I hope I get to see them all again. I don’t pray because religion is a nonsense I’ve never had much time for and the Plague hasn’t inspired a newfound devotion. If it is some bastard up there who’s done all this then I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of praying. Wanker.
Right, I’m tired. Even writing’s tiring now. I’m going to go to sleep. Frances, you’ve heard it a hundred times before now but I can’t say it too many times. I love you more than you can imagine. I miss you. I hope I’ll see you again and even if I don’t, please know you made me the happiest man in the world.
Oh, and if you get my body back and have a funeral, make sure to enjoy a good steak in my memory. Medium-rare with béarnaise sauce. And chips.
LISA
Toronto, Canada
Day 245
Home, finally. It’s midnight, again. For the first time in years, it makes no difference to me that the long days of July are here. I never see them. I get up in the dusk, and I return in the dark. Margot, sweet wonderful Margot, has left a glass of red wine and a note in her beautiful, calligraphic handwriting on the kitchen counter.
You can do it, keep going. But first, sleep.
M x
（And some wine, just in case it was one of those days.）
No one thought we would stay together. It was the talk of the academic staff across campus. Have you heard Lisa Michael and Margot Bird are together? Yes, the science dragon lady and the beautiful history professor are a couple. Opposites attract, chalk and cheese, send your clichés here. My students were less surprised. I’m tough to please but fair. If you want an easy A, get out of here, quite literally. But good students tend to be my most loyal defenders. Margot is universally loved, of course. Her classes are so popular you have to sign up online the second they open, as if she’s a rock star selling out a stadium tour.
I leave the wine—my brain has enough to be thinking about in the morning, it doesn’t need to be foggy—and fall into bed. I cuddle into Margot’s back and feel my shoulders unwind at the warmth and comforting smell of her.
“Hello,” she says, a lot less sleepily than I had expected.
“Hello,” I reply, dropping a quick kiss on her forehead.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says. One of our many, many differences is her brain’s ability to do its best thinking at night. I avoid the lure of sleep and manage to make a questioning noise in reply.
“What are you going to do when you invent the vaccine?” I smile, widely and instantly. Her confidence in me is boundless. It’s glorious.
She sits up, long auburn hair casting a faint shadow across the bed. “No, seriously. Do you just give it to the world and then that’s it?”
“I wouldn’t ‘give’ it to anyone. I haven’t worked this hard to just let it go.” My head is starting to pound from thinking this far ahead. I have just about enough bandwidth to do my job week to week; there’s no room for anything else. “I haven’t thought about it properly.”
“Of course you have.” Margot’s tone is resolute.
“Yes, but only the discovery bit. I haven’t gone beyond the congratulations and inevitable Nobel Prize. If they’re still giving those out anyway. I don’t have a plan.”
Margot turns the bedside light on and I shrink from the glare. “Well, you need one. Listen to me, Lisa. You have to be careful, okay? Once you invent the vaccine, it will spiral out of control. So many inventors across history haven’t reaped the rewards or the credit of their work. This will be your life’s work, it is what you must be remembered for.”
She’s looking at me intently. I love her so much and I am too tired to think about this right now but there’s a kernel of truth in what she’s saying that sits uncomfortably. What does happen after? I couldn’t bear to become a footnote; the rage would kill me. Canadian scientists invented a vaccine. No, I am going to invent a vaccine, not a nameless, faceless group identified by their nationality.