Love in the Time of Covid

The blue-haired girl didn’t love him, not really. At least, that’s how Christian, our Mormon cowboy guide, rationalizes her betrayal—her midnight fornication with his best friend in the flatbed of her F-150, the truck he helped get running after two years stagnant in the fields, pack rats eating its soul. He was going to marry that girl. His high-school sweetheart. Or so he thought.

“I didn’t love her either,” Christian insists. Only he did. I can hear it, a spur in his voice as he trots by, baring his soul to us strangers—thirteen tourists on horseback, venturing into the first state park to open after a microscopic dictator subjugated the world.

He’s only twenty. A child, birthed under Utah’s red rock hoodoos. He likes cowboy stuff: roping, riding, bulls, dust. He was headed to college for the academic version of cows, but just as he was zipping his bag, the grandparents who raised him became infirm, so he stayed. But I suspect a flip side to his story. He’d been planning on going with the blue-haired girl, and to make a point, he burned his acceptance letter and cooked s’mores over it with pre-pandemic visitors.

Wind rustles through the trees. Everyone stays awkwardly silent, out of practice with chitchat but also tentative, leery. Lines have been drawn. If someone says, “I don’t know anyone who’s died from it” or “It’s a hoax,” I’ll lose my mind.

My daughter and her best friend break the silence, and announce that they’re twins. I back them up, and let them weave this lie into plausibility. They’re bored from weeks of isolation. What’s a harmless fib if it keeps suicidal ideations at bay, a real concern for the actual fruit of my womb, her smarts no rival for solitude. She could get into Yale like she wants when she isn’t considering a cave overlooking the Alhambra a viable future. But who am I to judge? I was going to marry David Bowie.

Me and my “fraternal twins” ride behind a family from Salt Lake: mom, dad, little girl, and three boys so close in age they’re confusing. The oldest is uber-white, as reflective as his aviator glasses. He irritated me on sight. His mother feigned friendliness while we were saddling up, asking about Albuquerque. But chatting from six feet away while the acrid odor of horse piss fills the air doesn’t foster meaningful connections. The family behind us from San Diego might be better but their youngest brags about equestrian skills and their oldest wears a t-shirt that says, Feminism. Another word for Equality, which buys her zero credit with my Pussy Riot-listening “twins.”

Christian speaks up again, sharing his grandpa’s version of a Paiute tale, ignorant to his trespass. These are the native people his ancestors and their modern prophet supplanted.

“Grandpa says it doesn’t matter if the stories are true. It’s what they teach,” Christian says, and I wonder if he thinks we believe these sixty-million-year-old monoliths are in fact humans turned to stone. I stand in my stirrups, knees aching.

“How can I help?” Christian asks.

“Give me joints that aren’t fifty?” I joke.

This child-man oozes innocence. Everything still waiting for him if only he removes his blinders. Christian, I’ve heard your story. If you really want to help, listen to mine.

Andre, the friendly anesthesiologist, and I were dawdling in the ante room. Do you know what that is? It’s the tiny space outside a patient’s room where you don PPE before entering the negative pressure. Why rush? It’s fucking hot when you’re in a patient’s room basically wrapped in plastic.

The ventilator alarmed. Often it’s just an error. But this patient had been clotting suspiciously, blood thick and pasty every time I suctioned her.

I ran in. Andre followed. No masks. No precious PPE. She was going to die. Her breathing tube clogged with what amounted to giant scabs “healing” the artificial airway occupying her trachea. I sucked out globules. Andre re-intubated. Her blood speckled our faces.

She’s Navajo. She’d been airlifted to our ICU. Her nation was under attack and their hospital’s air-conditioning died. First, small pox blankets, now death by neglect, heavy metal poisoning, and no running water in forty-percent of homes. How do you wash your hands without water?

She was still in the ICU when we left New Mexico. My trial by fire—two-week home quarantine—finally over. I got lucky. Andre didn’t. He called me when they admitted him to the hospital. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” I piled us into the car, desperate for escape no matter how brief.

Christian, don’t you understand? This is your beginning. Not your end. That girl was a trifle whose name you won’t remember. You can still be a veterinarian. It’s okay to be a farmer, too. I’ve only known you twenty minutes and I think that might be your destiny. Don’t squander your bloom with regrets. Or at least understand that more extravagant ones await. 

I’m so tired. Tired of masks and goggles, and that sore spot on the bridge of my nose. Of people complaining about lockdowns. I wish I could stay home. You understand, right? I couldn’t watch her die just because my costume wouldn’t go on fast enough. I didn’t know he’d follow me, that I might be trading one life for another, or two for nothing. I never signed up to be anyone’s hero.

I long for simplicity. I could be your girl. We’d raise goats instead of cattle. Make organic chèvre. Up at dawn. Back-breaking physical labor. Full disclosure, though, my knees don’t run anymore. You’ll have to toss me over your shoulder if next time it’s the zombie apocalypse. But can’t you see us lying side by side in your flatbed, a blanket of stars expanding over the darkened sky, unidentified creatures murmuring to us in the night. You’ll tell me it’s okay. Not my fault. Your God will forgive me. One more little lie.