Natalie Layton, 23, is a recent University of Alabama graduate who usually works in a stationery store in Vestavia.

Her roommate is a nurse at Grandview Medical Center who planned to treat COVID-19 patients, so Natalie decided it would be best to stay with her parents in Alabaster for a while.

“And then I walked right into the coronavirus,” she said.

Now after weeks of state-ordered quarantine, her family of four will leave their house for the first time Wednesday.

“April 8th is our freedom day,” said Natalie’s mother, Tandra, 53, who runs a small business selling parts for school chairs.

To celebrate, the mother of two plans to pick up groceries from Walmart, check her mail, and take a long walk before looking for ways to monopolize on the immunity she feels 95 percent confident she’s gained. It’s still early, but medical experts do not think people get the virus twice.

“I’ll be doing something for people that are sick,” Tandra says, like delivering food to the elderly or to kids, or calling to check on other members of Church of the Highlands.

Tandra wants to tell others who are anxious that it is possible to survive coronavirus, even as an immunocompromised person like herself.

“We’re tired, like unusually tired,” she said, adding that she has a slight headache and lost her sense of taste and smell.

The family consists of Tandra and her husband, both 53, their daughter, Natalie, 23, and son, Andrew, 17.

Tandra and Natalie have autoimmune disorders, and her 17-year-old son has asthma.

The family now traces its coronavirus odyssey to a mysterious disease Tandra’s husband, Dale, 53, got back in early February, weeks before some Alabamians protested the possible arrival of cruise ship evacuees to Anniston.

“I’ve never coughed that much in my life,” he said it lasted about three weeks.

“I couldn’t get rid of it. My doctor made the comment to me, ‘We don’t know what it is, but you just have a nasty virus we don’t have a name for.’” Steroids were the only thing that helped.

Dale travels across the state for work, selling school furniture, and says several people he saw last winter also complained of similar mystery symptoms, although he doesn’t know exactly where he got the disease.

On February 19, their 17-year-old-son, Andrew, came home from school and basketball practice and took a nap, which was unusual. By the 21st, he was running a fever of 101 and had a bad sore throat.

A few weeks later, Andrew had a group of eight boys over who usually spend a night at his house each week. One of them ran a fever at home a few days later.

But Tandra, who hasn’t had a fever in decades, was the first in her family to test positive for coronavirus. She woke up on the morning of March 17 feeling like she had been hit by a truck.

After watching news reports about the disease, she went to get tested, and got positive results a few days later, on a Saturday. The next day, she had an hours-long conversation with state health officials.

“(They) went over all these rules and regulations,” she said. Someone, she thinks from the health department, came by to serve her with an order to remain inside and to make sure she was staying in.

She secluded herself in a room on one side of the house, fearful of passing the disease on to her kids. Her husband brought her food and water wearing gloves and a mask.

“I was in bed flat on my back for seven days. It was fatigue. I couldn’t walk down the hallway and back. I didn’t have energy,” she said.

As time went on, her symptoms remained mild.

“I was a little surprised because I just thought I would be sicker than I was,” she said.

A makeshift office Tandra Layton created to work from her bedroom during quarantine

Natalie watched from across the house and worried that her mom might have to go to the hospital, given her immune disorder.

“I panicked,” she said. “I went down a spiral.” She occupied herself disinfecting surfaces in the house, trying to avoid contracting the disease.

“We constantly Cloroxed everything,” she said.

But, she says, she may have been exposed during the days before her mom was symptomatic. After about a week, on March 25, the whole family got word they had tested positive, including Dale, weeks after he experienced his unusual symptoms.

“‘Oh my god,’ Tandra remembers thinking, ‘I get to leave the room and join the family.' It was an exciting moment.”

But her worst worries were ahead given her kids’ underlying health issues.

“I think I slept with my eyes open for about three nights, just making sure they were ok,” said Tandra.

Tandra and her daughter slept in one room and her husband and son slept in another so they could keep track of their kids’ breathing.

In the end, the family feels they had a relatively easy experience,

“We are thankful for a such a sweet community who has been dropping food off and continuously asking if they can do anything for us,” she said, like friends who checked their mail or people who prayed for them.

“I just feel for all the people who have lost (family). These healthy 20, 30, 40-year-olds are getting this, and they’re just, they’re dying,” she said.

Tandra does not know if the Z-packs of steroids they all took, or if Natalie’s existing hydroxychloroquine prescription, a drug President Trump has promoted for coronavirus, helped the course of their disease.

The Laytons now want to reassure other people.

“I think the biggest thing is just to remain calm through all of this. (The) media definitely makes it feel more terrifying,” said Natalie.

Her parents have seen a drop in furniture part sales in recent weeks, with school closures, and they face an uncertain economic future.

But Tuesday, for the first time in weeks, Natalie and her mother noticed a smell.

It came from an aromatherapy diffuser Natalie had teased her mother about continuing to burn, seemingly wasting her oil.

“I smell the peppermint!” they said to one another in unison.