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Traveling
The Wisco Pilot
International Trips during the Pandemic Continued from front page I called them medical workers, for there was no way I could recognize their positions, appearance, or even gender. They all looked the same to me in those plastic white suits covering from head to toe, fully geared up with the gloves, masks, and glasses too. I could only try to know them through their names they wrote with markers on the back of the suits and their eyes half-visible through the protective glasses, of which the other half was hidden behind the vapor formed on the glass surfaces. Despite my effort to get to know them, they clearly didn’t care at all if I would recognize them again when I saw them, for a room card was shoved in my hand, and I was hurried into the elevator while none of them said a word. I soon got used to the quarantine life routine. I got to know when the daily three meals are served on the chair out in the hallway, when I should take my own temperature and text one of the nurses, and how to order takeaway shampoo and towels from nearby shops. The medical workers, still wearing their full gear, kept running to and fro, busy with something I didn’t know about. Probably about cleaning and data recording.
To be honest, I haven’t remembered any one of them since my first day at the hotel: all of them looked exactly the same in those suits and it was hard to hear their voices through the door. The fact that all those living in the quarantine hotel were high school students didn’t make them any friendlier, for they never stayed for even a short conversation with anyone. They didn’t seem to care about introducing themselves to us in quarantine, either. All I could see from the peephole on the door was suited people busy running around with carts full of water or food. It’s very easy to get bored in such a repetitive routine and environment. Since coming back home was an emergency decision, I didn’t have a lot of luggage with me and thus no books or art supplies, which I rely a lot on to keep myself entertained while not touching electronic devices. The media described those medical workers outside my door as heroes, and I myself may be in one of those numbers reported to be quarantined. All this experience that I might not be able to go through ever again made everything around me feel unreal, as I couldn’t help but realize the twoweek quarantine was coming to its end and I would not be able to remember anything about anybody
there. On the second-to-last day of the quarantine, someone knocked on my door for the first time and asked if she could come in. I was surprised when I learned she was the supervising nurse that asked me for my temperature every day through text: recognizing her signature on the back of the suit, I realized that I had seen her before in the hallways. “This would be your final testing procedure here in quarantine. The test results will be out tomorrow so you may show it to the airport workers,” she said while poking the long cotton swab in my nostril. That was the first time I got to see her close: one would imagine shocking beauty within those protective glasses, as it would be written in a romance story. Instead, she had normal dark, calm eyes just like a normal person, a person I would meet on the crowded subway trains without bothering to look back to. Some hair wet with sweat was sticking out of her protective suit, and her eyes were moist, probably because of all the heat and staying up. Those, together with the red marks left by the glasses and the mask, made me wonder how uncomfortable it must be in that gear. When she was about to leave, she reached into her bag on her shoulder, as if searching for something. I was surprised by what she pulled out, though: it was a tiny chocolate bar, something I definitely would not expect a busy medical professional to give to the patient
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