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It’s too ain, I’ve been lucky The least I can do is stick around It’s the people like Lei whom I really admire They know they’re not immune but they stay anyway so they can help the patients

I h the rest of the patients, all the way to the last bed, where Patient 100 draws in ragged, wet breaths I try not to think too ht have caused the ht be I’ve already failed them But I can’t fail these hundred

I don’t see Lei in the courtyard when I’m finished, so I break protocol and look in the sleeproom She’s not there either

She wouldn’t have run away So where is she?

As I pass the darkened cafeteria, I see a flicker of light The port is on Who could be inside? Is the Pilot speaking to us? Usually, when he does, they have us watch on one of the larger screens I open the door to the cafeteria and see Lei silhouetted against the port When I get a little closer I see that she’s going through the Hundred Paintings

I’ but then I stop myself and watch her for a second I’ve never seen anyone look at the paintings the way she does She leans forward She takes a few steps back

Then she pulls up a painting, and I hear her draw in her breath as she puts her hand right on the screen She stays there looking at it so long that I clear my throat Lei whirls around I can barely see her face in the reflected light fro?" I ask

"Yes," she says "This is the best reain inyour ti to joke with her "You’d think you hadn’t seen the paintings before"

For aThen: "Not this one," she says,aside so I can see the screen

"It’s nuirl in a white dress and a lot of light and water

"I suppose I didn’t notice it until now," Lei says, and her voice sounds final, like a door shutting tight I don’t knohat I said wrong For some reason I’m desperate to open that door back up I talk to everyone here, all the time, patient and ether before we ca to get her to keep talking "I like how you can’t tell if she’s in the water or on the shore But what’s she doing? I’ve never been able to figure it out"

"She’s fishing," Lei says "That’s a net she’s holding"

"Has she caught anything?" I ask, looking closer

"It’s hard to say," Lei tells me

"So that’s why you like it," I say, re Lei’s story about the fish that come back to the river in Camas "Because of the fish"

"Yes," Lei says "And because of this" She touches a little patch of white at the top of the picture "Is it a boat? The reflection of the sun? And here," she says, pointing to darker spots on the painting "We don’t knohat’s casting these shadows There are things going on outside the edges It leaves you with a sense of so you can’t see"

I think I understand "Like the Pilot," I say

"No," she says

In the distance, we hear screahter ship whirs overhead

"What’s going on out there?" Lei asks

"I think it’s the same as usual," I tell her "People outside the barricade wanting to coht of bonfires on the other side of the walls looks eerie, but it isn’t new "I don’t kno er the officers can hold them"

"They wouldn’t want in if they knehat it looked like," she says

Now that ue is actual pain Her face has a drawn look, and her words, usually so light, sound heavy

She’s getting sick

"Lei," I say I aluide her froesture She holds aze for a moment Then, slowly, she turns away from me and lifts up her shirt Red lines run around her back

"You don’t have to say it," she says She tucks her shirt back in and turns around "I already know"

"We should get you hooked up to one of the nutrient bags," I say "Right now" Thoughts race through my mind You shouldn’t have stayed, you should have left like the others did until we knee had so that worked--

"I don’t want to lie down," Lei says

"Come with me," I tell her, and this tih her sleeve

"Where are we going?" she asks me

"To the courtyard," I say "You can sit on a bench while I go get a line and a nutrient bag" This way, she won’t have to be inside when she goes down She can stay outside as long as possible

She looks at me with her exhausted, beautiful eyes "Hurry," she says "I don’t want to be alone when it happens"

When I return with the equipment, Lei waits in the courtyard with her shoulders slue to see her with less-than-perfect posture She holds out her arins to drip I sit down next to her, holding the bag higher than her ar

"Tell "

"Which one of the Hundred would you like?" I ask "I remember most of them"

I hear a faint trace of surprise in her voice under the fatigue "Don’t you know anything else?"

I pause Not really The Rising hasn’t had tiive us new stories, and it’s not like I kno to create I just hat I have

"Yes," I say, trying to think of soo, back in the Society, there was a boy as in love with a girl He’d watched her for a long time He hoped she’d be his Match Then she was He was happy"