Quarantine

In the morning, I was still in a very, very bad way. My roommate John went to breakfast and returned with a plastic container full of wedding favors that he received from his son - Jelly Belly jelly beans tied into little decorative bundles. John then headed out again on deck. The wedding was going to occur soon - 1 p.m. - but I felt like hell. I decided I had to go down to the Medical Center and see if perhaps they had some medicine that might help.

In the reception area, the nurse (who had an Anglophonic accent - probably English) asked two questions: Have you thrown up, and do you have diarrhea? I answered affirmatively to both questions. Her pale skin blanched. She asked me to come into the examination room.

After getting my temperature, she brought forms to fill out to help her determine what food I had eaten, what bathrooms on ship I might have used, and who else I might have had contact with. I said I needed to get ready for a wedding in just an hour-and-a-half. She replied that I would not be attending any wedding: I was to be quarantined immediately to my room for twenty-four hours. I replied that could not be! She said :

"Paps, now you are going to be telling me you are the bride's uncle! But it doesn't matter. You will not attend. I once had to quarantine a bride on her wedding day and I certainly disregarded her protests. We take public health on this vessel very seriously. You will not attend. If we find that you are not complying with your detention, we will put you ashore in Puerto Vallarta."

I suppose I might have expected as much. In recent years, outbreaks of intestinal illnesses have sickened many on cruise ships. They would do whatever they had to do to arrest my virulent danger, up to and including exorcism, if need be.

This familiar term - "Paps" - bothered me a little too. Endearing, maybe, but under the circumstances, maybe just a little patronizing. Years ago, a stripper once called me "Poppy", and I thought was exciting, but being called "Paps" under these circumstances brought no thrill.

She had me lie down, and she listened to my bare abdomen. After last night's riot, the abdomen was quiet. She pressed near the appendix and asked if there was pain on the opposite side. Then she pressed in the same place on the opposite side and asked the same question. There was no pain on either side. She noted that I probably had not had my appendix removed, because people who have had that surgery will experience mirror-image pains. I thought that was an interesting piece of trivia, but if she wanted to know whether or not I still had an appendix, I thought she could have just looked for an appendectomy scar.

Then she asked if I had had any contacts with sick people. I hesitated. At embarkation, I had run into Natalie and Ben Wormeli. Natalie had been pulled aside for special screening by the ship's doctor, because she had answered her form in the affirmative in regards to recent illness. Could it be? Could I have caught this bug from Natalie yesterday? Who knew? I certainly didn't. I said I knew someone. She asked me for the person's name, so they could be quarantined too.

Just then, the nurse was called from outside. She asked me to finish filling in the forms she had brought me.

Alone again, I regretted my haste. No, I can't do it! Natalie is a wedding guest too! Maybe I can't go to the wedding, but I can't do this to her too! I will have to hide her identity. In place of a name, I filled in a big question mark.

Ten minutes later, the nurse returned. In the excitement of sending special HazMat crews across the ship to those locations where I had contaminated the public sphere she had lost the train of her thought regarding names and contacts. She simply had me return the filled-in forms and sent me up to my room with a few pills.

I called up Mark, the groom, and gave him the bad news that I should not attend, but was willing to defy the order in order to be there on this important day. After a hasty consultation with Lauren, Mark called back and said they'd much rather that I miss the wedding ceremony entirely rather than chance the possibility of getting bounced from the ship and missing the entire week of activities.

And they also wanted to leave a message for Mark's father, John, who was supposed to bring the jelly bean wedding favors to the ceremony: don't bother. They could not take the risk that, just by being in my proximity, the jelly beans might be carriers of disease too.

I hung up the phone. After all the elaborate preparations and expenses, I nevertheless missed Mark and Lauren's wedding....