Good Morning, Midnight

Bedridden by illness, Augie experiences feverish dreams and memories. He observes himself, young and attractive, pursuing women or studying the skies. The atmosphere is tropical and warm, like many of the places to which he once fled for both escape and research. After seeing himself admired and sought after, both academically and sexually, Augie observes a change in the dreams. He now sees his teenage self, watching his mother being taken to a psychiatric hospital and then his lonely life with his father. He sees versions of his own face, revealing the hurt he has caused and triggering shame:

[O]ver and over, from behind the eyes of women he’d abused, colleagues he’d cheated, servers and bellhops and assistants and lab techs he’d neglected, slighted, always too busy and ambitious to pay attention to anyone but himself (77).

Augie wakes as the fever passes. Iris has been caring for him for five days. As he recovers, he begins rebuilding his strength by walking around the observatory and out in the snow. Despite the physical exertion, Augie cannot work the “joy of survival and the weight of regret” out of his body (80).

On their first longer walk since his illness, Augie spots a