Only You by K.T. Quinn

42

Molly

The Day I Committed Theft

I jumped up from the floor. “No.”

“Molly…”

“You’re just congested,” I insisted. “That’s why you can’t taste anything.”

“That’s not it,” he said. He sounded resigned. “My taste is definitely gone.”

There was no denying it now. All of my bargaining and excuses felt useless on my tongue.

Donovan has the virus.

And then, a moment later, another thought slashed across my consciousness: I’ve been around him constantly before today. If he had it…

I shook my head. There was no time to worry about that now. I felt fine, and Donovan was my primary concern. He needed me.

“You need to get tested,” I said. “To confirm it.”

“What’s the point, Molly? They can’t do anything about it.”

“You don’t know that!” I argued. “They might have some treatment or medication they’re not telling people about. Or put you on a monitoring list. They can do something.”

“Molly. Listen to me.” His voice was firm and strong. “The hospitals in Rome are nearly full. They need the beds for people who are really sick. That’s not me. Not yet.”

Not yet. I shook my head to make the words disappear.

“I feel fine,” he went on, “except for my fatigue and lack of taste. Neither of those are life threatening.”

“You should still get tested. That way if things do get worse, they’ll already know you have it. They won’t have to waste time testing you.”

A sigh. “Molly…”

“What if they come up with a cure?” I was panicking now, but I couldn’t stop myself from talking out loud because it was better than acceptance. “If they have a cure they’ll give it to everyone they know is infected, and if they don’t know you have it they’ll leave you here, and you won’t get better…”

“They won’t have a vaccine for at least a year,” he said calmly. “And that doesn’t matter since I already have it. Molly, you need to relax.”

“Don’t tell me to relax!” I snapped. “I’ve been stuck in this hotel for weeks, and now my boyfriend is infected.”

There was a pause. “Your quarantine boyfriend.”

“That’s what I said.”

I heard the tip-tap of fingers typing on his phone. “I’m reading the ECDC guidelines now. For people with mild symptoms, they recommend sheltering in place. See? That’s what I should be doing.”

I frowned. “ECDC?”

“That’s the European Centre for Disease Control. They even spelled centre the funky way, so you know it’s legit.”

I sat back down and rested my head against the door. “I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. It makes me feel helpless.”

“You’re not doing nothing. You made me soup. It was hot and filling. And I’m sure it was perfectly delicious.”

Tears began welling in my eyes. I wiped them away angrily. “Do you want anything else? I can try baking cookies.”

“I’ve got everything I need right now,” he replied. “I know you want to help more, but you’ve done enough, Feisty.”

“Okay,” I finally said.

“I’m going to lay back down. I wish I was cuddling with you, believe me I do.”

“Me too.”

I heard him walk across the room, and then springs squeaked as he got in bed. For ten minutes I rested my head against the dividing door, straining my ears to hear if he coughed or wheezed or made any other concerning noise.

I paced in my room and tried to think of other ways I could help. I looked up the ECDC guidelines myself, then checked the American CDC website too. Donovan was right: both organizations recommended sheltering in place until symptoms grew severe.

But I couldn’t just sit around. I had to do something.

I found a map with the location of all the testing sites in Rome. One of them was half a kilometer away, next to the Celio Military Hospital. I got dressed, put on a mask, and left the hotel.

Medical care was one of the only exemptions to the lockdown guidelines, but I silently prayed that I wouldn’t run into the same police officers who had caught us before. My prayer was answered and I didn’t see anyone on the way to the testing site. It was in a sprawling plaza, which normally would have been filled with tourists visiting shops and eating at restaurants, just like the plaza outside our hotel. Now it was filled with drab military tents and medical personnel decked in full-body protective suits, like hazmat suits that were white instead of yellow.

There was a line of people waiting to be tested. I got in the back of the line, and a few minutes later, a volunteer handed out clipboards with forms for everyone to fill out. It looked like a typical medical form, asking for my name, age, address, and other information. But it was in Italian, so I had to use my phone to translate. It wasn’t easy juggling my phone in one hand and the clipboard and pen in the other, but somehow I managed before I got to the front of the line.

A nurse took my clipboard and asked me a question in rapid-fire Italian.

“I’m sorry, I do not speak Italian. English?” I asked with an embarrassed smile.

She babbled at me in Italian and led me over to a table underneath the largest tent. She held her palm out to indicate stay here, and then she went back to the line of people.

I sat there and watched the volunteers scurry around the plaza for half an hour. Nobody came up to me, and when I tried to get someone’s attention in passing they totally ignored me. It was beginning to feel like I had been forgotten.

Finally a nurse came up to me and said, “You need English?” in a slight accent.

“Yes! I’m so sorry, I’m an American who has been stuck here during the lockdown, and…”

“What symptoms?” she asked, scanning the medical document I had filled out.

“None.”

“You have been in contact with an infected?”

“Yes, my… boyfriend. He has fatigue, a slight fever, and this morning he lost his sense of taste.”

I searched her face for any kind of reaction, but she only nodded and tore open the seal on a big plastic bag. She removed a device that looked like a long Q-tip, then opened a plastic vial on the table next to me.

“I must take sample in nose,” she said. “It will be, ah, unpleasant.”

“Okay,” I said, pulling my mask down so she could access my nostril.

She gently tilted my head back, then inserted the Q-tip. The tip hit the back of my nose, near my sinuses… and then kept going. My eyes watered and I let out a little whimper as it went deeper into my skull. It felt like it was touching my brain.

She removed the Q-tip and nodded at me. “See? Unpleasant.”

“You weren’t kidding,” I muttered. My eyes were still watering.

She broke the long Q-tip in half, then stuck the cotton part into the vial on the table. Then she screwed the cap on, taped a red sticker over it, and dropped it in a big bin on the ground with all the other tests.

“Results in three days,” she said. “Maybe sooner.”

“Thank you so much,” I said. “What about my boyfriend?”

She looked around. “He is where?”

“He’s back at our hotel. He didn’t want to come, but I was thinking you could give me the testing kit to take to him…”

“He comes here,” she said while throwing away the remaining parts of the test kit. “Go now. Be healthy.” She nodded at me and hurried off to the next testing table where a man had been coughing for several minutes.

I stood and prepared to leave, but the bin to my right caught my eye. It was full of fresh testing kits, hundreds of them in identical plastic bags. I looked around the tent. There was a bin just like it next to every testing chair. They had plenty.

I snatched a plastic bag, tucked it under my arm, and hurried away from the site before anyone could see me.