Lovers in a Dangerous Time

LaVieEnRose

The question is when to tell Brian. The question, always, is when to tell Brian.

It's risky either way. If I tell him too early, I might be freaking him out over nothing, and Brian, for all his supposed stoicism, freaks the fuck out like no one I've ever seen. He saves the crying screaming queen-outs for very special occasions, but still he winds up so physically that I can see it when I look at him and he's waiting for the readout on a thermometer or a peak flow meter or a blood pressure cuff. And if it's nothing, if I scared him for no reason, it still takes him ages to let himself go again, and until then he's a bundle of nerves radiating energy like a caged animal, pacing our bamboo floors and growling at anyone who tries to calm him down, because I'm fine, leave me alone, damn it. The subtext there is always the same, too: why are you worried about ME? And that does not stop breaking your heart.

But tell him too late and I risk him figuring it out before I tell him, and then there's him pulling out his hair, holding me by the shoulders, taking my wrists between his fingers, letting me go just long enough to lecture You have to notice, you have to pay attention.

And of course sometimes there's a virus and people are lying in a makeshift hospital in Central Park, and if you wait too long to tell him, your brain reminds you over and over, maybe you'll die.

But it might just be nothing.

**

I came out of the bedroom and leaned against the doorframe. Evan was on the couch, doing something on his laptop, and Brian was staring out the window with his thumbnail in his mouth. He'd been doing a lot of that. We kept reminding each other not to touch our faces, but that's hard in ASL. You touch your teeth for glass, or nut. Your nose for funny, boring, do you mind. Cheek for girl. Tomorrow. Home.

You touch other people. We touched other people.

Now there was no one outside: no traffic, no joggers, no one walking their dogs.

At least this time it wasn't just me locked up.

Leaving the house had to be essential. Healthcare work, food you couldn't get delivered, medical appointments that couldn't happen over the phone. That meant Brian and I were set here, and he would have been content just Lysoling our deliveries to his heart's content if not for one little problem.

Did anyone there seem sick? Brian was asking him.

It's a dialysis clinic, Evan said. They all seem sick. He wore a mask to the appointments and sterilized himself as well as he could afterwards, but we still couldn't be sure. No one could be.

There's got to be a solution here, Brian said.

I'm keeping my distance from Justin. He was.

You're in kidney failure and your T-cells aren't great, Brian said, exasperated. You can't get this shit either.

Evan just rubbed his forehead--how do you have a conversation you've had a hundred times already when there's nothing new to say, no one new to talk to, nothing new in the entire world besides a virus--and I cleared my throat. Brian looked up at me, then Evan.

How's Emily? he said. We'd been on Facetime.

Good. Jane’s complaining about not going to the park. I paused. I’m having some trouble breathing. I don’t think it’s anything.

(Shortness of breath, coughing, headaches, fever, respiratory failure. Brian signed the list of symptoms to us weeks ago, then blinked and said, Did they read your fucking diary? Is this a joke? And then he went out to the porch and smoked five cigarettes and didn’t talk to anyone for six hours.)

He came over to me now and palmed my forehead and cheek, then relaxed a little and said, Your asthma needs to read the room.

Yeah, seriously.

He ran his hands over my shoulders. Pollen’s bad?

Been sneezing a lot. Not a symptom, thankfully.

Okay. Go do your neb. I think you’ll live.

He came into the bedroom when I was halfway done and sat on the bed next to me. He reached out with a sigh and rubbed a circle on my back.

Better? he said.

I nodded.

Breathe, he signed, and I did.

**

All my doctor’s appointments were virtual now. Video calls with me, a doctor, and an interpreter. This time it was my GP, making sure I was staying inside, washing my hands, still standing.

Do we have any idea when this is going to end? I said.

She shook her head sadly. “Unfortunately if you’re keeping up with the news, you know everything I do about a timeline.”

And there’s still no real progress on a treatment, I said.

You know there’s not, Brian said, from over by the sink.

You're not a doctor, I said to him, which in retrospect is probably one of the meanest things I've ever said to him, but he just rolled his eyes and went back to loading the dishwasher.

And of course, my doctor just shook her head. "I wish I had something to tell you."

Brian's just worrying...

“We're all worried about you," she said, and I had this vision of the entire city of New York, sitting around fretting about Justin's little lungs. "All we can do is make sure you're keeping up with your medications--"

I am.

"--and keep the guidelines going. As little contact with the outside world as possible until this is over."

I live with someone in dialysis.

Brian shook water off his hands.

"It's about minimizing the chances of exposure," my doctor said. "We'll do whatever we can."

I'll die if I get this, right?

We don't know that, Brian said without looking at me.

"We don't know that," my doctor said.

**

I woke up in the middle of the night scared out of my goddamn mind, which isn't that uncommon, and alone, which is.

It took me a few panicked moments to piece it together. Right. Evan had a rough dialysis and was dehydrated and fainted on the kitchen floor before dinner. Brian was sleeping down there to keep an eye on him, because I was supposed to stay six feet away. And I had been.

I couldn't stop shaking and thinking about choking and every time I tried to close my eyes I saw sirens and blood. "Brian? Brian!"

He was up a minute later, rubbing hand sanitizer between his palms. He hit the light. You okay? he said.

I nodded, still catching my breath. Is Evan okay?

Fine, sleeping. I was too.

"Sorry."

He sighed. Bad dream?

I felt my chin shaking. "Yeah," I said, and he crawled across the bed and put his arms around me. I blew my nose and rested my head into the crook of my neck. He played with my hair.

You want to tell me? he asked after a while.

And the thing was, I did want to tell him. I wanted to talk about how much this reminded me of being trapped in quarantine after my immune system tanked, and how much that fucked me up, how I couldn’t be in a room with a closed door for months afterwards without a panic attack. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t think I could do it again. That I’d end up overdosing on my anti-anxiety meds, accidentally or maybe not, if I had to stay in the house without an endpoint for much longer. I wanted to tell him how goddamn terrified I was of getting sick, of a virus that tears at lung tissue when mine was scarred and shitty to begin with, and how worried I was that Brian would get it, or Jane, or God forbid Evan. I wanted to tell him that I measured every single one of my breaths to see if I was okay, that every second I was counting, judging, evaluating, panicking.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t be scared, because Brian’s entire persona was designed to keep me from being scared. That was his job. To worry, plan, protect, so that I could live. If I was freaking out about my health, it meant he wasn’t doing his job. He’d blame himself.

It was his job. To worry, plan, protect, count, judge, evaluate. Panic.

Being scared was Brian’s job.

I had to be brave for him but I was so scared.

“Just prom stuff,” I said, the only thing Brian had almost, almost come to terms with not fixing, and he nodded and kissed my temple.

**

There were press conferences every day. More and more somber. Never somber enough. We didn’t watch most of them, for obvious reasons—Brian has on more than one occasion threatened to deafen himself so he doesn’t have to hear the asshole tell another fucking lie—but we had it on that day while Brian answered emails in the arm chair, Evan worked on drafts of a new mock-up on his laptop on the couch, and I sat on the floor, fucking around on my phone and thinking idly that I should probably paint something.

The asshole himself was talking, and I watched the captions scroll through at the bottom of the screen. Talking about how important it was that we reopen everything as soon as possible, because the economy, the stock market. Reminding us again that healthy people would be fine. Reassuring that most of the people dying were those with underlying conditions. Implication: they were dying anyway. It's not the virus's fault. It's not my fault.

Brian stood up abruptly and walked a few steps away, then came back and planted his hands on the back of the arm chair and glared at the screen.

Problem, dearest? I fingerspelled.

What the fuck is that? he said. Why do they keep fucking saying that shit about people with underlying conditions like it's a goddamn comfort? Who is that comforting?

Healthy people, Evan said.

What about you? Brian said.

I love him so, so much, but sometimes it is so exhausting teaching someone stuff you wish you didn't know.

They don't think about us, I said. They think disabled people aren't smart enough or present enough to be watching the news. They think we're institutionalized.

That's bullshit. Everyone becomes disabled if they live long enough.

I know that and you know that...

Brian ran his hand through his hair, and when he turned to me there was pain in his eyes. This is Stockwell all over again, he said.

"Brian."

He didn't care if queers died. He didn't want them to, he didn't not want them to, he literally did not fucking care. They were expendable. And now this. Sick people are just going to die so go ahead and relight Broadway.

"Cuomo's not going to--"

Sick people are watching, Brian said, staring at the screen again. They're important.

**

My mom’s signing has improved, but it’s not fantastic, and she has trouble understanding me over Skype, so most is the time we text chat when we’re not together. I asked her how everyone at home was doing, and she promised me everyone was healthy and safe. Deb was going crazy with the diner closed, and Michael was obsessively disinfecting, but everyone was okay. Gus and Luke and all the other kids were doing fine.

“We’re all just worried about you,” she typed.

“I know.” I had heard it so, so many times.

I’m not sure I can explain what it feels like to know that the happiness of so many people hangs on you staying healthy. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. It’s amazing how many care about me, and how much. But...it’s hard not to wish that what they needed was something I could control. Or something that at least felt somewhat likely. Because sometimes staying healthy seems downright impossible, and I don’t even get a chance to worry about how that affects me, what I need to do to keep myself going through it, because I’m too busy feeling guilty for putting everyone else through it.

It’s a part of being sick that people don’t think about, and it’s one of the most exhausting.

And sometimes there’s a virus and you cannot, cannot, promise them that you will be fine.

“We’re good over here,” I said.

**

Evan came home from dialysis freaking out. He refused to come inside and made Brian come out with a bucket of soap and water and a change of clothes.

Someone was coughing, he said. He and Brian looked at each other. This isn’t working.

The decision was made quickly and unemotionally. As much baggage I have about saying it, my seizures and occasional failures to breathe mean it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to be alone, and all our friends had essential jobs and still had to leave the house, so there wasn’t anyone I could stay with and be safer.

Evan had to go. A phone call to Emily and Gwen, twenty minutes to pack, and it was done.

I’ll send you so many pictures of Jane, he said to me. I couldn’t even hug him goodbye.

How long do you think it will be? I asked him, trying not to hyperventilate.

You did thirty years without me, he said. It’s just time.

But it doesn’t end. Evan and I, we know that. It doesn’t matter when the world starts turning again. We’ll still be standing still. People will go back to their lives and forget about us again. Talk about us like we’re not listening. Like we’re not people.

It was never normal.

Brian held him for a long time at the door, and I just couldn’t fucking watch it, so I went back to our room and sat on the bed, staring at the floor. Brian came in a few minutes later and sat down next to me, and I knew he was gone.

And we sat there and watched ourselves get old.

I’m really, really, really in the bad place, I said after a while.

Brian didn’t move for a minute, and then he took one hand and lay it on my back.

Breathe, he said.