In the Isolation Room

In his personal essay “In the Isolation Room,” Nicholas Spice, a consulting publisher for the London Review of Books (LRB), reflects on being a COVID-19 patient during the first wave in London. Spice acknowledges his awareness of his vulnerability as a “67-year-old man with a chronic respiratory allergy” (Spice) amidst prime minister Boris Johnson’s warning that Britons should be “prepared to lose loved ones” (Spice). However, it isn’t until 21 March 2020, when his symptoms result in an ambulance trip, that Spice speaks of the gratifying theatricality of his illness, his life having suddenly taken on a dramatic tenor because of the impending danger. As he leaves his home for the hospital, he understands that he might not be able to see his partner again. At the same time, he understands that acknowledging his death will not prepare him for the actual act of dying, and if he does die, “the sharpest poignancy of the moment” will be lost on him (Spice). Underscoring the randomness of COVID-19 death, Spice sees the pandemic’s ability to “create a ‘species event’: a temporary mass awakening to the commonest fact of life, mortality” (Spice). Not only has the pandemic revealed flaws in societal and institutional structures but also shakes Spice out of a “dream of safety” and reminds him of the intractable fact of death.