Wish You Were Here(36)

This woman was twenty years old. TWENTY. All that bullshit about how the virus is killing old people? Whoever’s saying that isn’t working in an ICU. Of my six patients who died, none were over 35. Two were Hispanic women in their twenties who developed Covid bowel necrosis, which required surgical resection—they made it through surgery but died from complications. One was an overweight man, 28—overweight, but not obese. One, a paramedic, bled into her lungs. One guy I thought was gonna make it, until his pupils blew out—the heparin we gave him so the ECMO could do its work without clotting gave him a brain bleed.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I need to tell someone. And because it’s easier than what I should be saying.

Which is: I’m sorry for what I said to you. I know I’m the reason you’re where you are now. It’s just that nothing’s the way it is supposed to be, goddammit.

Sometimes I sit and listen to the whir of the ECMO machine, and I think, This person’s heart is outside his body, and I understand completely.

Because so is mine.



The night before my two-week anniversary on Isabela, Abuela throws me a goodbye dinner. Gabriel comes with Beatriz, who clings to me when I leave to go down to my apartment. I’ve given her my cellphone number, but also my address, to stay in touch. Gabriel walks me to my door that night. “What will you do back home?” he asks.

I shrug. “Get on with my life,” I tell him. But I am not quite sure what that is anymore. I don’t know if I’ll have a job, and I am nervous about seeing Finn again, after our weird phone conversation.

“Well,” he says, “I hope it’s a good one, then. Your life.”

“That’s the plan,” I say, and we say good night.

It does not take long for me to pack—after all, I have nearly nothing—but I clean the kitchen countertops and fold the towels I’ve washed and fall asleep dreaming of my reunion with Finn. Normally, I would have checked on my flight home, but without internet, I have to just hope for the best.

The next morning when I open the sliding door, my tote stuffed and settled on my shoulder for the walk into town to the ferry dock, Gabriel and Beatriz are waiting. Beatriz looks happier than I have ever seen her look. She throws her arms around me. “You have to stay,” she says.

I look over her head at her father, and then hold her at arm’s length. “Beatriz,” I tell her, “you know I can’t. But I promise to—”

“She’s right,” Gabriel states, and something deep in my chest vibrates like a tuning fork.

I glance at my watch. “I don’t want to miss the ferry—”

“There is no ferry,” Gabriel interrupts. “The island isn’t opening.”

“What?” I blink. “For how long?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “But there aren’t any flights out of Santa Cruz … ?or even Guayaquil, for that matter. The government isn’t letting any incoming planes land, either.”

I let my tote slip from my shoulder to my elbow. “So I can’t get home,” I say. The words feel like they’re being torn from my throat.

“You can’t get home right now,” Gabriel corrects.

“This isn’t happening,” I murmur. “There has to be a way.”

“Not unless you swim,” Beatriz says, sunny.

“I have to get back to New York,” I say. “What am I supposed to do about work? And Finn. Oh my God, I can’t even tell him what’s going on.”

“Your boss can’t be mad at you if there’s no way for you to get back,” Beatriz reasons. “And you can call your boyfriend from Abuela’s landline.”

Abuela has a landline? And they’re just telling me now?

My life has been a series of telephone poles one after the other, benchmarks of progress. Without a road map of the steps that come next, I am floundering. I do not belong here, and I cannot shake the feeling that at home, the world is moving on without me. If I can’t get back soon, I might never catch up.

I’ve been on an island for two weeks, but this is the first time I’ve really ever felt completely at sea.

Gabriel looks at my face, and says something to Beatriz in Spanish. She takes the tote from my arm and carries it into the apartment while he leads me upstairs to Abuela’s. She is sitting on her couch watching a telenovela when we come in. Gabriel explains to her why I’m here, again in language I don’t understand.

Oh, God. I’m stuck in a country where I can’t even communicate.

He bustles me into the bedroom, where there is a phone on the nightstand. I stare at it. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know how to call home,” I admit.

Gabriel picks up the receiver and punches a few buttons. “What’s his number?”

I tell him and he hands the phone to me. Three rings. This is Finn; you know the drill.

When I glance up, Gabriel is shutting the door behind himself.

“Hi,” I say out loud. “It’s me. My flight’s been canceled. Actually, every flight’s been canceled. I can’t get home now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” A sob rises like a vine through my sentences. “You were right. I shouldn’t have left.”