Side Effects

March 2021

"So, are you excited?" the young nurse asked, her voice muffled through the double-layered mask, while she vigorously rubbed Kathryn's bicep with an iodine swab to ensure that it was thoroughly sterilized. Kathryn nodded and smiled—a bit nervously—behind her own mask. Excited, yes. It'd be nice, so nice to stop worrying quite so much about sanitizing her hands after touching every surface outside of her house, great to stop worrying about whether she'd be one of the unlucky ones that she read about in the Facebook posts—the otherwise young-and-healthy adults suddenly and inexplicably confined to an ICU bed. But also exhausted. The last eleven months had been an endless grind of juggling work and keeping the girls engaged with their schoolwork on Zoom, scrambling to keep the fridge full due to all of the crazy and unpredictable inventory shortages at the grocery store. Exhausted from working late nights and feeling like she wouldn't ever manage to catch up, wouldn't ever find the time to be the wife, mom, and college instructor that she desperately wanted to be.

Too many muddled thoughts to possibly share in a fleeting moment. As the nurse picked up the syringe and gently squeezed her upper arm, Kathryn settled on "relieved" as her response, gritting her teeth just a bit as the tiny needle bit into her arm. A fleeting pinch, gone in an instant and followed by a gentle coolness as the medicine slowly dispersed throughout the muscle of her upper arm.

The nurse smiled again, the crinkles around her eyes revealing the expression hidden behind the mask. "You're not the first one to say 'relieved,' believe me! I think we all are. In any case, congratulations on finishing your COVID vaccine series. The ladies on the other side of the screen will update your vaccination card and keep an eye on you to make sure there aren't any unexpected side effects."

Kathryn thanked the nurse, untangled her sleeve from around her shoulder, grabbed her small tote bag and fleece sweater, and ducked out of the tiny cubicle, rubbing her arm a bit absent-mindedly as she felt the coolness slowly ebb away, replaced by a vague, throbbing soreness. The two older women behind the worn folding table—retired nurses volunteering at the pop-up health clinic, likely—shuffled through their stack of paperwork and produced a card showing that Kathryn had received both vaccines, directing her to a row of plastic chairs against the far wall of windows. "Please have a seat for at least fifteen minutes. Your time is written here in the corner of your form," the kindly older woman with the faded blue scrubs gestured to the number scrawled on the top right corner of the document. "Did you have any adverse reactions from your first shot?"

"No, not really. A bit of all-around achy-ness on the second day." Kathryn thought back to the days following that first vaccination, days filled with an even stronger sense of relief and elation that the end of the long stretches of quarantine and social isolation might, in fact, be finally coming into view. "I felt clammy for a few days following," she recalled, "but I never had a measurable fever."

"Well, do take extra care for the next couple of days," the woman admonished her. "Folks report feeling a lot less...normal after their second shot, especially with this particular vaccine formula."

Kathryn nodded and gave a quiet laugh. "Even feeling like I'm fighting off the flu for a few days is fine with me as long as this does its job..." She gestured to her arm and both of the women chuckled.

She took a seat and thumbed through the packet of additional information the women had handed her along with her vaccination card. There were disclaimers, warnings about the potential of flu-like symptoms or other temporary side-effects ("Consider postponing high-risk or public activities for the next 48 hours!"), and contact information for reporting unusual or unexpected reactions to public health authorities. All the same information Kathryn had been given the previous month at the conclusion of her initial appointment. She set the papers on her lap and thumbed distractedly through her social media feed on her phone, waiting for the minute hand on the analog wall clock to sweep its quarter arc so that she could get back to the house.

* * * * *

She arrived back at home to a burst of noise—kids' boisterous voices and the cheery music of the video game console—a pile of discarded toys and dress-ups scattered down the hallway, and the kind but tired faces of her in-laws, who'd been tasked with keeping an eye on the kiddos while she and Anthony had headed out separately for their vaccination appointments. Both her and her husband had had their numbers come up at the same time, but at different clinics in different corners of town. His parents had traveled up from their home in a nearby city to provide an extra set of hands, just in case she and Anthony both developed the worst of the flu-like symptoms that so many others had been reporting online after receiving their second shot of any of the vaccines.

She was grateful for the help, but even more thankful that getting this second shot was her ticket to breaking free of the claustrophobia and the tedious routine-ness that being at home 24/7 with her husband and two kids for the last year had entailed. She loved the extra time with the kids and enjoyed the company of Anthony in the small moments throughout the day, but she longed for some space of her own, a quiet dinner-date with Anthony out at a restaurant, an in-person visit to the corner grocery store, and, most of all, just a change of scenery and a break from school-aged kids being under foot, all of them boxed in by the same four walls all day long. She knew that her relationship with Anthony had become a bit strained over the last few months—whose wouldn 't have under these circumstances?—and it was just such a relief to begin thinking about the small ways that life could change now that the risk to her and her family of catching the disease was finally receding into the background.

Kathryn hung her tote bag back on the hook by the front door and tossed her car keys into the bowl on the nearby table and rubbed her arm absent-mindedly again. Does my arm feel more or less sore than last time? Is that throbbing in my fingertips normal? Does it feel a bit cold in here? She sighed and picked up a stray dress-up to hang on the coat rack on her way through the living room, and then headed to the kitchen to start dinner.

A shiver overtook her as she stepped up to the kitchen sink to scrub the outing off her hands, and Kathryn felt a ripple of goosebumps race across her shoulders, her nipples jumping to attention inside her fleece sweater. She swore under her breath, now certain that she'd be one of the unlucky ones to get the full-blown stomach flu experience for the next two days following her shot. "Of course," she muttered, reaching for the thermometer in the corner cupboard. "It fucking figures."

* * * * *

Over baked ziti, garlic toast, and a small glass of wine that evening at dinner, Anthony shared his experience getting vaccinated with the rest of the family. His appointment had been at the large, regional hospital, and his experience couldn't have been more different than Kathryn's: a long line of people waiting to check in and submit their paperwork and the hospital's canteen turned into a makeshift vaccination clinic, with each table converted into a separate nurse's station.

"It was a madhouse!" he exclaimed, gesticulating wildly with his garlic toast as he explained how hospital staff had to scramble among the tables to deliver trays of syringes from the corner of the room where the ultra-cold freezers containing the temperature-sensitive vials of medicine were being kept, weaving in and out of the masses of people who'd come to get their jab that afternoon. His youngest daughter giggled as his toast emitted a shower of crumbs across the table, and he grinned and ruffled her hair once he'd popped the slice into his mouth.

"He certainly seems fine," Kathryn thought, just a bit darkly, as she sipped from her glass and shivered again. She was surprised what a contrast their appointments had been—his in a huge hospital, hers in a tiny, local health clinic; the bustle of distributing the thawed virus around his canteen table, no indication at all that her syringe had even been refrigerated prior to her injection. She suspected that this was one of the advantages of the newer vaccine formula that she'd been given. Although it had only been approved by the government a few days before, Kathryn's medication, synthesized using some kind of new and innovative manufacturing process, had been found as effective as the one that Anthony had been given. She had still read some articles online suggesting that the medication's side-effects in certain populations weren't as well understood, but the overall urgency of getting the vaccines out of the lab and into as many people's arms as possible—and as quickly as possible—had taken precedence. In any case, she was glad to have been bumped up in line as far as she had, and having to solider through a few days of feeling less-than-perfect would still be totally worthwhile if it got her out of the house a bit more and back to something even partly resembling the old, pre-pandemic "normal." She swallowed her sip of wine and mentally cursed Anthony's good luck in apparently feeling just fine as she tried to ignore the continued chill—or, maybe, more accurately, the tingling sensation—playing across her skin, as well as the subtle-but-persistent and rhythmic throbbing that was radiating out from her upper arm to her fingertips, to the top of her scalp, to the still-annoyingly-erect points of her nipples, and fluttering down into her lower belly.

* * * * *

Kathryn's phone chirped as she pulled the baggy hoodie sweatshirt that served as her pajama top over her head and dropped onto her side of the bed. She picked her glasses back up from the nightstand and peered at the green notification bubble on her phone's home screen: "Text message from 32-163: Time for today's Safe Vaccination check in!"

She unlocked the phone and clicked through to the linked web form to submit her daily health report. As she scrolled through the short questionnaire, she was dismayed at how many of the survey items she was responding to in the affirmative this time around: fever, dizziness, ache at the injection site. Yep, if these were the questions they were asking on "Day Zero," then she was definitely going to be in for it when she woke up in the morning. And that's if she managed to get any sleep at all that night....

Kathryn frowned as she reached the last two rating scales on the new, second-shot version of the survey. The first: "Sexual side-effects" What? What in the world was that supposed to mean? Yes, some of the doctors she'd been following online had expressed concern about the rush to get the new medicine out into clinics without a complete, long-term trial, but there had been nothing about any side-effects besides the flu-like symptoms that everybody seemed to get from these vaccines. And she was sure that something like "sexual side-effects" would've completely blown up the social media landscape, if not the nightly news. What kind of "sexual side effects" would she even be able to report on, anyway? She was worn down from months of being trapped at home, so sex with Anthony hadn't been at the top of her list for quite some time. And if she was in the midst of developing flu symptoms for the next 48 hours following her vaccination... well, that certainly wouldn't lend itself to much "sexy time," either, would it? She intuitively reached for the "None" option in the response list, but just as she did, she shivered again. No, she corrected herself, that definitely seemed like more than just a shiver. Kathryn's breath caught as she experienced another increasingly intense wave of tingles emanating from her bicep and coursing throughout her entire body.

She hesitated for a fraction of a second—what did they mean by "sexual," exactly? Was there something to report, ridiculous as it seemed? Sure, her breasts felt just a bit swollen and achy, but that clearly couldn't be related. Her nipples were tight crinkles, as they had been since she'd arrived back home, rubbing sensitively against the inside of her hoodie, but that was just a result of the chills that she'd been experiencing all afternoon, right? Before climbing into bed, she'd found herself moist and her lips a bit swollen when she'd wiped herself after using the bathroom, but that couldn't mean anything—clearly, it was just because of where she was in her monthly cycle. She frowned and then shook her head. Definitely not. Ridiculous. She jabbed her finger against the screen to illuminate the "None" option.

The last question made even less sense to her: "Inability to focus on routine activities or tasks." Kathryn knew that if she was going to be confined to bed with flu symptoms, it would likely mean that she wouldn't be particularly focused on "routine activities"—who would be able to focus on anything typical while fighting off a fever, body aches, and waves of nausea?—but it still seemed like an odd question to ask on a post-vaccination survey. She sighed, checked "None" once again, and submitted the health report.

She was plugging her phone in for the night when Anthony came wandering in from the en suite bathroom, shirtless, still a bit damp from his shower, and brushing his teeth with one hand while thumbing through something on his phone with the other. He looked up, pulling the toothbrush out of his mouth for a moment. "Did you signed back up for this Safe Vaccination thing again, too?" he said around his mouthful of toothpaste, indicating his phone with a tip of his head.

Kathryn nodded. "Just submitted mine," she said, falling into bed and closing her eyes, trying to will away the cool, throbbing sensation still flooding through her body.

Anthony chuckled. "They're not going to get much useful information from me today, I'm afraid. No chills or aches for me yet." He mashed a button on his phone and then turned back into the bathroom to spit his toothpaste into the sink and drop his toothbrush back into the charger. Kathryn opened her eyes and turned to look at him as he turned away from her. Droplets of water glistened on his shoulders as he stepped back into the glare of the vanity lights in the bathroom, and she watched the muscles ripple in his back. He was looking pretty OK for being a dad in a pandemic, she thought to herself, just as another wave of tingles caused her to squeeze her thighs together in surprise. She caught herself and then rolled her eyes. Sexual side-effects, indeed, she thought as she rolled over to bury her face into her pillow. Ridiculous.

* * * * *

Kathryn's dreams that night were unsettling. They were unlike any dreams that she'd had for a very, very long time. And much more vivid and life-like than any she could recall.

She dreamt that she was walking through a department store in the local shopping mall. She passed a large electronics display—a wall covered in various sizes of television screens. All of the TVs were tuned to a breaking news report; an obviously alarmed news anchor read from a sheet of paper (did they even still do that?! she wondered), explaining that a group of scientists were predicting dire consequences from a critical miscalculation about the country's vaccine response. Her feet froze in front of the display as her mind reeled; was she somehow implicated in the miscalculation? Could it have anything to do with the brand-new medication she'd just been given? Kathryn's breath quickened as she resumed walking quickly to find an exit, to get back to her car, to find someone who might be able to help... She jogged lightly out of the store and into the main part of the mall—when was the last time she'd actually been inside of a mall, anyway?—and looked around, trying to remember which way she'd come; trying to figure out which way to go. She paused for just a moment before rushing onward towards the central atrium—the "hub" of the shopping center that would give her the largest number of options for directions to go. But as she briskly walked past storefront after storefront, she found her concentration dulled by the incessant thrumming in her bicep. The first shot didn't feel anything like this. Why do I feel so strange this time around? Kathryn weaved her way through crowds of couples—unusually, only couples—milling about together in the surprisingly crowded space.

She needed to focus and figure out where she was supposed to go, she thought to herself, as her senses, already on high alert from being thrown back into a space that she'd actively avoided for nearly a year, jumped into high gear. The smell of popcorn from a cart off to her left. The waves of alternating heat and cold radiating out from her arm and throughout her body. Bursts of laughter and snippets of conversation echoing throughout the busy space. A burst of vertigo as she veered sharply to avoid colliding with a college-aged couple who had stopped short just in front of her to spontaneously sweep each other up in a passionate embrace. The feeling of her swollen breasts bouncing freely under her pajama hoodie as she pivoted hard back towards center court. Wait—that wasn't right... When in the world would she visit a mall without a bra? And in her pajamas?

Kathryn's shock at this realization, combined with her continued experience of sensory overload and a rising feeling of urgency, muddled the clarity of her thinking, leaving her feeling increasingly disoriented as she stepped into the cavernous atrium space at the center of the mall. She surveyed her surroundings as she stepped into a brilliant shaft of sunlight, trying desperately to re-gain her bearings and her wits. Focus, Kathryn! Although she struggled to collect her thoughts, this seemed like the right place for her to be. Everyone passes through here, she thought. This must be a jumping-off point to find help. Still, she just couldn't calm her racing mind enough to sort out what shape that help might take or where she'd be able to find it. She spun around, feeling adrift. She was surrounded on all sides: By the golden shaft of late afternoon light, pouring down on her from above. By the illuminated entrances of many busy stores. By couples strolling through the atrium, holding hands. By the noise of water cascading over rocks in the central water feature. By couples pausing to kiss one another deeply as their hands roamed over one another's bodies. Again: Wait, what? Kathryn blinked, hard, trying to clear her head, and when she opened her eyes again, they alit on the towering bank of elevators on the far side of the atrium, just beyond the waterfalls and fountains. Maybe the elevators? Upstairs? she thought, her eyes following the glass-walled elevator cars, silently carrying groups of shoppers up and down to the different floors of the mall. There's no place down here that seems to be what I'm looking for....perhaps there'll be a mall security office or information desk upstairs near the food court? She hurried over to the base of the elevator tower and pressed the button to summon a car.

As she touched the small, yellow button, Kathryn felt as if an electric current coursed through her body. It was as if the button itself had amplified the waves of sensation reverberating between the injection site in her upper arm and every extremity of her body. Her vision swam and her knees buckled as her bicep throbbed and the sensitivity of her nerve endings seemed to double with each pulse coursing through her body. She could hear a distant ding just as an errant breeze made the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end, and her breath was swept away. The elevator doors quietly slid open, and Kathryn took another shuddering breath. Focus! she chided herself, trying to ignore the physical sensations threatening to completely overwhelm her ability to think clearly, and she stepped inside. She found herself inexorably pulled all the way across the tiny cubicle to the far wall, and she felt herself clinging to the handrail that bisected the car's floor-to-ceiling glass wall to steady herself.