Translation: Julie Summers

I have COVID.

I sit feeling numb after the phone call from the contact tracing team and the thousands of phone calls and emails that followed in its wake. I went to the climate strike. I definitely touched a bunch of things on campus. I visited my eighty-year-old grandmother. I grow even number with each passing thought.

On top of that, I’m literally numb. There’s a symptom of COVID I’d never heard of before, an electric pins-and-needles sensation running from the heart into the arms, legs, and even face. I’m told it’s a rare but known symptom.

I gather everything I’ll need to survive for the next two weeks, don a mask and mismatched mittens, and walk out of my house, where a man in a protective suit opens the door to a van, the interior of which is thoroughly covered in plastic, and orders me to get in but please not touch anything. I feel like I’m dirty. Infected.

Hallgrímskirkja, Barónsstígur, and Bergþórugata rush past me, a part of the city I know like the back of my hand – but it looks different now, like a parallel universe that I’m not a part of. Maskless people walk around, freely going about their business, some of them glancing at me as I stare out the window.

The driver is silent, and it feels like there’s no point trying to make conversation. As we approach the hotel on Rauðarárstígur, he breaks the silence, reminding me that I am not to touch anything and should not stand up even when he opens the door. I have to wait until I’m told to leave the van.

The van comes to a stop, and my eyes fall on the aspens standing straight as arrows directly across from the hotel – I don’t really know why, but my eyes fill with tears at the sight of the yellow leaves. Maybe it’s because I know I’ll miss the autumn, or because the colors are so beautiful, though I can only see them through the window. I turn my head the other way to consider the building and am taken aback – in almost every window, someone is leaning up against the glass and staring at me. All the infected people are taking in their surroundings, just like me.

My driver opens the door, stands at a distance, and reiterates that I may not get out yet because the hotel is preparing for my arrival. He falls completely silent and backs further away from me when I ask him if the entire hotel is being used for people with COVID. “At this rate, it will be soon,” he says, and then we’re silent again. A familiar-looking guy is guarding the entrance to the hotel. Without meeting my eyes, he asks the driver my name, and the two of them talk about me in the third person for a minute.

Eventually, two women appear in the doorway, dressed in protective gowns and latex gloves, their faces covered by plastic shields, and I am finally allowed to get out of the car and walk in.

I glance back over my shoulder, and the last thing I see before I’m swallowed by the white walls is how the driver and the security guard block the entrance with two metal barricades that meet to form a large V.

Hotel COVID