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| Dallin as the Grim Reaper, like in a lot of medieval Black Death art. |
The morning they were packing up to go home, Cooper woke up dizzy. He called in for a sick day, though Cooper's boss thought he was pulling his leg. By that evening, Cooper had chills, achy muscles and sore throat. Oh crap, we realized, and though he said, "I don't have corona," I pointed out that those are a lot of the symptoms they ask about at my daily screening at work. I let my boss know, and she told me to stay home from work until we knew what it was. The next morning he was tested after waking up with a 103.5 fever. His uncle also got him strep medicine. We got him stocked up on gatorades, chicken noodle soup, cough drops, NyQuil, DayQuil, Tylenol and Ibuprofen to rotate every three hours. His fever broke.
Then I put myself on voluntary quarantine. I didn't realize the things I would crave until suddenly I couldn't leave the house: tortilla chips...frozen yogurt...petty things like that. Our friends invited us to the lake, and we had to turn them down.
The morning after that, he woke up with 103.9 fever. I was basically accepting our fate that me and all eight of the dudes were going to be put into quarantine, and that the four people living in the house were for sure going to get COVID. I joked to myself that I should start sharing food with Coop just so I could get it and be over with it {I did not actually do that}. The hospital had said 24-48 hours till they called with the results, but 48 hours had already passed, and we were all just losing it.
That night, one of my other bosses at work told me to come to work as scheduled for the rest of the week. I kept checking my phone like mad at work because I was so nervous that Cooper would text and say that he had it, meanwhile I just exposed everyone at work if I had it, just without symptoms. Then, toward the end of my work day, Dallin texted me, "He tested negative. No corona!"
That night, we celebrated with frozen yogurt.
