Fever Dream

With a violent cough, I wake myself up from my sick slumber.  I sit upright in my leather recliner, and realize that my COVID-19 test results should be emailed to me by now.  Stretching in my green-plaid pajamas, I pop my fatigued joints and let out what sounds like an aggressive yawn mixed with a sigh of exhaustion.  With great hesitation, I put my password in the phone, and stop on my home screen to think about how nervous I am about these results.  My migraines, loss of smell, and constant fatigue imply that my test will be positive, but I pray that I just have a bad flu that just happens to be during the pandemic.  Tapping on the envelope application icon, I open my email to see that there is in fact an email from my local urgent care with the subject “Here Are Your COVID-19 Test Results!”.  With a sigh, I click on the email, and sure enough, there is a big “POSITIVE” written across the top of the included message.

With a thousand thoughts racing through my head, I try to think of what to do next.  I’m in a state of complete disbelief with fear rising in the back of my mind.  All the cases on the news, all the deaths, and the uncontrollable spreading of the virus that’s now infecting me are racing through my mind.  I never would have thought that I would personally catch this virus.  I mean, that kind of stuff just happens to other people, right?  All the thinking makes my migraine pulsate, and I realize that I need to break the bad news to my wife, Tara, and our teenage daughter Layla. 

I put on a face mask so that I don’t potentially spread the virus to my family, and I call them down.  They respond that they will be down in a moment, and in bewilderment, I try to think of how I could possibly isolate myself from my family to keep them safe.  As I see my concerned-looking daughter, followed by my wife, coming down the stairs.  It’s clear that I have to protect them at all costs.  With a quick lightbulb thought, I conclude that I will go camping in the woods, by myself.  I painfully glance at both of their tan faces, painted with concern, as they’re aware of the information I’ve been waiting for all day.  My heart hurts, as I don’t want my beloved girls to feel as terrible as I do.  Sighing deeply yet again, I turn my phone in their direction to show them my positive test results.  Stepping back, as I am contagious, they both begin to bombard me with questions about how I got the virus, who I got it from, if I will be okay, and a million other things I don’t know the answer to.  I keep my answers to the questions short because I don’t want them to realize how bad I actually feel.  If I let them know how bad I truly feel, they will not let me isolate in the woods, which could potentially result in them becoming ill as well.

Doing my best to keep my answers short, so they don’t hear the soreness in my throat, I briefly explain to Tara my plans of isolating myself in the woods.  She is wary of it, as she wants to take care of me in case my sickness worsens.  I lie and do my best to convince her that other than a small headache I’m asymptomatic.  With a feeling of guilt washing over me, I continue that since spring is finally blooming outside, it will be perfect weather for me to camp anyway.  After a bit of convincing, Tara hesitantly says that it’s alright for me to go camping for a few days, just enough time for her to disinfect the house for me and make me up a bed in the guest room to stay in while I am sick.

In my weak state, it takes me much longer than it would take a healthy person to pack my things for my trip.  In the bed of my truck, I load up a large cooler of meats, nonperishable snacks, and loads of drinks.  I toss in my hammock to sleep in, and I bring a backpack of other necessities like extra clothing, a pocket knife, and even some mouthwash, as I plan to be gone for a good three or four days.  I do my best to ignore my growing migraine and hop into the truck and drive into the woods.  I drive for no more than five minutes, stopping near a ravine covered in fallen trees and leaves that once belonged to them.  Stepping out of the truck, I look at how beautiful nature around me is, and I’m saddened by the fact that my sickness makes me incapable of smelling the fresh spring air.  There are already some little yellow flowers beginning to bloom in patches around the trees, and some trees even have their little white buds popping up.

I look around and recognize where I am, and I decide to go to my usual camping spot - a circular opening that can be found if I climb down the side of the ravine I’m standing on, up the other side, and hike north for about fifteen minutes.  During my walk down and up the ravine I do my best to ignore my migraine and the overall weakness of my body.  I trudge along the desolate path to my destination, longing for health and wondering whether or not coming into the wilderness was really a good idea with the current state of my health.  I set up my hammock between two trees when I finally arrive at my spot, and prop my backpack and cooler up against the tree nearest the foot side of the hammock.  

Finding firewood isn’t difficult at all, as there are logs and sticks laying all around the opening.  Thanking mother nature for sparing me the work of searching far for wood, I start myself a little fire.  I don’t put it too close to my hammock, as I’d really prefer not to end up engulfed in flames.  When I finally set the fire and lay in my hammock, it hits me how sick I feel.  I lay in the hammock and yearn for health, and the last thing I see before I drift off into an unwell slumber is two birds on the branch directly above my head.  In my out of sorts state, I think to myself that it almost looks like the birds are gossiping, two little cardinals facing each other and chirping softly, both staring down at me.

As I’m staring up at the gossiping birds, I’m caught off guard as one makes eye contact with me and asks “Are you alright?” in a high-pitched voice, almost that of a parrot, but perhaps a bit softer.  Thinking that this sickness truly must be getting to me now, I simply ignore the question, when the bird chirps to his friend, who had strayed off among the branches of the tree.  The other bird half flies half hops over to the one who chirped out for him, and together they softly yet suddenly flutter down to me, perching on the side of my hammock.

“Did you hear me, sir?  Are you alright?”  comes a second, also high-pitched bird’s voice.  Panic immediately rises and my stomach turns as I begin to think that I must be dreaming, hallucinating, this just can’t be happening.  I’d never heard of hallucination being a COVID side effect, but maybe I had just not read the right articles.  How can I be imagining this? I think to myself, breathing harder and listening to my heart beating belligerently in my chest.  It just sounded so… real.  I could have sworn that bird called his friend over, and I swear I saw his tiny beak part as he called out to me.

My whirlwind of thoughts gets interrupted by the sound of leaves crunching behind me.  Alarmed, I shoot straight up from my laying position, groaning in agony and the pain the sharp movement has caused me.  I turn around to see a small deer, closer than I’ve ever seen one get to a human before.  Before I have the chance to react, the deer, too, asks “Do you need help, sir?”, and this time I know I just can’t be hallucinating.  I mean, not one, not two, but three of these woodland animals have just spoken to me, offering their concern for my ill state.

Looking more like a deer in the headlights than the actual deer in question, I ask, “Did you just talk or am I going crazy?”

“You aren’t crazy.  Are you okay?” responds the deer.  The two birds hop down the side of my hammock and flutter up to perch their tiny feet on the deer’s back.

“You look sick, are you dying?” questions a bird.

“I’m sick… this can’t be real, animals don’t talk.  I need to leave, I need to find Tara and go to the hospital” I express, feeling more and more panicked by the second as I begin to scramble to my feet. 

“Well, you’re an animal, and you talk, don’t you?” the young deer inquires.

“You aren’t really talking.  I’m leaving.  Go away!” I anxiously yell, trying to scare the birds away by waving my hand around them.  They don’t budge.

In an attempt to scramble out of my hammock, I flip the thing over, landing with a thud on the ground beneath me.  There’s now a chorus of the three animals asking all at once if I am okay and continuing to ask if I need help, though I decide that I am going to ignore them from here on out.  I mean, they can’t actually be talking to me, they’re animals!  This has to all be a dream, perhaps I’m truly in my hammock right now, dreaming a dreadful dream  

“Sir, where are you going?  You need to rest!” exclaims a tiny voice from above me.  Looking up I see the chubby cheeks of a chipmunk staring down at me with great concern written all over its face.

“All of you stop talking to me!” I yell, feeling my lungs and my throat tighten from my sickness as it becomes harder to breathe.  “I need to get home and get Tara to bring me to the hospital, I’m hallucinating!” 

In my body’s fatigued state, the bags are too heavy for me to carry, and not wishing to be slowed down, I decided that I will leave them here and come back when I am better.  Right now, all I want to do is hike back to my truck and get out of these chaotic woodlands as fast as I possibly can.  I tiredly begin to make my way back, overwhelmed by everything going on around me.  With the birds, deer, and now the chipmunk all collectively expressing their concerns and begging me to stay and rest, mixed with the tiring work of trying to walk to the ravine, I’m becoming dizzy and my vision becomes spotted.

Under the overwhelming sensations of the virus plaguing my body and the animals yelling all around me, I lose my balance, dizzily tripping over a tree’s root and falling into the leaves.  I land on my back, feeling the pain of the tree root I just tripped over now slamming into my shoulders.  I look up to see one of the little red birds hovering over me, fluttering his wings and looking down at me with great concern.  Until today, I never thought I would know what concern looks like on the face of a bird.

“Are you okay?  Go lay back down!” the hovering little creature chirps at me.  Groaning in response, I feel myself becoming more and more tired.  This is it, I think to myself.  I’m about to die, and the last thing I did was talk to a bird.  If I wasn’t so physically and mentally exhausted I would be worried sick about my wife and my daughter never finding me.  Mid thought, I feel my eyes start to droop closed, and the last thing I feel before everything goes pitch black is the small bird perching itself on my upper arm.

I wake up in my bed, the feeling of the bird’s feet perched on my arm now replaced with my wife's hand shaking me awake.  Confused, I look down to find myself dressed back in my green plaid pajamas.  With my head pounding, I give Tara a perplexed look, and she returns the same to me.  

“Are you alright, honey?” asks my concerned wife, “it looked like you were having a bad dream.”  As I sit there looking confused and not responding to her, she goes on to tell me that ever since my negative COVID test results came back, I’ve been napping all morning.  Negative COVID results?  Trying to make sense of her claims, I rack my brain for answers.  The clock on my nightstand telling me it's hardly even one in the afternoon and the absence of my previously agonizing migraine tell me that I was simply taking a nap.  Seeing the time, and thinking about everything that has happened to me, I realize that it was all but a fever dream.