Story and photos by Beth Dedman, December 21, 2020

NEW YORK CITY—The smell of urine lingered in my mask as I emerged from the filthy subway station onto 42nd street. For all of the promises of sanitized trains, the A Train [B1] [B2]  that carried me up from Brooklyn was littered with trash from the night before and the stench of human waste. I climbed the steps and was greeted by cool fresh air…and silence.

  A month earlier I had stood in that exact spot, at the intersection aside Carlo’s Bakery and the New York Times, and it had been a bustling hub of tourists and commuters all scurrying to whatever attraction or destination awaited them. Now, I spied a solitary sanitation worker emptying the public waste bins into a cart and no one else. Times Square was empty.

  Gov. Andrew Cuomo had issued a stay-at-home order to New Yorkers March 15 as the coronavirus swept through the state. New York became the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. through April and May and has experienced nearly 534,000 cases and 33,314 deaths since lockdown began. I sat alone in my apartment in Brooklyn as it felt like the world was ending around me.

***

My flight landed in La Guardia Airport on Jan. 16, 2020 and could not have been more excited. I had waited the entire winter break to find out if I had received a scholarship to participate in a partnership program between UA and The King’s College, a private school operating just off of Wall Street. I found out I received the money, packed up my house in Fayetteville, moved everything back to my parents’ house in Texas and moved up to Brooklyn in the span of about a week. The month-long anxiety had been worth it and I was getting to live out my dream of practicing journalism in the greatest city in the world.

  I was assigned three roommates to share a two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Downtown Brooklyn. Cora, Amalia and Carole. My friend Grant, who also worked in the newsroom at UA, also participated in the program. 

  I spent the next two weeks just trying to orient myself around the city. My roommates, Grant and I all had the same morning and evenings classes every day, so we often tried to ride the train together. We had one class we had to go to every night for two weeks, and it was during a train ride to this evening class that my mother sent me a text message with an infographic about the effects of a virus I had never heard of before.

  “Have you heard anything about this?” I asked Cora. “I’ve seen this graphic before, but I don’t know what it’s about.”

  “I think there’s some kind of virus that’s been sweeping through China,” she said. “It’s supposed to be pretty bad. I don’t think there have been any cases here though.”

  “Weird.”

  I put my phone back in my pocket, not giving it any more thought. I don’t know if Cora was technically wrong at the time, but the first confirmed case in the U.S. was reported Jan. 20.

  About a week later, I invited Cora to grab some coffee with me before we headed to class. I have always had a very poor sense of distance and I accidentally wound up all the way in Chinatown.

  I remember making a point not to tell my mom that the tea shop was in Chinatown. This trip was in January, but I had already begun to hear more concerns about the coronavirus coming to New York and how people had been taking rather racist measures to protect themselves. There hadn’t been any confirmed cases in NYC yet, but people were already avoiding Chinatown to the extent that the Mayor had to plea with the public to attend the Chinese New Year parade.

  It’s not going to get that bad here, I remember thinking.

  As a part of the program, we were all set up at internships at different publications around the city. Grant and I were both assigned to work at amNewYork Metro, which operated out of the Schneps Media newsroom in Brooklyn—about a seven-minute walk from our apartment building.

  Our professors had advised us to have pitches prepared for our editors on our first day of work, and I had come up with the idea to write a story about how coronavirus concerns might wind up negatively affecting businesses in Chinatown because of people’s racist perception that all Chinese people might have it.

  I never got the chance to pitch it. From the moment I walked in, Robert Pozarycki, the overworked and frazzled editor-in-chief of not only amNewYork but several other publications as well, immediately assigned me to do the Manhattan Happenings calendar, which advertised affordable events for people to do around the city. I spent my first day on the job googling events for six hours. In the meantime, I overhead another King’s student getting assigned my exact pitch for one of the other outlets.  It was validating that my idea had been good, but it let the wind out of my sails.

  I eventually found joy in my routine in New York. Grant and I would get drinks on Tuesday nights, come in and work together on Wednesdays and would join my roommates and Mickey, who was also in our program, in our apartment for wine night on Fridays. It may or may not have been against the rules to have alcohol in our apartments, but breaking the rules and feeling like a dumb college kids felt good and normal.

 I would either sleep all day on Saturday or I would go exploring with the girls. Cora and I went to church together on Sundays at Apostles Church Brooklyn, which held service inside of Public School No. 133.  Eventually we even started going to small groups on Wednesday nights.

  I loved the routine I created for myself. I loved spending time with my friends, and I loved getting to do it all in the most exciting city in the world. We were making New York our town.

  Professor Bret Schulte, who is the advisor for Hill Magazine, connected me with his friend Alex Kingsbury, who just so happens to run the Opinion Section for The New York Times. Kingsbury agreed to meet me and talk with me about his career on the Friday of Feb. 28. He invited me to come to his office at the New York Times Building, just off of Times Square. Getting to see the editors at work within the newsroom was getting to see the Greek gods of Olympus.

  I took the rest of that day to explore Times Square by myself and revel in the city. I explored the Square, got a cannoli from Carlo’s Bakery (as seen on TV), visited the New York Public Library and did a little shopping. It was at this point that I realized I had been living in New York long enough to be annoyed by tourists who walked too slow and took up the entire sidewalk.

  As an extrovert, I thrive on people’s energy. The hustle and bustle of the square made me feel alive. I was a New Yorker. And I was loving every second of it.

  I didn’t know that’d be the last time I’d see the Square so alive with people. I also didn’t know how much my luck was about to run out.

***

    The first case of the coronavirus in New York City was confirmed March 1, according to the New York Times. The first death in the U.S. occurred just the day before in Seattle.

  From that point, more and more people were wearing gloves on the subway. I noticed that the first people to start wearing face masks regularly were people from the Chinatown community, but as March went on, more and more people were covering their faces. At one point while I was sitting at the window at work, I saw a man with a gas mask walking down the street.

  They started using disposable communion cups at Apostles Brooklyn and the pastor began centering his sermons on how Christians should approach handling dark times. He hinted at moving to online streaming for services and people stopped shaking hands before the service.

  My roommates and I tried to go grocery shopping, only to be met with a long line to get into Trader Joe’s and an even longer line to try to check out. The cold and flu section of Target was completely picked over. I don’t know what people thought Emergen-C or Airborne was going to do for them against the coronavirus, but all of it was gone.

  People started being quieter on trains. There was one morning our train was delayed because someone was “sick.” I’m sure it wasn’t in a coronavirus-related way, but I know that’s what was on all of our minds.

  It became even more stressful trying not to touch anyone during the early-morning commute.

  Gov. Cuomo announced the State of Emergency March 7. A shelter-in-place order loomed over us as we reconsidered Spring Break plans. I was going to fly home for spring break, but now I was suddenly worried that I wouldn’t be able to come back to New York. Cora began to get really nervous about being able to fly home to California for the break. I kept assuring her that it was going to be okay. Surely, things wouldn’t get that bad here.

  Everyone in Brooklyn seemed to think it would. In an attempt to get some basic supplies like rice and bread from Trader Joe’s, Cora and I were met with a completely empty store. The entire freezer section was empty, there were hardly any vegetables on the shelves except for Asparagus and Artichokes, there was no rice and the only meat they had in the store was corned beef, which was pre-packaged for St. Patrick’s Day.

  It’s not like it’s the end of the world, I thought.

***

 

The last normal day I had in New York was March 11.

  Our editor assigned me and Grant to go to all of the Irish pubs along the parade route of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and ask them how their businesses would be affected if the parade were canceled. At that point, the cities of Boston and Dublin had already canceled their parades and New Yorkers were wondering when DeBlasio would admit that he needed to cancel ours too. But there was no guarantee that was going to happen.

  Grant and I stopped at every Irish pub along 5th Avenue and interviewed some of the most colorful characters I had ever met. There was Fergal Titley, who had fire red hair and a very small frame. There was Pauline, a hostess from Megan’s Bar + Kitchen, who insisted the parade wouldn’t be canceled because the community had a spirit of Irish pride that wouldn’t be pacified. There was Simon Conway, Owen Cleary and Shane McSorley, all of whom were wonderful people, concerned about making a living if the coronavirus got too close to home.

  While we typed up our story back in the Schneps office, Halie texted me and informed me that she no longer thought it was safe for her and our other friends to visit us during the break. She would hate to get it and spread it to someone in Arkansas who was vulnerable. I admitted to her that I was beginning to wonder when I would need to call her and tell her not to come.

  We had just put the finishing touches on our story and were about to send it to Robb when he walked up to our desk and announced that the governor had just canceled the parade. We rushed to adjust the tenses of the story to make it fit with the update and then sent it to Robb.

  The next day I ran into a friend I had made in my politics class, and she asked if I was going home for the break. I told her how that had been the original plan, but now I was going to stay in the city.

  “You better reconsider that,” she said. “If you stay you might not be able to leave.”

***

  The parade cancellation was the final seal that needed to break before all hell broke loose.  The next day, I woke up to a text from Grant announcing that we were to be working from home from then on.

  The next day UA announced that they were going to transition to online classes for the rest of the semester. King’s College announced that they were going to do the same. Amalia’s parents announced that they wanted her to move everything home permanently and that she would probably not be able to come back.  

  Cora’s parents had come to New York, and they had decided they were going to pack up everything she had and move her home, just in case she would not be able to come back. If she could come back, she absolutely would. But just in case…

  I was beginning to get stressed. All of these things were small problems on their own. But together, they were beginning to add up. And I had already cancelled my flight back to Texas.

  I needed a break. I had already been cooped up in the house for three days at that point. Looking back on it, I think it’s really funny that being inside for only three days was already causing me to be stir crazy.

  Grant and I decided to go to Central Park. He hadn’t been yet, and it was supposed to be a warm, spring day. I had a feeling this would be our last opportunity.

  The train to the park was silent. It’s not like many people were overly chatty on the train anyway, but the quiet had never had such weight before. It was somber. And unsettling.

  It was a beautiful day in the park. I know I should have been more upset that more people weren’t social distancing, but it was nice to see such a normal scene after constant notifications about how everything was awful and scary.  

  Afterward, we walked on towards Times Square. By this time, the sun was starting to go down. We walked along, and only saw brief handfuls of people, and even then, only for a moment. A man accidentally brushed against my arm and I let out an involuntary yelp. Then, I laughed about it because, come on, Beth, it wasn’t that bad. Right?

  I was about to step into a crosswalk when Grant put a hand on my arm.

  “Right then? That was almost a moment of complete silence.”

  We both froze in our tracks.

  I think Grant recognized that this would be our last outing for a while, so he suggested that we stop off at Scar’s pizza and grab a slice for dinner. I think the restaurant, which was just outside of Chinatown, was used to window service, but they also usually had indoor seating. Their front door was barricaded.

  The same somber silence that had followed us from the train and Times Square found us as we waited in the line for the pizza. It lingered over everything. It was almost like people were afraid that the virus would find them if they spoke too loudly.

  As we rode in another silent train home, we saw a man carrying a pack of toilet paper, and smiled to ourselves about hoarders.

  A couple days later, Cora left and I was alone in the apartment.

  It wasn’t that bad at first. Just quiet. But I hooked my phone up to the apartment speakers and fixed that. I hadn’t had the apartment to myself all semester, so I was embracing the opportunity to blast my music, instead of the constant replays of Don’t Stop Me Now that Amalia would listen to while taking a shower.

  When they issued the shelter-in-place order, it didn’t faze me very much. It wasn’t like they could do anything more to me after condemning me to my apartment. “At least it can’t get any worse.” I went through the motions of my day. I wrote the stories the editors from AM assigned me. I texted friends. I scrolled through Twitter. I watched Netflix. Honestly, things were not so bad at first.

  I sent out a group message to all of the friends Grant and I had left behind in Arkansas, and I coordinated a time that we could surprise him with a ZOOM call on his birthday.

  I left him instructions to be at my apartment at 7:35 p.m. (No Earlier. No Later.) He knocked on my door. I opened it. He laughed at the hideous cake. He smiled through the absolute worst rendition of Happy Birthday I have heard in my entire life as we all attempted to harmonize through the ZOOM call. We talked to our friends for hours. After we hung up, some of his roommate’s friends invited us to hang out in their apartment, where we shared some drinks and cigarettes. I like to hope that, despite it not being what he had originally hoped for, it wound up being a good birthday for him.

  His roommate’s friends informed us that we were some of the very few people left in the whole building.

  Things started getting hard after that first week.

  I already had a proclivity for getting depressed but the isolation, compounded with what I discovered later to be a hormone imbalance and iron deficiency, led to some pretty unsavory mood swings. And because, apparently, I haven’t learned anything from college, I thought alcohol would help. It most certainly did not.

  Over the course of my time in quarantine, I spent a rather unfortunate amount of time sitting in the tub. Usually I would just sit in it fully-clothed, both with water and without. Not one of my prouder coping mechanisms but it felt better to be alone in a room that is designed for privacy, as opposed to one designed for company.

  My sleep schedule went to hell. At the worst of it all, I wasn’t falling asleep until 5:30 a.m. and then wouldn’t be able to wake up until 1 p.m. at the earliest. I couldn’t think clearly, and I certainly couldn’t motivate myself to get any work done. Assignments and stories began to pile up.

  Group ZOOM calls began becoming a regular thing among our friends, which helped to see and talk to familiar faces. I think it was dumb that it took a literal pandemic for all of us to try to reach out to our friends. But I think it made us all realize how much we mattered to each other. It’s easy to take people for granted when they are readily available to you. I hope that after this is all over, we will all value each other a little more and be more present when we are in each other’s company.

  That didn’t keep me from attempting to dye my hair purple though. Or from watching Tiger King. Or from sitting in the bathtub drunk. Or from the random fits of crying. But it did help.

  I cannot express how grateful I was that Grant was there. Having an excuse to see him and find some company amidst all of this chaos helped to ground me the most. All we would do was watch dumb YouTube videos together and talk, but that made all of the difference, just being in another human being’s presence. I honestly probably would have had a much worse time if Grant had gone home.

***

After one night of hanging out, I went back to my apartment and could not, for the life of me, fall asleep. I laid in bed for hours trying. Eventually, I gave up and went and took a bath. I was in there for so long that by the time I got out, I decided to just get ready for the next day and put on a fresh set of clothes and did my hair and makeup. I figured, if I was going to be up that early anyway, I might as well go get some photos of the sunrise. So, I grabbed my camera and headed to the roof.

  Unfortunately, much of Brooklyn is covered in a fog first thing in the morning, so I didn’t get any particularly fantastic shots. That’s when I got a really bad idea. I went downstairs and put on a hoodie, jean jacket, face mask and some rubber gloves that Grant’s parents had sent us. I loaded up my camera bag and headed to the elevator.

  I was careful to touch as little as possible while I was out, despite the gloves. At first, I was going to get on the R train, but, over the loudspeaker, an announcement said:

  “TRAIN SERVICE IS FOR ESSENTIAL EMPLOYEES ONLY. PLEASE STAY HOME.”

  That was enough to make me second guess myself and abandon that track. I worked my way through the station and came to an A train stop, which would take me all the way to 42nd Street. I was alone on my platform, but on the other side of the tracks, I could see a bunch of people, clad in face masks and gloves, waiting for the train to take them to work. The somber silence weighed on the scene like a heavy blanket.

  When my train arrived, I was alarmed to see it covered in trash, with a pervasive smell permeating the air. After seeing so many articles about how the MTA was doing its best to try to sanitize the trains, this sight freaked me out. The stench was almost overwhelming and clung to my facemask long after I disembarked from the car.

  It was a relief to emerge from the station to the fresh air of Times Square. It was a chilly morning, but the sharpness of the air was dulled by my mask. I did see a couple of people at first, but the further I walked into the heart of the Square, the more desolate it became. It had unsettled me when Grant and I had experienced that moment of silence a few weeks before, but now the silence ruled the square.  

  I had reached the Coca-Cola sign, which now was emblazoned with a warning to stay home and social distance from others as opposed to its regular soda logo, when somebody actually tried to talk to me. Not only was I alarmed to interact with a stranger but he had the nerve to get within six feet of me and ask me if I smoke in the middle of a pandemic that affects the respiratory system.

  I walked away from him.

   I passed a group of four cops standing near their cars, a couple of sanitation employees and the occasional jogger. But aside from that, the entire street was still.

   I walked the reverse of the same path Grant and I had taken when we had come from the park to Times Square last time. I walked past the Brooklyn Diner, now closed, and crossed empty street after empty street. The Cherry Blossoms were white on the trees, and cast a heavenly aura on the park. I stopped to take photos. I noticed a shocking number of people in the park. I couldn’t exactly look down on them for it, I mean, I was there too. But there were a lot.

  At one point during my walk through the park, a jogger who wasn’t wearing a mask gave me a weird look. I’m not the weird one for wearing a mask, pal..  

  I wanted to circle back to the Square to take some photos using my polaroid camera, which my strange encounter made me forget I’d brought with me. Coming back from the other way, I realized that more and more of the advertisements that light up the square were replaced by CDC cartoon warnings about keeping apart and staying home. It was almost beginning to feel like a cyberpunk film, or the precursor to the abandoned wasteland that would be featured in a Fallout video game.

  When I was finally satisfied with my photos of the Square, I turned back to the subway station and rode it down to Fulton Street. I had been in the Fulton Street station quite a few times, but when I got off the train, and heard a Frank Sinatra track echoing off of its chrome floors and ceilings, I felt like I had stepped into the moment before a dream turned bad. At any moment, I was expecting a zombie or one of those monsters from Cloverfield to do a jump scare and eat me.  

  At this point, it had been about a month since I had walked this much. I had loved walking around in New York because of the amount of exercise I was getting. Since quarantine had begun, and the gym in the apartment building had closed, I had been getting absolutely no exercise. This journey was a lot to ask of my body and my left hip started to rebel against me. After I snapped a few shots of the abandoned street, I headed to the nearest station and took the train back to Brooklyn.

  I had left my apartment at about 7 a.m. and flopped down on my couch again at about 10 a.m. I was pretty happy with the photos I took and glad I had gotten some exercise, even if my hip was going to give me grief for a couple of days. I stretched out on the couch and watched some YouTube videos while I waited for the Apostles Church livestream service to begin at 11 a.m. I remember the beginning of the service, but I definitely lost consciousness for most of the preaching. I don’t remember much about the rest of that day. I was too tired to remember.

  After the excursion to take photos, much of April is just kind of a blur. Every day felt exactly like the day before. I made sure to at least tune into my zoom classes, but a lot of the time I just fell asleep or scrolled on my phone. I got to a point with my internship that I just desperately tried to do as little as possible. I was sleeping through most of the hours I was technically supposed to be working. Not that I didn’t try to wake up and do the work. I just couldn’t get myself to do anything.  

  Grant and I started taking care of each other in small ways. If I needed something from the store while he was there, he would grab it for me. He needed bitters to make a proper old fashioned, so on one run to the liquor store, I grabbed some for him. When I had an allergic reaction to some ciders I bought, he traded with me for some beers. I’d let him borrow my cheese grater. He’d let me borrow his broom. He brought me Ibuprofen one night when I had a migraine so bad I couldn’t even keep my eyes open.

  The closer it got to the end of the semester, the more dread I began to feel. I really wanted to start out my career in New York. I fell in love with the comradery of New Yorkers in the face of the pandemic. Almost every story that I wrote for amNewYork after the quarantine began was about organizations and individuals donating food, masks, money and volunteers to help their community. It was amazing.

  But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a job that would allow me to stay in the city and amNewYork wasn’t hiring. My lease ran up.

  My mom flew into the city to help me pack May 6. Grant had extended his stay in New York for the rest of the summer, and I hated that I would be leaving him even more alone than we both were before. As much as I wanted to stay, I had no more willpower to fight the ways of the universe. New York had been my dream, which had turned into a nightmare. It was time to give up.

   I landed in Dallas May 8. I couldn’t explain the stress I was feeling, but once I stepped onto the porch at my parents’ home in Denton, I burst into tears. I spent several days constantly on the verge of tears. I laid in my bed, unable to do much of anything.

  While my mom had expressed relief that I was finally home, it wasn’t in the way I expected. New York had become the epicenter and its shutdown was the strictest of all of the states. Texas, on the other hand, had not experienced nearly as much devastation and many people treated the shutdowns as an overreaction. I arrived in Texas just as it was reopening, which only added to my stress. My parents’ lives hadn’t changed from the shutdowns, as they are both retired. My best friend from high school never lost her job, neither did her boyfriend, neither did my brother. My sister-in-law had to work from home, but she was really the only one who had been affected in any way. Nobody understood why I was so upset and stressed.

  The city that never sleeps had been anesthetized. While I count myself fortunate to be one of the only people who may ever witness such an event, I think it may haunt me forever. New York City was supposed to be a dream come true. I was supposed to start my career there. I was supposed to make it there (and therefore, make it anywhere), but it felt like the entire universe had conspired against me to make sure that I did not make it there. I had fallen in love with the city. Now, those memories haunt me.

***

On the morning of Nov. 7, New Yorkers took to the streets to celebrate the election results. From my bedroom in Denton, Texas, I saw videos of people dancing, cheering, singing and holding their loved ones tightly in jubilee. I watched as they filled the streets of Brooklyn, the Lower East Side and even Times Square. I felt some of the cracks that my trip to the Square had left in my heart begin to mend. Seeing the Square alive once again helped something in me to heal. Maybe the city was finally waking back up.

  But, despite that healing, I think a part of me will always be haunted by that empty square. However, I think there is such a thing as being a healthy amount of haunted. Americans should be haunted by the 238,023 lives that have been lost to this disease. We should make sure that things do not go back to the way they were before, because the way things were before led us to this devastation. We need to do better. We need our leaders to do better. We must hold our leaders accountable, regardless of what political party they represent. And if they do anything less than what we elected them to do, we need to vote them out.

  We owe it to those that we’ve lost.