Ten minutes remained before the video chat with her friends, but Hannah busied herself setting up her ring light, arranging the laptop on a stack of books to present a better angle, and fiddling with items in the background, all adjustments she’d perfected during the many virtual visits she’d had with her patients. A clench of anticipation in her gut joined the percussive elf’s gentle thrashings; a lot was going on in there right now.

She couldn’t wait to speak to her friends. She knew better than to gush about her happiness; when she thought of what Compton must be feeling, with the loss of her husband, and Georgia and Kira, whose fiancé and friend, respectively, were deathly ill in other countries—a bit of her own joy shriveled. It gutted Hannah not to be able to go to her friends and console them. She’d been raised with a belief in southern comfort—the nonalcoholic kind—in which you showed up in person and took care of the bereaved person’s needs. You cleaned their house, you cared for their children, you loved on them. You anticipated the things they’d be unable to do and you did them. And above all, you fed them. By force, if necessary, so no one pined away from a lack of nourishment.

The appointed hour arrived. By now, everyone in the country held a deep animosity toward the idea of videoconferencing. At first, most people had made an effort to look presentable—they might not be donning full-on business attire, but they wore tidy clothes and makeup and whatnot. Now, though, standards had relaxed. People were apt to sign in for these things resembling Kim Jong Un on a bad hair day, half of them probably naked from the waist down.

This videoconference was different, at least in anticipatory terms, if not in hygiene. Hannah had organized a weekly session months ago, which had endured through all the Zoom fatigue. It turned out to be a wonderful thing, sustaining them through all the upheaval. Why hadn’t they done this in the pre-ART days?

The computer’s speakers issued happy bloopy noises as, one by one, the women signed on. Bloop! Zadie appeared, her genial face lighting up as she caught sight of Hannah. Bloop! Georgia: wearing a pair of giant orange-framed glasses almost the exact shade of her hair, lying on her back on a stack of bright decorative pillows with the camera held above her. Bloop! Emma: a little too far away from the screen, her Nordic-blond hair swept back in a tight ponytail. Bloop! Vani: waving vigorously before turning to holler at someone off-screen.