It came for us one by one, like a calculating antagonist in an Agatha Christie novel. I came home from a morning supermarket trip to find my spouse hunched at the dinner table, clutching a piece of plastic with two clear pink lines on it. "I have some not great news," he said.
That's how it started. But I had never had COVID, so I'd foolishly assumed I never would get it. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever and a hacking cough. It hit my kids, home for winter break, next. First the younger one and then her big sister. One afternoon in the midst of it, I woke up sweat-soaked from a long nap to find one daughter sprawled in fitful sleep on the couch, her father similarly splayed facedown on the floor. In those early hours, our apartment didn't resemble a sick house so much as a crime scene. A few days later, I was so wracked with chest pains and shortness of breath that I had to get x-rays and lab work to rule out pneumonia or a blood clot. Now, weeks later, I'm still coughing. And after three years of living inside of a pandemic, after all the vaccines and boosters I've had and all the hand washing and mask-wearing I've done, I have learned firsthand this winter how much abrupt havoc COVID can still wreak, and why this year's version is unique.
