It is 6:50 AM Central Time. The basement blinds are open, but the bleak Minnesota sky has no light to impart. I have been in self-quarantine in my parents’ house for eight days. In eleven minutes, I will be one minute late to a BlueJeans conference call with five of my medical school classmates to discuss local, inhaled, and IV anesthetics. At the moment, I am eroding my teeth with the hard-bristled toothbrush that Mom tossed down the stairs last week. My quarantine starter kit also included a bottle of water, a handful of chocolates, and a sleeve of Oreos. All additional means of nourishment since then have been delivered to the top of the basement stairs on a navy blue baking tray. Breakfast invariably comprises a croissant and a hard-boiled (sometimes fried) egg. Lunch includes a bowl of berries. Dinner is portioned into four fist-sized ceramic bowls. I have perfected my basement gremlin crawl, clambering up the carpeted stairs on all fours. The only thing missing is a dinner bell and a sterile vial to collect my saliva at the top.
Last Monday, on the morning that I left my Philly apartment to catch my flight to MSP, I spent my last ten minutes at home dumping out a pint of generic almond milk, sorting my favorite earrings into a pouch, and giving each of my stuffed animals a goodbye pat on the head. I exited the building in a hurry, Samsonite carry-on suitcase in tow and beloved Extra Soft Colgate toothbrush forgotten in the bathroom caddy. Eight hours later, I said goodbye to the outside world for good as I slipped on a surgical mask and got into my parents’ car.
My return flight to Philly is scheduled for the Sunday after Thanksgiving. At the rate that things have been going in self-quarantine, I will have eaten 251 Costco croissants (4216 g of saturated fat!) by then. But, I have to remind myself, things aren’t so bad down here. There’s central heating. There’s a couch to lie on. Unlike the shower in my Philly apartment, the shower in this basement bathroom has a functioning drain, so I don’t have to stand in a murky puddle as I attempt to cleanse my body of the coronavirus. There are wide windows facing into the backyard, where I can admire the barren trees and watch the local deer do their business. I have the entire floor to myself, which means that I can do poorly executed somersaults and arm-wavey dances when I’m bored. The only downside is the solitude, and the fact that I am not allowed upstairs into the kitchen, where all of the tools and ingredients necessary for baking and cooking reside.
My one reliable form of social interaction has been my learning team’s daily BlueJeans conference calls. Every day, as my eyes register the morning darkness and my brain attempts to clear the haze of some mundane dream, I begin to look forward to the moment that I click “Join Meeting.” The disembodied, somewhat frightened voices of my family members from upstairs cannot compare to the direct gaze of my friends through my warm laptop screen — an acknowledgement that I still exist, not as a reverted underslept high schooler but as a medical student who at one point served a purpose in her academic community. It has become harder and harder to conceive of the grand (truly irreplaceable) contributions that I would have made to the world this semester, especially as my physical movement — my “distance traveled,” as they say — dwindles to mere hundreds of steps per day. For every moment that I spend lying supine on the basement couch, I spiral deeper into the depths of my dismay. There is nothing like a pandemic to show a first-year medical student the long, long distance between her and the medical professionals on the forefront of an economy-crushing war.
I take a peek at my FitBit screen: 6:57 AM. The time is nigh for my morning ritual. Out of all the aspects of my life, most of which I have abandoned recently — writing, sketching, socializing, making travel plans, changing clothes regularly, responding to emails in a timely manner, having faith in society’s ability to respond to and function in an emergency, believing that I will one day have a meaningful and positive impact on said society — the one habit that remains unscathed is my eyebrow sculpting routine. It takes twenty odd strokes of an eyeshadow brush and two minutes of my time, but with an effect so impactful that I am now loath to witness my own naked face on a video call, even in the bottom right corner of the screen. The only word to appropriately describe this concern is inane. But soon, as I inevitably begin to abandon even my most crucial academic work for the likes of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and 2019 Oscars contenders, these two facial adornments will be the only remaining evidence of my vanquished adult life.
After tucking the brush and eyebrow palette back into my toiletries bag, I flip the light switch and walk out of the bathroom. I assume my usual perch at the basement table, then lift the lid of my laptop at precisely 7:00 AM. As the WiFi bar loads and the Outlook page flickers, I begin to wonder when my breakfast will arrive at the top of the stairs. Will the egg be fried or hard-boiled? Will there be avocado spread inside my horizontally bisected croissant? Despite my uncertain future, my intrepid eyebrows and I face the screen. This is our contribution to the fight against coronavirus.
Catherine Yang is an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine. Catherine can be reached by email at [email protected].
