Prognosis? ... Grim

London, England - 18th December 1347

Her skin is feverish—hot to the touch—and she has great purple pustules all over her body, most noticeably near her breasts and groin.

My wife, Adelaide. She lay in bed, desperately fighting for her life, and there is nothing any of us in the household can do about it.

“It hurts,” she mumbles, as I press a cloth soaked in cool water to her forehead.

The cloth warms from her skin as though I’d had it over a hearth. I glance at her grandmother, who sits sullenly in the corner, knitting socks and undergarments from a ball of sheep’s wool. A wintry chill blows through the house, whistling through cracks in the mortared wall, stirring stalks of straw and scattering sawdust from my carpentry. The room smells sick—of urine and feces and rot, the stench of imminent death.

I hear footsteps on the doorstep and immediately leap to my feet to get the door, but my mother-in-law beats me to it. The plague doctor. We’ve been expecting him.

He enters the room like a phantom, his birdlike mask prominent amongst his features, made from black leather stitched together with black sinew, its eyes fathomless pits, like looking into a reflection of hell.

“Please save her,” I say hollowly, shuffling sideways to make room for the doctor to approach her bedside.

He moves slowly forward, bowing over her bed and inspecting her closely, prodding her flesh with leather-gloved fingers. He takes his time examining her, lancing one of the many purple boils and watching the pus and blood ooze from her flesh. Finally, he finishes his exam and erects himself.

“I’m afraid she’s too far gone,” the plague doctor says, turning to face me. “She is beyond saving.”

This news is not welcome. Not at all what I want to hear.

“But there must be something you can do!” I wail.

“Save draining the boils and administering willow bark to stave off fever, it will only ease her suffering. She will surely die.”

No. Not this. Not anything but this.

I look back at the doctor, tears filling my eyes. “But we called you to save her. You’ve saved so many others!”

“Yes,” the doctor agrees grimly. “Others whose progress in the disease was not so pronounced.”

I glance at Adelaide’s mother, who merely drops her chin to her chest in reserved sorrow. The doctor collects his instruments coolly and quietly, not remarking further on the state of affairs. My eyes follow him the entire time, while my brain struggles to process his prognosis; Adelaide—my beloved new wife of scarcely a year—will succumb to the Black Death.

Finally, he buttons his medical bag and says, “I suggest you get a cat if you want to prevent further infection.”

The good doctor turns on his heel, his black leather cloak breezing about his ankles as he heads toward the exit. I watch him leave, my heart sinking with his every step.

And though the door shuts with only a soft ‘click,’ it is to my heart like it slams closed, forever separating my life into time before Adelaide and after.