The second day was always the hardest. There were too many memories bound up in day two, too many things had happened, too fast, that each time she was locked down now Cora knew she would relive them. This time almost too slowly to bear. Day two was the last day she’d spoken to Rob.

‘That’s some cosy looking isolation, wish I could join you’. That first morning he’d called her from the ICU in Inverness, pretty much as soon as he’d cleared the decontamination process and been admitted. They’d talked. They’d both kept it light. People went into isolation all the time, people came out all the time. Cora hadn’t seen inside one of the units before and so Rob gave her a mock tour of the room, flipping the camera from front to back on the tablet they’d given him and walking it round. From some angles you might have thought he’d moved to some new student digs, was settling into a one of those small halls-of-residence bedrooms, maybe ten square feet, bare walls waiting to be covered in posters, single bed, a chair, a desk. The details gave it away though. If you saw the bottom of the bed you could see the metal frame and the hydraulics that would lift and move its mattress; you’d see the wheels locked by brakes; you’d see pristine sheets tucked tight under the corners with a precision that didn’t belong to a first year undergraduate. If you saw the floors you’d see them flow up and into the walls, all nooks and crevices that might host dust or debris sculpted away in the design. If you were shown the tiny wet room adjoining, separated by a hanging, plasticky curtain, then you’d see the pull cord next to the toilet marked emergency, and you’d see the fold out shower chair attached to the wall. Most of all, as the camera swung around, Cora saw the medical monitor, a black LCD screen criss crossed with lines and numbers she didn’t understand. 

Cora had some old video on her phone of the day they’d gone up to Fort George. It was the footage she always came back to when she missed him; she liked to see him move, it was how she remembered him, full of energy and life. It was just a couple of sequences of them goofing around: Rob marching across the wooden slatted bridge at the Fort entrance and swapping salutes with a party of young kids being shepherded out by their teacher; Rob sitting astride one of the cannons overlooking the battlements out to the sea, her calling ‘if only’ and then the film shaking, briefly flipping to a view of the sky, as he jumped down and ran across to lift her in a hug. The video stopped but the memory ran on in her mind.

All through that first day they’d been in contact. There were times that he’d have to dial off, the hiss of the door decompressing signalling the arrival of a masked nurse or doctor. She never saw what they did, never really saw them at all, not properly at least. All she could see was just a pair of eyes behind protective goggles. In those gaps whilst they couldn’t speak she imagined their lives, sketched out a fictional version of these people that she had never met, these people that were looking after Rob. She gave them names and friends, lovers, family. She sent them on holiday, stripped them out of their scrubs and put them in swimming trunks and bikinis, let them splash in a hotel pool or swim some stretch of deserted shoreline. Somewhere hot. She made them endless cups of tea. She stole into their houses on Christmas Eve, after they went to bed, and padded out the pile of presents under their trees. She knitted them scarves, gave money to their favourite charities, watched them cheer on their football team (she always made it Caley), listened to their dreams, and whispered hope in their ears when they got scared. The first couple of times it was the same nurse. Cora had managed to blurt out her thanks before he’d made Rob switch off the camera, he’d waved to her briefly and said sorry that he had to cut them off. The others never had time to acknowledge her but that was okay. She understood. She was the one with all this useless time and so she imagined them all, talked to them all, thanked them all.

However many lockdowns she’d been through Cora knew that they’d all, always, be about that first one. When they’d taken her to soft isolation – no symptoms, all screening clear, just a precaution – she’d been so numb that she could barely process what was happening. There was someone inside of her screaming, scorched in agony, but she had hidden her away. She wasn’t for anyone else to see. Nobody could help her anyway. Everyone said the same thing, that it would take time, that it would get better with time, give it time, take your time, time heals. She didn’t believe it then and, now, she knew that time didn’t change how you felt about what happened: you just learned to carry the pain better.

The second day they only spoke once, early in the morning. Contact was restricted during the night so that patients could rest. Cora hadn’t really slept, impatient for the time that they were allowed to restore their link. She was tired from her restless night and from keeping up the face they’d both, undiscussed, agreed on as their way to see this through. When her phone started to vibrate she almost dropped it in her eagerness to answer. She slid the ‘call accept’ button on the screen and Rob’s face appeared. All her pent up anticipation melted into anxiety. He looked pale, stubble on his cheeks standing out in contrast to his grey-white pallor. He was coughing almost as soon as the call started and seemed to need a few moments after each sentence to catch his breath. She told him to rest, to not speak, just lay down and listen to her voice. She stumbled over repeated reassurances that everything would be okay, that he was in the best place, that he was young and healthy and there was nothing to worry about. It’s just a bad strain, this one, everyone’s saying it. Just a bad one but we’ll get through it. Just lie down and rest. She didn’t know whether she was saying it all for him or for herself. They spent a few minutes in silence. Rob had rolled on to his side on the bed and had propped up the screen against the wall, facing him. It seemed to help his coughing and she watched his chest settle into a steady rise and fall. They stayed like that until she heard the door open in his room and a gloved hand reached over to switch off the screen. 

She’d never told him that she loved him. That was what she remembered in lockdown now. That second day, in those few moments on that call, she hadn’t told him. She knew that he’d known, he must have known, but she hadn’t told him. On the days that she was kinder to herself she knew it wasn’t anybody’s fault, that neither of them could have known that they wouldn’t speak again, but she didn’t always have days when she was kind to herself. And she never had them during lockdowns.