Topanga resident and artist, Olivia Ferrari suffers from chronic persistent asthma. The mere thought of a highly contagious respiratory virus, let alone a pandemic, couldn’t possibly touch America, could it? Ferrari believed so. She diagnosed early symptoms as a cold or allergies but within two weeks she could hardly breathe. Her doctor put her on a program whose last step was to reserve a room with a ventilator at the hospital. My experience began innocently enough. It was early March and there was a faint promise of summer in the air. I made an appointment for March 7, at my regular salon for some regular beauty treatments. I was thinking of the sun and getting into better shape. Only peripherally wary of a virus referred to primarily as “the coronavirus,� I theorized that the virus eventually would come to California, but the weather was nice. While there were a few scattered reports of people getting sick, it really seemed so far away. Italy and Iran had taken center stage for the virus and the pandemic had not yet been declared. No one I knew seemed to be suffering. I kept my appointment thinking that it might be the last for a month or so. The appointment itself was uneventful. We talked as we always do about her boyfriend and family and my art. Two hours later, I was ready to leave when she mentioned that her father was really sick. Her mother was a nurse and had tried everything she knew, including antibiotics. I looked at her and noticed that her cheeks were flushed and there were beads of perspiration. Fever, I thought. I calmly asked her what his symptoms were, and they sounded classic to what I had heard about the coronavirus. I felt panic. Though I had other errands to do, including the week’s shopping, I made a beeline for home and showered and scrubbed from top to bottom and dressed in fresh clothes. I recall wanting life to be normal, regular, just the usual, and made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, had a cocktail, and forgot about it. Eleven days later I woke up feeling tired and a bit achy with a sore throat, and occasionally a little, light cough. I did not think for a second that I might have contracted the virus; I had thoroughly put all thoughts of that out of my mind. I took some aspirin and grabbed the two-pound bag of Halls cough drops, headed over to my newest drawing and forgot about it. The aches went away after a few days; the sore throat sort of went then came back. The cough stayed but didn’t really bug me. On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the virus, referred to now as Covid-19 or C-19, a pandemic. Everyone I knew seemed focused on New York, and we thought, “Oh, those poor dears,� but still there were only about 1,000 cases reported in the U.S. Logic and the L.A. County Department of Public Health dictated that this was nothing to worry about. Contracting the virus was not a high probability. Despite the pandemic status of the world, in California the cases were far away still: Silicon Valley, San Francisco. I continued to sicken slowly over the next seven days, a light cough that was really nothing, my throat was still sore, but now, I felt like the bottom of my lungs had disappeared; I couldn’t get a deep breath and I had a low-grade fever. I have a love affair with breathing as I also have chronic persistent asthma, so breathing with its essential qualities and me are old friends. I also keep a full arsenal of medications to help me breathe in any given situation short of calling 911. On Day 7, I had taken everything that I had and still couldn’t recover my breath. This was troubling; this meant I should call my doctor, and I did. The first person I spoke with was the nurse practitioner. She was great. She stayed with me on the phone for about an hour. She had a long list of questions: Had I been to China or EU recently? Had I been in contact with anyone who had been confirmed positive for the Covid-19 virus? I cried. I was embarrassed that I had been frivolous and gotten sick. I had put myself in harm’s way and had been harmed and now I needed help. This meant that I was taking the valuable time of medical people when I knew there was someone out there who needed it more. The following day, I spoke with my primary care doctor. She also stayed with me for about 30 minutes. She asked about my breathing and I told her. She asked if I could walk across the room or if I needed to go to the hospital. I thought about that last question. In the end I told her that if I were going to die, I would rather be at home. Pause. What was I thinking?! I told her that I did not want to go to the hospital because, if I didn’t have the virus, I would surely get it there. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly. Or maybe I was thinking very clearly. My doctor agreed and carefully outlined a program of graduating steps to follow. They started with a lot more medications and ended with a call to Kaiser to reserve a room with a ventilator, which, thankfully, I never needed. The next seven days were hell as I fought from a mostly reclining position. I had no sense of smell or taste and could not concentrate. I was tired of not breathing right. I looked at internet pictures of houses for sale in Hawaii where I was born. I thought about returning home and this was a comfort. This became a goal. I could not really join thoughts together other than following the doctor’s instructions. This was my light at the end of the tunnel, my ticket back to real life. After about seven days I was somehow better. I could still hear my lungs struggling but I was returning to health. I texted with my sisters. The company where my husband works had put the “Shelter in Place� mandate in, and he was working from home. This was a comfort, too, until he also displayed symptoms…. For him, it was more like a bad head cold. Sinuses packed and pounding, nose very clogged and then running, a minor sore throat that would come and go, and fatigue that would come on strong in the afternoon and worsen in the evening. Climbing stairs became exhausting and breathing was something he focused on, taking slow deep breaths. At times he felt he had a fever, but the thermometer showed normal. In week one things slowly became worse but some time in week two they very slowly became better. In all, it was about four weeks before he felt somewhat back to normal. With me, each following day I continued to try to notice some improvement, to take the medications prescribed and rest. It took about another week to realize that, indeed, I was on the road to recovery for real. I wanted to do more, I wanted to return to activity, but having enough breath to do the activity was a struggle. At the time of writing, it had been four weeks since I got sick and the entire social face of the earth has changed. I wave to old friends and neighbors at a distance and there is a tiny feeling of apprehension if they get within six feet. We order our groceries via the internet and then spray them on arrival with disinfectant. We wear plastic gloves and masks when we leave the house for anything and I no longer go for my leisurely walks with my friend. The Tai Chi class that I attend is being conducted via Zoom, like my husband’s meetings. One day, we drove to an old friend’s house to pick up some plastic pots for planting vegetables. Begrudgingly (I thought), we practiced safe distancing; they did not leave their upstairs balcony choosing to speak to us from the 20 to 30-foot distance. Somehow, we were comfortable with that, too. These people, like most of my friends, enjoy the touch of an embrace and being physically close. In the back of my mind the new mantra chants, “social distancing, wash my hands well, don’t touch my face.� It was only a couple of months before when we were debating the pros and cons of such behavior. At the last party that I attended I remember one friend saying, “ This is Topanga, it’s always safe to hug here.� As we drove home with the pots, passing the old church, lifeless on Sunday like all of the shops in town, I thought of weddings and birthdays that would not be attended, and of drive-by bunnies at Easter. Part of me was saying this is wrong, part of me was thinking about what it must have been like for those trying to survive the pandemics of the past. I tell myself, no, this is not bad. This is what we must do to move forward. This is the new face of progress. It does still seem so strange the distance we must still maintain. I find that I have been yearning at least to hear the voices of those whom I love. Phone calls over texting, photos exchanged of what I am growing, eating, drawing, or painting. I wonder at this strange virus, the damage, and the way we used to live. But also at how, by its nature, I find myself focusing now on redefining my immediate environment. Thoughts of travel, vacations, and casual touching fall away from my perspective. Are we really undergoing a complete reset of social behavior? It’s as though I woke up to a whole new world.