Pages looking for addresses of nearby clinics and hospitals, scribbling the information on a piece of paper. I was relieved to even find the phone book, stuck in the bottom drawer of a kitchen cabinet. I hadn’t seen one in years.
My first reaction was to search the map on my smartphone, but the map screen remained stubbornly blank. It was getting no incoming data feed. My usual stream of messages, after a brief flood of concerned e-mails from friends, had stopped as well.
I couldn’t access the internet at all.
Neither my smartphone nor laptop would load any webpages, or at least not anything intelligible. When I tried Google, either nothing would load and a “Could not find DNS server” error message would pop onto the screen, or sometimes a random webpage would load about an African tourism site, or the next time a college student’s blog would appear.
So I scribbled on paper.
As we left the apartment, half of our neighbors were out in the hallway, talking in quiet whispers with masks hanging around their necks. They spread away from us as we walked out, mostly away from Lauren, who held Luke. The Chinese family at the end of the hallway wisely stayed inside. Richard had called down for his car service to drive us, and I wanted to thank him, but as I held my hand out, he shrank away and put his mask on, muttering that we’d better hurry.
Outside, Richard’s black Escalade and driver were waiting for us. The driver, Marko, was already wearing a mask. It was the first time I’d met him, but Lauren already seemed to know him quite well.
At first we tried the Presbyterian clinic just around the corner on Twenty-Fourth. It was listed as open, but when we arrived, people were streaming out and telling us it was closed. We circled around to the Beth Israel clinic nearby, but there was a line stretching onto the street already.
We didn’t even stop.
Lauren gently cradled Luke in layers of blankets, quietly humming little lullabies to him. He’d been crying again, but had given up, and was now sniffling and squirming about. He could sense something was wrong, that we were scared.
The warmest things we could find in our closet for Lauren were a leather jacket and scarf, and I was wearing the thin, black jacket and sweater from earlier. It was warm inside the Escalade, but bitter cold outside.
I found myself worrying that Marko, the driver, would abandon us somewhere if it got too late. He must have a family somewhere he’s worrying about too . It would be impossible to find a taxi, with all this going on, and Lauren had said that the subways weren’t working either. I tried talking to Marko, but he just said not to worry, that everything was fine, that we could trust him.
I still worried.
The streets of New York had transformed from holiday festive to cold and desolate. Long lines of people snaked out of convenience and food stores, outside bank machines, and there were long lines of cars waiting for gas at the stations.
Memories of past storms and disasters pressed down heavily.
People hurried down the streets, loaded down with bags and packages, nobody speaking, everyone staring at the ground. None of the packages looked like Christmas gifts. New Yorkers always had the feeling that their city was a target, and now it seemed, from the hunched shoulders and furtive glances on the streets outside, that the monster was rearing its head again.
It was a collective wound that never quite healed, infecting anyone that came here. When Lauren and I had moved into the condo in Chelsea, she’d been concerned that we were too close to the Financial District. I’d told her not to be silly. Had I made a terrible mistake?
We stopped at the emergency clinic at the Greater New York on Ninth between Fifteenth and Sixteenth. The place was swarming with people, and not just sick-looking people, but crazy-looking ones. The woodwork of the city was opening up.
I got out and tried to talk to the police and EMTs at the
My first reaction was to search the map on my smartphone, but the map screen remained stubbornly blank. It was getting no incoming data feed. My usual stream of messages, after a brief flood of concerned e-mails from friends, had stopped as well.
I couldn’t access the internet at all.
Neither my smartphone nor laptop would load any webpages, or at least not anything intelligible. When I tried Google, either nothing would load and a “Could not find DNS server” error message would pop onto the screen, or sometimes a random webpage would load about an African tourism site, or the next time a college student’s blog would appear.
So I scribbled on paper.
As we left the apartment, half of our neighbors were out in the hallway, talking in quiet whispers with masks hanging around their necks. They spread away from us as we walked out, mostly away from Lauren, who held Luke. The Chinese family at the end of the hallway wisely stayed inside. Richard had called down for his car service to drive us, and I wanted to thank him, but as I held my hand out, he shrank away and put his mask on, muttering that we’d better hurry.
Outside, Richard’s black Escalade and driver were waiting for us. The driver, Marko, was already wearing a mask. It was the first time I’d met him, but Lauren already seemed to know him quite well.
At first we tried the Presbyterian clinic just around the corner on Twenty-Fourth. It was listed as open, but when we arrived, people were streaming out and telling us it was closed. We circled around to the Beth Israel clinic nearby, but there was a line stretching onto the street already.
We didn’t even stop.
Lauren gently cradled Luke in layers of blankets, quietly humming little lullabies to him. He’d been crying again, but had given up, and was now sniffling and squirming about. He could sense something was wrong, that we were scared.
The warmest things we could find in our closet for Lauren were a leather jacket and scarf, and I was wearing the thin, black jacket and sweater from earlier. It was warm inside the Escalade, but bitter cold outside.
I found myself worrying that Marko, the driver, would abandon us somewhere if it got too late. He must have a family somewhere he’s worrying about too . It would be impossible to find a taxi, with all this going on, and Lauren had said that the subways weren’t working either. I tried talking to Marko, but he just said not to worry, that everything was fine, that we could trust him.
I still worried.
The streets of New York had transformed from holiday festive to cold and desolate. Long lines of people snaked out of convenience and food stores, outside bank machines, and there were long lines of cars waiting for gas at the stations.
Memories of past storms and disasters pressed down heavily.
People hurried down the streets, loaded down with bags and packages, nobody speaking, everyone staring at the ground. None of the packages looked like Christmas gifts. New Yorkers always had the feeling that their city was a target, and now it seemed, from the hunched shoulders and furtive glances on the streets outside, that the monster was rearing its head again.
It was a collective wound that never quite healed, infecting anyone that came here. When Lauren and I had moved into the condo in Chelsea, she’d been concerned that we were too close to the Financial District. I’d told her not to be silly. Had I made a terrible mistake?
We stopped at the emergency clinic at the Greater New York on Ninth between Fifteenth and Sixteenth. The place was swarming with people, and not just sick-looking people, but crazy-looking ones. The woodwork of the city was opening up.
I got out and tried to talk to the police and EMTs at the
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