What I hallucinated wasn’t confinement, but freedom. Now that I’m constrained again it chafes. I want to wander to Sierra Negra. I can still smell the sulfur. I can feel Gabriel’s hand on my bare skin.

  “Neurons fire and rewire during a near-death experience,” the doctor says. “But I can promise you, it was just a dream. A particularly three-dimensional one, but still a dream.” He looks down at my chart. “Now, your nurse says you’re having trouble sleeping?”

  I wonder why everyone’s answer involves more medication. This will be Tylenol PM or zolpidem or something that will knock me out. But that’s not what I want. It’s not that I can’t sleep; it’s that I don’t want to.

  “Is it because you’re worried about having more hallucinations?” Dr. Sturgis asks.

  After a moment, I nod. I can’t admit the truth: I’m not afraid of revisiting that other world.

  I’m afraid that if I return there, I won’t want to come back.

  * * *

  —

  I am moved to a step-down unit that isn’t the ICU, which means I no longer have Syreta or Betty or the Hot CNA taking care of me. Instead, I am now in the ward I was in when I was first brought to the hospital, the one I don’t remember. The nurses here are flat out, with more patients to attend to. It is impossible for Finn to sneak in to visit me here, because he’s stationed in the Covid ICU and he’s not allowed elsewhere due to safety protocols.

  If anything, I feel even more isolated.

  There are a lot of codes on this floor.

  I realize that the vast majority of patients who move from this space to the ICU do not return. That I am the anomaly.

  When a speech therapist comes in to see me, I am so grateful to interact with someone that I don’t want to tell her I can already talk—even if it’s raspy. Sara reads my mind, though, and says, “Speech therapy isn’t just about talking. You’re getting a swallow test. We’ll try different consistencies of food to make sure you don’t aspirate. If you pass, you get to have your NG tube removed.”

  “You had me at food,” I answer.

  By now, I can sit up for nearly a half hour without getting dizzy, which is what makes me eligible for this swallow test. I dutifully sit with my legs swung over the side of the bed. Sara scoops some ice chips onto a spoon and places them on my tongue. “All you have to do,” she says, “is swallow.”

  It’s hard to do on command, but it almost doesn’t matter, because the ice melts in the heat of my mouth and drips blissfully down, quenching my raw throat. As I do it, Sara holds a stethoscope up to my throat and listens. “Can I have more?” I ask.

  “Patience, young grasshopper,” Sara says, and I give her a blank look. “You millennials,” she sighs, and she holds a cup with a straw to my lips. I suck up a mouthful of water, which is just as satisfying.

  By the time we move on to applesauce, I am in heaven. When Sara moves to take the little dish from me I curl around it, hoarding, and hurriedly scoop another spoonful into my mouth.

  I graduate to a graham cracker, which requires chewing—muscles that my jaw has to actively remember how to use. Sara watches my throat work. “Good job,” she says.

  I wait until I am sure no crumbs remain. “It’s so weird,” I muse. “To have forgotten how to eat.”

  She resettles the oxygen cannula into my nostrils as I lean back in bed again. “You’ll have plenty more practice. I’m going to give the green light for the feeding tube to be removed. Tomorrow, you get to eat a whole meal while I watch.”

  A half hour later, a nurse I haven’t seen before comes in to remove the nasogastric tube. “I cannot tell you,” he says as he works quickly and efficiently, “how glad I am to see you again.”

  I try to read the name on the badge clipped onto his lanyard. “Zach?” I ask. “Did you take care of me before?”

  He holds a hand to his heart. “You don’t remember me. I’m crushed.” My eyes fly to his, but they’re dancing. “I’m kidding. But clearly, I’m going to have to up my game.”

  I rub the bridge of my nose, itchy without the tape adhering the feeding tube. “I don’t…I don’t remember being in this ward.”

  “Totally normal,” Zach assures me. “Your O-two levels were so low you kept passing out. I’d be surprised if you did remember.”

  I watch him briskly wash his hands in the sink and towel-dry before snapping on a new pair of gloves. He seems competent and kind, and he holds a part of my history I may never recover. “Zach?” I ask quietly. “Would it be a surprise if I remembered things…that didn’t happen?”

  His eyes soften. “Hallucinations aren’t uncommon for people who are sick enough to be in an ICU,” he says. “From what I’ve heard, Covid patients are even more likely to have them, between the lack of oxygen and the deep sedation and the isolation.”

  “What you’ve heard,” I repeat. “What else have you heard?”

  He hesitates. “I’ll be honest, you’re only the second patient I’ve had who has gone to the ICU and survived to talk about it. But the other one was a man who was absolutely convinced that the roof of the hospital opened up like the Superdome, and twice a day light would shoot out of it, and one lucky person would be chosen to be lowered from a crane into that beam of light and get instantly healthy.”

  I probe the corners of my mind for hallucinations that are hospital-based, like this, but cannot find any.

  “I was in the Galápagos,” I say softly. “I lived on the beach and made friends with local residents and swam with sea lions and picked fruit right off the trees.”

  “That sounds like an awesome dream.”

  “It was,” I say. “But it wasn’t like a dream. Not like anything I’ve ever dreamed when I’m asleep anyway. This was so detailed and so real that if you put me on the island, I bet I could find my way around.” I hesitate. “I can see the people I met like they’re standing in front of me.”

  I watch something change in his eyes, as he puts on his professional regard. “Are you still seeing them now?” Zach asks evenly.

  “You don’t believe it was real,” I say, disappointed.

  “I believe you believe it was real,” he says, which isn’t an answer at all.

  * * *

  —

  Although I am still testing Covid-positive—which Finn assures me is normal—he lobbies to get me out of the step-down Covid ward as fast as possible, because if you’re in the hospital long enough you wind up getting sick with something else—a UTI, hospital-acquired pneumonia, C. diff. I feel ridiculous being in a rehabilitation unit when I’m not even thirty, but I also realize that there’s no way I’m ready to go home yet. I still haven’t managed to do more than sit upright in a chair, and even that took Prisha and a Hoyer lift for the transfer. I can’t get myself to the bathroom.

  To qualify for rehab, you have to be able to tolerate three hours of therapy a day. Some of it is physical therapy, some occupational, and for those who need it, speech therapy. The silver lining is that I will see people again. The therapists are completely covered in PPE to keep them safe, but at least three times a day I will have company.

  And the more time I spend with people, the less time I spend replaying my memories of Isabela.

  I am moved into a small room with a private bathroom, and I haven’t been there for more than a half hour when the door opens and a tiny hurricane with red hair and snapping blue eyes blusters in. “I’m Maggie,” she announces. “I’m your physical therapist.”

  “What happened to Prisha?” I ask.

  “She doesn’t leave the hospital; I don’t leave the rehab unit. It’s theoretically a single building, but it is like there’s a special force field between us.” She grins; there is a sweet gap between her front teeth. “Big Star Wars fan here. You watch The Mandalorian?”

  “Um, no?”

  “The guy’s hotter with his helmet on,” she says. She has approached the bed and already has stripped back the covers; her hands are firm and strong on my feet as she rotates my ankles. “My kids got me into that show. I have three. One came back home from college because of Covid. I can’t believe it. He’s a freshman; I thought I’d just gotten rid of him.” She says this with another smile as she moves to my arms, pulling them over my head. “You got kids?”

  “Me? No.”

  “Significant other?”

  I nod. “My boyfriend is a surgeon at the hospital.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Ooh, better be on my best behavior,” she says, and then she laughs. “I’m just kidding. I’m gonna put you through the paces like I do everyone else.”

  As she moves my limbs as if I’m a rag doll (which, to be fair, I might as well be), I learn that she lives on Staten Island with her husband, who is a policeman in Manhattan, plus her displaced college student, as well as a seventh grader who wanted to be a nun last week but has, as of Tuesday, decided to convert to Buddhism, and a ten-year-old boy who will grow up to be either the next Elon Musk or the Unabomber. Maggie says she’s already had Covid, which she’s pretty sure she contracted while volunteering to sew costumes for her son’s elementary school play, which is about a T. rex afraid to tell its parents it is vegan, which is what you get when you take your retirement fund and apply it instead to a private school for the gifted and talented. She talks about her apartment building, and the constantly rotating stream of morons who live just below them. One started feeding a skunk on the fire escape. After he was evicted, a woman moved in who slipped a note under their door, asking if they’d have objections to her putting in a skylight in her ceiling—which, of course, was Maggie’s floor. She keeps me so busy laughing that I do not realize I’ve maxed out my physical capacity until every muscle in my body is screaming.

  Finally, she stops stretching my arms and my legs. I collapse against the bed, wondering how I can be so exhausted from someone else doing the motions for me. “Okay, sunshine,” she says. “Time for you to sit up.”

  I push myself upright, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. It takes a lot of effort and concentration, so at first I don’t notice Maggie sliding a recliner wheelchair closer. She takes off one arm, locks the wheels, and then puts a board as a bridge from the bed to the chair. I look at it, then down at my unfamiliar body. “Oh hell no,” I say.

  “If you do it, I’ll get you a Popsicle. I know where the stash is.”

  “Not even for a Fudgsicle,” I mutter.

  Maggie folds her arms. “If you can’t transfer to a chair, you can’t get to the bathroom. If you can’t get to the bathroom, you can’t leave rehab.”

  “I can’t get in that chair,” I tell her.

  “You can’t do it alone,” Maggie corrects.

  She leans in front of me and uses all of her compact body for me to lean into as she slides my butt onto the edge of the board. Then she shifts my legs a bit, then leans forward again to help me amass the strength to creep sideways on the board. We do this a few more times until I am seated in the chair, and then she pops its arm back on.

  I am sweating and red-faced, shaking. “Orange,” I grind out.

  “Orange what?”

  “Popsicle.”

  She laughs. “Double or nothing. Can you kick your leg out for me? Yeah, like that. Ten times.”

  But ten times with the left leg leads to ten times with the right. And then come toe tapping and arm lifting. When Maggie asks me to grip the armrests and try to lift my body weight an inch, I can’t even budge a finger.

  “Come on, Diana,” Maggie urges. “You got this.”

  I can’t even raise my head from the back of the chair. I could sleep for a week. “Rehab,” I say, “is staffed by sadists.”

  “True,” Maggie agrees. “But when you’re a dominatrix, the pay is shit.”

  At that, I start to sob.

  Immediately, her demeanor changes. “I’m sorry. I crossed a line. My mouth just doesn’t know when to stop—”

  “I was on a vent for five days,” I wail. “Five fucking days. How could I get this bad this fast?”

  Maggie crouches down in front of me. “First, it’s not as bad. Not compared to some others I’ve seen—people who’ve been on a vent or ECMO for months; people who have suffered through amputations. It may feel ridiculous to you to sit in a chair and tap your toes, but that’s how you’re eventually going to walk out of here. I promise you, these are small things, with exponential benefits.” She meets my gaze fiercely. “You can be pissed at your body, or you can celebrate it. Yes, it sucks that you got Covid. Yes, it sucks that you were on a vent. But a lot of people who did the same aren’t going home, and you are. You can look at this situation and feel bitter, or you can choose not to be negative. Most adults don’t have many firsts left to them—but you get to experience yours all over again.” She takes a deep breath. “Give me two weeks, and your body will belong to you again.”

  I narrow my eyes. I look down at my lap and grit my teeth. Then I grab the sides of the chair, squeeze, and start to push myself up.

  “Atta girl,” Maggie says.

  * * *

  —

  It is after a session of occupational therapy—which involves me taking off and putting on clothes, and during which I decide that socks are the work of the devil—that I see the news story: a funeral director in Queens, talking about how backed up they are for cremations; how you can pick up the ashes of your loved one with contactless delivery.

  It makes me think, again, that being sore from all this therapy is not the worst that could happen, but rather the best. The majority of people in the Covid ICU ward will only come out of it in a body bag.

  Instead of ringing for help, I cantilever my body upright so that I can reach for my phone, which sits on the table hovering across my bed. After I’ve hauled my body weight around, the phone feels light as a feather—an improvement since yesterday.

  I do not want to make this call, but I know I have to.

  I dial the main switchboard of The Greens. “Hello,” I say, when I am connected to the business office. “I’m Diana O’Toole. My mother, Hannah, was one of your residents. I’ve been sick in the hospital, but I wanted you to know that once I’m discharged I can pick up her things. If you need to put someone else in the room, you can store—”

  “Ms. O’Toole,” the director of the facility says. “Are you saying you want to move your mother from our facility?”

  “I…what?”

  “I can assure you she’s being well taken care of. I know that there have been a lot of care facilities in the news recently because of Covid, but we have had zero cases here and we’re maintaining a level of vigilance—”

  My heart starts galloping in my chest. “Zero cases,” I repeat.

  “Yes.”

  “My mother is alive.”

  The director hesitates. “Ms. O’Toole,” she says gently, “why would you think otherwise?”

  The phone drops out of my hand, and I bury my face in my hands and burst into tears.

  * * *

  —

  What else didn’t actually happen?

  If my mother is alive, if I was never in the Galápagos, are there other things I believed as fact that aren’t necessarily true?

  Like…do I still have a job?

  I find myself logging in to my email, something I’ve avoided, because my eyes still have trouble focusing on a tiny screen and the number of unread messages is so high it makes me feel like I’m about to break out in hives.

  But before I can even begin to do a specific search for work emails, a text pings from Finn, with a Zoom link and an emoji heart. It’s been two long, endless days that I haven’t seen him or talked to him, because he’s been at work, so I immediately log on. It is the first time I’ve seen him without a mask, and there are bruises along the bridge of his nose. His hair is wet; he is freshly showered. His face lights up when I join the call.

  “Why didn’t you tell me my mother was alive?” I blurt out.

  He blinks, confused. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “Because when I was…sedated I thought she died.”

  His breath gusts out. “Oh my God, Diana.”

  “I saw her on a FaceTime call, fighting to breathe,” I tell him. “And then she…” I can’t say it. I feel like I’ll jinx this unexpected resurrection. “I asked you about her, when I first woke up. You said you’d take care of everything. So I assumed that meant you knew what had happened. That you’d been talking to the memory care place and the funeral home and everything.”

  “Well,” he says tentatively, “silver lining, right?”

  “When I thought she’d died, I didn’t feel anything. I thought I was a monster.”

  “Maybe you didn’t feel anything because on some unconscious level you knew it wasn’t real—”

  “It felt real,” I snap, and I swipe at my eyes. “I want to visit her.”

  “Okay. We will.”

  “I think I need to go by myself,” I say.

  “Then that gives you even more incentive to get better,” Finn replies, gentling his voice. “How’s rehab?”

  “Torture,” I say, still sniffling. “Every inch of me aches and my bed has plastic under the sheets so I’m sweating bullets.”

  “You won’t be there that long,” he says confidently. “It usually takes three times as long to get back to where you were after you’re intubated. So that would be fifteen days for you.”

  “My physical therapist said two weeks.”