“You’re seriously asking me to do that?” Masha said. “Get your own damn psychiatrist.”
“Okay, what about this,” Karen said. “We allow the DNR to stand, but we convince him to rescind the do not intubate part.”
“That’s what he’s afraid of,” Senderovsky said. “The intubation.” As a childhood asthmatic he could understand Vinod’s fear of the ventilator. The idea of waking up and finding a tube in your throat, extending downward through your core, through the passages reserved for breath and food and drink and sound （as in “help me!”）， of being at the mercy of a heaving machine, of the restraints around your hands—this medieval horror show conducted under the guise of an antiseptic hospital.
“He came here to die,” Senderovsky finally said. “He told me as much when he came here. He figured his chances out. That’s why he always had those papers with him.”
“That was then,” Masha said. “But his life his changed. He’s in love now. He should be able to fight for—” Now she was falling into cliché. The idea of fighting an illness or fighting for love was just American militarism run amok. You could do a few things to better your chances against something like this virus, but if you were to die, you were to die. Maybe that was the gist of Vinod’s stack of papers.
“I think he knows that after the early stages of love with me it’s all going to go downhill,” Karen said.
“That’s just your depression talking,” Masha said.
Karen shuffled through the papers again and read randomly from the portions Vinod had highlighted. “？‘A forty-eight-year life span seems short, but only a century ago…If you look at the peer-reviewed extract labeled…Over eighty percent of intubated patients…For many of those who did survive, long-term effects included paranoia, “brain fog,”…A living death.’？”
“Those statistics are changing now,” Masha said. “There are effective new treatments coming online, especially for people with compromised immune systems.”
“Can you administer them as a doctor?” Karen said.
“I’m not a pulmonologist.”
“Lots of doctors without relevant experience were pressed into service.”
“Under the direction of those who know what they’re doing. In a hospital setting. Someone should be taking oxygen levels constantly. There needs to be IV access. A pulse ox. A monitor. Steroids, if it comes to that.”
“So,” Karen said, “you think he should be in a hospital?”
“Jesus Christ, yes!” Masha shouted. “Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?” Senderovsky coughed into his hand. “And you”—spoken to Karen—“shouldn’t be around other people, even outdoors. I have a little child. Have you forgotten her? Aren’t you worried for her?”
“He goes into a hospital, we’ll never see him again,” Senderovsky said.
“You don’t know that,” Masha said.
“What’s the last thing he wrote,” Senderovsky said to Karen. “Read it.”
“We’ve all read it already,” Masha said. “Stop being melodramatic.”
Karen examined the Levin-Senderovskys with sadness. In the end, she thought, they’ll make up, and they’ll go to bed together, and they’ll have each other. And I’ll go back to how things were before I came down that driveway. Back to the loft on White Street and the morning and evening whir of solar blinds ascending and descending and the alabaster mirror in the foyer in which I can practice saying hello and goodbye.
“？‘You’re both people who relish control,’？” Karen read from Vinod’s final entreaty to her and Senderovsky, “？‘so why take that very same control away from me? Why not give me a final dignity? I just don’t want to die alone in the end. I just want to be with my friends.’？”
“Well, we all die alone,” Masha said. “It’s tragic. The greatest tragedy of our lives, other than being born in the first place. By the way, how often did either of you see Vinod before all this happened? How often did you check in with him? Other than offering him money you knew he would never take. To make yourself feel better.”
“What do you know?” Karen said to Masha. “You’ll never experience anything like our friendship.”
“And you’ll never be a real mother,” Masha said.