“You know,” I say, forcing a smile. “I think physical therapy just caught up with me. I can’t keep my eyes open.”
Immediately, Finn pulls out of the screen share and looks at me with the assessing eyes of a physician. “Okay,” he says after a moment, apparently finding whatever answer he needed to in my face. Then his mouth curls on one side. “Although this one might be snapped up off the market if we don’t act soon.”
I look at his beautiful, familiar face. The shock of blond hair that never stays out of his eyes, the dimple that flirts in only one cheek. “Thank you,” I say quietly. “For trying to make it all feel normal.”
“It will,” he promises. “I know how hard it must be to have to relearn everything. I know it seems like you’ve lost a whole chunk of time. But one day, you’ll barely remember any of this.”
I nod. And think: That’s what I’m afraid of.
The next morning, after Maggie bullies me into standing with a walker in spite of my Jell-O legs, I call my best friend. Rodney picks up on the first ring. “My therapist says I shouldn’t talk to people who ghost me,” he says.
“I’m in the hospital,” I tell him. “Well, rehab. I was in the hospital. With Covid. On a ventilator.”
Rodney is silent for a beat. “The fuck,” he breathes. “You are officially forgiven for not answering any of my texts and just ignore the part where I called you a faithless bitch. Jesus, Diana. How did you get it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even remember getting sick.”
I walk him through every detail Finn has given me, but it feels like trying on clothes that don’t quite fit. Then I hesitantly ask, “Rodney? Did we really get furloughed?”
He snorts. “Yup. You should have seen that bloodbath—Eva and all the other senior staff bargaining to save their salaries. There was never any question that the rest of us were expendable. And let me tell you, an apartment in Dumbo isn’t cheap. Not all of us have sexy surgeons pitching in to pay the rent.”
“What am I supposed to do without a job?” I ask.
“The same thing everyone else in the United States is doing. You sign up for unemployment and bake banana bread and hope Congress gets its shit together to pass a stimulus plan.”
“But … ?what did Sotheby’s say? I mean, do we get our jobs back … ?eventually? Or do we start looking for new ones?”
“They didn’t say shit,” Rodney answers. “Just a lot of circumstances beyond our control and we remain committed to the field of art sales blah blah blah. Didn’t you see the email?”
It is somewhere, I’m sure, buried under the 2,685 others I haven’t read yet. I wonder why this detail of my sedation dream would be the one that turns out to be true. “Isabela didn’t have internet service,” I reply automatically.
“Who’s Isabela?”
“Rodney,” I say quietly, “I want to tell you something. But it’s going to be hard for you to believe.”
“Like, how hard? On a scale from bike shorts and blazers during Fashion Week to Lady Gaga’s Meat Dress?”
“Just listen,” I say, and I sketch my other life: my arrival on Isabela and the closed hotel and Beatriz self-harming and her broody father. My mother’s death. The fierce and foolish night Gabriel and I spent together. The waves closing over my head.
When I finish, Rodney is silent. “Well?”
“I don’t know what to say, Di.”
I roll my eyes. “Rodney, I’ve seen you pass judgment on a five-year-old’s unicorn backpack. You have thoughts. You always have thoughts.”
“Mmm. It reminds me of something … ?oh, I know. Remember the guy who sleeps outside the Sephora on East Eighty-sixth? The one in the rainbow onesie who preaches End of Days?”
My face flames. “You’re an asshole. I didn’t make this up, Rodney.”
“I know that,” he says. “Because as it turns out, Isabela Island in the Galápagos did indeed close for two weeks, starting on March fifteenth.”
“What?” I gasp. “How do you know that?”
“Gooooogle,” Rodney says slowly.
“That’s the day I got there, on the ferry. Or dreamed I got there. Whatever.”
“Well, if you were running a high fever in the hospital that day, you probably weren’t doing Web searches.”
“Maybe it was in the background, on the television …”
“Or maybe,” Rodney says, “it wasn’t.”
When I hear those words, my eyes fill with tears. I don’t think I realized how much I needed someone to believe me.
“Look, baby doll, I got too many relatives who dabble in the occult to not give you the benefit of the doubt. Who’s to say you didn’t tumble into some fourth-dimension shit?”
“Okay, that sounds even more insane,” I mutter.
“More insane than having an affair with a figment of your imagination?”
“Shut up!” I hiss, although no one but me has heard him.
“So the million-dollar question is: have you told Finn about your, um, extracurricular excursions?”
“He thinks it’s a symptom from Covid, from the sedation on the ventilator.”