Your doctor could not believe the relentless persistence of your fever. Waiting for test results, she wondered aloud about other causes. I do not like the rabbit hole she disappears down when inquiring about night sweats and enlarged lymph nodes. When the coronavirus test comes back positive, she is surprised. I am not.

I like to believe that I know you, my love of 30 years, fairly well. But in these weeks of separation, I discover new, unexamined pieces to our knowingness.

From behind the safety of the guest room wall, I listen closely to learn how footsteps to the bathroom at 2 a.m. reveal your strength …. how the clearing of your throat tells the depths of today’s cough …. how fluctuations in appetite connect to frequency of fevers …. how the slightest waver of your voice divulges overall malaise …. how levels of exhaustion are confessed in the quality of tired sighs …. how longing and loneliness can be measured in the precise selection of late night music on YouTube.

We have our first squabble, by phone, on day 16. That is a very good sign indeed. It is trash pickup day. You call with helpful suggestions about how precisely to put out the trash the right way. Under the usual division of labor in our home, trash management lies exclusively in your domain. Weeks have passed with you being too sick to bother. Today you want it done right. I’m insulted by your detailed instructions. It’s going to be hard to renegotiate control of space, domain and trash cans after illness subsides.

Normally, you take pride in creating healthy, tasty meals. Now you are relegated to texting food requests, negotiating the exact timing of your meal deliveries with other household happenings. With our 22-year-old twin boys back home and taking college classes remotely, we all must be well-versed in the safety protocol of leaving your meals — on disposable products — outside your door at a predetermined hour. You mask and glove up, open the door with a Lysol wipe, take the food and shut the door quickly behind you while we all hide. I enlist all my self-restraint to not run out and give you a hug, collapsing into your comforting chest, lingering there a moment, breathing in your soothing ways. That breach of caution would take my breath away. Literally.