The Prisoner

Number 6: Where am I?
Number Two: In the village.
Number 6: What do you want?
Number Two: Information.
Number 6: Whose side are you on?
Number Two: That would be telling. We want information… information… information!
Number 6: You won’t get it!
Number Two: By hook or by crook, we will.
Number 6: Who are you?
Number Two: The new Number Two.
Number 6: Who is Number One?
Number Two: You are Number Six.
Number 6: I am not a number; I AM A FREE MAN!

– The Prisoner
Opening dialogue

On field trips our professor would have us count off on the bus. At the start of the day, she would point to the first student in the first row and they would declare, “um.” Then she would point to the next, “dois,” then, “três,” and so on and so forth. Every time I had my number assigned I would want to declare, “I am not a number; I AM A FREE MAN!” I thought this would be hilarious. I also thought that a bus full of people who mostly weren’t alive yet in the 20th century probably wouldn’t get the reference to a TV show from before I was born. 

I have spent most of my adult life working in metaphorical Petri dishes. I’ve worked in day programs, group homes and childcare. The nonprofit the Work Bestie and I met at hosts workshops where people fly from all over the world, through international airports, and spend the week hugging me, and each other. Not that the hugging is a requirement for natural building, but I am always available with the mom hugs for anyone in need. The point is, I have a well-exercised immune system that has mastered the quick catch-and-release. 

In December of 2019 I caught something I could not seem to release. My body turned on me so quickly. I went from a little rundown, to fighting something, to coming down with something, to the sickest I had ever been in my life in what seemed like a blink. I was fine and then suddenly I was genuinely scared. If I’d had the strength to shower, and dress myself, and drive to medical care, I would have. I could no longer stand for long enough to boil water and make a box of Kraft dinner. 

I had been someone who rarely used my inhaler. I mean, still asthmatic, thus having an inhaler, but it used to be something I only pulled out after sprinting drills during roller derby practice, like not even during bouts, just after especially fast drills. This virus had me reaching for my inhaler in the middle of the night. I would go to sleep propped up with all of my pillows, but when I inevitably slipped down to horizontal, I would wake up gasping for breath, drowning under an unseen ocean.

After I had “recovered,” I still had coughing fits for weeks. The kind of coughing fits that make you feel like you’re going to cough yourself inside out, like your larynx is about to be forcefully detached and expelled from your throat, like you’ll never take a deep breath again. Even when the steady stream of cough drops were working and I could breathe, shallow but steady, without coughing, I would get winded doing basic tasks for months. Now years later, I have to use my inhaler after fairly mundane workouts.

Flu season 2019 tried to kill me, so when Covid came around in March 2020, I took it seriously. It took me years to build up the social life I had in the Mojave Desert. Then, just like that, my world became very small. No more coffee with friends, no more adventure days with my hiking buddy, no more knitting group, no more volunteering. I had home and work and the ongoing quest for enough groceries, that was all. And then that summer I moved to northern California, to start university in the fall. 

My first semester in the Bay Area, my classes were online, my work was remote. It wasn’t a great way to make new friends in the new area. My Work Bestie went from being my best friend to feeling like my only friend. The world closed, and then it opened, and then it closed, and then it opened. I’m still skeptical about planning anything more than a week in advance. 

And yet, in June of 2022, I was studying abroad. As unlikely as I felt to get into the program, to pay for the program, to not have it ripped away from me if I got my heart set on it, there was something very now or never that made me try anyway. It worked.

I masked in the airport, on the plane, but once I was with my cohort, I relaxed. We were in class together, on field trips together, living in clusters together. I didn’t take any risks that we didn’t all take. I went to the same markets as everyone else, the same swimming hole. I ate most of my lunches in the school cafeteria. I was still working remotely, so when people would go out extracurricularly I was usually at home working. Even though I was taking so much more risk than I had in California, I was still one of the least exposed members of my group.

On Sunday, I had been exhausted, but I thought it was from trying to keep up with energetic undergrads for three full days of field trips. That night, working late on Portugal time, because meetings on California time, I started coughing. I realized I couldn’t keep being a fully engaged student all day and a fully present employee well into the night. I was clearly worn down. Then, I woke up with a sore throat and feeling kinda bleh. Oh crap. On June 13, 2022 I, who spent most of my free time alone with my laptop and/or a WhatsApp call with work, was the first person in our class to test positive for Covid. Insert a whole bunch of swear words here. 

There was an inexplicable feeling of shame. I had accepted that we might all come down with it by the end of the trip. I was reconciled to the fact that I might be a student with Covid. I was not emotionally prepared for being the student with Covid. Gross. I expected to be scared, I hadn’t had Covid yet, and December 2019 had shaken my faith in my mighty immune system. I wasn’t though. I was angry and humiliated and everything was stupid. I worked so hard for this and then having to waste any of my time abroad being diseased and quarantined and missing out, was total bs. 

I just wanted to get on a plane and go home. Forget Portugal. Forget Berkeley. Forget everything. Obviously, that wasn’t an option. For what seemed like hours I paced back and forth in our little backyard. I didn’t want to breathe in the house. I shared a bedroom with someone who had tested negative, so I didn’t feel like I could go to my room. Though, by the end of the day she was moved out of our room and I was sentenced to a week without leaving it again. 

It wasn’t a bad bedroom, as bedrooms go. Though her twin bed stripped completely down somehow intensified the loneliness. I had my own bathroom, toilet and sink, but no shower, still, at least my basic hygiene needs were met without breaking quarantine.

One of my roommates made a point of bringing me food every day, even though I had no appetite. You don’t burn a lot of calories stuck in your room all day, all night. I had no more conversations and most of the ones I could eavesdrop on were in a language I didn’t understand. 

I watched a few episodes of the Prisoner. It was suddenly relatable, the experience of being trapped in a quaint village, on a remote European island, with no idea what’s going on. I, too, wanted nothing more than to escape. I played a lot of World of Warcraft. I attended class on Zoom. I missed cool field trips. I worked remotely. I felt fine, other than coughing fits every night around sunset. In the Before Times, this would have been a quickly forgotten cold that I wouldn’t have missed any work or school over. But since it was Covid, I stayed isolated in my room for seven days.

The Work Bestie was the only person, not in Portugal with me, who I let know that I had Covid. I didn’t want to worry anyone, but I was always honest with him. To not tell him would feel like a lie by omission. Covid sounds so scary, but I was fine, physically. I think the isolation was wearing on me quickly, though. Or maybe it was grief.

The same day I had tested positive, the most interesting man I knew had a heart attack and died. He was seventy, not young, but not old enough. His death was completely unexpected. I had somehow assumed he would live forever. Some people live like that, in such a way that for them to not be alive is unimaginable. I thought about him a lot. I reread his facebook posts. Whenever I read his writing, I could hear his voice, his charming Czech accent, so clearly in my head.

Stuck in my solitary confinement, I thought about his girlfriend a lot. She had just lost her person. I thought about the fights, the bickering, the compromises that make relationships hard. Not that I’d ever seen them fight, I just assume all couples do at some point. From that point on, she’d always get her way. She would always get to pick the movie, but she wouldn’t have him to talk to about it when the credits rolled. She could always pick what was for dinner now, but would it ever taste as good without him there?

She’s such a sweet and generous person. I couldn’t help but think that she would much rather make all the compromises, have all the fights, to be able to share the adventures too. She loved him with her whole heart and it broke mine to imagine her learning to go on without him. 

I was incredibly lonely and stuck in my room. I worried that my cohort might never accept my Typhoid Mary self fully again. They were bonding over new experiences that I was missing. Even if my entire time in Portugal turned out to be lonely though, I still had my person at home to return to. I could not take for granted how lucky that made me. 

(Love) There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known
(Love) Nothing you can see that isn’t shown
(Love) There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be
It’s easy
All you need is love

–The Beatles
All You Need is Love