Whenever I think of them, I start to cry. I am grieving people who, according to everyone here, never existed.
The only explanation is that in addition to catching this virus, I have gone insane.
I realize, when I try to breathe in and can’t, when I feel the heaviness of my broken body, that I should believe everyone who tells me how sick I’ve been. But it doesn’t feel like I was sick. It feels like my reality just … ?changed.
I’ve read about people who are medically sedated, and wake up fluent in Mandarin when there is no Chinese family history and they’ve never traveled to China; about a man who came out of a coma, demanded to have a violin, and went on to become a virtuoso who played sold-out concerts. I always took accounts like these with a grain of salt, because honestly, they sound too crazy to be true. I may not have a new linguistic or musical skill, but I would stake my life on the fact that the memories I have of the past two months are not delirium. I know I was there.
Wherever there was.
When I start to get so agitated that my pulse rate spikes, Betty comes into the room. It is telling that I am so grateful to see another human being in the same room with me that I begin to wonder if acting sicker means I will not be alone as much.
“What happens when you don’t get enough oxygen?” I ask.
She looks immediately at my pulse ox numbers, which are steady. “You’re fine,” Betty insists.
“Now,” I clarify. “But clearly, I was bad enough that I needed a vent, right? What if it messed my brain up … ?permanently?”
Betty’s eyes soften. “Covid fog is a real thing,” she tells me. “If you’re having trouble stringing thoughts together or remembering the end of a sentence before you finish speaking it, that’s not brain damage. It’s just … ?an aftereffect.”
“The problem isn’t not remembering,” I say. “It’s that I do remember. Everyone is telling me I’ve been in the hospital and that I have Covid but I don’t have any recollection of that. All my memories are of me in a different country, with people you’re all telling me are make-believe.” My voice is thick with tears; I don’t want to see the pity on Betty’s face; I don’t want to be thought of as a patient who doesn’t have a grasp on reality. What I want is for someone to fucking believe me.
“Look,” Betty says, “why don’t I page the doctor on call? That’s what intensivists are for. Someone who’s come through the kind of experience you have is likely to experience some PTSD; and we can get you some medication to take the edge off—”
“No,” I interrupt. “No more drugs.” I don’t want to lose these memories because of a pharmaceutical that makes me a zombie. I don’t want my mind erased.
Since I sort of feel like it already has been.
When I refuse to let Betty call in the doctor, she suggests that we try to reach Finn. She uses my phone to FaceTime him, but he doesn’t pick up. Ten minutes later, though, he knocks on the glass outside my room. Seeing him there—seeing someone who cares about me—I am flooded with relief. I wave, trying to get him to come in, but he shakes his head. He mimes holding a phone to my ear, and then flags down Betty in the hallways. She comes inside to hold my own cellphone for me, because my arms are too weak.
“Hey,” Finn says softly. “I hear the patient is rowdy.”
“Not rowdy,” I correct. “Just … ?frustrated. And really, really lonely.”
“If it’s any consolation, isolation must be doing wonders, because you look better already.”
“You liar,” I murmur, and through the glass, he winks.
This is real, I tell myself. Finn is real.
But I feel the concavity of that statement, too: Gabriel is not.
“Finn?” I say. “What if I can’t tell the difference anymore between what was a dream and what wasn’t?”
He’s silent for a moment. “Have you had … ?any more … ?episodes?”
He doesn’t want to say the word hallucination, I can tell. “No,” I reply. What I don’t say is that every time I’ve closed my eyes today I have expected to return to where I was yesterday.
I want a do-over, even as my conscience reminds me this is one.
“Your nurse said you were getting a little worked up,” Finn says.
Tears spring to my eyes. “No one will tell me anything.”
“I will,” he vows. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Diana.”