“She was. But she was coughing. Everyone could hear it. And I …” He looks up at me, ashamed. “I was scared.”
I squeeze Finn’s hand. “You thought she had Covid?”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “So instead of going into her room, I checked on two other patients first. And I guess she got sick of waiting … and walked off.” He grimaces. “She has a smoker’s cough, and a gallbladder that needs to be removed, and instead of thinking of her health I was thinking of mine.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“Can’t I? I took an oath. It’s like being a fireman and saying it’s too hot to go into a burning building.”
“I thought there were only nineteen cases in the city.”
“Today,” Finn stresses. “But my attending put the fear of God into us, saying that the emergency department will be swamped by Monday. I spent an hour memorizing how to put on PPE properly.”
“Thank God we’re going on vacation,” I say. “I feel like we both need the break.”
Finn doesn’t answer.
“I can’t wait till we’re on a beach and everything feels a million miles away.”
Silence.
“Finn,” I say.
He pulls away so that he can look me in the eye. “Diana,” he says, “you should still go.”
That night, after Finn has fallen into a restless sleep, I wake up with a headache. After I find some aspirin, I slip into the living room and open my laptop. Finn’s attending at the hospital made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that taking time off at this moment would be greatly discouraged. That they were going to need all hands on deck, immediately.
It’s not that I don’t believe him, but I think of the deserted train station, and it doesn’t make sense. If anything, the city looks empty—not full of sick people.
My eyes jump from headline to headline: State of emergency declared by de Blasio.
The mayor expects a thousand cases in New York City by next week.
The NBA and NHL have canceled their seasons.
The Met has closed to all in-person visits.
Outside, the horizon is starting to blush. I can hear the rumble of a car. It feels like an ordinary Saturday in the city. Except, apparently, we are standing in the eye of the storm.
Once when I was small my father and I went with my mother to shoot pictures of the drought in the Midwest, and we got caught in a tornado. The sky had gone yellow, like an old bruise, and we took refuge in the basement of the B&B, pressed up against boxes marked as Christmas decorations and table linens. My mother had stayed on ground level with her camera. When the wind stopped shrieking and she stepped outside, I followed. She didn’t seem surprised to see me there.
There was no sound—no humans, no cars, and oddly, not a single bird or insect. It was like we stood beneath a bell jar.
Is it over? I asked.
Yes, she said. And no.
Now, I don’t realize Finn is standing behind me until I feel his hands on my shoulders. “It’s better this way,” he says.
“To go on vacation by myself?”
“For you to be in a place where I won’t worry about you,” Finn says. “I don’t know what I might wind up bringing home from the hospital. I don’t even know if I’ll be coming home from the hospital.”
“They keep saying it’ll be over in two weeks.” They, I think. The news anchors, who are parroting the press secretary, who is parroting the president.
“Yeah, I know. But that’s not what my attending’s saying.”
I think about the subway station today. About Times Square, devoid of tourists. I’m not supposed to hoard Lysol or buy N95 masks. I’ve seen the numbers in France, in Italy, but those casualties were the elderly. I’m all for taking precautions, but I also know I am young and healthy. It is hard to know what to believe. Whom to believe.
If the pandemic still feels distant from Manhattan, it will probably seem nonexistent on an archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
“What if you run out of toilet paper?” I say.
I can hear the smile in his voice. “That’s what you’re worried about?” He squeezes my shoulders. “I promise I will steal rolls from the hospital if fights start breaking out in the bodegas.”
It feels wrong, so wrong, to go without Finn; it feels even more wrong to think about bringing a friend along as a substitute—not that I know anyone who could leave for two weeks with zero advance notice anyway. But there is also a practicality to his suggestion that sinks its claws into me. I already have the vacation time blocked off. I know we can get a credit on Finn’s airfare, but the fine print on our amazing travel deal was no refunds, period. I tell myself that it would be stupid to lose that much money, especially when the thought of showing up for work on Monday makes my head throb harder. I think of Rodney telling me to snorkel with the iguanas.
“I’ll send pictures,” I vow. “So many you’ll have to get a better data plan.”
Finn bends down until I can feel his lips in the curve of my neck. “Have enough fun for both of us,” he says.
Suddenly I am gripped by a fear so strong that it propels me out of my chair and into Finn’s arms. “You’ll be here, when I get back,” I state, because I cannot bear the thought of that sentence being a question.
“Diana,” he says, smiling. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
I honestly do not remember getting to the Galápagos.
I have the Ambien to blame for that, I suppose. I took it as soon as I got on the flight. I remember packing, and how at the last minute I took my guidebooks out of my carry-on and put them in my luggage. I remember checking three times that I had my passport. I remember Finn getting paged back to the hospital, and how he kissed me goodbye and said, “Victoria Falls.”
“You’ve already forgotten my name,” I joked.
“No, that’s the next UNESCO site we visit. Except, for that one, I go to Zimbabwe and you stay here. Fair’s fair.”
“Deal,” I promised, because I knew he wouldn’t leave me behind.
After that it is all bits and pieces: the crazy bustle of the airport, as if it is holiday season and not a random weekend in March; the bottle of water I buy and finish on the flight and the People magazine I never crack open; the jolt of the wheels that whips me out of a dream state full of facts I’d read about my destination. Still logy, I stumble through the unfamiliar airport in Guayaquil, where I will stay one night on mainland Ecuador before my connecting flight to the Galápagos.
I remember only two things about landing: that the airline has lost my luggage, and that someone checks my temperature before letting me into Ecuador.
I don’t have enough Spanish or bandwidth to explain that my flight for the islands leaves early tomorrow, but surely this has happened before. I fill out a report at baggage claim, but based on the number of people who are doing the same thing, I don’t have high hopes for being reunited with my bag in time. Wistfully I think of the guidebooks I packed in there. Well, that’s all right. I’ll be discovering places firsthand; I don’t need to read about them anymore. I have the essentials in my tote—toothpaste and toothbrush, phone charger, a bathing suit I packed in case this very thing happened. I’ll come back to the airport in the morning and fly to Baltra on Santa Cruz Island in the Galápagos, then take a bus to the ferry to Isabela Island, where I’ll stay for two weeks. Hopefully my bag will catch up with me at some point.