“You had me at food,” I answer.
By now, I can sit up for nearly a half hour without getting dizzy, which is what makes me eligible for this swallow test. I dutifully sit with my legs swung over the side of the bed. Sara scoops some ice chips onto a spoon and places them on my tongue. “All you have to do,” she says, “is swallow.”
It’s hard to do on command, but it almost doesn’t matter, because the ice melts in the heat of my mouth and drips blissfully down, quenching my raw throat. As I do it, Sara holds a stethoscope up to my throat and listens. “Can I have more?” I ask.
“Patience, young grasshopper,” Sara says, and I give her a blank look. “You millennials,” she sighs, and she holds a cup with a straw to my lips. I suck up a mouthful of water, which is just as satisfying.
By the time we move on to applesauce, I am in heaven. When Sara moves to take the little dish from me I curl around it, hoarding, and hurriedly scoop another spoonful into my mouth.
I graduate to a graham cracker, which requires chewing—muscles that my jaw has to actively remember how to use. Sara watches my throat work. “Good job,” she says.
I wait until I am sure no crumbs remain. “It’s so weird,” I muse. “To have forgotten how to eat.”
She resettles the oxygen cannula into my nostrils as I lean back in bed again. “You’ll have plenty more practice. I’m going to give the green light for the feeding tube to be removed. Tomorrow, you get to eat a whole meal while I watch.”
A half hour later, a nurse I haven’t seen before comes in to remove the nasogastric tube. “I cannot tell you,” he says as he works quickly and efficiently, “how glad I am to see you again.”
I try to read the name on the badge clipped onto his lanyard. “Zach?” I ask. “Did you take care of me before?”
He holds a hand to his heart. “You don’t remember me. I’m crushed.” My eyes fly to his, but they’re dancing. “I’m kidding. But clearly, I’m going to have to up my game.”
I rub the bridge of my nose, itchy without the tape adhering the feeding tube. “I don’t … ?I don’t remember being in this ward.”
“Totally normal,” Zach assures me. “Your O-two levels were so low you kept passing out. I’d be surprised if you did remember.”
I watch him briskly wash his hands in the sink and towel-dry before snapping on a new pair of gloves. He seems competent and kind, and he holds a part of my history I may never recover. “Zach?” I ask quietly. “Would it be a surprise if I remembered things … ?that didn’t happen?”
His eyes soften. “Hallucinations aren’t uncommon for people who are sick enough to be in an ICU,” he says. “From what I’ve heard, Covid patients are even more likely to have them, between the lack of oxygen and the deep sedation and the isolation.”
“What you’ve heard,” I repeat. “What else have you heard?”
He hesitates. “I’ll be honest, you’re only the second patient I’ve had who has gone to the ICU and survived to talk about it. But the other one was a man who was absolutely convinced that the roof of the hospital opened up like the Superdome, and twice a day light would shoot out of it, and one lucky person would be chosen to be lowered from a crane into that beam of light and get instantly healthy.”
I probe the corners of my mind for hallucinations that are hospital-based, like this, but cannot find any.
“I was in the Galápagos,” I say softly. “I lived on the beach and made friends with local residents and swam with sea lions and picked fruit right off the trees.”
“That sounds like an awesome dream.”
“It was,” I say. “But it wasn’t like a dream. Not like anything I’ve ever dreamed when I’m asleep anyway. This was so detailed and so real that if you put me on the island, I bet I could find my way around.” I hesitate. “I can see the people I met like they’re standing in front of me.”
I watch something change in his eyes, as he puts on his professional regard. “Are you still seeing them now?” Zach asks evenly.
“You don’t believe it was real,” I say, disappointed.
“I believe you believe it was real,” he says, which isn’t an answer at all.
Although I am still testing Covid-positive—which Finn assures me is normal—he lobbies to get me out of the step-down Covid ward as fast as possible, because if you’re in the hospital long enough you wind up getting sick with something else—a UTI, hospital-acquired pneumonia, C. diff. I feel ridiculous being in a rehabilitation unit when I’m not even thirty, but I also realize that there’s no way I’m ready to go home yet. I still haven’t managed to do more than sit upright in a chair, and even that took Prisha and a Hoyer lift for the transfer. I can’t get myself to the bathroom.