“Let’s turn on your TV,” the nurse says as she runs back in. “They just announced there’s a vaccine! It’s the beginning of the end!”

I feel like I’m dying of cancer and she just told me they’ve found the cure. Which is great news for everyone else, but what if it’s too late for me? The CNN reporter spouts phrases like “ninety percent effective” and “two doses” and “wartime effort.” It’s not until there’s water dripping all over my hand that I realize I dug my nails into the latex gloves and popped them wide open. The nurse looks at me, annoyed.

“I’ll get someone to clean up this mess,” she says. And then, when she leaves, I hear her and her fellow nurses squealing with joy. Finally, a possibility that the traumatic stress will be behind them.

PARISA

Maybe it’s selfish, but when someone I love is in crisis, I have to find ways to make them—and everyone around them—feel like everything is going to be okay. It’s an Iranian trait, I think. Empathy runs deep in our culture, and we don’t like to experience another person’s pain from afar. We prefer to be in the trenches with them. And that’s where I’ve been with Julia and Elena for the past two weeks. Deep in the mud, so to speak. It’s entirely possible that I’ve been an unrelenting thorn in their side and they’re too polite to tell me as much, but hopefully, that’s not the case. Hopefully, by showing up at their apartment, I’m making the agony and uncertainty of Gabriela’s illness a little more bearable.

“You know you don’t have to do this every day?” my mom says, as she pulls the car into the parking lot of the Gonzaleses’ apartment building.

I’m still too gun-shy to drive my car after the accident, so my parents have been dropping me off in the mornings and picking me up in the afternoons. But, hey, at least I have a reason to face my fears and leave the house now.

“I know,” I reply. “I want to. It makes me feel closer to Gabs.”

The engine hums quietly as we wait for the results of my Adema test. My parents paid a small fortune for a case of at-home tests, and they make me take one before I’m allowed to enter the apartment. They’ve supplied Julia and Elena with the tests, too, so they can text me if they end up being positive. But so far they’ve been healthy. As much as I hate the sharp sensation of shoving a stick up my nose and all the way to what feels like my brain, it makes us all feel safer inhaling and exhaling under the same roof. Plus, according to experts, it’s the best way to get accurate results.