I can’t sleep. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to write in the middle of the night, but there’s almost enough light coming in through the window, from the lights out in the yard. I can pretty much see, though it won’t surprise me if I find mistakes in this later.

It’s unsettling to be sleeping alone in my room again. I’d gotten used to Regan’s breathing at night. It was almost comforting.

With only a few hours to go before I have to report to Nurse Gunderson for a multiple dose, I’m wracked with fear. Last time I got multiple does it was a triple shot, and I can’t help but think that triple is going to look like a walk in the park compared to what she’ll shoot me up with in the morning. I had hallucinations last time, I barely wrote at all that week, I was so stricken with sickness. My stomach rolled over and over on itself, flip-flopping bile up through my guts. My head ached, I felt disconnected from everything, even basic reality. I don’t know if I can let that happen again, but I don’t know what to do.

If they let Jack come after they multiple dose me I’m going to be a wreck when he gets here. I don’t know what his “good news” is, but the only real project I know he was working on was a way to get me out with marriage. There’s no way he’d want to marry me if I was whacked out of my gourd with the virus. I can’t let that happen. He can’t see me like that.

The thing is, there’s only one way I know to prevent it and I hate to be that selfish. Jack’s doing his best to save me. I can’t betray him. Oh, god, I just don’t know what to do, and the morning is marching toward me.

If only I’d done better at getting a job, or gotten a better major, or…something. I wouldn’t be in this awful mess, struggling between the choice of betraying my lover or being so sick he’ll want to abandon me. I should have done better. I should have done better. I should have done better. God, god, god.

Everything’s on its way now, and I feel powerless to stop it. Please, Jack, forgive me.