“We die from the extraction? That’s it? You take it all till we’re dead?!” I couldn’t let go of the image of a lot, a mass grave, in the back. I was loud, but I didn’t scream like I was in my head.

“Shhhhh. Calm down, now.” He glanced around the room, gave a fake smile, and waved someone off. “Not right away. It takes a month, maybe two. And it’s not the extraction that kills a patient. It’s the inability to heal without bone marrow. Basic science, sad but true.”

I could not believe he was saying these words the same way one might say “good morning.” My mouth was opening and closing like a fish; I had no response. How did you sanely respond to insanity?

“I understand this must be a bit of a shock.” He was really working on that merit badge in patience now.

“A bit of a shock? I couldn’t be more surprised if you removed your own head and flew around the room.”

“But here we are, both of us, we are alive. We really beat the odds on that one. And now we can start rebuilding a life. Together.” He leaned in. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, little brother? To stay together?” There was a softness around his eyes, or maybe that was just what I wanted to see.

I didn’t answer him; what was there to say? In the pause, I gazed around the room. It was a big space, divided up into cubicles by curtains and glass walls. I saw dozens of other beds, each one occupied, bodies big and tiny covered with stiff green sheets. I didn’t know what was more heartbreaking, the tiny bundles or the larger ones, some heavily pregnant bodies or men with still-youthful jawlines. At each bedside was at least one machine or IV pole and, in a few cases, laptops on carts with webs of wires slipping up under the sheets. There were moans and beeps and the shuffle of nurses walking between curtains. No one was running; no one seemed in any big hurry, not even when one of the monitors started screaming. An orderly just walked over—swinging his arms, even—and shut it off. High up on the walls, along the edges of the ceiling, were narrow windows, embedded with thin bars and frosted so that only light got in and nothing got out.

I’d heard so many stories about the new residential schools over the years. There were variations to the tales. Some said they were straight-up prisons without food or clean water. Others said they were where the government siphoned our ability to dream for mass production and we died in the process. Others spoke about a community of donors living the good life with books and clean water and the freedom to make noise. These ones talked about living through the donation, about reintegrating into the societies that were carrying on, and a world being rebuilt with enough room for us all. These were the stories planted by traitors to try to get us to come in on our own.