December 20, 2021
In the hospital parking lot, I pulled a stiff painter’s mask over my nose and mouth. I took a selfie on Snapchat, sent it to my brother and sister. My brother responded: “Whoa. That’s apocalyptic.”
This was mid-March 2020, when we feared COVID-19 the way you fear an animal’s yellow eyes in the dark, not the way you do when you’ve felt its teeth. I was 15 weeks pregnant with our second child and had recently been referred to a high-risk obstetrician. After our first visit, guests were no longer allowed. My husband, Adrian, had dug the painter’s mask out of a garage drawer before I left for a solo appointment, an improvised solution before our first mask order arrived. “Be safe,” he’d said.
In the small, dim room, my hands opened and closed like fish gulping on shore. I wanted Adrian’s hand. I wanted us to share a teary smile as the shape on the ultrasound screen cohered into something familiar, something ours. I wanted his calming presence when the doctor came in, brusque and aloof, and I tried to remember all the questions that kept me up at night.
Read more at TIME.