AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Molly. Listen to me.” His voice was firm and strong. “The hospitals in Rome are nearly full. They need the beds for people who arereallysick. That’s not me. Not yet.”
Not yet. I shook my head to make the words disappear.
“I feel fine,” he went on, “except for my fatigue and lack of taste. Neither of those are life threatening.”
“You should still get tested. That way if thingsdoget worse, they’ll already know you have it. They won’t have to waste time testing you.”
A sigh. “Molly…”
“What if they come up with a cure?” I was panicking now, but I couldn’t stop myself from talking out loud because it was better than acceptance. “If they have a cure they’ll give it to everyone they know is infected, and if they don’tknowyou have it they’ll leave you here, and you won’t get better…”
“They won’t have a vaccine for at least a year,” he said calmly. “And that doesn’t matter since I already have it. Molly, you need to relax.”
“Don’t tell me to relax!” I snapped. “I’ve been stuck in this hotel for weeks, and now my boyfriend is infected.”
There was a pause. “Yourquarantineboyfriend.”
“That’s what I said.”
I heard thetip-tapof fingers typing on his phone. “I’m reading the ECDC guidelines now. For people with mild symptoms, they recommend sheltering in place. See? That’s what I should be doing.”
I frowned. “ECDC?”
“That’s the European Centre for Disease Control. They even spelledcentrethe funky way, so you know it’s legit.”
I sat back down and rested my head against the door. “I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. It makes me feel helpless.”
“You’re not doing nothing. You made me soup. It was hot and filling. And I’m sure it was perfectly delicious.”
Tears began welling in my eyes. I wiped them away angrily. “Do you want anything else? I can try baking cookies.”
“I’ve got everything I need right now,” he replied. “I know you want to help more, but you’ve done enough, Feisty.”
“Okay,” I finally said.
“I’m going to lay back down. I wish I was cuddling with you, believe me I do.”
“Me too.”
I heard him walk across the room, and then springs squeaked as he got in bed. For ten minutes I rested my head against the dividing door, straining my ears to hear if he coughed or wheezed or made any other concerning noise.
I paced in my room and tried to think of other ways I could help. I looked up the ECDC guidelines myself, then checked the American CDC website too. Donovan was right: both organizations recommended sheltering in place until symptoms grew severe.
But I couldn’t just sit around. I had to do something.
I found a map with the location of all the testing sites in Rome. One of them was half a kilometer away, next to the Celio Military Hospital. I got dressed, put on a mask, and left the hotel.
Medical care was one of the only exemptions to the lockdown guidelines, but I silently prayed that I wouldn’t run into the same police officers who had caught us before. My prayer was answered and I didn’t see anyone on the way to the testing site. It was in a sprawling plaza, which normally would have been filled with tourists visiting shops and eating at restaurants, just like the plaza outside our hotel. Now it was filled with drab military tents and medical personnel decked in full-body protective suits, like hazmat suits that were white instead of yellow.
There was a line of people waiting to be tested. I got in the back of the line, and a few minutes later, a volunteer handed out clipboards with forms for everyone to fill out. It looked like a typical medical form, asking for my name, age, address, and other information. But it was in Italian, so I had to use my phone to translate. It wasn’t easy juggling my phone in one hand and the clipboard and pen in the other, but somehow I managed before I got to the front of the line.
A nurse took my clipboard and asked me a question in rapid-fire Italian.
“I’m sorry, I do not speak Italian. English?” I asked with an embarrassed smile.
She babbled at me in Italian and led me over to a table underneath the largest tent. She held her palm out to indicatestay here, and then she went back to the line of people.
I sat there and watched the volunteers scurry around the plaza for half an hour. Nobody came up to me, and when I tried to get someone’s attention in passing they totally ignored me. It was beginning to feel like I had been forgotten.
