He’s trying to save me.
It feels like forever, but in minutes, he reaches me. He grabs for me and snags his finger on the chain of the miraculous medal, but it snaps off and I drift further away from him. “Gabriel!” I scream, thrashing out as he floats closer. As soon as he is within reach I grab him and climb him like a vine, panicking. He shoves me under the water, and then jerks me back up.
I am sputtering, blinking. Now that he has my attention, Gabriel grabs my shoulders. “Hold on. Look at me. You are going to make it,” he commands.
He slings one arm around me, swimming for both of us, but I can feel his strokes slowing and his body getting heavier.
My God. This can’t happen to him again.
His fingers flex on my waist, trying to hike me closer to him. But I can tell he’s losing steam. Alone, he might be able to get himself out of this hellish current, but my additional weight is sapping him of energy. If he keeps trying to save me, we will both drown. So I do the only thing I can.
I slip out of his hold.
The current immediately yanks me away from him, so fast it makes me dizzy. He treads water, desperately calling my name.
The waves are so big this far out that they crash over my head. Every time I try to answer him, I swallow water.
I think of what he told me as he touched my throat. Of the airway humans have evolved, of the promises we can speak to each other, of the compromises we suffer for that.
I have heard that the hardest part of drowning is the moment just before—when your lungs seize, about to burst; when you gasp for oxygen and find only water.
Our bodies try to fight the inevitable.
I’ve heard that all you have to do to be at peace, is give in.
SEVEN
Help
EIGHT
Hold on. Look at me. You’re going to make it, Diana.
NINE
Do you know where you are?
Where is my voice.
TEN
Can you squeeze my hand? Wiggle your toes?
Do you know where you are?
Where is Gabriel
ELEVEN
“Blink once for yes,” I hear. “Twice for no. Don’t try to talk.”
It is so bright, I have to close my eyes.
“Do you know where you are right now?”
There is something in my throat, some kind of tube. I can hear a whir and click of machines. This is a hospital. I blink once.
“Okay, Diana, cough for me.”
The moment I try, that tube slips up and out, ridge by ridge, and my throat is raw and so so so dry—
I cough and cough and remember not being able to breathe. My eyes focus on writing on the plate-glass window of my room. The letters are in reverse, for whoever’s on the outside coming in, and I have to puzzle them out in the right direction.
COVID +
Someone is holding my hand, squeezing tight. It takes all my strength to turn my face.
He is dressed like he’s an astronaut, gowned and gloved, with a thick white mask covering his nose and mouth. Behind the plastic shield he wears, tears stream down his face. “You’re going to be okay,” Finn says, crying.
He is not supposed to be here.
He tells me that he begged a nurse to let him in, because even though I am in his hospital I am not his patient, and right now no visitors are allowed in the ICU. He says I gave everyone a hell of a scare. I’ve been on the ventilator for five days. He tells me that yesterday, when they dialed down the ventilator for a spontaneous breathing trial, my numbers on the gas looked good enough to extubate me.
None of this information fits into my brain.
Another nurse sticks her head into the room and taps her wrist—time’s up. Finn strokes my forehead. “I have to go now before someone gets in trouble,” he says.
“Wait.” My voice is a croak. I have so many questions but the most important one blooms. “Gabriel.”
Finn’s brows draw together. “Who?”
“In the water, with me,” I force out. “Did he … ?make it?” I pull air into my battered lungs; it feels like breathing broken glass.
“A lot of Covid patients experience delirium when they’re taken off the vent,” Finn says gently.
A lot of what?
“It’s normal to be confused when you’ve been sedated for so long,” he explains.
I’m not confused. I remember all of it—the current that swept me out to sea, the salt burning my throat, the moment I let go of Gabriel.
I clutch at the white sleeve of Finn’s doctor’s coat, and even that small motion is exhausting. “How did I get here?”
His eyes cloud. “Ambulance,” he murmurs. “When you passed out brushing your teeth I thought I—”