A COVID test in the city of a hundred steeples

The cab pulls up in front of my Montréal apartment. I am wearing an N-95 mask. I put on gloves, holding my arms up so the driver can see. I open the cab door.

“Wait, wait, wait,” the driver shouts in French. He struggles to get a wipe out of the dispenser on the seat next to him and then gives up.

“Okay, fine,” he says.

He looks upset as he half turns to look at me. He is middle-aged, with dark skin, a bald head and very dry hands.

“The only instructions I was given over the phone were to wear a mask and gloves,” I say in English.

“Next time let me open the door, okay?” he replies in English with a heavy French accent.

Fifteen minutes later we pull up to emergency at the Jewish General Hospital. I tell him we have to go to Pavilion N.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asks.

“I told the cab dispatcher, I’m sorry,” I say.

He yanks on the steering wheel, does an illegal left turn and then guns it to Pavilion N.

“Are you gonna tip?” he asks.

“I guess so, fifteen percent,” I say.

“It’s twenty dollars extra to go to a test site, for cleaning the car after. The total is $50,” he says. “And don’t touch anything while tapping the machine with your card.”

I tap, but it doesn’t work. We try again and it doesn’t work.

“You’re tapping it too fast,” the driver says.

We try again, and again it doesn’t work.

“I can use my bank card if you wipe the machine before and after,” I say.

He punches 5 and 0 into the keypad and passes me the machine.

I punch in my code and pass it back; he has a hand wipe spread over his hand, holding it open to receive the machine, like a doctor helping to deliver a newborn.

The driver gets out of the cab, opens the door for me and I get out at Pavilion N.

Two heads appear beyond the big sliding doors, hands held in a stop gesture. It is raining and other than the cab driver I am the only person here. The cab driver wipes down the seat belt, seat and door. Then he gets in the cab and drives off.

The hands in the window motion to come in.

A security guard says, “French, English?” He is tall, black, muscular. Then he tells me to wash my hands.

A nurse sits at the registration desk, behind Plexiglass with holes in it. She asks my name, address, place of work. She tells me to face the wall in the corner. I face the corner, but peek behind me. One of the adjoining walls is made of paper board. A slip of paper emerges from a small slit in the paper board. A nurse—round, dark skinned, ponytail—appears out of nowhere and grabs the slip of paper.

The security guard says, “You can turn around now.”

The nurse says, “Follow me, but stay two feet back.”

I follow her. The security guard sizes up the space between the nurse and me and gives me double thumbs up. The nurse stops at a hand sanitizing station and hands the slip of paper to another nurse with a high blonde ponytail, who puts the paper on a clip board and starts rattling off questions:

French or English? What are your symptoms? Have you travelled in the last fourteen days? Have you been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19? Have you had a nose job in the last ten days? Any other surgeries to the throat or nose in the last ten days? Are you immunocompromised?

I’m instructed to follow the pink and black tape on the floor all the way to the room at the end of the hall—without touching anything—where five more nurses wait, one of them scrubbing the walls. At the back of the room are two smaller rooms with glass doors. One of the nurses, her hair in a bundle, walks in front of me, telling me to walk along the path. Another nurse observes the whole operation.

In one of the small rooms waits a nurse in a protective mask and hood over her medical scrubs. She holds the door open with her body. The pink and black lines on the floor narrow as they get closer to the door. She tells me in French to walk directly to the chair in the corner of the room, and to hold my arms and bag close to me.

Then she says: “I am going to insert this swab in your nose, do not pull your head back, do not push my arm away, please pull your mask down over your mouth.”

She jabs the swab up my nose and holds it in place for twenty seconds. It feels like blood is gushing from my nose.

Then she says: “You should get your results in twenty-four hours. Do not leave your house until then. Do you have any questions? Okay, good luck and goodbye.”

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