Another Day
This is the day I leave my house. No wheelchair. I clench my cane, but it’s little help. Walking is easier inside. I’m like a baby animal taking those first few steps on shaky legs.
Spring is creeping in. The chorus of birds and sunshine. No people, though. Slim pulls the car up to the front door. He’s got gloves and masks in the center console. He gets out to help me, and I hold one of his arms as he spots me with the other. I won’t even have to say, catch me, darling. It’s been a year since an MS flare got me good.
During the car ride I try not to think. The radio is off, but the GPS interrupts our silence. Turn left. Get on the highway. Exit numbers. I listen intently and stare out the window like we’re going somewhere else, not a hospital, not a place where sick people go.
Later, when we’re back home, I’ll have a bit of a nervous breakdown at the sight of dishes piling up. Slim knows better than to push any buttons, but for some reason he’ll yell that I’m acting horribly.
“You’re horrible,” I’ll scream back, and storm off the best I can with a dose of steroids running through my body. Steroids make me crazy, but in that moment it will be hard to tell if anything is my fault.
This day I spend most of my time in my hospital’s satellite office receiving my second MS treatment of Ocrevus coupled with steroids. The first dose was split in half and given two weeks apart. Both times the nurses had to stop part way through because I felt like my throat was full of glass. Afraid to swallow or take deep breaths. The sick always want to believe they have more than the limited options. There might be something better in two years, according to my doctor. He stays up on these things while I wait for them.
This is the day my stepdaughter unpacks. Her clothes are thrown everywhere and her room is a disaster within forty-eight hours. I missed her. I’m glad she’s home after quarantining with a friend. I’ll tell her we can’t have messes like this. We have to be able to wipe down surfaces. The dirty dishes should already be in the dishwasher. I’ll get a yeah, I know, and she rolls her eyes as she closes the door.
I don’t know how much teenagers understand about the coronavirus. That there is a real threat to everyone, even a 16-year-old girl with a messy room. The climbing death toll and a fast-tracked reopening of the country is a bad combination. We’re all at risk. My stepdaughter knows I’m in a high risk category being on an immunosuppressant. Sometimes she humors me when I ramble on about political games costing lives. This is the day I forget to watch the news.
At the infusion clinic I get nurse Gloria. She’s nice, but after a decade I know which nurses are good at putting in IVs. Gloria’s pricked me a lot in the past. She looks at my arms, in search of a vein. I tell her anywhere is fine. She’s likely not to get it on the first try. Still, the familiar is welcome, even if it hurts.
Everyone has been feeling so far away. These nurses and I know a lot about each other. Gloria and I have talked about her kids, her commute, her life. She’s good at normalizing what should seem out of the ordinary. I’m temporarily okay in her company.
This is the day we are both wearing masks. It’s weird not to see her face. I wonder if she remembers the unmasked faces of the regulars she treats. For now, only essential treatments are given at the infusion centers. Today, I am the only one there, masked after a quick-screening test of about a dozen questions at the front door. They won’t let Slim stay. Gloria only pricks me once. It doesn’t even really hurt. She got lucky or she got good.
This is the day I get an antibody test for the coronavirus. It’s pretty standard now, Gloria says through her mask. Being out doesn’t feel safe. I worry Covid-19 would do a number on me. According to my doctor, there have been 500 cases of MS patients on Ocrevus who’ve contracted it. Low fatality rate, he said in the most comforting way you can say something like that.
My son will stop by the house in the early evening. He used to visit all the time, but now he just comes to pick up whatever he left behind. The traces of him that linger feel like they’re leaving. Today, it’s his light coat. I’ll put it between the screen door and our front door. I miss him so much. I want to wrap my arms around him and squeeze until he says, enough, Mom. He’s in his twenties now. I know his world is feeling small and lonely. When I see him it will be through the kitchen window. I’ll knock on the glass and then put my palm against it. “I love you,” I’ll yell. He’ll say it back, raising his hand as he leaves with the jacket.
Days are all becoming carbon copies of themselves. There is a sheet of glass between me and the world.
Andrea Gregory holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her fiction has appeared in The Sun and Consequence Magazine, with a story forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly. She is a former journalist and world traveler, having spent time reporting from the Balkans after the wars. Her work from the Balkans has appeared in Transitions Online (TOL), Balkan Insight, The Christian Science Monitor, and other places. She holds a BS in journalism from Emerson College. Her journalism career ended when she came down with multiple sclerosis, but life has a way of calling writers back to their roots.