Finn tells Diana he cannot join their Galapagos vacation and asks her to travel to the island without him.

Diana arrives on the island of Isabela just as local authorities close it down for a two-week quarantine.

An old woman who calls herself Abuela takes Diana in and offers her an apartment to stay in.

A man shouts a warning at Diana as she reaches toward a poisonous apple tree at the tortoise breeding center.

Diana spots a teenage girl cutting herself at the dock after meeting her briefly on the ferry to Isabela.

Diana learns that Beatriz, the teenager she has befriended on the island, is actually Gabriel's daughter.

An email from Finn includes the news that Diana's mother's care facility has been trying to reach her.

Gabriel arranges WiFi access at the closed hotel so Diana can video-call her mother, who has fallen ill with Covid.

Diana's mother dies from Covid while Diana remains stranded on Isabela with no way to return home.

After her mother's death, Diana gets drunk with Gabriel and the two sleep together.

While swimming with Gabriel, Diana is caught in a riptide, loses consciousness, and is swept away.

Diana wakes up in a New York hospital with Finn by her side and learns she never traveled to the Galapagos.

After being discharged from the hospital, Diana tells Finn that her feelings for the imagined Gabriel felt completely real.

Diana's mother contracts Covid in the real world and dies, and this time Diana mourns her deeply.

Finn proposes marriage to Diana in a park, but Diana turns him down, saying she is no longer the same person.

Diana is forced to travel to the Galapagos alone when her doctor boyfriend Finn stays behind as the Covid pandemic escalates. Stranded on the island of Isabela as it locks down indefinitely, Diana finds shelter with a local family and forms unexpected bonds with a man named Gabriel and his daughter Beatriz. As the weeks stretch on, Diana grows emotionally distant from Finn while drawing closer to Gabriel, and her mother dies from Covid while she is thousands of miles away. After Diana nearly drowns in a riptide, she wakes up in a New York hospital to discover she never left the city at all — her entire Galapagos experience was a ventilator-induced hallucination. Returning to the real world, Diana must reconcile who she has become with the life she left behind, including a mother she had kept at arm's length and a relationship built on a shared plan rather than genuine feeling. The novel closes with Diana turning down Finn's marriage proposal, having realized that surviving a crisis has permanently changed who she is.

The core journey from Galapagos lockdown to a life-changing revelation.

Diana's client Kitomi Ito announces she wants to delay an important painting auction because of the Covid situation.

Diana finds a ring hidden in Finn's underwear drawer and believes he plans to propose during their Galapagos trip.

Diana arrives on Isabela to find her luggage lost during travel and her hotel completely shut down.

Diana and Beatriz collect trash from the beach and use it to build sandcastles and sculptures together.

Finn reaches Diana on a video call and admits he never actually expected her to leave for the Galapagos alone.

Abuela hosts a farewell dinner for Diana on what everyone assumes will be her final night on the island.

Diana sketches portraits of locals at the market stalls and barters her artwork for food and supplies.

Gabriel breaks curfew to take Diana snorkeling after dark, and a moment of mutual attraction passes between them.

During a hike up a volcano, Beatriz lets go of a safety ladder and Diana grabs her before she falls.

Diana discovers that Beatriz has been hiding the postcards meant for Finn in her room rather than mailing them.

Diana progresses from the ICU to the Covid ward and then to a rehabilitation unit to relearn basic movement.

Diana begins online therapy sessions and builds a daily routine of cooking, watching television, and calling Rodney.

Rodney introduces Diana to his sister Rayanne, who suggests Diana may have glimpsed a genuine alternate reality.

Kitomi tells Diana on a walk that she is moving to Montana but has decided not to sell the painting.

Diana earns an art therapy degree, moves in with Rodney, saves enough money, and finally travels to the Galapagos.

Before the pandemic upends her plans, Diana is already navigating a high-stakes career moment when her most important client delays a major auction, and she packs for a trip believing a proposal is waiting at the other end. On the island, smaller but significant moments — sketching portraits to barter for food, a clandestine snorkeling trip with Gabriel, and a tense video call with Finn — reveal how Diana's new environment is quietly reshaping her priorities. The discovery that Beatriz has been hiding Diana's postcards instead of mailing them forces an emotional reckoning within the family that ultimately brings Beatriz and Gabriel closer. Back in New York after waking from her coma, Diana rebuilds herself piece by piece through therapy, daily routine, and a conversation with a stranger who believes her experience may have been more than a hallucination. A chance meeting with Kitomi in Central Park, followed by the news that the painting will never be sold, quietly closes the door on Diana's former career path. The epilogue finds Diana living a wholly reimagined life — new career, new home, new sense of purpose — as she finally sets foot on the island she once only dreamed of visiting.

The supporting moments that shaped Diana's transformation on and off the island.

As a young girl, Diana helps her father repaint a section of the Grand Central Station ceiling, leaving one small spot untouched.

Diana's father dies from a brain hemorrhage after falling off a ladder, and Finn is the doctor who delivers the news.

Beatriz confesses to Diana that she harms herself because it is the kind of pain that actually makes sense to her.

Diana reveals Beatriz's self-harm to Gabriel, prompting him and Abuela to enter Beatriz's room and confront the issue together.

Diana presents a private couples-only auction concept to Kitomi and secures the deal independently, impressing her boss Eva.

Gabriel confides to Diana that his father drowned trying to rescue a diver and that he has always blamed himself.

Gabriel invites Diana to his farm for her birthday and the two stay up camping together under the stars.

While searching Beatriz's room, Gabriel discovers a Polaroid photograph showing Beatriz and Ana Maria kissing.

Diana realizes where Beatriz has fled and she and Gabriel find her at the bottom of a lava tunnel.

A doctor explains to Diana that low oxygen levels and heavy sedation on the ventilator caused her vivid hallucinations.

Diana paints a detailed Galapagos scene on the back of her dresser, and the discovery deeply unsettles Finn.

Diana calls Eric Genovese, a man who also experienced a vivid alternate life during a coma and later lost his fiancée.

Diana breaks into her mother's apartment during a facility Covid outbreak and Hannah, lucid for once, fully recognizes her daughter.

Diana finds a photograph she once took as a toddler tucked as a bookmark in a book by Hannah's bedside.

At the tortoise breeding center on Isabela, Diana slips from a wall and someone grabs her, shouting 'Cuidado!'

Diana's story is rooted in a childhood memory of painting with her father, a moment that frames the novel's central idea about knowing where you started in order to understand how far you've come. Key turning points on the island include Beatriz's painful confession about self-harm, Gabriel's revelation of guilt over his father's drowning, and the discovery of a hidden photograph that exposes Beatriz's secret relationship with a girl she loves. Once back in the real world, Diana's grip on her former life loosens through a series of revelations: a clinical explanation for her hallucinations, a Galapagos painting on a dresser that rattles Finn, and a phone call with a stranger who lost everything after his own coma vision. The emotional climax arrives when Diana breaks into her mother's apartment during a Covid outbreak and finally receives the recognition and understanding from Hannah that she had always needed. The novel closes on a note of deliberate mystery as Diana, now standing on the island where her imagined life once began, hears a familiar warning cry and turns to see who is calling her name.

The decisions, confessions, and discoveries that drove Diana's inner transformation.