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The card had fallen out of the pile when he collected his mail from the porch. He likely wouldn’t have spotted it otherwise – it would have gone into the recycling along with the free local tabloid and the desperate takeaway menus emphasising their owners' stellar hygiene record and delivery options. Something about the bright colour and big non-threatening font on the card had given him pause, though he hadn’t known at the time that it would apply to him soon enough.
HELLO! If you are self-isolating, I can help.
My name is… Sansa
I live locally at… Stonehill Terrace
I can help with… Picking up shopping / Urgent supplies / Errands / Dog-walking
Just call or text me and I’ll do my best to help!
A phone number was printed just below, and on the back of the wallet-sized card was a list of helplines, information websites and volunteer groups that had sprouted up as Kings Landing went into lockdown over this bloody virus.
But dogwalking. Fuck. He hadn’t thought of that. Sandor dumped his bills on the kitchen counter and and looked out into the garden. His big stupid mastiff was woofing at the seagulls that wheeled in the sky above, hopping with impotent rage that they’d invaded his airspace. The dog was placid enough, but Sandor didn’t want to think how much pent-up energy would be unleashed on his little house if the furry fucker went a few days without their morning run.
Judging from the piece of clip-art on the card – an illustration of a red-haired girl on a green Vespa – he doubted this Sansa was the volunteer for the job, but he tucked the card away by the phone just in case.
Sandor didn’t need the thermometer to tell him that he was fucking sick. The racking cough, pounding headache and total lack of energy were bigger clues than the little digital readout. Didn’t need to be a medic to know 38.2 was a bad number.
“Have you or any of your close contacts travelled to a badly-affected area in the past four weeks?” asked the call-handler in his maester’s office. “Yi Ti? Yunkai? Braavos? Dorne?”
“No. I flew back from Lys on the 12th though.” Fucking airports. Breathing every fucker’s air from every part of the known world so some cunt could pat him down in security. Could’ve been that smirking security cunt asking him about the metal pins in his leg.
“That’s good to know, Mr Clegane,” said the handler. She asked a few more questions about his symptoms and then rattled off a long list of instructions. It was a bit deflating to realise that self-isolation was pretty much identical to his normal lifestyle, just with extra handwashing.
He dumped some pellets into Stranger’s bowl, knocked back a couple of painkillers and prepared to go back to bed until the testing team arrived. Hours later, he was woken not by the doorbell, but by the big mutt huffing and puffing at his bedside, shuffling his feet and staring intently at Sandor.
“Sorry fella,” he rasped at the big dog. “No 5 miler for us today.”
It said something about how rotten he felt that he didn’t even miss the routine of his morning run. Sandor gulped down some water, grabbed another painkiller and checked his emails. It looked like his post on the ‘Self-Isolation Help’ group hadn’t garnered a willing volunteer to walk Stranger.
He sighed, stared the big dog in the eyes, and keyed the number for ‘Sansa’.