A Different Sort of Mask

by Sierra Bedwell (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Italy

We came back from Carnival wearing a different sort of mask. These masks were not things of beauty, crafted by local artisans. We did not buy them at a shop in St. Mark’s Square, ducking away from the pigeons above our heads; they were given to us in Belgium at three in the morning as we prepared to go home after the long bus ride from Italy back to France. Mine was plain white, and covered my nose and mouth instead of my eyes. Because scientists are discouraged from studying abroad, I am the only representative of my field I have met this side of the Atlantic. The average person, in my experience, doesn’t really know what I study. Microbiology: you can’t see the germs, why try? I came abroad not in spite of this stigma, but because of it. There is a certain level of pride that I feel being the first ever American to study science at my host university. I came here to help people, and to learn from them, to broaden my horizons and better my science. I’m nowhere close to an expert—far from it, in fact. But, I am still one of the only scientists I’ve met here. This is why, about an hour from the Italian border, just after the tour director came onto the bus intercom and said "quarantine", my ten friends all turned to me. And they were afraid. The day of February 25th was going wonderfully, until the moment it wasn’t. It was our third and final day in Venice, and I’d just emerged triumphant from the hotel’s breakfast room. Spirits were high. On the bus, there was talk of a gondola ride, gelato, shopping. But, then, the intercom turned on and we were told that instead of gondolas and gelato we’d be returning immediately to France, where I study, as fast as we could go. We needed to leave before the border was closed, the director said, and it was only then, as I considered the fact that the Schengen area does not close borders, that I realized what a mess this might become. In a moment, I was terrified. But I wasn’t terrified of COVID-19; that, to me, was a known quantity. I’d studied virology in the past, and I’d read plenty about it since it had first appeared. No, I was more scared that they’d send me home to America, that my sojourn abroad would be over before it had properly begun. I had just enough time to realize this fear before that three-syllable word, quarantine, clanged through the bus and my friends turned to me. For a moment, I was relieved. They were as worried as I was, I realized. But they weren’t scared of missing out on adventure. They were scared of hospital visits and debilitating sickness. Of dying. Every one of them was going back to that ingrained knowledge of microbiology, all that most people are ever taught. You can’t see the germs, that knowledge says, but they can kill you. And they had turned to me, someone still in undergraduate, someone who’s taken only a few virology classes, why me? I thought. Why? I had said it myself, I was the black sheep biologist in the pack of liberal arts wolves for a reason. Hadn’t I come across the ocean to learn, to grow, to prove why science is needed? Why? Because I could help. And so I looked again into their faces and I made myself smile. I made myself laugh. "We have nothing to fear but boredom," I made myself say. I proved it to them later by finding some peer-reviewed sources about risk factors and transmission rates, but that didn’t matter to them as much as someone they trusted, telling them the truth in a way that news articles couldn’t. We spent the rest of that long bus ride laughing and playing games. And when, later that night, we were handed a different kind of mask, my friends grinned and took mask selfies, when hours before they had been terrified and uncertain. Their faces said it was going to be alright, and I smiled right along with them.