Wish You Were Here(40)
Delighted, he runs the length of the tent, thrusting it toward a woman who must be his mother. I see some of the boys who’d been bullying him drift over, looking at what’s in his hands.
I sit down, satisfied, and lean back in the lawn chair.
A moment later the boy returns. He is holding a fruit I’ve never seen before, the size of my fist, and armored with tiny spikes. Shyly, he sets it on the table in front of me and nods a thank-you, before darting back to his mother’s table.
I scan the tent, searching for Abuela, and suddenly hear a small voice. “Hola.”
The girl in front of me is thin as a bean, with dusty bare feet and braids in her hair. She holds out a dimpled green Galápagos orange.
“Oh,” I say. “I don’t have anything to trade.”
She frowns, then pulls another postcard from Abuela’s magazine. She holds it out to me, and tosses her braids over her shoulders, striking a pose.
Maybe I do.
When Abuela and I leave the feria two hours later, I am no richer in cash, but I have a straw sunhat, a pair of athletic shorts, and flip-flops. Abuela cooks me lunch: lamb chops, blue potatoes, and mint jelly that I received in return for my portraits. Dessert is the spiny fruit the boy gave me: guanábana.
Afterward, belly full, I leave Abuela’s so I can take a nap at home.
It is the first time, in my own mind, I’ve called it that.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
It’s crazy—everything’s been shut down. There are no flights out, and none in, and no one knows when that’s gonna change. It’s probably safer that way. Even if you could fly into the U.S., it’s a shit-show. You’d probably have to quarantine somewhere for a couple of weeks, because we don’t even have enough Covid tests right now for the people who are coming into the hospital with symptoms.
The truth is that even if you were home, I wouldn’t be. Most of the residents who have families are staying at hotels, so they don’t infect anyone accidentally. Even though I’m alone in the apartment, after I peel off my scrubs in the entry and stuff them in a laundry bag, the first thing I do is shower until my skin hurts.
You know Mrs. Riccio, in 3C? When I came home last night, I saw people I didn’t recognize going in and out of her apartment. She died of Covid. The last interaction I had with her was five days ago, in the mailroom. She was a home health aide and she was terrified of catching it. The last thing I said to her was, Be careful out there.
One of my patients—she was extubated successfully but was in multiorgan failure and I knew she wasn’t going to last the day—had a brief moment of consciousness when I went in to see her. I was in full PPE and she couldn’t see my face well so she thought I was her son. She grabbed my hand and told me how proud she was of me. She asked if I’d hug her goodbye. And I did.
She was alone in her room and she was going to die that way. I was crying under my face shield and I thought: Well, if I catch it I catch it.
I know I took an oath. Do no harm and all that. But I don’t remember saying I’d kill myself to do it.
Once we saw a movie, I don’t remember the name, where there was a WWI soldier who was all of twenty, in a trench with a new recruit who was eighteen. The bullets were all around and the twenty-year-old was calmly smoking while the younger kid shook like a leaf. He asked, How can you not be scared? The older soldier said: You don’t have to be afraid of dying, when you’re already dead.
Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, I figure.
I read that the Empire State Building will be lit up red and white this week for healthcare workers. We don’t give a fuck about the Empire State Building, or about people banging pots and pans at 7 P.M. Most of us won’t ever see or hear it, because we’re in the hospital trying to save people who can’t be saved. What we want is for everyone to just wear a mask. But then there are people who say that requiring a mask is a gross infringement of their bodily rights. I don’t know how to make it any more clear: you don’t have any bodily rights when you’re dead.
I’m sorry. You don’t need to listen to me vent. But then again, this probably isn’t even getting through to you.
Just in case it is: your mom’s place keeps calling.
A few days later, while Beatriz is occupied making tortillas with her grandmother, I ask to borrow Abuela’s phone to leave another message for Finn. Gabriel has taught me how to dial direct internationally, but calls are expensive, and I don’t want Abuela to incur the costs, so I keep the conversation brief—just letting Finn know I’m all right, and I’m thinking of him. I save everything else for the postcards Beatriz mails.
Then I call my mother’s memory care facility. Although I haven’t received any emails or voicemail from them, that may be a function of the internet here, since Finn said they’ve left messages on our landline at the apartment. The last time The Greens reached out so doggedly, there was a glitch in the direct deposit that paid my mother’s monthly room and board. The administration was all over it like white on rice, until I smoothed out the mistake and their money came through the wire. It will not be easy to sort out another bank error from a quarantined island.
I dial the number and a receptionist answers. “This is Diana O’Toole,” I say. “Hannah O’Toole’s daughter. You’ve been trying to reach me?”