One of my patients—she was extubated successfully but was in multiorgan failure and I knew she wasn’t going to last the day—had a brief moment of consciousness when I went in to see her. I was in full PPE and she couldn’t see my face well so she thought I was her son. She grabbed my hand and told me how proud she was of me. She asked if I’d hug her goodbye. And I did.
She was alone in her room and she was going to die that way. I was crying under my face shield and I thought: Well, if I catch it I catch it.
I know I took an oath. Do no harm and all that. But I don’t remember saying I’d kill myself to do it.
Once we saw a movie, I don’t remember the name, where there was a WWI soldier who was all of twenty, in a trench with a new recruit who was eighteen. The bullets were all around and the twenty-year-old was calmly smoking while the younger kid shook like a leaf. He asked, How can you not be scared? The older soldier said: You don’t have to be afraid of dying, when you’re already dead.
Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, I figure.
I read that the Empire State Building will be lit up red and white this week for healthcare workers. We don’t give a fuck about the Empire State Building, or about people banging pots and pans at 7 P.M. Most of us won’t ever see or hear it, because we’re in the hospital trying to save people who can’t be saved. What we want is for everyone to just wear a mask. But then there are people who say that requiring a mask is a gross infringement of their bodily rights. I don’t know how to make it any more clear: you don’t have any bodily rights when you’re dead.
I’m sorry. You don’t need to listen to me vent. But then again, this probably isn’t even getting through to you.
Just in case it is: your mom’s place keeps calling.
A few days later, while Beatriz is occupied making tortillas with her grandmother, I ask to borrow Abuela’s phone to leave another message for Finn. Gabriel has taught me how to dial direct internationally, but calls are expensive, and I don’t want Abuela to incur the costs, so I keep the conversation brief—just letting Finn know I’m all right, and I’m thinking of him. I save everything else for the postcards Beatriz mails.
Then I call my mother’s memory care facility. Although I haven’t received any emails or voicemail from them, that may be a function of the internet here, since Finn said they’ve left messages on our landline at the apartment. The last time The Greens reached out so doggedly, there was a glitch in the direct deposit that paid my mother’s monthly room and board. The administration was all over it like white on rice, until I smoothed out the mistake and their money came through the wire. It will not be easy to sort out another bank error from a quarantined island.
I dial the number and a receptionist answers. “This is Diana O’Toole,” I say. “Hannah O’Toole’s daughter. You’ve been trying to reach me?”
“Hold please,” I hear.
“Ms. O’Toole?” A new voice speaks a moment later. “This is Janice Fleisch, the director here—I’m glad you finally called back.”
It feels pejorative, and I try not to get my hackles raised.
I look over at the counter, where Abuela is showing a recalcitrant Beatriz how to knead lard into flour to make dough. Curling the phone line around me, I turn, hunching my shoulders for privacy. “Is there a problem with my account? Because I’m not in New York at the—”
“No, no. Everything’s fine there. It’s just that … ?we’ve had an outbreak of Covid at our facility, and your mother is ill.”
Everything inside me stills. My mother has been sick before, but it’s never merited a call.
“Is she … ?does she need to go to the hospital?” Were they calling to get my permission?
“Your mother has a DNR,” she reminds me, a delicate way of saying that no matter how bad it gets, she won’t be given CPR or taken to the hospital for life-sustaining measures. “We have multiple residents who’ve contracted the virus, but I assure you we’re doing everything we can to keep them comfortable. In the spirit of transparency we felt that you—”
“Can I see her?” I don’t know what I could possibly do from here; but something tells me that if my mother is really, really sick, I will know by looking at her.
I think of Mrs. Riccio, in apartment 3C.
“We’re not allowing visitors right now.”
At that, a crazy laugh breaks out of me. As if I could even come. “I’m stuck, outside the country,” I explain. “I barely have any phone service. There has to be something you can do. Please.”