happened?”
“He tested positive but then wouldn’t self-quarantine. The governor ordered him to be put in house arrest. They’re forcing him to stay home.”
“Good ol’ martial law,” I said.
Our accountant overheard.
“Oh, I thought you were going to talk about my friend’s dad,” he said. “Did you hear about the older man who died on Monday?”
I hadn’t heard about him either, but Jerry had.
“That was my friend’s dad.”
Jerry and I looked at each other.
He didn’t seem down about it.
“I didn’t know him. And he was older, probably mid-sixties. Still…”
The gravity of what he said reminded me that someone had called out sick on Friday.
“Whatever happened with Dale?” I asked Jerry. “Did anyone ever check in on him?”
“He’s still out today. He texted me this morning. He’s going to the doctor.”
I checked later online about that first death. The article I found, quoting the governor, said the virus “was only a factor” in the man’s passing, but they still attributed it to that.
Jerry and I talked about the numbers sporadically throughout the day. Kentucky had one case as of Thursday, like three as of Friday, around a dozen on Saturday. And then a death two days later?
The number of confirmed cases in the state hadn’t gone up since Saturday. Was the mortality rate really that high? Were cases increasing faster than the reporting? Was there just a glitch on the counting website? We didn’t know.
California issued a shelter-in-place order, to go into effect the next day. No one really knew what that meant, but it sounded bad. In our industry, we knew shelter-in-place as a type of emergency pull station. When someone pulled one, everyone in the facility was supposed to duck beneath something stable, curl into a squatted, fetal position, and cover their head. No one actually did that – too many false alarms – but that’s what they were supposed to do.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen here,” Chris told us in our manager meeting. He’d pushed it to later in the day than usual. “They’re closing restaurants tonight and saying they might try to shut down other businesses too. I can tell you, they’ll have to pry the keys from my hands.”
Further into the meeting, when we were talking more about the schedule, Liz sent me an SOS signal: she called, texted, and then immediately called back again. I stepped out.
“Are you busy?” she said.
“What’s up?”
“Dr. Madison called. She wants to schedule an appointment for Kenneth.”
“Geez, I thought there was something wrong with the baby or something.” I took a breath.
“I’m sorry. She wants to schedule it for today.”
“Okay? Can Shepherd not go?”
“No, she wants you there too. She wants me to call her back, to let her know if we can go now.”
My thoughts raced again, like when she called back a few moments ago immediately after the text.
I told Chris.
“I’m not sure what it’s about,” I said. “But I need to go.”
Chris knew about Kenneth. A couple years back, we were scheduled to have a pre-Christmas dinner over at his house with some of the other managers. We had to cancel because that was the year we took Kenneth back to the hospital again.
“Take care of your family,” he said.
