PODs (6 page)

A thick packet of papers had been on my bed when I’d arrived in my quarantine observation room. It outlined what I could expect during quarantine, what would happen when my two-week stay was over, how the POD system was arranged, what to expect living in the PODs—going into mind-numbing detail that made my high school economics textbook exciting by comparison.

I quickly understood why my quarantine room was called an observation room. Everyone could see everything I did. The room was a box made of thick glass. Inside, I had a bed and a TV. The only privacy was in the bathroom in the far corner, which had curtains that ended a few inches from the floor. Additional curtains were bunched at each corner outside the glass; people inside had no way of closing them to get any privacy.

Beyond my glass walls, rows and rows of identical glass boxes extended in all directions, the glass becoming blue-green like pictures of glacier ice. Across the hall in front of my room was a girl my age. On either side of her were guys. Behind my room was another row of observation rooms. I stood in the middle of my room and turned in a slow circle. We were everywhere. The chosen—locked away in glass fishbowls while people behind surgical masks and hazmat suits waited and watched for us to show signs of the virus.

At the front of the room was a box inset in the glass where I’d insert my arm when it was time for my blood check. Thick rubber gloves hung limp from where they attached to the outer wall. Next to that was an airlock mechanism through which I received my daily MREs—meals ready to eat. The nurse opened the door on her side, inserted the meal and closed the door. The chamber was then filled with an antibacterial vapor, killing any germs that may have entered on the meal’s container. When the vapor process was complete, the door in the observation room unlocked, allowing me to retrieve my meal. It happened four times a day—breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack.

At least it was just me in the observation room. I wasn’t ready to make nice with a stranger. My emotions were still too raw from the goodbye with my parents.

Quarantine, day two

I couldn’t sleep. Day one and two merged, creating one long day. The lights had dimmed for several hours, but it never got fully dark. I’d never been particularly claustrophobic, so I hadn’t been worried about quarantine. I knew I’d be in a small room. I was okay with that—I thought.

But scenarios tumbled over and over in my head.

What if there’s a fire, a tornado, rioters break in, a flash flood, a meteor—okay, the last one probably won’t happen, but still
.

It was hard to breathe in the little room. I felt like I was suffocating; I couldn’t get enough air. My blood pounded quick and hard against my temples.

“What happens if there’s a fire?” I asked the nurse who poked my finger and filled the little tube with my blood. I tried really hard not to think about what she was doing. I hated getting my blood taken. I’d thought the little finger pricks would be easier. I was wrong.

“The sprinklers come on,” she said. I swallowed back the bile that rose in my throat at the sight of my blood being squeezed into the tube.

Sprinklers… no kidding
.

“I meant to us. We’re locked in here. How would we get out?”

“Don’t worry. There’s nothing here to catch fire.” She stuck a tiny, square Band-Aid on my finger, passed the sealed test tube through the decontamination airlock, and walked away.

Nothing to catch fire? Is she for real? With medical personnel like her there’s no wonder we don’t have a cure for the virus
.

I walked to my bunk and fell across it, throwing my arm across my eyes and trying to forget that I was locked in a small room with no way out.

Quarantine, day three

The first two days of quarantine I’d concentrated on my little room, my memories, my fears. The world beyond my little cell hadn’t really registered. But on day three I spent time looking out at the world outside the glass walls.

I sat on the cold tile floor at the front of my observation room, watching the people in the other cells. When the girl across the hall met my eyes, I grabbed my notepad. In big letters I wrote my name across a page. I flattened it against the glass so the girl across the hall could read it. I saw her smile. She motioned for me to wait and ran to her bunk. She wrote across what looked like the back of a page from the briefing booklet, holding it up so I could read it.

“Kelly.”

Finally. Someone to communicate with—sort of.

By the time the day ended I knew everyone’s name in the rooms around mine. We’d even managed to play a game of charades. It was fun, and for a little while I forgot where I was and why.

Quarantine, day five

I jerked awake, sitting up in bed. My heart hammered in my chest, echoing the banging in my head. I strained to hear over the blood rushing behind my ears. Was it just a dream? No. No, I could definitely hear someone—a male voice.

“I’m not. The test is wrong!” The thick glass surrounding me muffled his pleading voice.

I couldn’t tell where he was. Noises bounced around the quarantine facility’s cement and glass walls. I peered into the hall. The yellow glow of the security lights shining on the green hallway floor gave the room an odd, yellowish-green haze.

The guy was still yelling, and the sound was getting louder. Shadows moved in the hallway, and my heart beat faster.

“Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. I’m not sick. The test is wrong. It’s wrong.” He was crying now.

I jumped back from the glass, sucking in a breath, as a person moved out of the shadows. Another person came into view; three people followed. Two of the three were medical personnel. The third, a guy about my age, was being wheeled down the hall inside a Plexiglas container. He sobbed, his feet flailing against the sides. I recognized him—his observation room had been four rooms to the right of mine on the same side of the hall.

The members of the medical team wore hazmat suits and breathing apparatuses. My hand flew to my mouth and I stumbled backward toward my bunk. He’d failed. His test results must have come back positive for the virus.

Someone else in a hazmat suit moved to the glass of my isolation room, staring at me through the unreadable facemask. I instinctively took another step backward, tripping and falling onto my bunk with a grunt. Once they moved beyond the end of the row, I couldn’t see where they took the crying guy. His sobs grew fainter until I heard nothing but my own breathing.

I sat on the edge of my bed, my heart beating so fast it hurt my ribs. I pushed my hair out of my eyes with shaking hands. I shoved them under my thighs on the mattress and forced myself to take deep, cleansing breaths.

I sat on the bed for a few seconds, listening to my own overloud breathing and wondering what was happening to the boy, terrified that I’d be the next to be wheeled out in a plastic box. I ran into the bathroom, falling on my knees and sliding to the toilet before puking up the “tuna surprise” I’d forced myself to eat for dinner.

Hanging over the toilet bowl, I said a silent prayer that my blood tests were clear and I wouldn’t be pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and hauled away to suffer God only knew what.

And then I said a prayer for the guy who had been.

Later that morning I was waiting at the glass wall when Kelly woke. She sat down across from me, dark circles ringing her eyes.

The boy?
I wrote.

She nodded, her gaze darting to the room to the right of me. I turned and looked down the row of glass rooms. His was still empty. I was hoping that it was all a bad dream—that I’d wake up and he’d be there like he’d been every other morning.

I looked back to Kelly. She held up her notepad before quickly laying it in her lap.

Virus
, she wrote.

Where is he?

DEAD
.

My blood ran cold. I dropped my notepad and scrambled backward, kicking against the floor with my feet, scooting myself across the tile floor until I was jammed between the toilet and the curtained wall. The only place in the room I could be alone, just me and my tears. And my fear.

Quarantine, day seven

One week down, one week to go. I was counting the hours. At least I was trying to. There wasn’t a clock in my observation room.

Quarantine was brutal. Since the first guy had been dragged out of the facility two days before, three more had been removed. Each time, the screaming and pleading had been horrible. I had lain in my bunk with the pillow over my ears to block it out.

Every morning I said a prayer of thanks that I’d made it through another night. My blood was clean… so far. Then I’d look around the other observation rooms and see who was missing.

The only things that made the days bearable were the few people I’d learned to communicate with since quarantine began. We’d write notes on our notepads and use hand signals. We’d even developed our own form of sign language. It helped pass the time and kept us from going insane from lack of personal contact, because the nurses sure weren’t bubbly conversationalists. We affectionately called them Grumpy, Grumpier and Grumpiest.

Quarantine, day eight

I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep. It was always the worst time of day. Memories and fears suffocated me in the darkness.