“Drink this.” I say to B, handing him a caramel latte in a travel cup.
It’s 7.55am. We are all awake, and ready to leave the house, for the first time in over two weeks. Our appointment for our PCR exit quarantine test is set for precisely 8.50am in Bodden Town. B does not usually do mornings. Right now he looks as if he has risen from the dead.
“I am strategically avoiding coffee this morning,” says B, “so that I can go back to sleep after the test is over.”
“If you drink coffee now, it will make the next hour a lot more pleasant.” I say. “For all of us.”
The drive to the test centre is surprisingly quick, perhaps because schools are out. We enter the building wearing face masks and holding up our passports. A security guard checks our ID, and points us toward a table where there are test vials in ziplock bags, each labelled with a name and DOB. We present our ID a second time, and are each handed the bag with our name on it. Then A notices that she has been given the wrong bag, and returns to the table, to ask for the correct bag with her name on it. The man behind the table looks embarrassed. He has just one job to do in this process after all! We are asked to sit in seats, 6 ft apart from each other, and wait our turn. We are summoned, one by one, to receive our PCR test, up the nose. We then leave and return directly home.
After we get home, it’s a waiting game. I feel anxious, and can’t concentrate on anything much, checking my email every half hour for a test result.
D practices Wim Hof Method breathing. He holds his breath and beats a personal record of 3 minutes 45 seconds.
A sunbathes. And listens to music.
B watches the Madalorian Season 2 finale. Then does a session on the rowing machine before jumping into the pool. I guess on the 15th day the ‘no swimming’ rule seems less stringent.
I bake another batch of mince pies. Then rake the beach.
A asks me if I have received any news yet.
We wait. And wait….. And wait.
Finally at 6.37pm we receive our negative results by email. Hallelujah!
We snip off our smart bands with scissors.
“They were real!” says B, demystifying whether the entire tracker system was just a hoax.
We join friends for dinner, and crack open a bottle of wine to celebrate our new found freedom.
“Drink this” says my doctor friend, as she hands me a glass of wine, as if it were medicine. I relax. Freedom feels good.
