My mother’s April flight was canceled. She sounded resigned when she told me that customer service had booked her on the very next available seat for June. They had asked her to be patient. Hundreds of flights had been canceled, tens of thousands of Chinese nationals were trying to get home, especially international students with time-sensitive visas and immigrants working here with entire families back in China, a loved one dying or sick, not from the virus but from other causes, like cancer or heart disease, like stroke. What a virus has never done is scare other deadly illnesses off.
My mother guessed that she wouldn’t be flying back in June either. From June it would get pushed to August, to October, and before she knew it, she would turn seventy and, as her friends had warned, be stuck in this country forever. Even if a vaccine did become available and travel resumed, something else would come up to impede her, like extreme climate change, an apocalyptic flood, and not totally impossible, the Third World War.
But if they did ever let her leave, this would be her last trip to the States, she’d decided, she wouldn’t be visiting again.
I too suspected the same, that once she left, it was for good. I asked her over the phone how she felt about that. That should she manage to leave now, we might not be able to see her for several years, with more travel restrictions being put into place. There was a long pause and I thought I’d lost her. Mom? Mom? I said and she tsked and told me to calm down. Come up and see me before October then, she said. But not every weekend, please. We’ve already spent a good amount of time together, so we also don’t want to overdo.
Having finally come to terms with our mother not being happy here, Fang was trying to find her a more reliable ticket. I asked him what was happening to these unreliable ones? How were they still being booked and then canceled?
In March, the number of daily cases in China fell below a hundred. On March 10, Xi Jinping visited Wuhan to declare the fight against the virus a success. Wuhan must be victorious, Hubei must be victorious, and all of China must be victorious, he said, while raising a clenched fist. I thought of my father, of course, and the feeling of tumbling face-first down a steep slope of ice. But to continue being victorious, China would close its borders to other nations just as other nations had first done to her. The new policy from its aviation bureau was called Five-One. All domestic airlines were limited to one international flight per week per country, while foreign airlines could fly into the mainland no more than once per week. The list of approved flights was released in batches, and you wouldn’t know until some unknown time prior to your flight date if your flight would actually leave. So, to play the odds, people were buying up dozens of tickets at a time and there were simply not enough. The most indefatigable group (hardy international students, the truly desperate to return) bought tickets elsewhere to Japan or Korea, to India, in hopes of catching a transfer, but once they reached their transfer point, new regulations had gone into effect while they were midair, pausing all flights from that country. China-bound passengers would then have to deboard the plane, wait a few hours, and board the same plane back. Fang and I agreed that we couldn’t put our mother through that; it was either a direct flight home or nothing.
Home run, for which nicknames include a homer, a goner, a moon shot, the big fly.
* * *
—
THE HOSPITAL CONTINUED TO ban family visits, but families wanted to visit, so we began holding phones and iPads up to the sick, ourselves wrapped in polyphenylene ether, gloved, masked, the iPad shielded, wrapped in plastic, the patient covered in a thin white sheet. Sometimes you had to bring the iPad close to catch the patient’s voice and then pull the screen farther out since the relatives were louder.
Close: I love you.
Away: And I love you too, but listen, you’re going to be fine, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? At this exact time.
There were some horror stories already. Not at our hospital yet, but elsewhere and abroad. A woman in Italy had been unable to leave her apartment. Her husband had tested positive and died in their house early the next week. The town’s protocol stated that no one was allowed to approach the body until at least two days had passed. So, the widow was stuck at home with the body. She was seen on her balcony crying for help.
In my own unit, one exchange between a husband and a wife caught me off guard. I tried to hold the iPad level but was already having trouble. The city’s death count had been climbing, a reminder of the tired-out truth that the demon will always win. But even if it does win, one still has to try. While there is no fight against death, there are fights to delay it and to give a person more time. For my father, after a blow to the head, it was over. He could not speak or move thereafter, so in that second, he was already gone. But what would he have said to my mother had he been given the chance?
Write this down, said Earl, the man who was sick, to his wife. The kids each have a college account with Janus Henderson. He spelled Janus Henderson out for her, enunciating each letter. To log in to those accounts, they’ll first send my phone a code. You enter that code and then answer the questions. He gave her the answers to those questions and the passwords to input right after.
Earl, the wife said, I’m not writing anything down, I refuse. Come on, talk to me about something else.
You write it down. Or you call this number—he recited the number digit by digit—they have advisors. You call that number and someone will help you.
The wife stared blankly at the screen but wasn’t writing anything down. As I was setting the iPad up for the call, testing the video and audio, Earl had told me that this was just a precaution, this was just him preparing for the worst because he was the pessimist in the family, his wife the optimist. You’ll see, he had said.
Earl was now agitated and trying to move his arms from under the thicket of tubes. For the love of God, get over yourself and pick up a pen. I’m trying to tell you something. I just want you to know what to do.
The wife continued to say nothing, but her eyes were shiny, her mouth a flat line.
I said if it was all the same to them, I could write some of this down. I had good recall and legibility.
Someone write something down, Earl said. He didn’t care who.
I found a pen, paper. I had the nurse hold the iPad.
More account names and portfolios. The passwords were mostly numbers, and I knew Earl’s birthday, his height and weight, his vitals, but these numbers weren’t that. They were the birthdays of his wife and kids, followed by their initials and then a bunch of exclamation marks. Earl advised not doing much with one account but selling some in another. The wife nodded and had covered her mouth with her hand. The last account was for their retirement.
We have an advisor there, Earl said. His name is—now don’t laugh, I know you’re about to laugh. Please don’t. I’m tired, I have a tube up my nose. But his name is Earl, an utter coincidence. Don’t run off with him after I’m gone.
The wife did laugh. It was a laugh and then a cry. She said she didn’t think she could do any of this without him. He said that she could.
* * *
—
DURING MY WALK BACK from the hospital that day, I was, surprisingly, less tense. I told Earl that I would be there tomorrow, and he said he would see me tomorrow, though he wasn’t a morning person, so if by chance he was asleep or whatnot, he wished to not be disturbed. Lots could happen in the “whatnot” and what would happen to Earl I couldn’t predict. That I couldn’t predict many things, at times not even my own thoughts, still unsettled me. That I had to stay on guard and protect myself from both the tangible and intangible tired me to my core. But for a moment some of this unease receded, and with no one else around me, I slowed my pace, unclenched my jaw. I shook out my hands, my father’s hands, that had been stuffed into my coat pockets and looked around.