Manhattan Covid Panic

East Harlem 2020

Photo by Nelson Ndongala on Unsplash

You never know when your life might suddenly seem to be teetering on the edge of the abyss: Especially during the Covid-19 Pandemic, where most if not all of the rules have been thrown off.

            It happened one night in late April after I took a hot shower. I’d been going through a rough time the past three, four days, feeling slow, exhausted, depressed, lonely, and generally drained. For weeks prior to that I’d been doing almost amazingly well: Writing every day; going on two, three walks; connecting with close friends and family on the regular; reading books like a scholar. But then suddenly I hit a wall. And I hit it hard.

            Around April 26, I started getting up early, seven AM, doing my morning routine, but then lying down in bed in the late morning, early afternoon thinking it’d be just to close my eyes for a minute, and then waking up hours later. I hated this. I’d wake up at three, four, five PM, groggy and out of it. It reminded me of being a kid, on those days when I was sick with the flu and stayed home from school, only I didn’t have flu symptoms; just extreme fatigue.

            This particular night I’d passed out oddly around five PM. When I woke it was nine at night. The first thing I recall is hearing cars rushing down below out my open window on 5th Ave, the loud noise of a big-rig motor rumbling angrily past.

            I walked into my kitchen and boiled water; I had a new habit, during Covid, of drinking hot water. I stood against my kitchen counter and when the steam screamed out of the spout I turned the dial down and poured the boiling water into a white mug.

            I entered my bathroom and turned the shower on. I waited until it was nice and hot and then stepped in. The heat assaulted my body in the best way. It would wake me up, like always.

            I turned the water off, toweled myself, and walked into the kitchen. I stepped to my office room and gazed out the window onto 5th. It was dark out, the road slick with rain. A fire truck and a paramedic van blasted then, the incredibly loud wails exploding like bombs.

            That might have been an omen.