“Certainly,” he says. “I realize the pandemic was difficult for you on a personal level as well as a professional one. The, ah, situation with your children . . .”

I wait, but there is no more. He must not know—or at least he must not know for sure—the details of what I did.

By some miracle, an account of my behavior at the tail end of the pandemic, known to only a handful of people, had not filtered through the medical community in Atlanta and out to the general public. Still, for ethical reasons, I’d disclosed my action to a few people at the hospital and at the CDC, hoping some greater good would come of my transgression. To my relief, the story of what happened behind the scenes never blew up. Or, to employ a bit of irony: it never went viral.

But if this man suspects what I did, how long before some legitimate news reporter catches wind of it? The thought sends an antsy ripple crawling up my spine. Somehow, somewhere along the line, Mr. Smert must have managed to connect with someone who knows the truth.

I recall those days in fragments, long, unbroken streams of timeless waiting, my mind suspending itself in a protective haze where thoughts dissolved into nothingness before they could fully form. The blurred metallic edges of a hospital bed; the plinky little drip of IVs; slats of light cutting through parallel rows of blinds and falling in stripes across my forearms; exhaustion giving way to confusion. Sometimes this nightmarish haze sharpens into shards of distinct terror and I remember that final moment.

It haunts me still.

“I’m not interested in being on TV,” I say to Smert as my friends wade through the mob to reach my side. Up close, Vani, Hannah, and Compton present dramatically different approaches to evening makeup, Vani’s glossy lips and curled eyelashes and vivid yellow—yellow?—eyeshadow contrasting with Hannah’s unadorned eyes and the slash of crimson outlining Compton’s smirky half smile.

Smert switches tactics, pivoting to my friends. “Are you ladies coworkers of Dr. Marchand?”

Only Hannah smiles back at him. “We’re old medical school friends,” she says before anyone can stop her. “I’m Hannah—I’m an ob-gyn in San Diego. Vani practices internal medicine in Kentucky, and Compton’s an ER doc—she was in New York City during the pandemic.”

Perking up at the words ER and New York City, Smert swings his attention toward Compton, but upon encountering her total absence of expression, he swings right back to me. During our med school years, if we needed to deflate some horny clown in a bar—metaphorically or literally—we deployed Compton, who even then possessed a brittle, ball-busting sophistication. I know her well enough to state that a warm core of generosity lurks within her, but you have to excavate a layer of straight-up ferocity to reach it. We love her for it.