Wish You Were Here

The chapter opens with a memory. Diana O’Toole, as a young girl, helps her father, a conservator, repaint a corner of the zodiac ceiling in Grand Central Station. A small spot is left untouched, and Diana’s father tells her that this is done in case historians need to study the original at some point: “The only way you can tell how far you’ve come is to know where you started” (3).

In the present day, it is March 13, 2020, in New York City. Diana is now a 29-year-old associate specialist at Sotheby’s, rushing to meet a client. Kitomi Ito, the widow of a famous musician, Sam Pride, is selling a painting she owns, and Diana is the one who acquired the deal for Sotheby’s. However, Kitomi now tells Diana that she wants to delay the auction due to the Covid situation. Back at the office, Diana’s best friend and colleague, Rodney, tells her that the mayor has declared a state of emergency in the city.

After work, Diana goes to meet her mother, Hannah O’Toole, who has Alzheimer’s and lives in a memory care facility. Hannah used to be a famous photographer, and she was a fairly absent mother throughout Diana’s childhood. Some years ago, Hannah was found wandering Central Park, and the police brought her to Diana; Diana then had her admitted to the facility.

Back at home, Finn tells Diana that his attending has warned him that cases will rise sharply and taking time off is “greatly discouraged.” Finn and Diana were supposed to leave on a two-week vacation to the Galapagos the next day. Having found a ring hidden in his underwear drawer, Diana believes that Finn plans on proposing to her on this trip. Now, however, Finn asks Diana to go on the vacation by herself, so they don’t lose money on the deal, and Diana reluctantly agrees. In the middle of the night, she wakes up with a headache and scrolls through news articles on her laptop detailing different places closing due to Covid.

Diana eventually flies to the Galapagos, though she doesn’t remember much of the journey, and her luggage is lost along the way. She takes a ferry from Santa Cruz to the island of Isabela, where she discovers that the island is closing down for two weeks due to the virus. Diana, and one other fellow passenger—a young schoolgirl—choose to stay behind on the island anyway.

When Diana reaches the hotel she was supposed to stay in, she finds it closed, along with everything else on Isabela. An old woman who works at the hotel introduces herself as “Abuela” and takes Diana home with her, offering her an apartment to stay in. Later in the day, Diana wanders into town in search of food, and ends up at the Giant Tortoise Breeding Centre. Just as Diana tries to pluck a poisonous apple off a tree in the enclosure, she hears a man call out “Cuidado!” or “careful.”

Diana and Gabriel—the man who warned her about the apples—get off to a rocky start. Gabriel seems to think that Diana is a selfish tourist who only cares about her vacation; she, in turn, finds him rude and unfriendly. Back at the apartment, Diana proceeds to write a letter to Finn on a postcard.

The next morning, Diana heads into town, where she manages to acquire some basic supplies. Her phone briefly picks up a signal, and she receives multiple text messages and an email from Finn. The email details Finn’s current situation in New York, seeing fast-rising cases in the hospital as the ICU fills up. Diana’s reply fails to go through.

Diana goes down to the pier to try and get back to Santa Cruz, where she meets Gabriel again. He informs her that there are no flights operating at all. Wandering around once more, Diana finds Concha de Perla, a popular snorkeling haunt. She goes swimming in the lagoon, after which she runs into Beatriz, the girl from the ferry, back at the dock; she is cutting herself. Beatriz informs Diana that there is a curfew after two P.M.

Diana heads back to the apartment and finds Gabriel there. Abuela is his grandmother, and the apartment belongs to him, though he no longer stays there. As Diana is talking to him, Beatriz arrives as well, and Gabriel rushes to greet her. She is Gabriel’s daughter.

Throughout the chapter, Diana also recollects details of her foray into the art business world and how she met Finn. When a freshman in college, Diana switched tracks from art studio classes to art history and business to avoid comparisons with her mother. She eventually made it to Sotheby’s on a summer internship, where she met her friend Rodney on her first day. During the internship, Diana was assigned the grunt work for an important client pitch that was eventually successful. Through the process, she discovered that the “buzz provided by art did not begin and end with its creation” (41). After graduating, Diana was eventually hired as a junior cataloguer at Sotheby’s. Three years into working there, she slipped and broke her left arm while hurrying down a staircase at work. Rodney took her to the hospital, and she met Finn, who was the resident doctor in the ER, for the first time.

Diana falls into a routine of running on the beach in the mornings and writing letters to Finn on postcards. A few days in, she spots Beatriz picking up trash on the beach; they exchange names and stories. Beatriz tells Diana that she goes to school on Santa Cruz island where she lives with a host family. Beatriz’s mother left when she was 10. Diana tells Beatriz about Finn and not being able to contact him, and Beatriz offers to mail Diana’s postcards to him.

Diana receives another email from Finn detailing the worsening situation at his end. He ends the email saying, “God, I wish you were here” (68). Meeting on the beach once again, Diana uses some of the trash that Beatriz has collected to build a sandcastle, and they talk about art and Diana’s job. Beatriz says that she has mailed Diana’s postcards, and she offers to mail more of them. Diana asks Beatriz why she cuts herself, to which Beatriz replies “it’s the kind of hurt that makes sense” (73). Beatriz tells Diana that she hates being on the island because it feels like “moving backward,” which Diana understands.

A little over a week after arriving at the island, Abuela invites Diana for lunch. Abuela calls for Beatriz to join them, but Beatriz is shut up in her room, crying. Diana tries to talk to her, but Beatriz shuts her out, too. Gabriel arrives, and Diana tells him about Beatriz cutting herself. Gabriel and Abuela go into Beatriz’s room, and Diana leaves the family alone, thinking that isolation “is the worst thing in the world” (79). The next morning, Gabriel arrives with a box of vegetables and fruits for Diana as an apology for when he was rude to her. They talk about Beatriz, and Gabriel offers to show Diana around Isabela someday.

Throughout the chapter, intermittent emails continue to arrive from Finn that detail the situation in New York and the challenges that the doctors are facing every day. Diana, in turn, writes out replies to the emails on postcards.

Diana also remembers her father’s death. Some years ago, Diana’s father fell off a ladder at work, struck his head, and suffered a brain hemorrhage. Diana missed the initial calls from the hospital as she was busy at work. When she finally arrived at the hospital after a traffic delay, Finn broke the news of her father’s passing.