Wit begins with Dr. Vivian Bearing revealing to the audience that she is dying of ovarian cancer. She is a university professor and scholar of seventeenth-century poetry. We meet Dr. Kelekian who asks her to sign paperwork and wavers agreeing to undergo an expiremental chemotherapy treatment. She signs without hesitation and agrees to go for eight full rounds of the treatment.
Vivian begins to reflect on her life and states to the audience that she knows by the end of the play she will be dead. Her time is short. Her life's journey is reflected through Donne's Holy Sonnets. We are introduced to Vivian's university professor who she was trained under as a student assistance decades prior. In a flashback scene Dr. E.M. Ashford, Vivian's professor, demands more from Vivian in her studies and paradoxically asks her to get out into the world and experience it in order to truly understand Donne. Vivian chooses to go to the library to study rather than begin to interact with the world as suggested by her professor.
We then meet Dr. Jason Posner. He is an oncology research fellow under Dr. Kelekian. Jason was a former student of Dr. Bearing's and we find her embarrassed that she must expose herself to someone she once taught. Vivian gets along well with Dr. Kelekian because he is a scholar of medical research as she is a scholar of the highest degree herself. She also meets Susie, her head nurse at the treatment facility who is far different than the doctors. She is sentimental, something that Dr. Bearing has rejected in her work and which belongs now in her day to day life.
Soon, though, Vivian sees how Jason is using her solely as research as his bedside manner has very little humanity in it, other than him being reminded to be clinical. Dr. Bearing then begins to feel the need for companionship, to bear her feelings, something she has not done in her life. In the middle of the night she kinks her IV tube in order to set off an alarm. The alarm causes Susie to come into her room and Vivian reveals how scared she is to die. Susie sits with her and gets her a double popcicle which they share as Vivian cries. Susie then asks Vivian a critical question, if her heart gives out does she want the medical staff to revive her. Susie explains that if they revive her they, meaning Jason, will be able to continue to study her for research which is what he desires, but she may not become conscious again. Or, she can choose to be DNR, do not resuscitate. Vivian decides to be DNR. She is ready to go.
Vivian's pain increases to the point that Dr. Kelekian order her to be on morphine, given to her every hour, but he won't allow her to self-administer. Vivian is then visited by a much older Dr. E.M. Ashford who is in town for her great-grandson's birthday. While there she climbs into the bed with Vivian and reads to her The Runaway Bunny a story that Vivian recalled reading as a child with her father in an earlier scene. And, this is read rather than Donne's poetry being recited as Vivian can't stand to hear his words any more. She then leaves and Vivian flatlines soon after.
Jason finds her unresponsive and calls for the medical team to resuscitate her even though she is DNR. They arrive and Susie, knowing that Vivian is DNR is screaming to stop them from reviving her and as she does Jason yells that Vivian is "research." Finally, the medical team stops once they see the DNR order. Vivian, now alone on stage, stands up and removes the two hospital robes she is wearing and reaches towards the light that shines above her.
