Testing Times

Saritha tossed and turned in the bed for the fifth straight night. She wasn't sure whether it was her shortness of breath or the feeling of feverishness or her restless mind that is responsible for the sleepless nights. She got up and checked her temperature. Heaved a sigh of relief when it showed normal body temperature.

Her relief was short lived as she struggled with a bout of cough. 

"This is only getting worse. But it is not a dry cough, thankfully" she thought though he hated wet coughs too. The feeling of tightness in her chest especially in the mornings was really bothering her. 

"COVID-19 has only dry cough" she told herself for the n'th time. She had been checking the symptoms of COVID-19 across all kinds of websites and none of them had mentioned wet cough.

"But then you never know with all the new symptoms, the virus is throwing up" the dissenting voice in her mind cautioned her.

She didn't feel like discussing the issue with anyone. More than worrying others, she didn't want to worry herself more than what she was already going through. "I live alone and I hardly go out. So even if I contract it, I won't spread it" was her convincing line of thought.

"And anyway this must be the seasonal change flaring up my Asthma. How many times have I not suffered from the same symptoms in the past?"

"But then it was never against the backdrop of Corona. Was it? And what about the falling saturation levels?"

"So what are you saying, for heaven's sake?"

"Why don't you get tested and be done with it!"

Saritha felt the weight of this constant internal dialogue weighing her down. The next morning, she made up her mind once for all. 

She called up the nearby testing centre to confirm that they were open and reached the place by 8 AM. There were very few people in the centre at that time. As Saritha gave her filled in form for the RT-PCR test in the designated queue, people started moving away from her.

"So this is how it is, even before the test" she realized with a start.

Saritha had lost her husband in a freak accident about two decades back. Though she struggled a lot in her life, fortunately for her, her only daughter turned out quite well in life. After finishing her graduation, her daughter Diya did her MS abroad eventually settling into a good job out there.

After her retirement from a very demanding job, Saritha moved into a rented place to live close to certain extended family members. At that juncture in her life, the only thing she prayed for was good health for herself and her daughter.

Against that backdrop, the year of the pandemic had been especially tough on Saritha. A travel enthusiast that she was, she squirmed in agony realizing her limited narrow window for travel was getting narrower through the lost opportunity to travel due to the indefinitely ongoing pandemic.

When she found herself sneezing, wheezing and short of breath, she ascribed it to her asthma and seasonal allergies that she always suffered from. But then ultimately, she had to land herself into the diagnostic centre waiting for her turn to be tested.

After reaching home that day, Saritha waited for the test results with bated breath. Though the test centre had told her that it would take 24 hours - 48 hours for the results, she constantly checked her email and jumped at every Whatsapp message.

She kept telling herself that it would take at least a day for the results to arrive, more so because she had got it done on a Sunday. But it arrived by the evening of the same day proving her deduction wrong.

Staring at the message with the link, she drew a long breath. 

"This is it – the moment of truth" thought flashed across her mind as she clicked the link.

As soon as the pdf document opened, in her anxiety, she double clicked it to enlarge it. Sighting the words "positive" she felt her worst fears had come true. But then she realized she was staring at the range of values that delineated what 'positive' meant. Her eyes went across the test result field, where it was printed "Negative".

She let her breath go into a long exhale and realized she was holding her breath without even being conscious about it.

The very next day she walked into a clinic nearby for getting treated for her ailment very clearly informing the doctor about her test coming negative so that the Doctor was put at ease.

When the doctor told her in all likelihood she was suffering from one of her asthma bouts due to the change in the seasons, she felt relieved.

That evening over a call when she told her daughter about the whole ordeal the very first thing her daughter said was "I am happy it is just your asthma."

"Can you believe even I, who always harbored negative feelings about asthma, am so relieved that it's positive for asthma and negative for COVID-19. I told myself, okay it's my good old friend asthma. I can deal with it. It took Corona Virus to view my ailment as my good old friend. It's so strange and paradoxical that something so positive can come out of something negative? It's like two positive outcomes."

"Make it three Amma. You have no idea how relieved I feel. I would have got into a panic attack if you had tested positive given the physical distance and the travel restrictions currently prevailing everywhere.

Both of them laughed in relief now that they had successfully emerged out of the "testing" times.

This story is based on true incidents.