things are happening all around us.”
“You’ve read them?”
He hadn’t really, only skimmed parts, but the professor sounded so pleased that Elliot nodded.
Keelan used the bathroom while Elliot pulled out the couch and made it up with a clean set of sheets. As soon as it was ready, the older man sank down onto it fully clothed and pulled the covers up to his chin.
“Goodnight, Professor.” Elliot turned out the overhead light and began tugging down the blinds.
Keelan rolled over onto his side. “Do you think they miss us?”
Elliot thought it an odd question. The wrong question. After all, Julia and Dory had chosen to sideline them. Or maybe he and Keelan had not made enough of an effort to remain in their lives. Perhaps they were all at fault. But the professor seemed to be waiting for his answer.
“Probably,” said Elliot. But all he could think was, Why should they?
* * *
In the morning, Elliot came to with tensed muscles and an unsettling awareness of someone moving about in his apartment. He jolted awake and threw off the sheets.
“Professor Gibbs?” he said, switching on the light. The older man was stumbling around the room, grappling at every piece of furniture in his path. “Keelan?”
The professor’s eyes were confused and feverish. “Do I know you? What is this place?”
“It’s my apartment. I’m Elliot. You know my parents.” This was met with only a blink. “Frank Bailey and Gretchen Howe, from the department. From Lansdowne.”
The professor opened and closed his mouth, then screwed up his face and shook his head. “My mind has been very strange this trip, very scattered. The city…”
Elliot backed away as Keelan began babbling, realizing with a sinking horror that neither of them had been wearing personal protective equipment the night before. Elliot usually relied on a stash he kept in a gym bag in his car. Now he rummaged in the closet until he found the last package of Shillelagh Precaution Kits Sarah had given him. He put on a set, cursing himself for not doing it as soon as the man arrived. It had been so long since anyone had visited him at home that Elliot had forgotten the very basics of the new normal.
Keelan was now wide-eyed, panicking. He jerked his head from the floor to the ceiling and back again, and from corner to corner of the room, as if looking for a problem, the source of his concern.
“What’s happening to me?” he said, in a faint, pleading voice. The older man’s vulnerability was almost more jarring than his dishevelled appearance. Keelan was famous at the university for the fastidiousness of his three-piece suits and his immaculate beard. Now his dress shirt, half-unbuttoned, was streaked dark with sweat, and his frown lines were deep and pronounced, like fissures in the earth. His light blue eyes were glazed and uncomprehending.
Elliot knew there was no point in calling the health line or waiting for a screening unit. There were a few early ARAMIS symptoms that were becoming well-known via the media: paleness, excessive sweating, disorientation, glassy eyes. Keelan seemed to be exhibiting all of them as he gripped the kitchen counter.
Elliot eased him into a chair and gently put a face mask on him. But the flimsy nitrile gloves would not go on. Though weakened, Keelan was still an outsize figure: tall, with a core built like a marble plinth designed to hold his colossal chest and head. His hands were huge. Though the gloves would probably stretch to fit, the task required delicate manipulation, and Keelan was mumbling and swiping the air in front of him with his fingers as if to brush something away from the sides of his face. Elliot dug around at the bottom of his dresser until he found a gift Sarah had picked up for him: gigantic hand-sewn mittens she’d purchased directly from an artisan but which were far too large and ostentatious for him to ever wear. He eased the sealskin mitts onto the professor’s hands like flippers.
“We have to take you to the hospital,” said Elliot. He shouldered his knapsack and extracted a set of car keys from the pocket of Keelan’s camel coat. Though the professor was still sweating, Elliot knew the fever would progress to chills soon enough, so he wrangled him into the coat even though it meant starting over with the mitts. Keelan moaned in protest but could do nothing to stop him.
Somehow they got downstairs, with Elliot holding Keelan’s arm over his shoulders