* * *
—
Leah texted Noah to say that the concierge doctor was running late, and he showed up not at three o’clock but at almost seven. Dr. Fischer arrived alone, as I hadn’t expected, and wearing so much protective gear that he was barely recognizable as human, which I suspected further disoriented Jerry. I certainly couldn’t fault Dr. Fischer for it, but in addition to a white mask over his nose and mouth, he wore a hood with a clear shield in the front and, on his body, pale blue plastic coveralls. On his hands were latex gloves, and, over his shoes, white booties. He administered a Covid test via Jerry’s nostrils, the first Covid test I ever saw, and said his office would notify us of the results the following day but that we should operate on the assumption that Jerry did have it. We were to watch for Jerry’s skin or lips turning blue, an inability to catch his breath, or complaints of chest pain; if any of these symptoms occurred, we should call an ambulance or take him to the hospital immediately. In the meantime, we should encourage fluids and use the pulse oximeter on him twice a day.
I had thought that the presence of a doctor in the house would feel reassuring, and it hadn’t. And that was even before I said, “How worried should I be?” and, a little impatiently, though maybe he was just tired, Dr. Fischer said, “He’s in his eighties. It would be highly irresponsible for me to make any promises.”
* * *
—
The next few days were a blur, a sort of inverse of the fun blur after my arrival at Noah’s house. The way the pulse oximeter worked was that I affixed it to Jerry’s pointer finger and confirmed that the number showing the oxygen level in his blood was above 90; if it wasn’t, he was supposed to go to the hospital.
At Target, in addition to buying the pulse oximeter, a jumbo pack of tissue boxes, and several jugs of Gatorade, Noah had bought a so-called bedside commode （it was gray with armrests that made it grimly throne-like）; a so-called bedside urinal （a sideways-slanting plastic thermos with a glow-in-the-dark cap）; and a medical shower chair （a lot like a regular plastic-and-aluminum chair except with a wider seat and suction cups on the bottoms of the legs）。 At some point on that endlessly long first day back in Kansas City, after Jerry ate a quarter of a scrambled egg I’d made, Noah and I together got him into the shower, and, while Noah wore a mask, running shorts, and nothing else and Jerry wore nothing at all, Noah bathed him and I changed his bedding. As I did, I played the Indigo Girls on my phone at a low volume, so that I could distract myself and have company at the same time that I could hear Noah and Jerry in the shower and help if they needed me.
When Jerry was resettled in fresh sheets, I went outside, crossed the front yard, and rang the Larsen family’s doorbell. Then, so as not to be standing overly close when the door opened, I turned and descended the three steps back to the walkway. Both Charlotte and her husband, Keith, came outside, and I thanked them profusely for letting Sugar stay with them for the day. They said it had been the highlight of the pandemic for their daughters. Keith went to get Sugar while Charlotte asked how Jerry was doing, and when Sugar bounded out to me, seeing her mournful eyes and wagging tail—it was two-thirds black and one-third white, at the end—almost made me weep. Instead, I lifted Sugar into my arms and thanked them again.
“Let us know if you need anything,” Keith said, and I turned back toward Jerry’s house.
“Sally, sorry if this is a weird question,” Charlotte said then, and I paused, and Keith said, “Not now, Char,” and Charlotte said, “But are you dating Noah Brewster?”
“Oh.” I hesitated.
Charlotte was in her midthirties and worked as a buyer for an electronic goods company, and it was the Larsens’ older daughter, Stella, who was eleven, who thought she’d caused the pandemic by telling her mother she traveled too much. “I’m not sure,” I said.
“It’s just that he’s my favorite favorite singer. For real, since I was a teenager.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. It seemed safe to assume that revealing Noah was inside Jerry’s house, about twenty feet away, would complicate rather than simplify matters.
“I know you meet lots of famous people with your job, but those pictures—was that really you?”
“Charlotte, let her go,” Keith said.
“I do know Noah,” I said. “Have a good night!”
When we entered Jerry’s bedroom, Sugar leapt onto his bed and licked his face, which seemed maybe medically inadvisable. But then, his voice weak, Jerry said, “There’s my good girl.”
* * *
—
That night, when I told Noah that I was going to sleep on the floor in Jerry’s room, he said, “With a mask on? Won’t you sleep terribly?”
“Presumably,” I said, and went to find an ancient sleeping bag in the basement. Noah slept in my bed with the wicker headboard.
On the second afternoon, someone from Dr. Fischer’s office called to say that Jerry’s Covid test was positive, and offered me the opportunity to speak with Dr. Fischer after he finished seeing patients, but instead I called my pediatrician college roommate, Denise. Although the advice Denise gave echoed Dr. Fischer’s recommendations, I had learned my lesson, and instead of asking how worried I should be, I said, “It’s completely plausible that he’ll recover, right?”
Immediately, she said, “Oh, sure.”
The second night, I slept again on the floor of Jerry’s room and on the third night, I slept in my old bed with Noah. In contrast to in California, our physical contact was minimal and chaste.
During this time, Jerry continued to have a fever, to report a sore throat, and to mostly sleep and still seem exhausted when he woke, but, with our encouragement, he ate small amounts of bananas and applesauce and chicken broth and toast. He didn’t seem to have lost his sense of taste or smell, he didn’t vomit, and, once we got the rhythms of the bedside urinal and commode established, he no longer went to the bathroom in the bed. I was usually the one who emptied the bedside urinal, which he used solo after I’d helped him sit up, and Noah was usually the one who helped him onto the commode.
As the days passed, Noah and I increasingly took turns doing things other than taking care of Jerry. I binge-watched a fantasy drama full of dragons and gore, and Noah worked out in the backyard, apparently while facetiming with Bobby, and he went for runs in the neighborhood. On one of his almost-daily outings to Target, he purchased a legal notepad and a guitar that I’d find him playing on the deck, while intermittently pausing to make notes on the pages, as Sugar sunbathed at his feet. “Kansas City is really creatively inspiring, huh?” I said the first time I came upon this scenario, which was on our fifth day at Jerry’s house. “Kind of like Paris in the 1930s.” I’d just carried a soup bowl from Jerry’s bedroom to the kitchen sink, seen Noah out the window, and slid open the glass and screen doors.
Noah smiled. “Kansas City did produce you.”
I stepped onto the deck, and Sugar immediately rolled into belly rub position. Noah was sitting in a folding lawn chair with gray webbing, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses that he removed. It was eleven in the morning and eighty degrees, which by Midwest summer standards wasn’t bad.