Quarantine
By Anvi Bhate
When your friend tells you they have COVID, it’s hard to figure out what to say back. “Are you okay?” or “I’m so sorry” don’t seem to say nearly enough. It’s hard to hide the hundreds of emotions running through your mind reflected in your eyes. Fear for them and yourself, stress because you have no idea what’s going to happen next, shock because it was out of the blue, and a bucketful of “why me?”s. It’s hard to comfort them and keep your calm all at once. But what’s even harder is figuring out how to react when a text from Dr. Lily tells you that you’re going to have to quarantine alone in a metal box for 14 days.
I remember that windy Wednesday morning clearer than ever. First, the emergency phone call from “PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY” that threw me off my chair. Then, the 50 calls with the nurses where I told them exactly how close of a contact I was, and figuring out if we would need to isolate. I remember pleading and hoping that I wouldn’t have to go to the trailer, and the audible drop in my voice when the nurse finally called and told me to go to the health center as soon as possible with bags packed. Distressed, I sloppily stuffed all my clothes into a suitcase and zipped up another one with bathroom essentials and snacks. Making a ruckus as I dragged it hurriedly down three flights of stairs, I almost tripped while running to Lamont in the pouring rain.
We each dropped off our luggage and took a COVID-19 test. As soon as we got the negative, they walked us over to a parking garage a block down from the edge of campus. Towards the back of the lot, surrounded by muddy ice, was a long, grey trailer, like those that you would take on a camping vacation in the mountains. The bent steel in the stairs creaked as I pulled my suitcases up to a corridor surrounded by iron walls and a door labelled with my name on a piece of torn paper. I opened the door to a slightly dark, almost closet-sized room with a small bed, a desk around a foot away, a tiny closet-like cabinet, and a sink with a bathroom attached. I thanked the nurses with the most joyful smile I could muster, and then slammed the door shut and yelled into my pillow at the top of my voice.
I laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, one I would stare at every night for the next two weeks. My legs shook from the strong winds outside, and I reached over to grab a rough blanket that felt more like cardboard than cloth. I turned to look at my photo wall for comfort, but then realized it wasn’t there. Because I wasn’t in my room. I was in a strange cell in a strange metal vehicle. Alone.
I couldn’t leave my room. I couldn’t see my friends. I couldn’t go on runs. It all hit me at once, and I found myself crying. Tears kept sliding down one by one and I couldn't stop it. I called my best friend back home and ranted to her at the top of my voice for over an hour, although I doubt she could even make out what I was saying between all the sniffling. I hated this place. How cramped the room was, how claustrophobic and musty it felt. I just wanted to go back.
That night, I barely left my room amidst all the wailing and whining. The nurses brought some dinner up to our rooms, and although I didn’t eat, I tried to accept it and greeted them with a warmish smile. We went down to one of the check-in rooms later to do vitals and get our temperatures and blood pressure taken to make sure we didn’t have the virus. Later, I took a warm shower and blasted music, thriving with my own personal bathroom. I shabbily finished up my homework for the night, and laid down in my bed for hours, trying desperately to fall asleep.
The days after that sort of blurred into one, because we had nearly the same schedule each day. Wake up, attend online classes (which were even worse now that most other people were in-person), eat lunch they deliver to your door, get vitals done, sleep, repeat. The highlight of my day was probably the hour-long walks, either through campus or to the field house and back. It was refreshing to be outside and feel the wind in my hair, and see human life other than the 20 people at the unit. Sometimes we got to exercise, and without being able to run, I took every opportunity I got. Other times, we would see people hanging out in large groups and laughing with each other, and I could feel myself unable to resist the urge to go join the fun. I counted down the days till I was out, and I knew every day was closer, but it still wasn’t exactly exciting that I had to spend over 300 more hours in that prison.
Eventually, I began to get used to it. It wasn’t ideal, but the people that had COVID couldn’t leave their room at all for two weeks, and I was grateful for every little thing I was able to do. Some of my closest friends were in the unit with me, and between midnight homework study sessions in the hallways, doing tarot card readings and trying to climb the electrical poles outside, we only got closer. I got to really know people that I had just vaguely known of before, and I became great friends with people I had never spoken to before. Turns out, 14 days of complete isolation with no human interaction but one another is a wonderful bonding experience.
Another thing I cherished about my time there was the unlimited supply of food we got from the kitchen and fridge. We had boxes and boxes of chewy granola bars, could ask for Capri Sun and ginger ale at demand, and had access to whatever fresh fruit we wanted. I lived off the chips and skinny popcorn, and pretzels and hummus were my favorite thing to snack on while grinding homework. I specifically remember one day when my friend and I were feeling especially adventurous, and we tried to have a picnic in the lot outside despite the furious winds. We took out a few blankets and tried to balance them with some hefty chairs stacked one on top of the other. We wanted to make it aesthetic, but all we could end up getting as food were two bags of popcorn, two ginger ales, and some milano cookies I had brought from my dorm. A few chairs flew off, so we experimented using soaked bags full of rocks, our computers, and our pillows. In the end, we had to chase the blankets as they blew away with a gigantic gust of wind, but it was a memorable experience nevertheless.
As the days went by, the trailer got more and more homely. I got used to hearing my friends’ yell on the phone with their parents from the room beside me, or walking out in just my pajamas to steal a bunch of midnight snacks from the kitchen. I thoroughly enjoyed warming my hands to the bonfire outside while we gorged on some Stillwells and petrified each other with horror stories. The space between us and the rest of the students gave me some essential alone time, and I took care of myself and began to appreciate the little things: the way I woke up to the soft birds chirping every morning, the happiness in the voices of children outside my window as they giggled in a playground across the road and how considerate all my teachers were about my mental health. I began to look forward to the daily visits from the nurses asking how I was doing and their stories about their elementary-school kids and their amusing lives. It made me realize how selfless they were and how much they were sacrificing for us, leaving their kids home alone, being in an enclosed box when they could have been watching a movie with their family. “It could have been much worse,” I reminded myself every day.
The last night was full of heavily mixed feelings. Obviously, I was ecstatic to finally be free and be able to see my other friends. But there were definitely things I was going to miss. The nurses, the friends, the food and the individual bathrooms. Quarantine had been only two weeks long, but it had affected me in a way I would never expect. It made me realize how grateful we should all be for every slight liberty we had, and made me realize how important it is for us to actually strictly follow COVID guidelines. Many times, we think the restrictions the Academy gives us are an exaggeration or that teachers are being too harsh on us for making us social distance, but in reality, it’s all for our safety. Isolation might not have been the worst experience, but it certainly isn’t a party either, and you might end up there when you least expect it. And trust me, that is not somewhere you want to be.
Quarantine was mentally taxing, lonely, and infuriating, but it was also an opportunity to make new friends and start to appreciate myself and the world around me. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I bet I’ll be talking about it to the end of my high school years. Sure, it might have been hell, but at least now I’ll have stories to tell.
