The Before — Suzey Ingold

It started with the small things. My commute was as busy as it ever was, only one or two other passengers left on the bus by the time we swung east onto Lawrence Avenue, rounding past the petrol station. The price of petrol had been dropping steadily since the start of the week. Markets meant very little to me but, historically, nothing good ever seemed to happen when the price of petrol dropped.

At work, we lined up outside the one bathroom to wash our hands. Disinfecting high touch surfaces became a daily task. I got pulled out of the lab to cross-train on the front desk, in turn showing the front of house staff how the cameras worked. It didn’t really register. The headlines kept coming and our boss was increasingly the voice of pessimism from his corner of the office but it still felt too far away to feel tangible.

It was a surprisingly mild March evening as I hopped on the subway to meet friends downtown. The restaurant was packed out. It was difficult enough to find my friends, let alone contemplate finding the bathroom. I popped out the hand sanitiser as my friend’s brother observed me across the table.

“On the hand sanitiser train?”

I shrugged. I’d lived in big cities most of my life. Cleaning your hands after getting off public transport was a force of habit, more than an abundance of caution in the present times.

As we ate, an ambulance screeched down the street, pulling to a stop outside the building across the road.

“Someone’s got the virus,” one of our group joked.

The blue and red lights spun spots before my eyes, reflecting off the glass of the windows. I shivered and returned to my soup.

You wouldn’t have known we were on the brink of global crisis. The theatre was sold out, a mix and mingle of bodies that now feels so unfamiliar and odd to so much as think about. My friend pointed out a man a few rows back wearing a mask. When I turned my head, I searched out a costume mask with a slight frown.

“Oh,” I said as I caught sight of the man in a medical face mask. “That kind of mask.”

That was the before – a year ago today, when the reality of the future we were all walking towards was still something from a dystopian novel. The time when I still associated the word mask more with a costume than with an item I now carry with me at all times. The day the World Health Organisation declared it to be a pandemic – a term which held no real-life connotation for me with which to gauge its severity.

The rest of the week passed in its usual kind of way – then, I would have called it average. Now, I would call it unimaginable. It feels like a lifetime ago. I continued my daily, hour-long commute to and from work. The price of petrol continued to drop. We continued our daily attack of the door handles.

My roommate called me in a panic as I was leaving on Thursday. They’d just announced the upcoming school closure. She wanted me to find toilet paper. I told her to calm down. I said we’d be fine. I took a cab home with a box of Christmas decorations I’d salvaged from the office purge. My cab driver said things were getting bad.

I sighed and stared out of the window. “Yeah,” I murmured. “I guess they are.”

Without knowing it, Friday was my last hurrah. We took a detour from our usual routine of burger Fridays to sample a lunch deal at the Indian restaurant nearby. I had no idea it was the last time I would ever sit and eat lunch with all of my co-workers. I took a cab downtown to a friend’s birthday. The cab driver offered me hand sanitiser. Three times.

“The only rule is everyone washes their hands first!” My friend called out as I walked into his apartment. I followed along the other arrivals, scrubbing off before greeting my friends, hugs as easy as breathing. It was a small gathering, many of the usual faces opting to stay home that night. Just as a precaution.

I didn’t mean to stay out so late – even then, I was rarely out until the early hours of the morning. One minute, it was late evening and we were in a busy bar on King Street. The next, it was after three o’clock in the morning and we were skipping west singing Hamilton lyrics in truly awful Scottish accents. I know I got home. I know my roommate put me to bed with a glass of water. I know I woke up feeling incredibly sick. (The normal kind of sick – not the virus kind).

Squinting at the bright light of my phone, I groaned. I was due at a birthday brunch in less than an hour. One friend had already bowed out, having got back to the country two days ago, she’d realised she was supposed to be quarantining. I made it to an empty restaurant, not quite having time to process that before I politely excused myself to throw up in the bathrooms upstairs. I silently begged that no one would pass outside and think that I was virus-sick.

Returning to the table, something more of a human being, I blinked at my surroundings.

“It’s so…”

“Dead?” My friend offered.

It was mid-morning on a Saturday at one of the most popular brunch spots in the city. Usually, even getting a reservation could be a struggle. We were one of two tables.

Our server gave us a sad smile. “I’ve never seen so many cancellations.” I tipped well and told her to take care.

I said goodbye to my friends. I wouldn’t see them again in person for months.

The weekend petered out. I started putting together my immigration paperwork on Saturday night. I went to the gym on Sunday morning. I wandered through a quiet grocery store. There was barely any bread. There was no pasta. A woman picked up the last can of tomatoes and cast me a haggard look. I smiled back sympathetically. Worst came to worst, I knew my roommate had picked up enough canned foods to last us through the apocalypse.

By Monday, having spent the rest of my Sunday spiralling into a horrifying news cycle, I felt guilty getting on the bus to work. It was significantly quieter than usual – it was more than just the absence of the schoolchildren. We were a bare bones team at work, a sombre, tense feel over those of us that were left.

We were told to keep our distance. I spent the day in the lab, alone, shoes kicked off as I worked through a stack of Batman memorabilia. I propped Justin Trudeau up on my phone as he began his first press conference. I started shaking. I looked up flights to the U.K. and wondered if I should just get on a plane and go, to be with my family.

By the end of the day, no one wanted to come back tomorrow. But, as far as we knew, we had no choice. Ours was not a job conducive to working from home. I left half an avocado in the fridge and returned home, dread growing in the pit of my stomach. Late that night, I was told not to return to the office tomorrow. Or the next day. Or for the next two weeks.

Two weeks. At first, that’s all we thought it would be. I started a two week workout program. I bookmarked a handful of films to watch. Two weeks became four. Four became my office closing down for good and officially becoming unemployed.

Two weeks later, I was drinking bellinis in the middle of the day for the first of many Zoom birthday parties.

It’s very hard to write back on those days. Not for lack of memory – in the hindsight of finality, I can playback the minute details of that week like a film reel from a projector. Nor, either, because this new way of life continues now, a year on. It’s difficult because it feels like writing fiction. In our fierce adaptability, we’ve become so accustomed to what daily life looks like now that it becomes difficult to comprehend that it wasn’t actually always like this.

My body cannot physically remember what it’s like to be in a crowded room with dozens of people. Nor what it feels like to leave the house without checking my pockets for a mask. Let alone what it feels like to greet someone I just met with a hug, to reach across a table and touch someone’s arm.

For all that I want some sense of that old normality back, I can’t help but wonder – once we get it, will I even know what to do with it anymore?