“I’m putting meals outside the door like for a dog,” Melissa Thornton of Madison, Ala., said Saturday. “It’s really horrible when somebody you love is not feeling well and you keep reading more and more alarming things and you’re not able to take care of them.”

She’s talking about her husband, 59-year-old engineer Mark Thornton. He’s been quarantined over the garage at their home in an office-turned-loft for a week.

Mark Thornton felt “horrible” when he came home from business travel March 14, and he got a coronavirus test from his doctor on March 16. He was still waiting for the results on Saturday.

The Thorntons’ story is what can happen when a traveling professional meets a national health crisis and a system that’s overrun. Mark Thornton works for a large defense contractor in Huntsville and has been in Arizona, Colorado and Washington, D.C. over the last month for his job.

“I was just coming home and had a killer headache,” Thornton said Saturday, “and I woke up the next morning with chills. I didn’t really have a cough.”

He felt better Sunday, March 15, but he had no energy and the cough came back. “Not a violent cough” like the flu, he said, “just sort of a nagging little cough.” His fever would come and go.

“Monday, he called me (at work),” Melissa Thornton said. She’s the communications director at the Princess Theater in Decatur. “He was driving himself to the doctor.”

“I called my (general practitioner) and he said he had five kits, and I was the fifth person, so he said come on in,” Thornton said. “He said just stay in the car and park under the awning. You pull under the thing and they’re geared up and they’ve got more stuff than they can hold in their hands….

“He’s very nice and does a good job,” Thornton said. “He had me wear a mask to come in to take the test. I’m sitting in the truck, and he pulls the mask down to get a swab of my nose. Then, essentially, leave.”

Thornton’s physician told him the results would be back in 24-48 hours. They weren’t. He’s been calling daily ever since.

“I’m not upset with them or anything,” Thornton said. “Their practices and procedures are not set up for this. When you call them, the first disclaimer on the phone is ‘if you’re having some kind of emergency, call 9-1-1.’”

The Thorntons won’t say which lab got his sample to test. It’s one you’ve heard of and probably used, Thornton said, but his wife said they don’t want “to throw them under the bus.” But, still.

“We’re like, well, what’s happened? Has it gotten lost? How do we follow up?” Melissa Thornton said. “I don’t think anybody’s being malicious, but the system is overwhelmed.”

“I don’t want to take another test, when there seems to be a shortage of them,” Thornton told his wife. They now hope to hear Monday, but they’ve been told the possible wait for results after Monday is now two days, not just one.

Thornton spends his days working on America’s defense. It’s a job that involves travel and back-to-back teleconferences when he’s in the office. “I’ve been able to do that here,” he said of his loft. “My company is well-equipped to do that, but generally we meet face-to-face with another company.”

Thornton has done a lot of research in his loft on the crisis and America’s response, and he isn’t angry.

“What’s to get mad about?” he said. “These are circumstances beyond anyone’s control. In this country, we don’t build capacity, because capacity costs money. So, everything is sized to what the need and demand is. When something interrupts that flow, we’re just unprepared for it.

“We’re also very much a just-in-time society, as well, so when I need it, I’ll go get it,” Thornton said. “So, we find ourselves in a situation where doctors only have five of the kits.”

“I have a wonderful wife,” Thornton said to end the conversation. “I’m staying in a loft above the garage, and she’s just been an angel to provide food for me, emotionally and spiritually, as well.”

But his wife said Thornton is feeling the strain. “He’s not sleeping because he’s concerned,” she said. “Even if it’s a mild case and he gets through to the other side, we don’t know how long he needs to stay out of circulation. If it’s the flu and he’s over another strain of it, great. But we don’t know that, either.”