In February 2021, I took my mother-in-law to get her first Covid vaccine. She was scheduled at the end of the day. When we were getting up to leave after her 15 minute waiting period afterward, a nurse ran up to me and asked if I had gotten mine yet. I replied no because I’m in the last group that would be phased in due to my age. The nurse explained that they had three more doses and they wanted to give me one of them so it didn’t go to waste. Knowing that more than 1,200 wasted doses had already gone to waste across the state of Massachusetts, largely because there weren’t enough people around to get shots when health-care workers got to the bottom of opened vaccine bottles, I agreed to get it. But that was after a lot of texting back and forth with my husband and physician’s assistant neighbor because I felt guilty getting it ahead of friends and family who had medical needs and really needed to get it before me.

The 1200 silver oval dots represent the wasted doses before I received my shot. They were made one at a time on a stiffened piece of fabric that has the monoprinted texture of a construction fence that was stitched following the grid.

Construction sites use construction fences as a barrier to keep people out of danger by blocking off the site. The vaccine was developed to help us stay safe from Covid-19.