By Mary Beth Schneider
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—Waiting has become our routine.

We are waiting to get together with friends and family again. Waiting for all businesses, schools, summer camps, sports to resume. Waiting, most importantly, for a vaccine to inoculate us against COVID-19, as well as an effective treatment if we do contract the virus.

And, in my case, waiting for the results of the COVID-19 test I took Monday along with my husband and brother-in-law. We don’t have symptoms, but we fall into the high-risk category of — sigh — senior citizens.

I hadn’t planned on getting tested. But after hearing Dr. Kristina Box, Indiana’s state health commissioner, repeatedly emphasize testing for those who fall into certain categories, including those age 65 and over and those — like my husband — who have health concerns, I registered us online and scheduled an appointment.

Monday morning, the three of us drove to a church near Fountain Square — the farthest any of us had been in months — then donned our masks before walking through the open door to the desk where a masked, gowned and gloved woman signed us in. We were ushered downstairs — I carefully avoided the handrail on the stairs — then took a seat where a nurse inserted a long swab into each nostril after I tugged the mask down over my nose.

It didn’t hurt. It did trigger a strong urge to sneeze, which I stifled.

Then I backed my way out of a basement door, so my hands wouldn’t touch the push bar. In fact, my backside and my feet were the only things that touched any surface at the testing center. It was over, except for the waiting.

Wait two or three days, I was told, to get the results.

As of early Thursday afternoon, I was still waiting. I’m mostly sure the test will show nothing. Mostly. There’s the persistent cough that I’m 99.9 percent sure is a consequence of my pollen allergies. There’s the strange dizziness I suffered a couple of nights ago that kept me awake.

I’m not someone who always suspects I have some illness. When I had a lump in a breast once, I was absolutely sure it wasn’t cancer — and it wasn’t. But when every day is about coronavirus, it becomes a drip drip drip wearing away confidence.

Even when I get the results, the waiting isn’t over. A negative test only means that on Monday, neither my family nor I had contracted the virus. Since then, I’d been to the grocery store, where most people wore masks. But not everyone. Not the man who stood behind me in the checkout line and coughed, assuring me it was just allergies.

Polls show strong majorities support wearing masks. But I’ve seen too many pictures of restaurants and bars reopening, packed with people who aren’t wearing masks and certainly aren’t staying six feet apart from each other. A store clerk in Mishawaka was beaten for telling a customer she couldn’t serve him as he wasn’t wearing a mask. A security guard in Flint, Michigan, was killed because he’d told customer masks were required.

On Twitter, someone posted a cartoon that implied those wearing masks are cowards as if bravado will stop a virus. I’ve argued with people on Facebook who scoff at masks. My favorite excuse? The person who said she lived in Texas and the sunlight there kills the virus. As of Thursday morning, Texas had 1,438 deaths from the virus and 52,183 cases.

For weeks, Box has stressed at almost every briefing the need to wear a mask.

“I know some people think that wearing a mask everywhere you go is overkill,” Box said. “But remember how COVID spreads. If you wear a mask, you are protecting others from your own respiratory droplets. That means they’re less likely to get infected if you sneeze or cough or breathe out on them.”

It’s a message reiterated by Gov. Eric Holcomb, who on Wednesday said that “the number one thing you can do is wear a mask” when around other people, especially indoors.

So I’ll head to the grocery store and pharmacy, clutching hand sanitizer and wearing a mask. And I’ll be waiting for the day my stash of both homemade and store-bought masks are mere historic artifacts of an era that is only a bad memory.

FOOTNOTE: Mary Beth Schneider is an editor with TheStatehouseFile.com, a news web site powered by Franklin College journalism students.