I pause, thinking of my dream about Finn when I was in the Galápagos, or my not-dream, or whatever it was. It, too, had been in a basement. And I was tied down.
I dreamed that my four-year-old grandson, Callum, drowned. I went to the funeral with my daughter and helped her grieve and lived through her having two more kids, twin girls, Annabelle and Stacy. When I woke up for real, I asked her if I could see the twins and she thought I was crazy. She said the only grandkid I had was Callum, and sure enough he was alive and well.
I think about my mother’s face, still and white on the iPad, her chest barely rising.
I read for hours, stopping only to eat leftover Thai food for lunch. There are hundreds of posts from people who have been delirious from lack of oxygen or who have, like me, survived ventilation. I read lush, sprawling dreamscapes. Some are terrifying, some are tragic. Some have common threads—the videogame scenario, the basement entrapment, and seeing someone who’s died. Some stories are detailed, some are a scant few words. All are described as painfully, unequivocally real.
As one person in the Facebook group puts it: If I’d never woken up, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Everything I was seeing, feeling, EXPERIENCING was genuine.
For the first time since I’ve awakened, I realize that I’m not crazy.
That I’m not alone.
That if all my good memories of the Galápagos didn’t actually happen … ?then neither did my bad ones.
Which is why, come hell or high water, I am going to visit my mother.
That day, Finn calls me three times from work. Once he asks if he left his phone charger in the bedroom (no). The second time he asks if I want him to pick up dinner on the way home (sure). The third time I tell him he should just ask me how I’m doing, since that’s why he’s really calling.
“Okay,” he says, “how are you doing?”
“Not bad. I’ve only fallen once and I’m pretty sure that the burn on my hand is second degree, not third.”
“What?”
“Kidding,” I tell him. “I’m fine.”
I do not tell him that I have been reading obsessively about other Covid survivors. Or that I am trying to figure out how to get to The Greens safely, given that I can barely walk the length of a city block without resting.
He tells me that he will check in again later, but he doesn’t. I don’t hear from him again till his keys jingle in the lock a full hour after he told me he’d be home. Immediately I get up and start toward him—I’m not even using Candis, just cruising on the furniture when I need a little extra support, and I want to show him—but before I can reach him he holds out his hand like a stop sign. He proceeds to strip off his clothes and stuff them into a laundry bag that he’s wedged underneath the table by the door where we keep our phones and keys and wallets. When he’s wearing only his boxers and a surgical mask, he edges past me in the hallway. “Just let me rinse off,” he says.
Five minutes later he reappears, dressed and smelling of soap, his hair still wet. I am in the kitchen, awkwardly dragging a Clorox wipe along the wax paper of the two deli sandwiches he’s brought home. I wonder if we will all die from ingesting cleaning solutions.
I scrub my hands thoroughly and bring the plates to the table. Finn immediately takes a giant bite and groans. “First thing I’ve eaten since this morning.”
“So I shouldn’t ask how your day was.”
He glances at me. “This is the best part of it,” he says. “What did you do?”
“Skydiving,” I tell him. “Then a little light lion taming.”
“Underachiever.” His face lights up. “Wait. I have something for you.”
He goes to the entryway and digs inside the backpack he carries to work, coming out with a sealed Ziploc bag. He pulls out a fabric mask, printed with sunflowers. “Thank you?” I say.
“An ICU nurse made it. God knows the last thing I’d want to do after a shift is sit down with a sewing machine, but it was really nice of her. I haven’t had a chance to buy any reusable masks yet, and you can’t wash the blue surgical ones.”
“How does she even know about me?”
“She’s the one who snuck me in to see you.”
“I don’t want to take your mask—”
“Oh, it’s okay. Athena made me one, too. Without sunflowers.”
His cheeks have gone pink.
“Athena,” I repeat. “That’s a real name?”
“Greek mom. Dad’s from Detroit.”
I wait for him to say, She’s sixty-five. Or, She’s been married longer than we’ve been alive. Or even to be amused by my jealousy. But Finn doesn’t say anything else, and I put the mask down carefully beside my plate. “You seem to know a lot about her,” I say.
“I guess that’s how it is, when you’re fighting against death together every day,” Finn answers.
I am resentful of a woman who may have helped save my life. I am suspicious of Finn, even though I cheated on him in my dreams.