But none of those people experienced what I did.
And there are all kinds of things that used to be considered inconceivable but that turned out to be the opposite—from the earth circling the sun to black holes to diseases that jump from bats to humans. Sometimes the impossible is possible.
I don’t know why I keep feeling the tug back to that other place. I don’t know why I’m not thanking my lucky stars to be alive and here. But I do believe that there’s a reason I cannot let go of this—science and doctors and logic be damned.
And I think Eric Genovese might know what I’m talking about.
Hello, I type. You don’t know me, but I read your story in the newspaper.
I was on a ventilator for five days.
I think I lived a different life, too.
On April 19, we celebrate my birthday.
Finn orders a fat slice of cake from one of our favorite delis. “Carrot cake?” I ask, when he sets it on the table.
“It’s your favorite,” Finn says. “We always split it when it’s on the menu.”
Because it is his favorite, but I don’t say that. He’s gone out of his way to make sure he’s not working tonight, and he’s trying to make the day special for me, even if it looks and feels exactly like yesterday and I haven’t left the apartment in days.
When he sings to me, I have an uncanny sense that I’ve done this before, because I have. I think about how Beatriz made me a cake; how Gabriel and I slept outside by a campfire. How he gave me a volcano as a present.
Since we don’t have birthday candles, Finn scrounges up a fancy Jo Malone scented candle that Eva gave me for Christmas and lights it. When he hands me a jewelry-size box, my blood thunders in my ears.
Thisisitthisisitthisisit. The thought becomes a second pulse. It feels like more than just the biggest question I will ever be asked; it is the understanding that the answer will be for life.
For life.
Which one?
Finn bumps his shoulder against mine. “Open it,” he urges.
I manage to stretch a smile over my face and I tug at the improvised wrapping paper—yesterday’s Times. Inside is a little bracelet that says WARRIOR.
“That’s how I think of you,” Finn admits. “I am so fucking glad you’re a fighter, Di.”
He leans in, threading his hand through my hair and kissing me. When I pull away, I lift the bracelet from the box and he helps me put it on. “Do you like it?”
It is rose gold, and catches the light, and it’s not an engagement ring.
I love it.
I look up to find Finn already digging into the slice of cake. “Get in here,” he says, his mouth full, “before I finish it all.”
I feed my sourdough starter. I watch YouTube tutorials so I can cut Finn’s hair. I have another session with Dr. DeSantos. I FaceTime Rodney and we dissect the new email we received from Sotheby’s, saying that we will continue to be furloughed through the summer.
The United States crosses a million cases of Covid-19.
I stop using my quad cane. Although I get tired if I am on my feet too long and even one flight of stairs leaves me winded, balance is no longer an issue. I go to put Candis away in my closet and when I do, I remember the shoebox with my old art supplies inside.
Carefully, I tug it loose and set it on the bed.
I peel back the cover and find acrylic paints and a crusty palette and brushes. My fingers sift through the cool metal tubes and my nails catch on dried bits of paint. Something unfurls in me, like the thinnest green shoot from a seed that’s been buried.
It has been so long since I painted that I don’t have an easel, I don’t have gesso, I don’t have a canvas. The wall is the perfect surface to work on, but this is a rental and I can’t. Finally I manage to tug the dresser away from the wall. It’s something we picked up at a secondhand shop and primed with the intent of repainting one day—but we never got around to it. The wood on the back is smooth and white and waiting.
I sit down on the floor with a pencil and begin, in rough, sweeping strokes, to draw. It feels otherworldly, like I’m a medium channeling from somewhere else, watching the unlikely manifest before my eyes. I tumble into the zone, blocking out the sounds of the city and the occasional ping of my phone. I squeeze a rainbow of color on the palette, touch the tip of a brush to a carmine line, and draw it over the wood like a scalpel. There’s a sense of relief at having made contact, and anxiety at not knowing what comes next.
I don’t notice the sun going down and I don’t hear Finn’s keys in the door when he comes home. By then, I have covered the back of the dresser with color and shape, sea and sky. There is paint in my hair and under my fingernails, my joints are stiff from sitting, and I am thousands of miles away when I realize Finn is standing in front of me, calling my name.