The Time In-Between

The morning fog slowly rolled through the front lawn outside my window like a blanket of vapor covering the grass. It provided a starch contrast to the heaviness I was feeling. Despite the fog, there was supposed to be a meteor shower tonight. The town was going to hold a festival for it, despite current circumstances, and everyone who was healthy would be in attendance. It was to honor those who have died, ironically.

For the past year, a disease has spread throughout the world; which isn’t unheard of in history. However, this pandemic was by far the strangest to ever occur. Epidemiologists and researchers alike have yet to figure out how it came to be. It couldn’t be traced to one country or another, with cases popping up worldwide around the same time frame. Many scientists even believed it was noncommunicable. Some people had it and some people didn’t, but there was no definite proof of spread in-between populations. It was like God decided to flip some switch and have three percent of the U.S. population die.

While I’d never been a man of faith, being a doctor and all, I was starting to feel like somethings just can’t be explained by science anymore.

Of course I wasn’t the only human to have his life altered. Hell, I’m one of the fortunate ones -- I was healthy. That’s why I decided to give myself and my knowledge to the cause.

A year later and with every step forward, we seem to take a step back. Guidelines and regulations are put into place just to be ignored. Media outlets blow up misinformation. Worst of all, it seemed that the people in charge were the worst offenders. Like this festival for example.

“A tribute to the brave men and women who have lost their lives, and to those who risk theirs in order for society to return to normal,” the mayor announced, unironically.

Yet, I couldn’t be mad at him. He, like many people, wanted life to return to some normalcy. Whatever atrocity he was committing for doing that, what I was doing was far worse.

I turned my attention from the window to the little black notebook in my hands. My partner said I was outdated for using a pen and paper to write down my work, but it was a habit from my mother. She wrote everything down on paper, stating anything of importance deserved to be written by hand. Now a quarter of my paychecks are used on buying Moleskins.

But the one in my hand was the most important thing I have written and will ever write. The dread I’ve felt these past few weeks are manifested into just 150 pages. On them are my notes from research, my hypothesis, and what I believe is a cure.

The craziest aspect of my situation was not that I managed to find a potentially viable solution to the problem, nor that I managed to get inspiration from a conspiracy site, but that I did it without the help of my partner.

“Good morning, Dr. Jackson!”

I nearly fell out of my seat. A year of working with her had not improved my conditioning to her surprise visits, nor her jumpscares. The notebook was now being cradled in her hands.

“Dr. Clarke,” I grumbled, “I was hoping that I could live long enough to see the end of this pandemic, but you seem to be making that quite impossible.”

She laughed out loud with my book pressed against her belly, and my heart did a flip - for multiple reasons.

“And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t read my writing.”

She frowned. Although, I wasn’t sure if her frowning was ever serious considering how adorable it looked.

“You know I would never read something of yours without your permission,” she said sincerely. “Even though I let you read all of my work.”

“Well, how about I make breakfast?”

We fell into a comfortable silence as I cooked and she skimmed through her laptop. I put the notebook in my bag, but I truly trusted that she wouldn’t read it. When we were assigned to work together, it took quite a while to develop some form of camaraderie. I wasn’t too keen on moving halfway across the country to work with someone I didn’t know. She was persistent, however, and it didn’t take long for us to find our stride.

Over the months we made a lot of progress, more than any other research groups have in the country. It helped that she was absolutely the most brilliant scientist I have ever worked with, but more than that, we worked well together. Her strengths mirrored my weakness and mine mirrored hers. And, quite frankly, we were both obsessive individuals.

Where we differ though was how transparent we were. She had her heart on her sleeve. She would text me at three in the morning just to tell me about some tidbit she found. There were no secrets on her end.

On the other end of the spectrum, I had dead test rats from failed trials in a shack across town.

I placed a plate of bacon and eggs in the center of my coffee table and sat across from her. Here, in my own house, across from the person I’ve spent almost every hour with for the past year with, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her… anything. At least anything that mattered.

“Are you okay, Ben?”

“Yes,” I lied through my teeth. “Actually, I got some good news. We won the VC award for that report we submitted last month.”

“And you’re just telling me now?”

“I wanted to surprise you with this,” I pulled out the check the winner receives.

Joy snatched the check out of my hand and adorned it with dilated brown eyes. She examined every inch of the tiny slip of paper like I was pulling some elaborate prank. Then, in a flash, she was spinning around in a fit of joy. Her mouth couldn’t even form words, only producing unintelligible but happy noises. $20,000 was a lot in retrospect, but if it had this kind of reaction, I would try to win a check every week.

“This is brilliant! We can buy more viales or test rats. And Jack, you can buy more notebooks!”

I laughed. “As much as I love notebooks and viales, I think I have a better idea.”

We walked from stall to stall trying every type of food each offered. No one was really adhering to the mask mandate nor was there any social distancing, to our chagrin. But everyone here seemed healthy, and Joy was smiling at everything, which made being grumpy impossible.

“I can’t believe we’ve blown $300 in just two hours.”

“It’s okay,” I said through biting my fried oreos. “This festival is in our honor after all.”

She snorted and then patted her chest in a regal way. “For those who risk their lives in order for us to eat fried food!”

We were both snickering like school children. Her imitation of the mayor wasn’t good at all, but we were also a few beers in, and everything was funny at the moment.

An hour later we all stood in a field on a hill, a perfect spot to watch the blue and purple streaks from the comets flowing overhead. I tried to keep my eyes on the sky, but I snuck a few glances over at Joy. Later, we all congregated towards a giant bonfire next to Mr. Brevin’s farm. I was a little worried about it being a fire hazard, but no one seemed to care. Country people, at times, were a different breed.

Joy and I stood at arms length away from the flames. It might be the alcohol, but I thought our shoulders were touching far too much to be coincidental.

After a while, we noticed people were throwing pieces of paper or wood into the fire. Joy, being drunkenly curious, asked around. Apparently it was a new tradition; you would write something about the past year that you would like to forget, and throw it into the flames to forget.

Somehow, we got some parchment from a random guy. It was a little funny in my mind, like we were about to burn the Declaration of Independence. I was going to tell Joy the joke, but she seemed very focused on her task. Peeking over, it looked like she was writing a whole list.

“Hey! No peeking!”

“I thought you shared everything?”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “This is personal.”

I wasn’t sure why that made me a little upset, but I couldn’t talk. The notebook was in my back pocket, and despite being slightly buzzed, I still haven’t mentioned it. I think I had figured out what was actually bothering me.

It wasn’t if the cure would work, but what I would do if it did work.

What would change? Obviously our work would be finished. People would be saved. We’d probably get famous. But what would happen to Joy and I?

It’s a question that’s been burning in my chest for the past hour. It was shameful to admit, and I could never tell her this, but these past few months of being crammed together in a cabin in the middle of Tennessee have been the least loneliest months of my life. Arguably, they’ve been the best months I’ve had a long time.

The more I thought of it, the more I realized how terrible of a person I was.

“Dr. Jackson, is this a date?”

“Wh-what?”

She looked me in the dead in the eyes. “You’ve been tense all night. I can tell when you’re hiding something from me. Is that what you’re worried about?”

Not quite I thought. Yet, my heart was hammering out of my chest from your words.

“I’ve just been worried about the future,” I said, not looking her in the eye. The notebook was burning a hole in my buttocks. “Do you think...we’ll still be close?”

Joy gasped quietly. “Why...what makes you say that?”

“I’m just saying,” I shrugged. “I mean a year ago, we were strangers from different parts of the country. I’m really...happy with the time we’ve had together, but it only matters if we find this cure. Once this is over, and we find it, will we still even be, like, friends?”

In hindsight, maybe I was more buzzed than I thought I was. There’s no way sober Jack would be saying anything like this. And if he did, he’d be much more eloquent.

Joy's eyes were wide and for a horrible second I thought she was going to cry. Instead, she dramatically tossed her piece of parchment into the bonfire. Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and put her lips near my ears. I tried not to barf.

“I don’t know what will happen in the future, and I don’t know if we’ll be this close to each other, everyday, ever again,” she whispered, “but you’re crazy if you think we’re just friends.”

She pulled back to look at my face, and I could see the wicked smirk on her face.

“In all seriousness, the time we’ve spent together does matter. We’re going to find that cure; whether it’s tomorrow or next year. But we should cherish this now, because...these months have been some of the happiest times I’ve had too.”

I swallowed. “Joy?”

“Yes?”

“I… let’s take tomorrow off, too.”

Her face looked surprised, and a little shell shocked, but soon she started laughing.

“If that’s your way of asking me on a real date, then I accept,” she said through giggles. “C’mon, I want more fried oreos.”

“Right behind you.”

As she turned, I tossed the parchment into fire - along with the notebook. I wanted more than just tomorrow.