The morning after the declaration of a national emergency, I remember that Savannah and I made a trip to pick up her desktop monitor from her office, which would be undergoing a sterilization. She was being allowed to pick up the monitor and to bring it home on the condition that she would not utilize public transit on the way to the office.
We called a ride share with my gifted credit, and a white ADA-ready van pulled up to our walk. The driver was wearing a face mask. The trip was uneventful until she started to cough.
She had pulled the mask up, covering her mouth and nose, and proceeded to cough loudly. She was quick to disclaim that it was only a cold, but nonetheless I was made immediately uncomfortable by this turn of events. She kept coughing, now and again, until we arrived to the office building in the Loop. Any conversation had died with the first cough, and for that reason and because claustrophobia was closing in, we were both glad to be out of what seemed to us afterward as a pressure cooker for disease.