Synopsis
When an ambitious young botanist named Nancy Sandford discovers that she is positive for HIV, she scraps plans for a world-class research career and reinvents herself as a mediocre professor in an academic backwater. By doing so she hopes to keep her secret concealed, and to survive until a cure for HIV is found. In her struggle to endure the loneliness and terror of such a life, Sandy involves herself in activities ranging from the botanical to the bizarre; and both sorts come into play when an accident occurs at a power plant near her home, shortly before an alien ship lands on the moon.
The nuclear meltdown shatters Sandy's carefully restricted personal world. Yet its consequences—combined with alien intervention—bring about a startling conclusion to her situation and to the story.
Notes
"Tiny Tango," written in 1987. It appears (as Chapter 3) in The Ragged World, Volume I of the author's Holy Ground Trilogy.