“For you guys, though, I am reserving the non-boring aspects of my profession. Battling infectious diseases is a bad-ass job. Look at the militaristic language we employ against the enemy: Big-gun antibiotics. Magic-bullet therapy. A shotgun approach. With this last mechanism, I have to admit, the onslaught of friendly fire often takes out our more beneficial bugs too, but . . . desperate times call for desperate measures. Right?”

I get some nods but also some bewilderment: no one is sure where I’m going with this.

“Desperate measures,” I repeat. “It sounds like the name of a bad thriller, doesn’t it? I picture some steroid-bloated blockhead with an ammo belt slung over one shoulder, the bullets in his bandolier lined up like a row of gold-and-black dinosaur teeth. He prevails against ridiculous odds, surviving twelve-story falls through plate-glass windows and all manner of high-speed automobile crashes, all while dodging a hail of gunfire from lesser dudes. If a woman is involved in this nonsense, she’s always slim and underdressed and has apparently undergone a personality resection.”

More laughter. The people in the corners are filtering toward the center, replacing their phones in their bags and their pockets, directing their attention toward me. I can see the absorption on their faces; this is not what they’d expected.

A rustle in the back of the room catches my eye. Someone—a man—edges his way through the crowd, nodding in apology to the people he displaces. He reaches the front and offers me a broad wink.

Wally.

Instantly, I’m sucked into a slipstream of time. It’s been eighteen months since the death of the first human being known to be infected with ART; it’s been ten months since my own children contracted the virus; and it has been nine months since the release of the vaccines that ultimately brought the pandemic under control. In the time since the fateful moment when I asked Wally to go to the office, retrieve a package from the freezer, and bring it to me at the hospital, I’ve seen very little of him.

He never blamed me for what I did, even though administering a drug still in its trial phase constitutes a grievous breach of the ethics of our profession. Afterward, I reported my action to the CDC so he wouldn’t have to do it. I didn’t wait for them to investigate me. Instead, I offered my resignation, which they accepted.

In the months that followed, Wally did attempt to stay in touch, calling and texting and emailing when he could. He stayed busy at work, often working one-hundred-hour weeks, but despite his insane hours and my self-imposed seclusion, he never stopped offering to visit.