Six Dimensions

Abstract

A health journalist named Alice Newman (a heterosexual, married woman of English and Scottish descent who is in her forties and resides in a modest house situated in a London suburb) at Britain’s largest Sunday newspaper is assigned the task of compiling a collection of reports (in preparation for the manuscript of a book) on healthcare workers across six continents of the globe. All interviewees lived through and survived the COVID-19 pandemic but in different countries and continents. Alice Newman will travel to the cities in the following countries and states (Lagos, Nigeria; Mumbai, India; Sydney, Australia; São Paulo, Brazil; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Berlin, Germany) and conduct interviews with healthcare workers whose lives were turned upside down during the pandemic. Her primary goal for the assignment is to gather nonfiction accounts of each interviewee’s memories of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the idealized and harmonious domestic life Alice Newman once envisioned during her youth upon settling down, marrying, and having two children is rapidly deteriorating in unexpected ways in which no simplistic or obvious solutions can remedy all of its rifts.