Wish You Were Here(68)

My heart hurts, thinking of how hard that must have been.

“I’d sneak in whenever I could, sit by the bed, and talk to you—about my patients, and about how fucking scary this virus is, and how I feel like we’re all just shooting in the dark and hoping to hit a target.”

Those sporadic emails from him, then, weren’t really emails.

“I bullied your medical team into proning you—putting you on your belly, even on the vent. I read where a doctor on the West Coast had success with Covid patients by doing that. They thought I was crazy but now some of the pulmonologists are doing it, because what the hell, it worked for you.”

I think about all the time I spent at Concha de Perla, floating facedown with a mask and snorkel, peeking into a world undersea.

“I’d be working—rounding on my own patients, whatever—and I’d hear the call for codes, and every time, every goddamn time, I would freeze and think, Please God, not her room.”

“I … ?I’ve been here ten days?” I ask.

“It felt like a year to me. We tried to bring you out of sedation a few times, but you weren’t having it.”

Suddenly I remember the vivid dream I had when I was in the Galápagos: Finn, not costumed as I had assumed, but wearing an N95 mask like everyone else here. Telling me to stay awake, so he could save me. The woman I pictured beside him, I realize now, was Syreta.

There is one overlapping part of both realities, I realize. “I almost died,” I whisper.

Finn stares at me for a long moment, his throat working. “It was your second day on the vent. Your pulmonologist told me that he didn’t think you’d last the night. The vent was maxing out and your O-two levels were shit. Your blood pressure bottomed out, and they couldn’t stabilize you.” He draws a shuddering breath. “He told me I should say goodbye.”

I watch him rub a hand over his face, reliving something I do not even recall.

“So I sat with you … ?held your hand,” Finn says softly. “Told you I love you.”

One tear streaks down my cheek, catching in the shell of my ear.

“But you fought,” he says. “You stabilized. And you turned the corner. Honestly, it’s a miracle, Diana.”

I feel my throat get thick. “My mother …”

“I’m taking care of everything. Your only job is to rest. To get better.” He swallows. “To come home.”

Suddenly there is a code blue over the loudspeaker and Finn frowns. “I have to go,” he says. “I love you.” He runs down the hall, presumably to the room where one of his patients is tanking. Someone who is not as lucky as me.

Betty takes the phone away from where she’s been holding it to my ear with her gloved hand. She puts it on the nightstand and a moment later presses a tissue gently to the corner of each of my eyes, wiping away the tears that won’t stop coming. “Honey, you’re through the worst of it,” she says. “You have a second chance.”

She thinks I’m crying because I nearly lost my life.

You don’t understand, I want to tell her. I did.

Everyone keeps telling me I have to focus on getting my body back in shape, when all I want to do is untangle the thicket of my mind. I want to talk about Gabriel and Beatriz and the Galápagos but (first) there is no one to listen to me—the nurses spend quick, efficient moments in my room changing me and giving meds before they step out and have to sanitize and strip off their gear—and (second) no one believes me.

I remember how isolated I felt when I thought I was stuck on Isabela, and wonder if that was some strange distillation of my drugged brain filtering what it is like to be a quarantined Covid patient. I was alone a lot in the Galápagos, but I wasn’t lonely, like I am here.

I haven’t seen Finn for a whole day.

I can’t read, because words start to dance on the page and even a magazine is too heavy for me to hold. Same with a phone. I can’t call friends because my voice is still raspy and raw. I watch television, but every channel seems to carry the president saying that this virus is no worse than the flu, that social distancing should be lifted by Easter.

For endless hours I stare at the door and wish for someone to come in. Sometimes, it’s so long between visits from nurses that when Syreta or Betty arrive, I find myself talking about anything I can seize upon, in the hope that it will keep them with me a few minutes longer.

When I tell Syreta that I want to try to use the bathroom, she raises a brow. “Easy, cowgirl,” she says. “One step at a time.”

So instead I beg for water, and I’m given a damp, spongy swab that’s moved around my mouth. I suck at it greedily, but Syreta takes it away and leaves me thirsty.

If I’m good, she promises, I can have a swallow test tomorrow and my feeding tube might come out.

If I’m good, physical therapy will come in today to assess me.

I resolve to be good.

In the meantime, I just lie on my side and listen to the beep and whir of machines that prove I’m alive.

Even though I’m alone, when I soil my adult diaper, my cheeks burn in humiliation. I scrabble for the call button. The last time I needed to be changed (my God, even thinking that embarrasses me) it took forty minutes for Syreta to come. I didn’t ask why she was delayed; it was written all over her face: disappointment, exhaustion, resignation. Sitting in my own mess just doesn’t compare to another patient who’s crashing.