Dear Tess,

  I know I waited too long, and I know you hate waiting and I’m sorry. I sat down to write a hundred times, but what the hell am I supposed to say? Even this feels so cogging contrived, like I’m writing for some future reader and not for you. I guess I am, because you’ll never see this.

  If I’m being totally honest (and I might as well, because you could always see straight through me) I would not have written at all except Pitney won’t shut up about it. He’s convinced it will help me “process my grief.” You never got to meet Pitney, but you’d like him. He’s the nurse at my new clinic, and he’s pretty good at it despite being a giant whose calling in life should have been hauling train cars single-handedly through the sand or something. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw him stitch up a cut. How those enormous fingers can do work that delicate with that much precision, I’ll never know.

  See, you do like him, don’t you? I knew you would. Idiotic to talk to you like that and we both know it. Anyway he’s wrong about this silly exercise but at least now I can tell him I did it and maybe he’ll leave me be for a while. (Pitney, if you are reading this, mind your own business, I’m talking to my wife.)

  He asked how we ended up in Haven station and I just laughed and asked how anyone ends up in a remote, pallridden outpost on the edge of the world.

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  He said, “Usually by pissing off a keeper or something,” which is, in spirit at least, how we did end up here.

  I haven’t told him about the research, and I don’t plan to. I haven’t picked it up myself since you left. I can’t do it, Tess. I said I would because you made me promise while you were literally in the act of dying, and no offense, darling, but fuck you for that. I am a doctor, not a researcher. You were the one with the mind for that. We made a good team but trying to carry on our work without you would be like trying to ride a donkey whose legs have been removed on one side. Ridiculous and not very useful. Also uncomfortable for the donkey.

  You probably thought it would give me something to occupy my mind so I wouldn’t drown in thoughts of you. You have once again underestimated how much of my mind you possess. You simply cannot be extracted my love.

  The Pall must have fiddled with your brain if you thought I could read a single word of your work, written in your handwriting, and think of anything else but you. I know what you’re thinking: I’m being selfish. It’s not about me, I have to think of others and so on, but Tess I simply do not have the capacity for that. Maybe someday I will. For now, I shall wallow, and since you are not here, you cannot stop me. That’s all I have in me for now.

  Wherever you are, if you are anywhere, I hope they have whiskey because I need a drink and I’m betting you would too if you had to read this foolishness.

  Nothing I’m saying makes sense. I guess that’s okay though, right? You always know what I mean.

  With all my love (and fuck you for dying)

  Samar