Word: Lucubrate

lucubrate

[loo-kyoo-breyt]

verb (used without object), lucubrated, lucubrating.

1. to work, write, or study laboriously, especially at night.

2. to write learnedly.

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                Dr. Tellman hunched over the desk.  He scribbled furiously on a sheet of paper, and then looked up to one of the man books scattered haphazardly around his desk.  His eyes darted around the page, desperately looking for what he needed.  The words seemed to blur and run together as he read.  He forced his tired eyes away from the page.  He pushed up his glasses to rub the sleep from them before returning to his task.

                “Are you still working?” A voice asked. Dr. Tellman ignored the speaker.  He wasn’t in the mood to deal with his colleague.  “That isn’t healthy.  You should really go home and get some sleep.”

                “No.  I can keep going.”

                The speaker moved to Dr. Tellman’s side.  The man, Dr. Fisher, looked at what Dr. Tellman was working on and sighed.  “You aren’t going to find a solution when you’re in such a bad state, you know.  It’ll probably do more harm than good.”

                “I have to keep going.  I don’t have enough time to rest, you know that.”

                “Yes, yes, I know.  But you won’t do her any good like this.  Look, if you haven’t found a cure now, you never will.  But if you go home and sleep, you can come back, refreshed, and ready with fresh eyes.”

                “But what if something happens while I’m sleeping?”

                “Then something happens.  That won’t change just because you got some shut eye.  Besides, this disease is slow.  It won’t suddenly get worse in a few hours.”

                Dr. Tellman knew his colleague was right.  His wife’s illness wasn’t something he could cure in a night, and it would still be there, relatively unchanged, tomorrow.  Even knowing that, he couldn’t just leave her.  The cure had yet to be discovered, but he was on the right track.  He knew it.  If he kept working, he might discover something that could save her life.  But if he went to sleep, he would lose his train of thought.  He would forget and the cure would be lost forever.

                “No.  No, I have to stay here.  I’m onto something, I know it.” Dr. Tellman said.

                “Any cure you’re about to find will be there tomorrow. And it’ll probably be easier to see.  You’ve taken lots of notes, right?  So then you won’t really lose anything by getting some rest.  It can only lead to good things.”  Dr. Fisher looked over the books his sleep deprived colleague was studying.  “Besides, you probably won’t find anything in those books.  They’re long out of date, and most of the information in them has been disproven.  If you weren’t so tired, you’d have seen that.”

                Dr. Tellman paused his writing to look over the book he had been using.  Some of them were older than he was.  He knew the information was useless, yet he couldn’t help but hope for something.  None of the newer, more accurate books held any hope anyway.

                “All right, fine.  I’ll...I’ll go home.” Dr. Tellman said.

                “Good, good.  You’ll feel better after a good night’s rest, I promise.”

                “But what if it doesn’t help?  What if I can’t find the cure in the morning?”

                “Ten your notes will help the next person.  And if they fail, they’ll help the next one, and the next one.  Who knows?  Medical science might never find the cure.  But the point is that we’re trying.  Your wife would understand that, wouldn’t she?”

                “I suppose so.”  Dr. Tellman stood and gave one last look at his stacks of books and papers.  Something at the bottom caught his eye.  “I have to clean up here, then I’ll go home.”

                “Alright.  Just make sure you’re not here when I arrive in the morning, okay?”

                “Of course not.”

                Dr. Fished slowly left the room, keeping an eye out to make sure Dr. Tellman was indeed cleaning his research material.  Once he was out of sight, Dr. Tellman sat back down and pulled the loose sheet of faded, yellowing paper out from under the pile of books.  It was much different than the others for a variety of reasons.  Dr. Tellman smiled.  Dr. Fisher had been right.  Medical science might never find a cure for his wife.  But there were other things in the world that might.
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 At a glance, curing all diseases might seem like a great, noble thing, but when you really think about it, it's not so great.  If every single illness in the world was cured, then so many things would go wrong.  Every single industry reliant on illnesses would all but disappear, leaving millions unemployed.  The human population would skyrocket, leaving so many issues with resources.  And those are only the things I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure people much smarter than me would be able to come up with more.