I break off.
“Winding up …？”
“Like me,” I finish.
Dr. DeSantos nods. “You’re not the only one with PTSD,” she says. “Dr. Colson tells me that you work for Sotheby’s?”
“Worked,” I correct. “I’ve been furloughed.”
“You know what surrealism is, then.”
“Of course.” It was a twentieth-century art movement that elevated the subconscious and the stuff of dreams: Dalí’s dripping clocks and Magritte’s The False Mirror. The whole point is for the art to make you uneasy, until you realize the world is just a construct. An image that doesn’t make sense to you forces your mind to free-associate—and those associations are key to analyzing reality on a deeper level.
“The reason this all feels surreal is that we’re in uncharted territory,” the doctor says. “We’ve never been through something like this—well, at least most of us haven’t. There aren’t too many people who survived the 1918 Spanish flu who are currently alive. Humans love to find patterns and to make sense of what we see. When you can’t find those patterns, it’s unsettling. The CDC tells us that we have to social distance, and then the president is on TV without a mask, shaking people’s hands. Doctors say if you feel sick you should get a test, but the tests are nowhere to be found. Your kids can’t go into a classroom, even though it’s the middle of the school year. You can’t find flour on the grocery shelves. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or six months from now. We don’t know how many people will die before this is over. The future is completely up in the air.”
I stare at her. This, this is exactly how I feel. Like I’m in a little panga, adrift in the middle of a great, wide ocean.
With no motor and no oars.
“Of course, that’s not really accurate,” Dr. DeSantos says. “The future is going to come, in some form, whether we like it or not. What we really mean is that we can’t plan for the future. And when we can’t plan—when we can’t find those patterns that make sense—we lose the skeleton of life. And no one can remain upright without that.”
“But if everyone’s experiencing this right now,” I ask, “then how come I’m the only one who got dropped into an alternate life?”
“Your rumination,” she says gently, “was your brain doing its damnedest to make sense of a very stressful situation for which you had no reference. Plus, you were on medications that mess with consciousness. You created a world that you could understand, from building blocks that were lying around your mind.”
I think about the guidebooks I had highlighted. The places I’d seen on Isabela. G2 Tours.
“What you keep referring to as another life,” Dr. DeSantos says, “was a defense mechanism.” She pauses. “Are you still having dreams of the Galápagos?”
“No,” I say. “But I don’t sleep much.”
“That’s very common for people who have been in the ICU. But it’s also possible that you’re not dreaming because you don’t need to anymore. Because you survived. Because the outcome isn’t as vague anymore.”
My mouth is suddenly dry. “Then how come I still feel lost?”
“Build your scaffolding again, but while you’re conscious. Use the bricks that you’ve still got, in spite of the pandemic. Make coffee in the morning. Meditate. Watch Schitt’s Creek. Have a glass of wine at dinner. FaceTime the friends you can’t see in person. Whatever habits you used to have, stack them up and give yourself structure. I promise. You won’t feel as unsettled.”
I think about surrealist paintings, how you can be startled out of your understanding of what the world should be. To my surprise, tears spring to my eyes. “What if that’s not the problem?”
“What do you mean?”
“I wish I could dream about the Galápagos,” I whispered. “I liked it better there.”
The psychologist tilts her head, pity written on her face. “Who wouldn’t,” she says.
In my past life, I’d groan when my alarm went off and choke down a piece of toast with my coffee and join the millions of people in New York City getting from point A to point B. I’d spend my days buried in work, a mountain that only seemed to get higher the more I climbed it, and when I came home I was too tired to deal with groceries or cook so I ordered in. Sometimes Finn was here, sometimes he was doing an overnight at the hospital. There were weekends I worked but also weekends when I took walks to Chelsea Piers, down the High Line, through Central Park. I’d force myself not to think about office politics or what I could be hammering away at on my laptop to get a head start on the coming week. I’d go to the gym and watch rom-coms on my phone while running on the treadmill.