I want him to take off his mask; I want to see his whole face as if everything between us is normal. But I also know that he’s already taking a risk being in this room with me, even trussed up in all that gear.
It strikes me that Covid isn’t the only thing that can take your breath away.
I remember the first time I saw Finn in a suit instead of scrubs—on an official date, waiting for me at a table at an Italian place in the Village. When I came in, late because of subway delays, he stood up and the room narrowed to the size of just us. I had to actively remember to draw in air.
A week later, in the middle of a heated kiss, his fingers found the strip of skin between my sweater and my jeans. It was like being branded, and all the breath rushed out of me in a sigh.
Months into our relationship as I reached for him in the dark, I remember thinking how lovely it was to have a body you knew as well as your own. How he gasped when I touched him the way he liked; how I gasped at the miracle of knowing exactly what that was.
Suddenly I realize how lucky I’ve been to have had Finn with me when I got sick. If he hadn’t realized that I passed out from a lack of oxygen; if he hadn’t gotten me to the hospital—well, I might not be sitting here now. “Thank you,” I say, my voice thick. “For saving me.”
He shakes his head. “You did that yourself.”
“I don’t remember any of it,” I tell him. “I don’t even remember being in the hospital before going on the vent.”
“That’s normal,” Finn says. “And that’s what I’m here for.” The corners of his eyes crinkle, and I think that of all the horrible things about the masks everyone has to wear, this must be the worst: it is so hard to tell when someone is smiling at us. “I’ll be your memory,” he promises.
A part of me wonders how his recollection could be any less faulty than mine. For one thing, he wasn’t here the whole time. And, in my mind, neither was I.
There are experiences our brains probably forget on purpose, so we don’t have to suffer through them again. But there are experiences our brains remember that serve as some kind of red flag or warning: Don’t touch that stove. Don’t eat that rotten food.
Don’t leave your boyfriend in the middle of a pandemic.
“The last thing I remember is you telling me I should go on vacation without you,” I say quietly.
He closes his eyes for a moment. “Great. That’s the part I was hoping you wouldn’t,” Finn admits. “You were pretty pissed at me for saying that.”
“I … ?was?”
“Uh, yeah. You asked how I could even suggest that, if I really believed things were going to get so bad here.”
In other words, everything I had felt in the Galápagos.
“You said clearly we had very different interpretations of a relationship. You kept talking about Romeo and Juliet and how if Romeo had just stayed in Verona, all the rest of the bullshit wouldn’t have happened.” He looks at me, confused. “I had no idea what you were talking about. I’ve never read it.”
“You’ve never read Romeo and Juliet?”
Finn winces. “You said that, too.” He looks at me. “You accused me of caring more about the money we were going to lose on the vacation and less about you. You said if I really loved you, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight when all hell was breaking loose. The truth is, I made a mistake. I spoke without really thinking it through. I was tired, Di. And scared about working here, and taking care of patients who had the virus, and—” His voice breaks, and he bows his head. To my shock, I see that he’s crying.
“Finn?” I whisper.
Those beautiful blue eyes, the color of his scrubs, the color of the sea in a country I never flew to, meet mine. “And I’m probably the one who brought it home to you,” he forces out. “I’m the reason you got sick.”
“No,” I say. “That’s not true—”
“It is. We don’t know a lot, but it’s pretty clear some people are carriers and they never show symptoms. I work in a hospital.” He spits out that last word, and I realize he is nearly bowed over with the guilt he’s been carrying. “I almost killed you,” Finn whispers.
“You don’t know that,” I say, squeezing his hand. “I could have caught this at work or on the subway—”
He shakes his head, still steeped in remorse. “I was so tired that night that I didn’t want to fight anymore. I didn’t try to stop you when you went to bed early, and you were already asleep when I turned in for the night. When you woke up in the middle of the night to get some Tylenol I heard you and I pretended to be asleep, because I was afraid to pick up where we left off. And then the next morning, when I wanted to apologize, I could barely wake you up.” He turns away, wiping his eyes with the shoulder of his scrubs.
Other things that leave you breathless: love so big that it tumbles you like a wave.