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“Layne Stoll?”
“Yeah?” Layne stood.
“Can you come up here, please?” the woman asked.
Layne had been bending down to pick up her bag, but she stood fully again without it.
“Why?”
“Up here, please,” the woman repeated.
Layne left her bag and walked toward the front.
“Your results are inconclusive. I’m going to give you another test, okay?”
“Inconclusive?”
“We might not have gotten enough mucus on the swab for the test. We’ll just do it again. I’m sure you’re okay.”
“Okay.”
The woman administered the test a second time, and Layne returned to her seat to wait again. She watched members of her team get their negative results and hurry off to the waiting bus. She watched as the woman who was administering the tests turned to check the results on the ones she’d already administered. Layne checked the time on her phone and knew her name should be called soon. No one called her name, but the woman walked over to where Layne was sitting and stood several feet away.
“Layne, I’m afraid you have a positive test.”
“What?” Layne asked. “No way. I’ve been so careful.”
“I’m sorry. I need you to go back to your room for me. I’m going to let your coach know. You’ll need to remain in your room and only leave for the bathroom for now until you can get a negative test. Please head back upstairs now, and I’ll have someone message you all the instructions you need to know, okay?”
“Instructions? I’m fine. I feel fine.”
“You might not have symptoms yet, but you’ll get an email in just a few minutes with some more information on what to do if you start showing symptoms and when you can try for a negative test. We’ve got a lot of athletes in season right now, though, so I need you to head upstairs. We’ll clean the chair and everything, okay?”
Layne grabbed her bag and said, “Fine.”
She walked to the elevator and took it alone back up to her floor, where she got off and hurried down the hall into her room. She locked the door, tossed the bag on the floor, and went to her bed. There, she put her head in her hands and tried to think about how she could possibly have gotten COVID again. She’d been so careful. She hadn’t even touched her own girlfriend in weeks. They were near the end of the season, with tonight being their twentieth game, so if she had it and it stuck around, she’d miss the whole rest of the season and possibly even any tournaments.
Her phone told her that she had an email notification, so she pulled it out of her pocket and checked the information the woman had promised.
First, she had to stay in her room, which she already knew. She needed to limit her contact with anyone, which she already knew. She also needed to report anyone she’d had close contact with in the past three days so that they could be alerted to someone being positive around them.
“That’s the whole basketball team. Fuck…” Layne flopped back on her bed.
Could she have done something to screw up the whole season for her team? She’d seen pretty much everyone get a negative result, so most of the team, at least, was already on the bus that was probably leaving right now. That meant they’d at least get to play this game. And their team was fifteen and four right now, having gone on an amazing run lately. They were right on the cusp of being able to get back to where they’d gotten last year…
Layne read the rest of the email about testing requirements to get back to playing and lay there still, trying to remember how she’d felt the last time she’d gotten it. She’d been tired and had blamed it on taking care of her mom and on the job she hated, but while that had been some of it, it hadn’t been all of it. The obvious symptoms were the fever and the cough. She hadn’t had a fever that she’d known of, and she hadn’t had a cough at all. No shortness of breath, either, outside of what she normally felt after getting it the first time. Layne didn’t know what to do, so she called her mom.
“Hey, honey.”
“Mom, I have it again,” she shared.
“What?”
“I just took my test for the game tonight, and the first one was inconclusive, so they gave me another one. That second one was positive, but I feel fine.”
“Son of a bitch. You just got over it,” her mom said.
“I know. But I’m okay. I feel fine. No fever.” Layne pressed her hand to her head. “And no cough or anything.”
