Page 101 of Dose

“Our histories aren’t the same.”

“No. I don’t need them to be.” His eyes stay on mine. “I’m telling you I understand what it is to survive by becoming excellent at the thing they demand, then discover that excellence came with victims.”

The tea smells faintly of anise. I do not drink it.

“There were choices,” I say. “Even inside the program. Small ones, but they existed.”

“Yes.”

The agreement unsettles me more than an argument would have.

“You expected me to tell you none of it belonged to you,” he says. “I’m not going to. Some of it does. So does what was done to you. Those truths do not cancel each other.”

“Then what am I supposed to do with them?”

“Stop treating suffering as repayment.”

I look down at the tea.

“You can stay awake until Cassandra has a perfect number. You can stop eating. You can make yourself hurt in every way that doesn’t leave an obvious wound.” His voice remains calm. “None of that helps one child in those files.”

“Neither does tea.”

The corner of his mouth moves. “The tea keeps you hydrated. Modest objective, measurable outcome.”

I take a sip despite myself.

“What helps?” I ask.

“Honest records. Medical plans. Getting the next group out alive. Living long enough to keep doing it.”

“That doesn’t undo the first direction.”

“Nothing does.” Raphael lifts his own mug. “I stopped asking my later choices to erase my earlier ones. They can’t. They can only be later choices.”

The weight in my chest does not move.

But I finish the tea.

Jenna finds me on Henrietta the next afternoon.

I slept another five hours. Cassandra still has fourteen tabs. I closed all of them before leaving our quarters, which feels less like progress than it should.

Jenna lowers herself onto the couch with one hand beneath her belly and shifts until the cushion supports her back.

“How are you?” she asks.

“I don’t have a good answer.”

“Good answers would worry me right now.”

She watches the silent television for a moment.

“Raphael told me he spoke to you,” she says. “Not what you discussed.”

“He told me pain isn’t repayment.”

“He’s right.”