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enough of life to welcome death; yet trapped in your stare, just behind, I see the workings of a thoughtful mind. Barely utilized. Barely tested as to its limits. Its potential.” His voice dropped in volume. “In you, there is something undiscovered. Something more .”
    I watched his eyes reflect the newborn flare of the fire, and I was grateful that if I closed mine now, never to open them again, the last sight I would see would be his beautiful, haunted face.
    “You are little more than a child, yet you confront your own death with the unaffected stoicism of an old soldier. How is that possible?”
    I was far too weak to offer him an answer, even if my heart was overflowing with emotions and desperate to give voice to them. This moment felt like a sort of confession, perhaps a chance for deathbed absolution, though I wondered, in truth, what mortal sins I could have committed in my young life to require such Divine forgiveness.
    He paced the floor before me, heels alternately clicking against the grain of the wood and muffled as they tread the pile of the lush, elegant rug.
    “I am facing a dilemma, young lady. I need to know something before I make up my mind as to the best course of action.” He stared with a fixed intensity that could have withered the hottest summer sun. “Have you always had problems with your heart, or is this a recent development?”
    It took most of the remaining strength in my body to speak the single word. “New.”
    One of his eyebrows elevated. “Dread Fever?”
    I lowered my eyes and closed the lids.
    “You were otherwise healthy before?”
    My eyes opened partially again, and a puzzled look crossed my face. I was uncertain exactly how to answer, for I did not know what his criteria was for declaring someone ‘chronically sick’ instead of ‘occasionally ill’, and I did not want to feed him false information.
    “I will take that to mean you are unsure.”
    I relaxed, and again he seemed to carefully consider his dwindling options.
    An unholy clatter sounded from the room beyond the one we currently occupied. A cacophony of voices rose above the din and while I could not separate clearly one from another, I knew there were several. They were young voices, and everything around me suddenly seemed like the oddest of dreams laced in among the darkest of nightmares.
    “Get them out of here, Schuyler!” Quinn barked. “They are not to see our guest.”
    Schuyler hurried to the exit. He took care to open the door only enough to allow him passage through it. A moment later, all sound outside ceased.
    The doctor's eyes settled again upon my face, analyzing what must have been a confused and desperate look. My reaction once more softened something in his expression, just for a moment, before it again took up the appearance of being chiseled from pure stone.
    Yes, perhaps it was the delirium brought by the medicines he'd administered, or perhaps just the delusions that would precede death, but to me he was a statue, not unlike those I'd seen when first viewingthe city from the train. Somehow imbued with life beyond that normally granted to his kind. I could imagine him unfurling sculpted wings and staring with the burning, frightful eyes of a gargoyle; taking up residence on high. Forever chained to the exterior of some ornate place of worship and scowling down over all creation. Clearly superior, but unable to descend to truly experience what it meant to be alive.
    I asked myself again what pain could reside so deep inside of him that it deprived him of the living, breathing warmth that should contain his very soul.
    “Do you understand why it is that you're dying?” he asked, and I realized that aside from the most basic of answers, that my heart was weakened and failing, I did not.
    “Do you wish to know?”
    Too exhausted now even to move my head, I tried my best to intensify the focus of my eyes upon his, and in so doing I found that they seemed even deeper in hue and more