James Turnbow

I sat outside the quarantine chamber.

Wade sat inside, slumped in a wheelchair, discolored skin visible everywhere that wasn't covered by his gown.

The sickly greens, alarming purples, and disturbing reds made him look like a piece of modern art.

His swollen lymph nodes, the size of golf balls, made his neck look thick.

I could hardly look at my friend.

I wanted to go out and find whoever was responsible for this.

I wanted to grab them by the neck and tell them, fucking fix it!

But no one was responsible for this.

No person anyway.

Nothing with a neck that I could wring.

This sucks, I said, leaning down, elbows on knees.

And it cuts, Wade rasped, his voice coming through the intercom set into the wall.

I looked up to see him smiling, actually smiling.

The dude was something else.

It certainly does suck, I said, finishing the Wayne's World quote.

We'd been working together for over 10 years, trading movie quotes daily.

Our very first interaction featured a dumb and dumber quote.

On our second day, Wade had come up to me during lunch to ask if I knew the name of another junior researcher who was in orientation with us.

We spent a few moments trying to remember, testing out different names, when Wade finally said, Samsonite, I was way off.

It was a fantastic Jim Carrey impression.