Katrina Wischusen overheard her parents, Bob and Julie, talking that Monday night. They could speak honestly to each other, with the four younger kids in bed.

Julie sounded nervous. She doesn’t scare easily. She’s traveled to Haitian villages as a volunteer nurse three times, treating children for parasitic diseases, malnutrition, and tape worm. This next mission, the next morning, felt more foreign — even though it was 15 minutes away.

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Julie had no idea what she’d be walking into, as a volunteer nurse at Union County’s free drive-thru coronavirus testing facility. Her first shift was March 24, a day after the pop-up center opened. Would they provide enough protective gear for nurses administering tests, like her? How could she know she wouldn’t bring the virus home to her family in Cranford?

Bob tried to calm her fears. She’s known his steady voice most of her life. They met about 30 years ago, at Union Catholic High School. In 22 years of marriage, they’ve seen it all together — five kids now between ages 11 and 18, Hurricane Irene flooding their house, dozens of Phish shows across the country. She still calls him Bobby.

Sports fans know that voice, too, from Jets games on the radio and ESPN college football and basketball telecasts. But how could he find the right words now?

He tried to sound sure, like he did earlier that Monday, when the four youngest kids were worried. Talking with Julie, he did his best to hide his anxiety. They wouldn’t take volunteers if it were dangerous, he told her. Yet part of him wondered: If hospital intensive-care units are short on masks, can anyone feel safe?

“It was daunting,” Julie said later. “I felt like: What am I doing? But I felt like I needed to do it.”

The next day, still nervous, Julie drove to the testing facility in a Kean University parking lot. The detailed setup and National Guard staffing quickly eased her concerns. She now volunteers there Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday with her friend Kathleen Ollen, silently spending about 20 hours a week staring this virus in the face hundreds of times, then scrubbing away the stress at home, just to go right back for more.

About 60 percent of the patients who visit the by-appointment-only Kean facility test positive, according to Union County. The facility has run more than 3,000 tests — and now churns through 400-plus a day.

The numbers feel as jarring as Julie and Kathleen’s days are long. But Julie keeps telling herself what she vowed to show her kids by choosing to walk headstrong into a pandemic.

“Good things happen when you’re brave.”

Julie and Bob Wischusen with their five kids (left to right): Katrina, 18; Benny, 11; Charlie, 15; Cory, 11; and Jimmy, 13.

A sneeze can be deadly.

That’s the reality for coronavirus testing center nurses like Julie and Kathleen. They must insert a swab so deep into patients’ noses that they might sneeze — an easy way to spread the virus. So nurses at Kean, working in teams of three under several large tents, tell patients — before the test — to roll up the car window and blow their nose into a provided tissue.

The nurses keep their mouths shut. An X (or Xs) marked on vehicle windshields indicate how many people need a test. Nurses hold up signs to communicate with patients — show your ID; take this tissue, close your window, blow your nose; roll down your window halfway, lean your head back for the test. One nurse swabs, one writes patient information, and one puts the swab in a bag. The whole process takes just a few minutes. Results usually are available in three to four days.

Julie, Kathleen, and the nurses shield themselves as best they can — surgical gown; N95 mask; hair net; face shield; and three pairs of gloves, with the bottom pair taped to the gown and the two other sets changed throughout the day. Nurses not only are provided new gear daily, but also after lunch — plus assistance removing gear, so it’s done correctly.

At lunch the first day, Julie texted Bob a photo of her and Kathleen in their coronavirus armor. They felt safe. Bob said he’d been “looking at the clock all day waiting” for this news. He let himself exhale. So did Katrina, who hadn’t forgotten the fear in her mom’s voice.

“It was like a weight off of our shoulders,” Katrina said.

Still, days at Kean are emotionally draining. Nurses have their temperature taken every morning when they arrive. Many people getting tests are fellow health-care workers. Julie and Kathleen see paw print decals on the back of vehicles — Cranford’s logo. These are their neighbors.

“They pull up, and they just look so scared,” Kathleen said. “Some of them look really sick. Some of them are obviously short of breath, sitting in their cars. They just keep coming.”

Kathleen, a former oncology nurse, has seen misery before.

“But I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she said.

Kathleen Ollen with her husband, Tom, and their daughters, Caroline, 11, and Grace, 16.

Julie walked in the door, and her kids rushed over for a hug.

“No, no, don’t come near me,” she said.

After days at the testing center, hugs must wait.

When Julie gets home, she removes her shoes outside, hurries to the basement and throws her clothes in a hot wash, and goes upstairs to shower. Then, hugs. She wipes down her car with disinfectant, too. Kathleen follows a similar routine when she comes home to her husband and two daughters in Cranford.

On a recent Tuesday night, Julie craved normalcy after volunteering at Kean. So she and Bob watched a free webcast of an old Phish concert that the band was streaming. Thousands of people packed together, dancing and partying on a summer night. It made Julie and Bob smile — and reminded them why her work at Kean matters so much.

“That’s what we’re doing this for — to get back to that,” Julie said. “Because this sucks.”

She wants to get back to Phish shows — she’s seen about 100 so far — and get back to her regular job running a performing arts studio. She wants to do another trip with Hands up for Haiti, which lets her use her nursing skills even though she no longer works in health care. She wants to hang out with Kathleen — a school nurse at Newark Academy in Livingston — while not covered in surgical gowns and masks.

Sometimes, it all seems too far away. Bob’s cousin — Matty Price, an ICU nurse at Hackensack University Medical Center — recently told them the hospital was converting its cafeteria into extra ICU space, to combat the coronavirus.

“I can’t get that out of my head,” Julie said. “It’s staggering. It’s almost too much.”

As Julie, Kathleen, and the Kean center nurses chip away with testing, they recognize they’re playing catchup — which frustrates Bob, even as he admires their bravery.

“Obviously, we should be testing many, many more [people],” he said. “It’s been a massive failure so far that we haven’t, as a nation, tested what we’ve needed to test — to contain it.”

So Julie’s routine continues, for however long — back under the tents in Kean’s parking lot, into the layers of armor, staring down a pandemic.

“I feel like I’m feeling all of my emotions, all at the same time,” she said. “And I’m just trying to quietly manage that. You’re feeling nervous. You’re feeling angry we were not more prepared — and we all know why, of course. You’re feeling grateful for your family and your health. And you’re feeling hopeful for a time to come. Aren’t you feeling everything?”

Union County’s free drive-thru COVID-19 testing center is located at Kean University in Union. It is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The center is available to Union County residents with COVID-19 symptoms. First responders and front-line health care workers who are experiencing symptoms may use the center, regardless of residence.

Union County residents who want to be tested can call 908-214-7107. First responders and front-line health care workers can call 908-373-5105. Testing is by appointment only. For more information: ucnj.org/coronavirus-update.

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NFL analyst Darryl Slater may be reached at dslater@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DarrylSlater.