The woman was winding down from her day when she clicked on an article about the first patient in the Houston area believed to have the new coronavirus.

The description — a man in his 70s in Fort Bend County — matched her dad, who had gone the day before to the hospital because of trouble breathing. “Uh oh,” she thought.

Her mother hadn’t yet told her the news, but suddenly, she realized she had a family member suffering from an illness the world was struggling to understand — an experience of worry and questioning that many stand to go through as more get infected.

She hadn’t expected it to happen to her family, but it had. She spoke to the Houston Chronicle on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy. She wanted to help people realize that, as she said, “This is real. It’s coming whether we like it or not.”

The woman’s parents had been part of a group that went in February to Egypt and took a cruise along the Nile River. As it happened, a woman who traveled on the ship before them tested positive for the illness.

After the group returned Feb. 20, her dad started to feel sick. The family figured it was probably the flu. The daughter, an only child who lives in Austin, had just helped her husband through the flu in January.

First responders took her father to the hospital last week. After realizing her dad had tested positive for COVID-19, she felt dumbfounded. How did that happen?

It was almost a matter of bad luck. The Houston region’s first 12 cases — people in their 60s and 70s — were linked to the Nile River cruise boat, as were infected residents in other states.

“You never want to be the first of something that could be something very bad,” she said during a phone interview Tuesday evening.

As the story dominated local news starting on the night of March 4, what happened to the woman’s dad became the first chapter. She felt a loss of control, she said. There was so little to do to help. She couldn’t visit her quarantined parents. She didn’t know if she should tell friends or co-workers.

The following week was like a blur. Authorities pieced together information. She checked in daily with her mom, to chat and see how her dad was doing. Her mom cleaned bedding, surfaces, the pantry.

Feeling tense, the daughter tried watching the show “Love is Blind” on Netflix to quiet her thoughts, but she always had coronavirus and her parents in the back of her brain. She could feel herself distracted at work.

“It’s no longer this thing that’s happening in the world and hasn’t hit Austin yet,” she said. “I’m dealing with it head-on.”

Coronavirus at times seems like all anyone is talking about — and she was among those reading the Facebook posts about it. She laughed at some jokes. Others hit her differently.

She and her husband selectively began to tell people that her father had been found to be “presumptive positive” for the virus. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still has not confirmed his case.) Concerned friends started checking on her, which helped.

Worry would have risen up no matter what caused her otherwise healthy dad to be hospitalized. She would have turned to Google, to WebMD. But in this case, there is still so little known — and so much to anticipate.

The region is bracing for an expected (but hopefully slowed) rise in coronavirus cases. The uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of how it is spreading can be a source of fear for those facing it, said Jon Stevens, who oversees outpatient services at the Menninger Clinic, a psychiatric facility.

No one wants to be put in the position of having a parent who is sick, and a limited number of people so far know what that experience will look and feel like.

“We don’t really know for certain who’s carrying the virus, where and when the epidemic will start or end,” he said. “That’s going to lead to increased fear and stress.”

Infected residents from Maryland, Florida and California were all connected to travel in Egypt or specifically to the cruise on the MS A’Sara that her parents took. The first dozen Houston-area patients traveled on two different cruises on the same vessel.

Two more cases were announced Tuesday in the Houston region, for a total of 14. One of those cases was linked to time spent in Italy. The other new patient, a man in Montgomery County, had not left the state recently.

There is no vaccine to prevent COVID-19. Older adults such as the woman’s parents are considered at higher risk for developing complications. The fatality rate is being studied.

The daughter didn’t know how others from the Nile River cruise boat — friends of friends of friends — were faring. Her mom, who has no symptoms, is under quarantine at home, and her dad is stable in the hospital.

For her parents, it was a waiting game. But she remained optimistic they would be OK.

She plans to visit as soon as her mom can leave the house.

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emily.foxhall@chron.com