Melissa Kite
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‘But that’s not what they told your father,’ I argued. ‘They told him quite clearly that the vaccine does not stop you getting it, it just stops you getting it too badly.’
‘Yeah, and they’ll tell you something different. What are you going to do about it?’ Truly, this lurgy had put us both in a stinking bad mood. We hardly ever argue.
Earlier, when it first hit, I knew something was up because after cooking dinner, I suddenly threw all the crockery across the kitchen and screamed, for no reason other than my nerve endings felt like they had been set on fire.
The BB crawled up to bed saying he felt a bit off. I followed after, and we settled beneath the duvet to suffer four days of what felt like being stabbed with an ice pick, he in his spine, me in my neck and face. Nothing else, just stabbing. It was like we had been kidnapped and an invisible sadistic torturer was randomly plunging a sharp weapon into us. Every now and then one or the other of us would yell, ‘OW!’, as the tormenter drove the ice pick in.
‘So, let me get this straight,’ I groaned, reaching for another paracetamol and a gulp of orange juice. ‘If you say you’ve caught Covid despite being vaccinated then it’s a testament to the resounding success of the vaccine — OW! — that you’re able to function enough to complain you’ve caught Covid despite being double vaccinated. But, on the other hand, if we say we’ve caught Covid while being unvaccinated then that is proof that we’ve left ourselves vulnerable to Covid by not being vaccinated. It then follows you are claiming that if we had had the vaccine we would not have caught Covid. While also claiming the opposite.’
‘Now you’re getting it — OW!’ said the BB, and he rolled over and went to sleep.
The builder boyfriend’s father hadn’t wanted the vaccine. He is as tough as old boots with a constitution that defies his seventy-something years. But the texts had kept coming in to his phone and he had been unable to deal with the constant reminders.
We told him it was his choice and they couldn’t compel him. But in the end he said it was just easier to have it. Afterwards, he felt immediately run down and developed a cold he couldn’t shift. He complained and complained until truly we were sick of listening to it. His constant refrain was that he had ‘not been the same’ since having the jab.
He sniffed and sniffled and coughed and spluttered until that simply segued seamlessly after four months into him complaining that he had just tested positive for Covid.
‘Do you wish you’d had the vaccine now?’ I asked the BB, as he lay beneath a heap of fretting spaniels. Poppy in particular would not leave his side, peering into his face or licking his nose every few hours to wake him up. Cydney was more focused on the morsels of leftover food by his bed.
He shrugged and said it didn’t really interest him either way. Personally, I’m not sure I want to be stabbed with ice picks for another week of my life. I would be very interested in a vaccine that prevented me getting it entirely. So if they bring one of those out, I’ll be the first in the queue.
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