“Again, thank you so much,” Jack said. “I… I have no words.”

“It’s alright,” Ani replied, “I’m just doing my job.” She smiled at Jack and got back to work.

Jack nodded profusely and then stepped off to the side.

It wasn’t a good idea to get in Ani’s way when she was busy, especially when she was following her heart.

Julia was sleeping soundly, though not peacefully. A baby dose of sedative in the IV bag above her kept the baby girl from being woken up by the sound of the ventilator at her bedside, or by the feeling of breathing tubes—a nasal cannula—snaking into her nostrils and down her trachea, past the mass obstructing her throat.

Unlike before, this time, I’d taken my bow-tie off before donning my PPE. I now proudly wore my lucky charm around my neck, out in the open, where it could do its thing. I wasn’t so sure I put much stock into luck as an abstract principle, but, as a memento of my sister and her guidance and wisdom, it was priceless beyond comparison.

I actually, genuinely smiled—for once—when, instead of falling to me, Ani had happily taken up the task of dosing little Julia with the noxtifell while I took care of prepping the ventilator and the cannula for insertion. To Ani’s pleasant surprise, I didn’t need an explanation for how to do it. I just copied my memories of what Jonan had done.

After swooping to our rescue, Ani had led Jack, Julia, and myself to a collection of inexplicably empty patients’ rooms in a quiet, dead-ended hallway at Ward E’s far end. Getting the baby on ventilator support solved her breathing trouble, at least for the time being. There was nothing good in seeing a new life so close to death’s precipice, but at least it was hope. And, knowing Ani, if there was a chance, she’d seize it by the throat.

At the moment, Dr. Lokanok was hard at work solving Jack’s SPN troubles.

“If oncology won’t give Julia a biopsy,” she’d said, “we’ll just give her one ourselves.”

Well, herself. Ani was well-aware that I was squeamish when it came to stabbing or cutting, most of all when children were involved.

I’m sorry, Rale. I’m so, so sorry.

I stood off to the side while Ani performed the biopsy on Julia.

After we’d hooked the baby up to the ventilator, Jack explained his situation to Dr. Lokanok, who promptly stormed out of the room to which she’d brought us, only to return several minutes later with Jack’s wife—Lucy—in a wheelchair, and Ani grinning from ear to ear.

The room to which Ani had brought us—E92—was absolutely state-of-the-art. It had everything: sensors, tools, cameras, cabinets, x-rays, refrigerated storage, a negative pressure ventilation function, centrifuges, microscopes, assay equipment, and even a miniature matter printer. The utilities were built into the walls. Many of them were mounted on adjustable arms that swung out (or back into) smoothly and seamlessly from hidden panels that opened in the walls.

Then, there were the beds. With just a push of a button, a familiar coffin-like structure with a familiar barrel-shaped miracle-plastic lid would erupt from the sides of the bed. A tiny laser beam melted the two halves of the plastic barrel-lid together where they pressed up against one another. And everything could be done by voice command. Manual adjustment, though optional, was not all necessary. Nearly everything in the room was hooked up to ALICE—the Automated Learning Intelligence Cooperation Engine—the newest, shiniest part of the hospital’s IT network. ALICE was a sterling artificial intelligence, and had a bedside manner that was at least two standard deviations better than the average surgeon. ALICE had complete functionality in over fifty major languages. All you needed to do was ask; a simple request from Ani was all it took for a ventilator to emerge on its own from the wall near to the cushioned table ALICE had extruded from that same wall for Julia to rest upon.

I really wanted to know how Ani had gotten the permission to use these rooms. Rooms like these were usually reserved for VIP patients—financial VIPs, though, not medical VIPs.

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Meanwhile, Jack’s wife rested in the darkpox coffin bed, and in that, she was far from alone. Though not as large as the mass examination center Jonan had made into a makeshift lab in E57, E92 was rather long, long enough to hold multiple beds, all of which were occupied and in darkpox mode. Privacy came in the form of holographic curtains that ALICE projected from the ceiling, like waterfalls.

E91, next door, was nearly full, and E93 wasn’t far behind it.

Jack had quietly taken his seat in a chair that unfolded from his wife’s bedside as he approached. Jack pressed his fingers deep into the special plastic, making it mold around his hand and arm as he clasped Lucy’s hand and held it in a firm but gentle grip.

While Ani was busy with the biopsy, I got to work giving Lucy the same regimen of medications I’d been using for all the other Type One NFP-20 patients I’d been treating during my rounds. I fetched an IV bag of antifungal drugs from the heat bath in the wall (a kind of reverse refrigerator) and hooked Lucy up to it. I plunged the tip of the needle on the IV bag’s tube into the bed’s self-healing plastic covering and, from there, into the port on the back of Lucy’s wrist.

“You know,” I said, “as much as he’s been beating himself up for the failures of his experimental treatments, Jonan’s suggestion to use miforol was right on the money. I’ve been using it, and it seems to have helped slow the progression of the disease.”

“I’ve seen similar results in my own patients,” Ani said. She glanced at me from over her shoulder. “Do you think it might be worth trying on the Type Patients?” she asked, softly.

I stopped in my tracks. “That…” I shook my head and smiled—to Ani, in thanks, and to myself, in self-deprecation. “Why didn’t I think of that?” I said. I would have face-palmed, but my PPE was in the way.

“Stress,” Ani replied—that reply being the answer I’d given her back whenever, as a resident, she’d ask “Why didn’t I think of that” of herself.

I nodded. “Touché.”

It was strange. In the middle of all this sickness, misery, terror, and death, I found happiness in the simple act of working alongside a colleague.

“There we go,” Ani said.

I turned to see Dr. Lokanok staring at a stopper-sealed plastic phial she held in her white-gloved hands.

“Is that the biopsy sample?” I said, asking a stupid question.

Ani nodded.

I walked over to the wall-mounted console by the door and began to input a request for a sample-trolly to stop by the room as soon as it could.

“Genneth—wait…” Ani spoke just as I was about to hit send.

I stopped what I was doing and turned to face her.

“I’m putting in the request for the sample-trolly to pick up Julie’s biopsy sometime soon and send it to pathology.”

Ani crossed her arms and sighed. “I’d rather deliver it myself,” she said, “and… to that end,” she smiled, perking up, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t file a request from this room’s console, or… any room’s console.” She admonished me with a cutesy finger-waggle.

My eyes closed as I sighed. Suddenly, I had a very good idea as to where Ani had gotten permission to use high-tech VIP patient rooms. Then, as I was fidgeting with my bow-tie, Ani caught me doing so, and the way her face immediately blanched raised my suspicion from “likely” to “oh yeah, I know what you did,” and, of course, she knew that I knew.

Like I said, I’d make for a terrible poker player.

“Dr. Lokanok,” I said, in a serious tone, “I think we need to step outside for a moment.”

Ani complied with a nod.

I shook my head and turned around to face her the instant she’d closed the door behind us.

“Ani,” I asked, “what is all this?”

She shook her arms at her sides. “It’s insufferable, that’s what it is.” She huffed and puffed. “It’s insufferable, intolerable, and indefensible.” Nodding vigorously, she started counting off her words with her fingers. “It’s unjust, unjustifiable, unbearable, unmanageable, and any other fricken’ word I can come up with instead of sticking my head out the window and yelling, ‘I’m as angry as hell, and I can’t take it anymore!’ That’s what it is. The world’s really got its priorities mixed up when you need health insurance to get health assurance.” Huffing again, Ani crossed her arms, but then looked down at the floor in dejection. “I know, I know. I know what you’re going to say.”

I pointed to the adjacent rooms. “None of the people here have health insurance, do they?” I said.

Ani wove her fingers together. “Hospital policy is that these rooms are to be set aside for use by VIPs and other high-priority patients. They’re not patient rooms; they’re parking spaces, and nine times out of ten, they’re empty.”

“I’m going to assume that means you don’t have permission to,” twirled my wrist, “do all this.”

“Since when have I ever let that stop me?” Ani said, with a Jonanesque smirk.

“Quite a lot, actually, when I was mentoring you,” I said. “I see your… boyfriend has been rubbing off on you.”

Ani flashed her teeth nervously. “You can tell?” she asked, meekly.

I stared at her for a moment, at her eyes so bright and filled with hope. I wished I could have said the same for my own, but I’d long since contracted that duty out to my lucky yellow bowtie.

This probably isn’t going to end well…

I couldn’t believe what I was about to say, so I took an especially deep breath.

“I like it,” I said. “How can I help?”