Four words I never expected to hear

On Tuesday, Hamilton County recorded a record 510 positive COVID-19 cases. I was one of them. Two days before — Sunday — began quietly. The dog and I went on a long run.

That night, I felt … something.

Monday, the something felt like a cold.

On Tuesday, I got tested. “Mr. Cook, you’re positive,” the health care worker said.

He said those four words with such kindness, such empathy. I will never forget that.

In that moment, I lost my breath.

I turned my face away and said something unprintable.

Then, strangely, the symptoms I’d been feeling — aches, congestion — paused momentarily into something else. Awe. Somewhere in my body was a virus less than a millionth of an inch large; it had traveled the globe, destroying families and economies in its wake. For months, I had done everything to avoid it. Now, it was part of me. And my own body was internally responding, trillions of immune system processes at work designed to keep me alive.

And externally, hundreds of area health care professionals continued to risk their lives — working since March 13 — like a civic immune system to keep us all alive.

I am now linked to them, intimately part of this viral story in both frightening and beautiful ways.

For the past six days, I have been quarantined in our bedroom, eight paces by nine, with windows that let me watch chickens scratch, cars pass and shadows lengthen across the yard. For much of the day, that is all I have the energy to do.

So far, here is my COVID-19 experience:

Enormous fatigue, as if gravity grew 10 times stronger, pulling me down, down, down. I am so very tired. These sentences are like barbells to write.

A low fever that passed after three days. Congestion.

A sense of fogginess and confusion; it takes me twice as long to count the hours between Tylenol doses.

And all of the accompanying mental states of testing positive for a virus that has killed more than 300,000 Americans.

I feel grief for so many who are suffering. I feel angry and bewildered. Positive? I wear a mask. I wash my hands. I thought we could control this. I thought we would work together responsibly. How wrong I was.

I feel worry and fear.

I feel a light humor. (At least now one of us on the church softball team has something in common with Freddie Freeman.)

I feel very still and quiet. COVID-19 has taken me to a place I cannot go when healthy. Buddhism says sickness is a heavenly messenger; I am trying to listen.

Yet somehow, most of all, I feel grateful.

For my responsive and wise doctor. For generous, loving friends. For all those heroically working to save you and me.

For this unspeakably precious life.

Shortly after I got tested, my wife and kids went for testing, too. As I was finishing this column, one of the results came back.

Positive.