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He had been worrying about this particular upcoming conference for a week already. Seven straight days of mounting dread and anxiety that had crept into almost every aspect of his life. It was immensely frustrating. Stress did not make him rise to the occasion. It did not help him think any clearer, and it did not prompt him to plan ahead or prepare well for whatever was stressing him out. It was just a distraction.
He knew lots of people in the academia world who seemed to thrive off of stress, or almost require it to function well—“Oh yeah, no problem, I’ll just pull some all-nighters and crank that out a few days before the deadline.” Crazy. He wasn’t a stranger to the feeling of throwing yourself at something with such fervor that you were going days without any sleep, but he couldn’t perform like that if he was so close to a scary deadline, or a talk, or an event. All his mind yelled at him then was “Hey! Guess what! This is going to be bad! Freak out!”
Usually it had a terrible feedback effect, too, where the stress would cause him to forget simple things, or make simple mistakes, which intensified the catastrophizing. He’d learned to deal with this pretty effectively over the years, though. Mostly by deliberately not running up too close against deadlines. Then he could have allotted freak-out time without it substantially impacting his work. The day before he had to give his final thesis defense he stood in his little apartment and dry-heaved over the sink from nerves, but the important part was that he had time to be doing that.
This conference was going to be a big one. The largest yearly molecular biology conference in the country, in fact. And he would be speaking at it on the final day. And he would be showing off his research on non-water solvents for life that he’d been working on for the past two years. He’s a little impressed that he’s only been really feeling the panic for a week beforehand. He would’ve thought three weeks minimum, all things considered.
Still, that week had been killer. His sleep schedule had gotten all screwy, his eating habits had completely decayed, and he’d spent most days in a general fog of unhappiness. It wasn’t the first time, though, and it wouldn’t be the last.
One time, several years ago now, he remembered having a conversation with his doctoral advisor. She looked him in the eyes and said “You will want to quit. You’ll want to quit a year in, two years in, three years in. Do not do that. Just keep going forward. Once you’re out on the other side with a PhD, it’ll all be so much easier.”
Now solidly out on the other side of it, he can confidently say: it’s not!
The research freedom is all that he could’ve ever hoped and dreamed for, he loved it more than anything, but everything else? All this? Less than paradise.
He bounced his leg and waited for the Uber guy to show up and take him to the airport.
The first two days of the convention passed in a blur of stress punctuated by genuine excitement over what other researchers were getting up to. Lots of presentations. Lots of general networking, shaking hands, chit-chatting. Lots of worrying about his own upcoming Sunday morning talk. Especially because, oh boy, he was learning by watching other talks that this crowd was a fan of asking very pointed questions.
This was all he could think about, in fact, when he was finally standing up there to speak. He almost considered just feigning illness and cancelling the thing, but he didn’t. Might as well rip the bandaid off when you’ve already been worried sick for a week straight about the pain of ripping the bandaid off, or something. He’d already been forced to experience the worst of it.
His hands were shaking very badly. He just hoped it didn’t show in his voice, too. It probably did, but whatever.
Mercifully, once he got into the swing of it, passion helped to replace anxiety. His thumping heartbeat faded substantially. He really could talk about his work for days, if someone were to let him.
Ideally just one person, though. Not a room full of about two hundred people.
Either way, though, he was genuinely excited to get into it, and he thought he did well enough. Serviceable. It wasn’t a total disaster.
The Q&A portion was a true nerve-wracking lowlight. Discussions of many of the alternative compounds for life received, uh, substantial pushback whenever he went over one of them at the request of an audience member.
Liquid ammonia! phenomenal dipole, and even functions well as a reactant for a broader range of compounds than water has access to.
“Ammonia is highly susceptible to degradation by light. Already-existing life is even required to regenerate most of it. I’m no astrobiologist, Dr. Grace, but would you not expect to almost never find it in high enough quantities–?”
Okay, sulfuric acid: common, easy to form in an environment lacking water. Polymers can theoretically form in it, and would stay stable.
“Extremely reactive, you’re destroying the function of even basic carbonyl groups, the window for complex biological reactions would be much smaller—”
Hydrogen fluoride?
“Just ridiculous, you’d have to have a planet with no silica and no metal and no oxygen present at all—”
“The temperatures where you’d have that be a liquid would create unfathomably slow reactions—”
“It’s not even able to form chemical branches with itself—”
Alright, alright, maybe not hydrogen fluoride. At one point he gave up trying to give an in-depth explanation of how biological processes might come to function under different solvents and just said “Come on, guys, work with me here. Use your imagination a little.” The crowd did not like this one, judging by their complete silence.
...Which he thinks is a little unfair, because there really are so many possibilities for biological chemical reactions to occur outside of the parameters we happen to live in that it would be impossible to even fathom them all.
Eventually it ended, and he went off with his tail between his legs to mingle and stand around and get asked more questions for the next several hours.
He got snappy as the day went on, sometimes with people that honestly didn’t quite deserve that. But in his defense, he’d been fielding questions and conversations since 10 AM, and he hadn’t had a real, solid meal all day. Some of them deserved the snappiness, though. He had one biochemist tell him that he thought the research “lacked polish and depth.” Ouch. He didn’t even seem to have a question, he just wanted to get that one in.
The conference ended at 4, officially, but most people stuck around afterwards for unscheduled socializing over dinner or drinks. A few people asked if he’d be around. He would be, at least briefly. But he was also really starting to feel the effects of everything catching up to him, so for how long he’d be around, he wasn’t sure.
By the time people started trickling out of the conference halls a little earlier than the end time, he’d decided to just head back to his hotel room for a breather.
He didn’t feel terrible, but certainly felt woozy and sore. And a little like he could sleep for a year straight. An adrenaline crash would do that to you. But he knew that he probably should at least show his face, briefly, at whatever after-conference gathering people had going on. And get some substantial food.
So he pulled the hotel room blackout curtains shut and set a timer for thirty minutes. A nap, and then he’d rally. It did not take him long at all to fall asleep once he laid down, and it was a completely dark, dreamless, dead asleep nap.
…And he had no clue what time it was when he woke up.
He remembered hitting snooze twice on his alarm, at least, before he might’ve just turned it off entirely. He wasn’t sure. It felt like he could’ve been out for over an hour.
He sat up, drowsy and disoriented. Due to the blackout curtains he wasn’t sure just how dark it actually was outside, so he couldn’t quickly gauge the passage of time. He leaned over and tapped his phone to see the time. The screen was extremely blurry, and the numbers were just a smear across his vision. He could only make it out by really squinting.
11:26 PM. He was out for six straight hours.
So much for showing his face, then.
He felt absolutely awful, which he assumed was the reason he didn’t simply keep sleeping all the way through the night.
He had laid down for this “little nap” in his semi-nice dress undershirt, and he was now sweating through it. He could feel big patches of sweat that had collected around his collar, back, and chest. His entire body felt sticky and damp. A shiver went through his whole body.
No, come on. No, no no.
He’s always been an absolute magnet for convention germs. He had a fine immune system otherwise, but almost without fail he managed to catch something from the handful of events like this he’d attended before. Usually it’s just a sore throat with some light congestion. This didn’t seem so merciful.
He put the back of his hand on his forehead. Then he put it on his neck. He couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure he was running a temperature.
He considered heading down to the lobby to fork over $30 for a tiny pack of cold and flu medicine and maybe one of those strip thermometers, or something, but at almost midnight he doubted it would be open. All he had on him was ibuprofen. Which he took, because he had a developing headache, too.
And oh, goodness, he had to catch a plane tomorrow morning. Very early morning, 6 AM takeoff, because those slots were usually the cheapest.
His only strategy, really, was to get himself back to sleep and hope that he just didn’t feel like this tomorrow.
When his alarm went off he knew he wouldn’t be getting out of this one. It was a level of tiredness he didn’t know was possible. He hit snooze once because he could hardly even get his eyes open, then got worried he would end up actually missing his flight if he let himself keep doing that again.
Maybe I should just miss my flight and get one later, he thought, and then came to his senses, because he didn’t actually have the money to be doing that. He forced himself up out of bed. By some miracle he made it to the airport on time. It was cut a little closer to takeoff than he would usually be comfortable with, but he made it there.
His entire body hurt so, so bad, deep down into the muscle and bone. It was so much effort to just stand and walk, which made getting checked-in and to his gate across the airport a nightmare. He had stopped in the central cafeteria and downed a single-use mini packet of “Extra Strength” acetaminophen with half a cup of black coffee earlier to try and take the edge off the pain, and while he was pretty sure it did lower his fever some, this move also had the lovely side effect of souring his stomach. He ditched the coffee and switched to plain water.
He didn’t have to wait too long to board, at least, due to the aforementioned cutting it too close. He got an aisle seat. It’s what he always goes for when they’re available. He’s honestly fine with being in a plane so long as he isn’t visually reminded just how high up he is. He likes to be towards the center, away from any windows. Plus, he’s not a small guy. It is very awkward to have to push past people in those tiny seats to get up for the bathroom.
The cabin was cold. Very cold. Sterile doctor’s office type of cold.
He did not have a jacket with him. He had one of his nice blazers on, he had taken it out of his bag at the airport as the only solution against the fever chills, but he hadn’t brought anything else to the conference in the way of layers. It was New York in August. And he was going home to San Francisco in August.
And the guy in front of him had fiddled with the settings of the little overhead A/C unit and started absolutely blasting it at himself. Grace tugged the edges of the blazer closer together to create some kind of a shield against the frigid air in the cabin, but it doesn’t really do anything. He was shivering so bad already that he was worried his teeth were going to start chattering.
Six miserable hours like this, he thought. Six.
Takeoff was uncomfortable. The rattling of the cabin intensified an already-present headache, and the twenty minutes of ascending at an angle before the plane finally leveled off made his head spin a little. If he wasn’t already a little nauseous beforehand, he certainly was now.
At cruising altitude, he just tried to shut his eyes and sleep through as much of the flight home as he could. He eventually drifted off to some half-asleep state, but he was incapable of actually staying asleep. He was too uncomfortable. The lights, the cold, the ambient noises, the constant low-level movement of the plane, everything.
“Come on,” he thought. “I accidentally sleep for six hours yesterday but can’t stay out for more than ten minutes now?”
He moved to distract himself instead with reading a paper on his phone that had been brought up at the convention but which he hadn’t had time to look at yet, except he couldn’t concentrate at all. He’d get through four sentences before catching that he wasn’t remembering a single word of what he was reading, and would have to double back to read it again, slowly, still struggling to hang onto what was being said. He was stupid tired. He just had to accept that he was stupid tired. He put his phone away.
The creeping nausea from around the time of takeoff still hadn’t left him. It was miserable. He tried his luck with ginger ale, when the flight attendants came around. It was great, actually—he was extremely thirsty—but it didn’t do much beyond that.
It did so little to help with the queasiness that only a few minutes later, really, he was already starting to hit the bargaining stage with his own body.
Why me? Come on.
He was pretty sure he was dangerously close to needing to find a place to be sick. He waited a little longer. It got worse.
Don’t do this. Actually don’t do this. Anywhere but here and now.
No dice. He undid his seatbelt frantically and headed directly for the bathroom at the back of the plane. It was, bless everything, unoccupied. He slammed the door shut and doubled over the extremely—extremely—tiny sink. He puked immediately. There wasn’t a lot for his body to get up, but it got it all up nonetheless.
Tears beaded up at the corner of his eyes afterwards, purely from the primal deep-down misery of being this sick and exhausted and still so far from his own home. He wiped them away and went to get a paper towel and rinse his mouth out. When he did, he caught his own reflection in the mirror. He looked absolutely horrendous. He’d never seen himself this pale.
He shakily walked back to his seat and slumped down into it as far as he could go with the extreme lack of legroom. He felt his forehead again. Though it was hard to gauge his real temperature with his own clammy hand, the verdict was “still very hot. Probably hotter than earlier.”
Every hour and a half, two-ish hours, he repeated this cycle. Try to sleep, fail, sit there shivering with an increasing fever, try to keep some water in him, get up, puke out the water. Which he thinks has gotta be a circle in Hell.
The kind flight attendants must have noticed that he wasn’t doing too hot, because they had pulled him aside to ask if he needed anything. Turns out they kept most over-the-counter meds stocked. He very gratefully accepted a new dose of pain meds and fever reducers, and apologized for the trouble. It didn’t work magic of any kind, but it at least made him marginally less miserable for the rest of the flight.
He was so spent by the time they landed that when he thought about the fact that he was now only a few minutes’ drive away from his apartment, he nearly teared up again. Basically as soon as they touched down he was ordering a ride home from his phone. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Unlike the Uber guy that took him to the airport three days ago, who was dead silent the entire time, this Uber guy was extremely chatty. He introduced himself as Frankie, and kept doing that too-confident career driver thing of putting his arm on the armrest and turning all the way back to face Grace to say something. It was a little nice to have a distraction in the way of conversation, but Grace knew he probably wasn’t making that great of a conversationalist back right now.
His driver asked him where he was coming from.
“Oh, New York. Had a conference there.”
“A conference, huh? For what?”
“Molecular biology. I do theory on non-water solvents for life.”
He chuckled back and said “What? You’ll have to explain that one.”
He would’ve given a well-rehearsed, coherent overview of his work and interests, but what came out was the product of fighting through absolutely absurd brain fog. Lots of “Uhms” and “Uhs,” trailing off, and waving his hand around to try and remember a word.
“Sorry,” Grace eventually said. “Usually I’d be better at this. I’m very tired.”
Frankie, an apparently considerate man, took the conversational pressure off. “Ah, no worries. I wouldn’t understand it anyway even if you explained it perfectly. Science was never my strong subject. You know, I used to be a substitute teacher. English and History were my preferred subbing jobs—thank God I didn’t actually have to know how to explain biology or chemistry to kids for that gig…”
Grace appreciated it.
When he made it up to his little apartment, the very first thing he did was toss on one of his thick, knitted cardigans. The second thing he did was flop into his bed. The third thing he did was text his friend from grad school that he was back in town safely, and that they would probably have to be cancelling their regular Thursday meet-up.
I picked up something really nasty. I’m worried it’s actually the flu. It sucks so bad. Don’t want to give it to you.
She texted back almost immediately. Noo!! That’s awful! I can drop off supplies to you. I literally have half a pack of Gatorade just sitting by my fridge.
He let her know he would really, really appreciate that one. And then she asked the question he’d been dreading answering.
“How’d the talk go?”
He didn’t reply.