Shit.

I stooped down and touched the man’s shoulder. His breathing was shallow, strained. Dark brown blood was crusted on his mouth, and I saw it on the cobblestone where he had stood and spat bloody sputum. I reached over to feel his forehead.

“I wouldn’t touch him,” said one of the meis, a man in his twenties. He pressed a dirty handkerchief over his nose and mouth, and I saw that his fingernails were caked with grime. “You’re in your fancy you suit, but your hands are bare. Don’t want whatever he’s got.”

The sick man was burning up. Command: what’s his temperature? I queried in my mind.

103.2°F flashed across my helmet.

Gods.

“We need an ambulance!” I shouted, raising my head to look around me. Jin’s guards had retreated after the yous left—their only concern. A few mei gawkers remained near the edges of the square. All of them wore face masks. Their black eyes studied me: curious, desperate, frightened. Seeing the dark specks of blood reminded me of Yu Hua’s novel: a hero struggling to support his own family by selling more and more of his own blood. Now, that wasn’t even a possibility for most meis—especially the poorest among us. Their blood was considered too dirty. Tainted.

The other mei who remained near, a girl wearing a mask covered with fluffy white cats and purple stars, snorted. “An ambulance? Let him die in peace. They’ll bag him later and cremate him.”

I stared at the mei girl. She didn’t look more than fifteen years. Rolling her eyes at me, she said, “Rich, stupid you boy. Who’s going to pay for an ambulance? And his medical costs? Stop making a big show of it.”

I glanced down at the man and saw the sheen of sweat collecting at his hairline and above his upper lip. He was burning up. Just like my mom had.

“I’ll pay for all of it. We can’t just leave him here. He’s still alive.”

The girl shrugged. “Probably not for much longer. We die on the streets all the time. You just don’t know.”

But I did know. Yet I had always turned my back, as most meis did. What could we do? This was life. The truly poor and sick died in their hovels or in dark alleys. If they were lucky, a family member or friend reported their demise immediately. The unfortunate rotted until their rancid stench gave them away. Just one month in my $75 million apartment and I had already grown comfortable, removed from the grittiness of the streets. The hunger, illness, and deaths. I had grown soft. But here, now, there was something I could do. “Command,” I said. “Get an ambulance to Liberty Square now.”

CONTACTED. AMBULANCE IS ON WAY, flashed across my helmet.

The mei girl wandered off with the older man, neither glancing back even once.