I didn’t know what to do. I started crying. Which I never do. Which I hate because I hate feeling weak, I hate letting people see me be vulnerable. But I had no idea what to do. Suddenly life without Lux seemed like exactly what was going to happen, and I just didn’t know how that could possibly be. I wiped at my eyes and came away with a handful of black mascara, which was running down my face making me look like a fucking clown or something. I turned away from the doctor, knowing I wasn’t going to get anything more out of her. I started back toward the stairs. As I was walking, someone stopped me. It was a nurse with scrubs with kittens playing with balls of yarn on them. She put her hand on my shoulder.

“We’ll do what we can,” she said. She shrugged helplessly. “It might not be enough. In these conditions, we might not be able to do enough for any of these people. I’m so sorry.”

Then she started to cry. Not huge, racking sobs or anything, just a few tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes and splashing down on her kitten scrubs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone in her position cry.

I went back down to the lobby to get the twins and Lux. We carried her up the stairs. When we got her up to the third floor, a nurse grabbed a gurney and put her body on it. Her body. I wasn’t sure if that was what it was now. Her breathing had gone shallow, and I wasn’t sure if she was still there at all.

The nurses wheeled Lux away, presumably to some surgery room. They wouldn’t let us follow. We stood there in the hallway, listening to the moans, the dark doors of rooms looming around us like open mouths of jack-o’-lanterns with no lights in them. I grabbed Sebastian’s hand and pulled him toward the staircase. I couldn’t stay there with all those dying people. We made our way down to the second floor.

Opening the door there was a big mistake. I shone my flashlight around the hallways and saw gurneys everywhere with bodies on them. The bodies were covered up past their foreheads with sheets. Some of the sheets had blood and puke and piss on them. The smell was atrocious, even in the cold.