My partner, James, sleeps. He coughs. He breathes. He smiled this morning when I brought him tea. He nodded when I asked if he wanted the curtains open so he could look at the sea, then returned to sleep.   

We’re quarantined in his new beach house on a skinny peninsula just three blocks wide, bay-to-ocean, off of New Jersey. I am a stranger here. When his doctor asked me the location of the nearest hospital, I couldn’t say.

I’m sitting in the second bedroom on a small orange settee. Hard and spare, it provides the structure on which I wait as we make our way through the long days—James in one room, I in the next, close enough to respond when necessary.

I’m sure that he has COVID-19. At first he denied it. His cough was allergy, his deep fatigue simple weariness, his low-grade fever my imagination. Losing his sense of taste finally convinced him.

Now the virus is cascading through his body. It has taken over his cells’ functions, just as governments transformed mills, mines and factories during World War II to produce munitions. Only instead of fighting evil, the virus is turning his body against itself.

- from Pulse Magazine 6 May 2020