Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Seven Hundred Seventy Two

For three days I felt miserable and tired, staying largely abed and in seclusion, venturing out only to eat. My love stayed apart from me, reluctant and distant, masking whenever I came into her presence. I slept well both nights though and on the third day I awoke feeling much better, the congestion in my head dissipating. In truth I felt much worse after each of my inoculations. I had no aches and pains, no deep chills, no nausea. It felt like a cold, something I wouldn’t have given much thought to before the Grippe Reborn returned.

The days themselves were strange and long. My sense of time was out of step, partly because of our travel and partly because of my illness. It felt like a week passed in which I did nothing, barely stirring from the room where I was isolating, alternating between napping and reading. My love lived her own separate life in the next rooms. We would message each other from our phones as if we were separated by more than these walls.

Despite our precautions my love began to experience symptoms, a certain heaviness in her chest and a scratch in her throat. It gradually became a cough and when she tested herself it was positive. It seems most likely she caught the Dread Lord’s touch from me before I realized I was ill. Yesterday she began to feel as I did those first two days, though she still worked having urgent tasks that needed completing. Today she is much the same, but I hope this weekend things will turn for her as they did for me.

For me the Dread Lord has lingered, still with a grasp upon me. I am congested and have developed a cough, but otherwise I feel like a slightly faded version of my normal self. By day’s end my congestion is usually gone and, though I am tired, I tell myself I will be well the next morning, only to wake up with the same congestion again. This morning I was certain I would feel better, my eighth day with the Dread Lord. Instead, he is still there, lurking, much to my frustration.

The week on the whole has grown more and more frustrating. When it was just I who was sick, my wife could still venture out, while masked, if necessity demanded. Now we are both trapped and must rely entirely upon the kindness of others. The weather has been miserable as well, cold and snowy, a taste of February in April. As I write this heavy snow is descending, huge flakes of a kind we only get in spring. I had thought by the time we returned from our travels we would be past all this, but it would seem not. On the one hand it makes our seclusion somewhat more bearable – it is not as though we would be venturing out much if we were healthy – but it does mean we cannot even get a breath of fresh air from our balcony. Some nights it has even been too cold to keep the windows open.

Our weekend will be one of enforced restfulness, which I am strangely looking forward to. How often does one have an excuse to lie about at nothing? I intend to take full advantage and hope that is enough to finally expel the Dread Lord from these premises.