Wish You Were Here(69)

To my relief, this time the door opens almost immediately. But instead of my day nurse, the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen walks into my room. He is young—early twenties—with raven-black hair and eyes so blue they are like looking into the sky. Beneath his mask, his jaw is square; his shoulders are wide, and his biceps strain the sleeves of his scrubs. “Need something?” he says.

I feel like I’m going to swallow my tongue. “I … ?um. You’re not Syreta.”

“I definitely am not,” he agrees. I can tell he is smiling from the way his eyes crinkle, but I bet beneath that mask and shield he has perfect teeth. “I’m Chris; I’m a certified nursing assistant.”

“Why?” The word springs from my mouth before I can stop it. This man could be a movie star, a model. Why would he choose to be in a Covid ward taking care of contagious people who can’t wipe their own bottoms?

He laughs. “I actually like the work. Or I did, before it became a potential death sentence.” His cheeks darken above his mask with a fierce blush. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

I imagine how, in another time or place, patients might have requested him when they wanted to be moved from the bed, or lifted into a wheelchair.

Those arms.

Suddenly I am blushing as much as he is, because I remember why I pushed the call button.

“So, what can I do for you?” Chris asks.

My voice dries up. I weigh the thought of sitting in this disgusting diaper against the mortification of telling him why I needed help.

Apparently, he is also psychic, or accustomed to women making idiots of themselves around him. Because he just nods briskly, as if we’ve had an entire conversation, and efficiently moves to the supply cabinet to extract a fresh diaper. He gently pulls down the bedding, rips the elasticized side panels of the diaper, and swiftly cleans me before getting me sterile and swaddled again. The whole time, I keep my eyes closed, as if I could will away this entire experience.

I hear the swish of debris in a trash can and water being run and the snap of new elastic gloves. “All set,” Chris says lightly. “Anything else?”

Before I can answer, another person comes into the room. I haven’t seen two human beings in the same space with me since I was extubated, and Finn was there. This is a tiny woman who is swathed in PPE, like everyone else. “Stop hogging the patient,” she says. “It’s my turn.”

Chris winks at me. “See you later,” he says.

The woman watches him leave. “Hot CNA,” she muses, “is sex on legs.”

“His name is Chris,” I reply.

She raises a brow. “Oh, I know.” She walks toward the bed. “I’m Prisha. I’m a physical therapist.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

“We’ve met, kind of. When you were sedated, I moved your limbs around so your joints and muscles would stay healthy.” She shrugs. “You’re welcome.”

“I want to go to the bathroom,” I tell her. “I mean, not now. But when I have to.”

She nods. “That’s a great goal. But you’ve been on a vent for five days, so we have to see how you’re moving, and how you’ll respond to being upright, first.” Prisha draws one of my arms over my head, encouraging me to take a breath. Then she does this with the other arm. I can feel my rib cage expanding. She gives me a few breathing exercises to try, and I do, until I cough. “We can try to get out of bed, but to do that, we’re going to need a second set of hands and a blood pressure cuff,” Prisha says.

“Please,” I beg. “The bathroom?”

She narrows her eyes, as if assessing me. Then she calls in Chris, the CNA, again. Prisha helps me roll and lowers my legs off the bed. With Chris’s help, she gets me to a sitting position. Prisha slides an arm around me, and at the embrace, I almost gasp. Everyone else—even Finn, that first night—is tentative about coming close to me, as if my skin itself is contaminated. To have someone touch me, so willingly and without fear, nearly brings me to tears.

Everything hurts as I move it, but I am driven. I do not want Chris wiping my ass again.

“Why,” I grind out, “is this so hard?”

“You’re lucky,” Chris says, from my other side. “The other postvent Covid patients—and there aren’t many—have a lot of complications. Renal failure, heart failure, encephalopathy, pressure ulcers …”

Prisha interrupts him just as I’m starting to get panicked hearing about complications I haven’t even anticipated. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s try sitting up on your own for a few seconds.”

Sitting? I’m not an invalid; it’s only been a few days. “I just need help standing. I haven’t been in the hospital that long—”

“Humor me,” Prisha says, and she removes her arm so that I have to support myself upright.

For about fifteen seconds, I do.

Then everything swims. Around me, inside me. Being vertical feels like hurtling through space. I see stars, start to tip forward, and Chris’s strong arms catch me and gently lower me back onto the bed.

Prisha looks down at me. “You’ve been effectively paralyzed for nearly a week. When you sit up, all the blood rushes down from your head because the muscles around the blood vessels have been on hiatus and need to remember how gravity works. Baby steps, Diana. You almost died. Cut your body a break.”