In January of 2008, Michael and I went to Mexico for the fourth year straight. Mexico is complicated, and the landscape is wild and unforgiving. If you've spent any time there, you can understand the preoccupation with death. The cemeteries are scatter shot alongside winding roads punctuated with crosses at every curve. So much for "Curva Peligrosa."
In 2007, a man died in the surf at the beach yards from where we ate our shrimp tacos and drank our margaritas under a palapa roof. Mexican mortality grins like a Dia de los Muertos mask, but who can say whether there's any maliciousness in that toothy smile?
Of the four years I have been there, I became sick fifty percent of the time. It has been a biennial health habit. The first year, great. The second year, puking in a plastic bucket while the sea howled below us from the lush drop of our balcony. The third year, dead guy on the beach. And then there was last year.
The first two days at Casa Melissa were paradisaical. Coati gathered to drink from the infinity pool. The view from the infinity pool was infinite ocean. Whales were commonplace and fun-loving, or so the binoculars said. Cats and dogs wandered up from the village for a scratch and some scraps. It was sometime during that third day that I thought I was coming down with something like a little head cold.
Funny how the flu can come on so meekly, disguised as the common cold. I remember heading out for dinner that night, a little tired, my throat kind of tight. By the sixth day, I was completely bedridden and soaked through with sweat. My fever raged as I popped Xanax to try and get some sleep. The day: endless sun arcing across the walls. At night, Mars glared through the window. I guess this was some kind of war.
Not long before leaving, we decided to go whale-watching. This was at the height of my fever. On the boat, I shivered uncontrollably, but the whales were beautiful. It was like a waking dream when your body has been poisoned. Barnacled mothers and their calves crested so slowly. The filmstrip ran at 80 percent speed. After we got off the boat, and I fainted on the beach, I was comfortable for those first few moments after I awoke. As if the heat and chill that bickered in my body was a completely normal state of coexisting binary opposition.
Michael had to wheel me through the airport in a wheelchair to get back to Seattle. I couldn't walk because I was too weak and prone to fainting at this point. My cough was deep and wet and rib-shaking. This was no way to enjoy our first-class seats. The people sitting around us must have wished for surgical masks and a Purell dip just from listening to me.
After returning to Seattle, a trip to the ER, a few more days of delirium, and the possibility that I might have been improving, I ended up with acute bacterial pneumonia. I split a week between the Harborview ICU and an acute care floor. I don't remember much. An NG tube for feeding. A catheter. Oxygen mask. EKG. IV tubes. I skated around the vent. I had no control over my body; my bedclothes were changed often. Nurses came and went. My blood was drawn often. The arterial blood draws left my wrists black and blue. Michael, who was then my fiancé, slept in the room for the first two days. It means a great deal to me now when I hear of individuals who have died from the flu or pneumonia.
At one point, at the height of my illness, probably after Michael had to clean me up and change my bedclothes, he leaned over me and said, "You're going to marry me and we're going to make a baby, right?" And I nodded "Yes." These words were the rope he used to keep me tethered to my mortality. He was just reminding me of what I wanted. What I was living for. Not that I had any sense that I was going to die, or that I was going to "let go." Though, I don't know if anyone really knows. But, for him, I think, he was just reinforcing our future. If you say it, it will be so.
We were married this past May. I became pregnant by the beginning of July. Our child is due in March. We skipped our yearly trip to Mexico because of the pregnancy. I'm not sure if that means that I have missed the healthy year, and if we choose to go next year, does that mean I'll get sick?
I don't take anything for granted. We have been blessed.
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