Twenty-four-year-old Denver newspaper theater critic Miranda is dreaming. Her dream is filled with strangely familiar objects: a house, a bed in the house and even a stranger whom she seems to know.
She has taken the reins of a gray horse on the desperate attempt to escape the clutches of Death and the Devil. Beside her is another gray horse on which sits the familiar stranger. The dream is disturbing and it would be a relief to wake from it if only the real world were not just as disturbing.
The world Miranda wakes to is one in the grips of what will become known as the worst flu epidemic of the 20 century; that World War I-era addition to the misery already felt so intensely by so many people around the world. When Miranda arrives at work, she finds men waiting for her. They are government agents whose job is to press home the absolute need for loyalty to her country during these trying times. She is harassed by the men for her failure to buy purchase a Liberty Bond, one of the government issued securities used to fund the war in Europe. She has no intention of reversing this decision and is almost pushed by their aggressive behavior to the point of openly voicing opposition to the war, a grievous offense now that isolationism is no longer cool or very much tolerated.
Miranda is next pictured in his bath at home, suffering from a headache and wondering what might have been the stimulus for it. Her memory carries her back to the previous day: the day of the visit by the government agents. She and Mary Townsend grew anxious over the mystery of what the consequences might actually be for some refusing to buy a liberty bond. Afterwards, more for the sake of appearance than any genuine emotional impetus, she had stopped by the hospital to visit with soldiers wounded in war who had returned home.
Back to the bathtub and the headache and now Miranda’s thoughts to more tender and desirable memories: Adam Barclay, the young soldier recently taking up residence in her building while working for the corps of engineers and waiting for his orders to be sent overseas. Ever since—for the past ten days—the two have shared each other’s company as much as possible. They walk to work together with both the war and the flu epidemic refusing to part company as the topics of discourse. Miranda feels the romanticism of it all, but as if watching from the outside. On the inside, she is troubled by the lack of real connection made worse by constant fear that she’s getting sick. After parting company to go to work, Miranda joins in a conversation with Mary and another co-worker, Chuck, about the war, but there is a disconnected there as well as nobody really seems willing to be honest about their actual feelings. Work that night requires attending a show, accompanied by Chuck, and writing a review. Outside the theater she is confronted by an actor who was on the wrong end of bad review, but the whole exchange seems off and slightly unreal, almost as if she was still stuck back in her dream. Meanwhile, the strange foreboding sense of something really bad about to be happen won’t subside. Something really bad about to happen to her, specifically.
She makes plans to spend the night with Adam, but while waiting, her mind won’t let go of the feeling that all is not connecting up as it should. They go together and catch a truly terrible show made all the worse by yet another attempt to get the audience to buy war bonds. The theatricality of the shilling of these securities nauseates Miranda ethically as well as artistically and she and Adam wind up leaving to go dancing.
Miranda looks around deliriously, realizing she is in bed. And she is sick. Adam is tending to her as she drifts back and forth between consciousness and delirium. Adam tells the epidemic has devastated the city and how they are both doomed to death because of war and the flu. At one point, she and Adam exchange vows of love just before she falls asleep again, but when she wakes up, she is no longer in her bed, but in a hospital. Adam is nowhere to seen. Consciousness and sleep intertwine in the hospital bed as Miranda’s dreams are visions of death and her reality is a desperate inquiry for the missing Adam. A nurse reads her a note from Adam since she cannot focus enough to read it herself in which he says he has tried everything to see her, but has not been allowed to have any contact with her.
Miranda drifts fully into delirium, incapable of distinguishing between dreams and reality as she is overcome by thought of the abyss while also fueled with the spark of optimistic hope. Finally, at long last, the struggle is over and she regains full consciousness and understanding. Recovery would be pure joy if only the real world waiting her upon recovery was joyful, but it is only partly so: the war has ended, but Adam died in an influenza camp in Europe. Mary and Chuck arrive to visit, delirious themselves with happiness that she has recovered. Miranda desperately aches to as happy about this news as they are, but is haunted by the nightmarish visions of the abyss.
She enjoys one last vision of Adam as they once again she tender exchanges of love before Mary appears, telling her the cab has arrived to take her home.
