Love on the Brain

The night that Bee receives the email from the lawyer passes in a blur of tears; she is too overwhelmed to even pick up Levi’s calls and blows him off with a text about being swamped with work. Bee picks up Trevor from the airport the next morning, the day of the demo. Trevor makes a throwaway comment about Levi having been a genius for designing the solution in such a short time, and a frustrated Bee finally bites back, stating that she and Levi are co-leads.

A number of important people are in attendance for the demo, including higher-ups from NASA, as well as a couple of congressmen. Levi comes to check on Bee just before the demo; he doesn’t seem fine and confesses that there is a non-work-related mess that he is dealing with, which he will explain later. Levi also has something to show Bee later, which involves her “imaginary cat.”

Levi and Bee begin the demo, and despite an initial slight snag, things progress smoothly. The results—an improvement in Guy’s attention during a flight simulation, brought about by neurostimulation via the helmet—receive a round of applause. Suddenly, Guy starts shaking uncontrollably, and he falls out of his chair, in the throes of a seizure. Guy is driven to the hospital and eventually regains consciousness, but everyone is shaken by the incident.

Boris calls Levi and Bee into his office and demands to know where the error was; Bee knows it is not a hardware issue, and despite Levi’s stalling, she confesses that it was probably in the stimulation protocol. Bee apologizes profusely, but Boris states that BLINK is over. Trevor enters and asserts that the project is salvageable by replacing Bee, whom he blames for the incident. Even as Levi attempts to defend her, Bee leaves the office, begging him to keep the project going in whatever way he can, even if it means taking her off of it.

A miserable Bee goes home to pack, sure that she has lost her job. Levi arrives at her apartment, worried that she hasn’t been answering his calls. He informs her that Guy is fine and has asked Bee not to worry about him. Levi tries to reassure Bee that what happened was not her fault, but Bee is unable to accept this and is resigned to leaving the project.

Levi sees that Bee is packing and is furious that despite their relationship, she is planning to leave Houston over the fallout at NASA. He confesses that he is in love with her and knows that she reciprocates his feelings but is too scared of committing because of her past experiences. However, he needs Bee to at least stick around while he tries to prove that he will not leave her; there hasn’t been any other woman in his life since he first met Bee, and he is sure that he is in this for the long haul. Despite desperately wanting to say yes to Levi and continue the relationship, Bee tearfully refuses, terrified of being hurt again. Levi leaves, heartbroken, placing something on the table before he goes. Once again, Bee is convinced that disaster does, indeed, come in threes: she has lost her job, her online community, and Levi, all at the same time.

Hours after Levi has left, Bee finally emails Rocío, asking her to request Trevor to let her stay on as an RA. She is about to message Schmac but is stopped in her tracks when she sees a picture he has tweeted: a black cat asleep on a laptop against a familiar backdrop. Bee recognizes Schrödinger and the blue backsplash from Levi’s kitchen and realizes that Schmac is Levi. When she remembers their conversations about The Girl, she connects the dots as to how Levi thought she was married to Tim for a long time. She remembers the intensity with which Schmac had confessed his love for The Girl and begins crying again.

Bee notices the object Levi has left for her: a flash drive. She plugs it into her laptop and watches the only video clip on it. It contains 30 minutes of night surveillance footage from the Discovery Institute: little clips put together, all featuring Félicitte who has, indeed, been entering and roaming around the building at night. Bee begins to laugh and cry at the same time, feeling an intense love for Levi, and resolves to make up with him.

As Bee continues to watch the video, she notices something odd: someone enters her office at 2.37 AM. A subsequent clip shows the cat napping at Bee’s open laptop; when she zooms in, she realizes that the screen is displaying her Twitter account, something she would never open on a work computer. She quickly texts and emails Levi, asking how she can gain access to the complete security footage; without waiting for his reply, she heads to the building by herself to investigate.

The building is empty as it is now past 11 PM. Bee opens her work computer and accesses the logs on the server; she has realized that someone who had access to her Twitter account on her computer would have also had access to all of BLINK’s servers. She discovers that someone modified the file used for Guy’s brain simulation at 1:24 AM the previous night; at that time, Bee had been at home and in bed.

Guy appears out of nowhere, startling Bee. She begins to apologize for giving him a seizure, then notices that he is behaving strangely. Realizing that something is wrong, she tries to leave, but Guy stops her, asking her how much she has told Levi about the security footage. Guy confesses that he is the one who hacked into Bee’s computer and has been in and out of her email for a while, now; he is the one who had been stopping Levi’s emails from reaching her, in an attempt to cause miscommunication between them.

Guy reveals the deep resentment he feels about BLINK moving forward. The prototype was supposed to be called Kowalsky-Sullivan as he had been collaborating with Peter on it. However, after Peter’s death, it was named solely after him in his honor, and Levi took over the project, completely eclipsing Guy. Once Bee was assigned by NIH, Levi became determined to see BLINK through, and Guy did whatever he could to cause issues by misplacing files and causing arguments between Levi and Bee. Despite this, they managed to figure out a solution, and so, on the morning of the demo, Guy fudged the protocols and took some caffeine pills, which affected his brain chemistry and caused the seizure. He wasn’t going to personally involve Bee any further, but when he found out she wasn’t actually married, he was furious about being lied to; he hacked into Bee’s Twitter account and emailed STC, posing as @WhatWouldMarieDo.

Guy pulls out a gun, insisting that he cannot let Bee leave. Just as Bee is sure she is going to die, Félicitte appears and jumps onto Guy, giving Bee a chance to run out of the room. Guy begins to follow, but Levi appears and tackles Guy. Bee runs back and kicks Guy, allowing Levi to pin him down and wrestle the gun away. While Levi restrains Guy, Bee sits down on one of the lobby couches, on Levi’s instruction and promptly blacks out.

Bee wakes up in the hospital the next morning and discovers Rocío and Kaylee in her room. They keep her company the whole day, during which she also receives messages from Reike, informing her that she was on the news last night, in a story that featured NASA, Guy, and his attempt on Bee’s life. Boris and Levi arrive, and Boris apologizes to Bee for everything that has happened. He begs her to return to BLINK, which will be resumed as soon as possible, and in exchange she wrangles a promise that he will write a letter of recommendation to include in Rocío’s college applications. Levi, too, apologizes for not having noticed anything amiss with Guy, even though they had been working so closely together for so long.

After the others leave, Levi gives Bee a bag. It carries a mug that reads “Yoda Best Neuroscientist,” which delights Bee; inside the mug, furthermore, is nestled a bobblehead of Marie Curie. Levi tells Bee that he won it at a second-grade science fair, and that the beakers Curie is holding glow in the dark, leading Bee to realize that Levi knows about her Twitter alter-ego. He confesses that after receiving Bee’s texts about the security footage, he went back and reviewed the tape himself and noticed her laptop screen, too.

Levi brings up Kazimierz Żorawski, one of the sons in the wealthy family for whom Curie was once a governess; they fell in love but were separated by his family, leaving them both heartbroken. Żorawski never got over the breakup, however; he named one of his daughters Maria, and as an old man, could be found sitting in front of Curie’s statue in Warsaw, staring at it for hours. Before Bee can confess her love for Levi, they are interrupted by a nurse, and Levi leaves.

Bee is discharged from the hospital two days later, and she heads straight for the Discovery Institute, where she tracks down Félicitte. Bee carries the kitten to Levi’s place, where she asks him if Schrödinger would be okay with them adopting another kitten. Overwhelmed with joy, Levi responds that “[W]e won’t know until we try” (344).

Bee and Levi end up marrying in a secret court ceremony. After Bee rejects Levi’s nine marriage proposals because of the trauma of her past, she secretly arranges a marriage license and drives them down to the courthouse. She wears her blue Target dress to mislead Levi about their destination. In the parking lot, Bee asks Levi to marry him that same day, and they become husband and wife following a 94-second ceremony. Since Bee often wears the blue dress to the lab, she compares herself to Curie, as she, too, technically wore “lab clothes” to her wedding.

After BLINK’s success, Bee is offered Trevor’s job, and later Trevor’s boss’s role, by NIH; she rejects both, and after great consideration, she and Levi decide to continue at NASA. The debacle with Guy leads Bee’s identity as @WhatWouldMarieDo to be revealed. Although she initially faces some backlash and trolling, it eventually settles down, and she begins to enjoy running the account again. With Annie’s help, with whom Bee is slowly trying to work things out, Bee organizes a 5K run in the name of #FairGraduateAdmissions, simultaneously keeping her promise to Levi. Rocío and Kaylee, who are both accepted at Johns Hopkins, fly in for the race from Baltimore, as does Reike, courtesy of Levi, who arranges the surprise visit. At the race, Bee is approached by a fan of @WhatWouldMarieDo, thanking her for organizing the run for such an important cause. The book ends as Levi and Bee begin the race together, with Levi promising to be by her side the entire time.