directions to Emergency. Russ pointed them in the right direction before adding, “You know what I’ve been through.” Like Elliot, Russ’s wife had spent three weeks in quarantine, after one of her co-workers had fallen ill. Though Russ’s family remained healthy, Elliot imagined his partner had gone through his own mortal reckoning.
“Just keep your mask on,” he said.
“You’ve got to teach me some karate or whatever,” said Russ. His fidgety hands had gone slack, but his voice remained tight. “I need to be more Zen, like you.”
Elliot cracked a smile. “What is the colour of the wind?” His partner just shook his head, and Elliot noticed the dark circles below his eyes. “Hey, man.” He clapped his partner on the shoulder and waited until Russ met his gaze. “We’ll be fine.”
Elliot went inside and followed the signs for the Infectious Diseases Division. He asked a nurse where the labs were and she directed him up to the fourth floor. He spotted Keisha as soon as he emerged from the stairwell. White coat, black hair, narrow hip swish, slight bounce on the toes. It was harder to recognize people in face masks, but being tall, she’d always had a very particular stride. She was headed to a set of doors at the opposite end of the hall.
“Keisha,” he called out.
The woman who stopped to look at him was dignified, preoccupied, in a hurry. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” he said. “Elliot Howe. From college.” He took off his hat because he knew it could be hard for people to see past the uniform. “It’s good to see you,” he added, in case she was on the fence. From what he could see, she’d aged better than he had, in that she hadn’t aged at all. Shorter braids, still pretty, no makeup. “It’s been a while.”
“What are you doing here?” Her tone was, if not angry, then at least annoyed. She carried a slim metal briefcase under her arm.
“Keeping the journalists at bay,” he said. “Though I wondered if you wanted to come downstairs and make a statement. It might be enough to make them leave.”
She shook her head. “If they don’t let me get on with my work, there won’t be anything new to report.”
It was clear she took no pleasure in her recent elevation to the status of media personality. She was as sensible as he had always known her to be, and he was glad she had achieved her goal of becoming a doctor and that there was a consistency to who people were over time. It reassured him to know that he hadn’t been wrong to let her go back then, maybe only wrong to have gotten involved with someone as Type A as her in the first place.
“So you did it,” he said, nodding at the name tag on her lab coat. “You’re a doctor.” Through her clear nitrile glove, he noticed a wedding band on her finger. “And married.”
She nodded. “Nine years, no kids. He’s a doctor, too. And you’re going bald.”
“Just a little.” He put his hat back on. He could feel his back sweating. “Your patients are lucky to have you looking after them,” he said. There was something wonderful and strange about speaking with her. He almost felt like he was twenty years old again, or that he had never stopped being twenty years old.
“Oh, I’m not involved with the patients,” said Keisha, ignoring the gallantry. “I’m here for research.”
“The cutting edge,” he said. “That’s awesome.”
Her brow furrowed as though she was trying to figure out if he was joking. “Well, I’m looking at rates of resistance and survival in the patients here.”
He spread out his hands. “I actually came up because I saw you on television. I wanted to apologize for being a jerk back then. What was it, nineteen years ago? You didn’t deserve that.”
“You’re not sick, I hope?” Keisha sounded mollified.
“Not yet,” he said. She raised an eyebrow but he didn’t elaborate. “Just on a shift outside, like I said.”
“Well, if you were sick, this is the best hospital.”
“Good to know.” Elliot felt the conversation coming to a natural close as Keisha glanced back to the laboratory doors behind her. “So, listen, I’m sorry again. I’ve been feeling bad about what happened.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I haven’t spent the past nineteen years being upset with you. I got over it.” She looked puzzled for a second, and Elliot remembered that expression from when he broke up with her—just before tears began filming her