One Year Later

On my personal pandemic anniversary, I take a look back at my last few days of normalcy in the “before times.”

Keiko Zoll
8 min readMar 14, 2021
April 2020.

“You heard the whole thing I just told your husband, right? How you might experience chills, body aches, elevated temperature tomorrow morning?”

I nodded as I sat down in the seat still warm from where Larry had sat just a moment before.

“Any questions before we continue?”

“Just one,” I said, looking right at the EMT. “What’s your name?”

“Kevin,” he said with a curious smile.

“Hi Kevin,” I said. “I wanted to know the name of the man who’s making history for me today.”

His smile widened. “It’s my honor,” he replied.

With just a slight pinch, I was fully vaccinated with my second dose of the world’s fastest-developed vaccine against the novel coronavirus. In 14 days, I will be at full efficacy, my body producing all the cellular “fork hands” it needs to fend off the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Saturday, March 13, 2021.

Exactly one year ago to the day, my world closed. I remember trying to remain hopeful…

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