Raymond Scholwinski might have caught the coronavirus on March 16, his wife Rynda Scholwinski believes, but there's no telling for sure.

On that day, the 70-year-old Harris County Sheriff’s sergeant met with a deputy who later tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The fever arrived a few days later - low. Fatigue. But such symptoms weren’t unusual for Scholwinski, who has scarred lungs that make him cough sometimes. But days later, he still had a fever.

“We had some high hopes,” Rynda said. “But that evening, his fever came back up.”

Now, her husband is fighting for his life in a bed in an ICU at Memorial Hermann’s hospital in the Woodlands. He is one of thousands of first responders sickened by COVID-19 nationally, including dozens in Harris County.

Police families know the inherent dangers in their jobs - car crashes, fights with suspects, getting shot - but the coronavirus is different.

Just going to work means walking into the line of fire of an unseen enemy.

So far, 30 Harris County deputies have become ill, and the number will grow.

“We have the same caution and fears as the general public, except we don’t have the option to stay home,” said Harris County Deputies’ Organization President David Cuevas. “We have to go to work, continuously do our job and we’re fighting an enemy we can’t see.”

Deputies also still have to run the county jail, a crowded facility holding more than 7,500 inmates in close proximity.

Experts fear an outbreak tearing through the jail. A dozen jail employees have already come down with the virus. Three inmates have tested positive; dozens more are presumed ill, and 850 others are in quarantine after possible exposure.

“It’s challenging for our personnel,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. “And the anxiety …. They’re seeing teammates become ill, seeing that a number of first responders are starting to die around the country. It’s all very new and scary to us.”

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A caretaker

Rynda also fell ill - and had to spend four days in bed. Even getting up to let Cissy, her Yorkie, outside exhausted her.

Raymond brought her water, and Gatorade.

“He always took care of me,” she said.

It has been that way ever since they first met 35 years ago, when he was working at the apartment complex where she lived and slowly began courting her. Lean and gregarious, he seemed to know everyone. He’d retired from the insulation installation business he’d created and was working at several apartment building. But his heart was at the sheriff’s office.

When she cut her hand on shattered glass, and needed surgery, he drove her to and from the appointment. He brought her meals, and flowers. She thought he was taking pity on her. He had other plans. On a camping trip a year after they met, he asked her to marry him. By then, she’d long since fallen for him, for the way he always looked out for her, and the way he always tried to help out the elderly residents in the complex where she lived.

On his days off, he sometimes worked at the marine division of the sheriff’s office, where he’d volunteered as a reserve deputy in 1979. He decided to work there full-time soon after they married.

It was nerve-wracking for her.

When he worked nights, she always woke up early, looking for him on the morning news being interviewed from a crime scene. If he was on TV, that meant he hadn’t got hurt.

This feels different.

“They go through training how to learn how to approach a vehicle to make a stop, how to answer a door when they’re going to a domestic violence call” she said. “But you can’t even train against this.”

Scholwinski works at the sheriff’s office’s station in District 2, where he helps run public safety town halls with residents.

He works long hours, helping frustrated residents and attending community meetings, his District 2 colleagues said.

“He loves people. That’s why he loves this job,” District 2 Capt. Mike Koteras said.

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His colleagues describe him as the go-to guy when there’s a problem. He’s the one on his hands and knees helping friends fix a broke-down car, or pulling out his wallet to help, whether he can afford it or not. The one who shows up hours early to cook turkeys for deputies working on Thanksgiving, and then stays hours late cleaning up.

“He’s got time for everybody,” said Sgt. Joe Halm. “No matter if he’s in a hurry, he’ll stop, he will talk to people.”

Now his friends and fellow deputies are watching, stunned, as he fights for his life.

Test results

After Scholwinski started to feel sick he drove to Baytown to get tested. The result came back positive. Rynda tested positive a few days later.

They were encouraged at first, even as they both battled mild fevers and fatigue. Rynda counted the days. Each day was an emotional roller coaster, fevers rising, then breaking.

They prayed, and tried to stay positive.

“The longer it got, the more hopeful I became it wouldn’t get into his lungs,” she said. “But I was very wrong about that.”

His fever, in spikes, inexorably ticked upward.

“We were yo-yos,” Scholwinski said.

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On Sunday, March 29, breathing became more difficult. They called his pulmonologist, who told them to head to the hospital.

They drove from their home in Inverness Forest to the hospital later that morning, holding hands along the way.

When she stepped out of her Denali, she told the waiting nurses they both were sick with COVID-19. Her mask muffled her voice, and so she took a step closer to the nurses, so they could hear her better. They waved her back.

A nurse went inside, and brought out identity bracelets for Scholwinski -- and a wheelchair. A nurse eased Raymond into it, and warned Rynda that because of the virus, she wouldn’t be able to visit.

She watched as they began wheeling him toward the hospital doors.

She told him she loved him. To fight with all his might. To hurry home.

He told her he loved her, and that he would do his best. Then the doors shut behind him.

“That’s the last time I saw him,” she said, her voice catching.

After Scholwinski arrived at the hospital, doctors started giving him oxygen, Rynda said. Doctors prescribed hydroxychloroquine, the medicine President Donald Trump has touted.

By the next day, doctors told Rynda that Raymond wasn’t responding to the medication anymore. The couple tried to talk every day, but she did most of the speaking.

On Thursday, doctors called. Raymond needed to go on a ventilator, a potentially life-saving intervention, but one that often signals a rapid decline.

Rynda’s mind raced. She wondered what it would mean for her husband.

“Every little step he takes backwards means it’s that many more before he can step forward,” she said.

On Tuesday, Scholwinski remained in an artificially induced coma, on dialysis. The virus has made it difficult for his body to expel the carbon dioxide it produces, so the machine is helping pull the gas from his blood.

“He’s hanging in there,” Rynda said. “He has a lot to come home to.”

Doctors may give good news, she said. But there is always a pile of bad news to go along with it.

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Time has blurred.

The virus has done more than prevent her from seeing her husband. Her close-knit family -- they still go on group camping and hunting trips -- can’t assemble the way they normally do in times of trial and stress. She can’t see her grandchildren.

Like untold millions across the country, she is sitting in quarantine.

Her daughter-in-law tested positive for COVID-19. Rynda believes she probably caught it from them visiting her and Raymond when they weren’t yet showing any symptoms.

Her other son also had to quarantine -- and only now is finally out.

On her 58th birthday on Sunday, her children drove to her house, her grandchildren in tow. The kids zoomed up and down Woodchurch Lane on their scooters and bicycles, but Rynda could only watch from her porch, a dozen yards away.

It hurts in other ways too. Her sisters in her native Tennessee can’t come visit.

But it’s worse being away from Raymond.

“I never thought I wouldn’t be able to be with my husband when he’s so sick,” she said.

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