A Patient
To Vivian BeninVivian Benin — Eden’s patient, one of the first subjects of the new drug’s trial., Eden was both her attending physician and a fellow patient who shared in her suffering.
Eden was so young, and so gifted. Yet she had none of a prodigy’s conceit or arrogance. Instead, she was forever caught in self-doubt and moral dilemmas. Benin could see clearly that Eden suffered no less than she did.
She treasured their friendship beyond measure, grateful for the salvation she had found in Eden. The disease had taken everything from her, yet had given her peace in the face of death. Left with nothing else, she chose to share that peace with Eden, to soothe her weary soul.
She had never looked like this before! That pale face, so tired, so drawn—give me a mirror, and I couldn’t look any worse myself.
If you really are Catherine, then that’s just as well. As you can see, I’m dying. I must be dying, or I wouldn’t be seeing you. 贝宁 could no longer speak. Agony twisted her words beyond meaning and turned them into groans. Soon even those would fall silent.
Don’t grieve for me, Catherine. Don’t cry for me anymore. Look at yourself. Grief and work are crushing you. The sharp edges of pain began to blur, and her consciousness began to float. Her soul watched her own body on the bed, and Catherine at her bedside.
“Catherine, shall I read you some poems? Donne’s poems. Mine, too.” There was one good thing about being a ghost: at least she could speak again. “I’d meant to read them to you at the seminar, once I was well again. But I really am dying.”
A Colleague
CoricCoric — An older physician at New Grandon whose views resemble Luo Ze’s. was an older physician whose views were close to Luo ZeLuo Ze — Leader of a Doctors Without Borders team; Eden’s adoptive father and teacher.’s. Years of medical practice had gradually made him cold and numb. He had watched younger doctors enter the profession full of passion, setting out on a road of no return, and watched them become, in the end, just like him.
From this perspective, he considered Eden not yet mature: she was recklessly squandering her life and her gifts. Yet he also felt a complicated mixture of protectiveness and sorrow for her. Before the expedition set out, he carefully instructed its members to protect her and not let her do anything foolish.
Who could have known that this would be their last farewell?
Coric could not find another word. All he could do was hold her. Perhaps she needed someone steadfast to lean on—but who in this world was worthy of being that person? The girl in his arms kept sobbing. Coric knew she was afraid, afraid of death, for all the extraordinary calm with which she seemed to have put her affairs in order; Coric knew that she was the cure for the disease, that she meant to sacrifice herself in search of answers and a way out.
Herself
When she was alone, in the empty hours of the night, she began to recall the time she had spent with her father. She found herself slipping, little by little, into a predicament much like his. She understood that this was what they called growing up.
She saw a figure buried deep in her memory. As a child, whenever she woke with a start in the night, she would see a figure wandering in the dark: exhausted yet irritable, lonely and lost, pacing round and round the room, holding a cup of black coffee so bitter that drinking it verged on self-punishment. When he woke her, he would sit down apologetically at her bedside and gaze at her, lost in thought, watching her drift back into peaceful sleep. When she opened her eyes in the morning, he would still be sitting there, still gazing at her, lost in thought. Then he would say good morning. She had never understood why—not until now, when she found herself plagued by the very same symptom.
Insomnia.
Beneath her outward strength and gentleness, she too knew cowardice; she too knew fear. Yet all these terrors arose within her. She chose to heal, and in doing so, she also tormented herself.
Morality, promises, responsibility—they were like three mighty, solemn mountains, bearing down on her once more, toppling toward her as she tried to flee, to find release. She began to pray that no one would recognize her, that everything in the ward was an illusion, that she could turn and leave in silence.
In her final days, her soul endured the torments and temptations of the malevolent will within Starcrystal DiseaseStarcrystal Disease — A cosmic plague brought by a meteorite; it assimilates flesh and consumes the soul.. And she gave her own answer.
“I will not let you devour me!” she declared. She knew in her heart that although these things surrounded her like a pack of hungry beasts, with not a trace of life in their ravaged faces, they had simply been in the dark wilderness too long, far too long. Their hollow eye sockets betrayed a longing for light! Even the rotting blood longed for it. She knew these lost souls would not let her go; nor, with the firelight revealed, would she find forgiveness from that skeleton. Anger flared in her heart, only to be quenched by pity for these ghosts. She knew that without her, they might indeed perish in the dark. “What more can I do for them?” she demanded of her own heart, and her heart burned more fiercely still. And so she bowed her head and laid her hand against her chest. And so she raised her hand, and shared her light with them.
