Wish You Were Here

A major plot point that quickly comes to light in these chapters is the difference in the experience and passing of time—a two-month long stint for Diana in the Galapagos is actually only 10 days in New York. Similarly, although Diana almost died in both worlds, the near-death experiences respectively took place on her last day in Isabela and her second day on the ventilator in the hospital.

Time, reality, and memory are intertwined in complicated ways in these chapters. In Diana’s experience of the Galapagos, despite most things now appearing to have been a construction of her imagination, there are aspects that correlate with the reality in New York. These correlations might have seeped in due to old memories of actual facts and incidents. For instance, everything that happened after Diana and Finn’s first conversation about the Galapagos trip, appears to have been imagined—and yet, the detail of her having woken up in the middle of the night with a headache, as described in the first chapter of the book, appears to have been real. Similarly, Diana’s mother is alive and well in the reality in New York, a detail that is vastly different from what Diana experienced on Isabela; and yet, her having been furloughed is true in both worlds.

Other details seem to converge, or influence each other, in strange places in these parallel realities. Diana’s feelings of unease on Isabela at Finn having asked her to leave, stemmed from the argument that they had about it, which she does not now explicitly remember; when Diana looks up people and places on the Galapagos later on, the people don’t exist, but some of the places do; the dream of being locked in the basement, as well as the experience of drowning, both seem to have been constructed by the physical reality she was experiencing in New York. The concept of reality, its validity, and the subjectivity of its nature is further explored through Diana chancing across other Covid survivors having had similar, vivid dreams, when on the ventilator—the experience has been real enough to Diana to have her reaching out to Eric in an attempt to process everything. In fact, despite that the events on Isabela never took place, when Diana tells Finn that her experience felt real to her, the confession holds enough weight to worry him.

The relationship between Diana and Finn is changing in this section, helped along by her closeness with Gabriel. Despite that Diana is in love with an imagined reality, the changing dynamic seems to have found its way into Diana and Finn’s shared reality as well. Finn is unable to relate to or understand Diana’s experience. It is also clear that this experience that Diana has had, simultaneous with Finn’s experiences at the hospital attending to Covid patients and watching Diana almost die, changed both Diana and Finn in different ways. The separateness, as well as the content of these different experiences, are contributing to the growing disconnect between the couple. Where once Diana looked forward to Finn’s proposal, she now actively avoids it and is glad when his birthday gift for her is not an engagement ring.

It is not, however, the only relationship that is undergoing change. Diana’s experience of her mother dying when Diana was on Isabela is also prompting her to visit her mother more often to try and reestablish a relationship with her. Similarly, just as Diana grew closer to an imaginary Gabriel on Isabela, Finn appears to have grown closer to a nurse, Athena, in the hospital.

Changing relationships is not the only challenge that Diana faces—she is thrown back into a world that she once knew, without the skills and abilities that she once had, i.e., control of her body. Once again, Diana is forced to adapt in order to survive. As she goes through different kinds of therapy to relearn the use of her limbs, she also attends therapy to address the difficulties in psychosocial adjustment that she is facing. Her psychiatrist’s advice to use daily habits to build a structure again is reminiscent of how Diana fell into a daily routine when on Isabela.

Even in this scenario of adaptation, isolation comes into play. Diana’s isolation on the Galapagos that forced her to adapt and survive mirrors her Covid-enforced isolation after waking up in the hospital. On Isabela, she was isolated from the people she knew and loved with no way of physically reaching them, forcing her to form a community; this is mirrored by the loneliness she faces during her isolation in the ICU and Covid ward, and the relationships she eventually forms with the nurses and therapists to combat this loneliness. Just as Diana had no common language with which to communicate with the locals on Isabela—save Gabriel and Beatriz with whom she eventually forms close bonds—here in New York, Diana finds that she is not able to talk about her memories of the Galapagos with people around her in a way that they will understand; it is only Rodney, her closest friend, who seems to believe her. Rodney’s belief opens up the possibility that Diana’s experience is not as harmless as it seems and may have been some sort of supernatural experience. Having now laid the foundation that the Galapagos was nothing but a dream, Picoult begins to deconstruct this assertion in the reader’s minds through characters like Rodney and later, through his sister Rayanne.

Once again, art seems to play a part in Diana’s process of adapting to this old-new reality. When looking up jobs online, the memory of making art with Beatriz on the beach is what propels Diana to consider art therapy as a new career. However, while on Isabela, art solely aided her adapting to the circumstances. In this reality, it serves as an indication of possibility and moving forward, as well as a reminder of the past—the day that Diana paints a scene from the Galapagos onto the dresser corresponds with the night that she dreams of Gabriel again.