Silas began to record dates.
Not on a calendar, but in his lab's specimen logbook—the one meant for orchid pollination times, fungal growth cycles, temperature and humidity fluctuations. Now every page held only a number, an abbreviation, an ever-shorter description.
10.23. ALS confirmed. Left hand strength: Grade 4.
11.07. Mayo Clinic. Right hand tremor. Dysphagia.
11.29. Tokyo. Slurred speech. Respiratory trainer.
12.15. Zurich. Wheelchair. Left leg strength: Grade 3.
1.03. Tracheotomy. Unable to speak.
He no longer wrote the weather, no longer listed specimen numbers. He only recorded her decline, like documenting a withering plant, one he could not save.
Jasper Locke's compliance was a cruelty. She never cried, never questioned—she only smiled when he wrote, saying, "Your handwriting is nicer today." Her voice had changed, as if filtered through water, thicker and thicker water. ALS began in the medulla, freezing her from the inside out: first taking her voice, then her breath, finally her heartbeat.
In the dead of night, Silas searched for "what it feels like to be fully conscious with ALS." He found a patient's account: "It's like being buried alive. You can hear everything, see everything, but cannot move. The worst is the itch—you itch to madness, but cannot scratch. You urinate on yourself, feel warmth, then cold, but cannot rise."
He closed his laptop and sat in the dark until dawn. The ginkgo tree outside was already bare; he'd forgotten when the last leaf fell.
Three million dollars, eight months, seventeen specialists, forty-two tests. Silas sold the Brookline house and moved into an apartment; sold his lab equipment and rented shared space; sold his parents' belongings, keeping only one photo of his mother—standing under a ginkgo tree, identical to the one in Jasper's photograph.
He noticed the coincidence but had no strength to pursue it.
1.15. Ventilator-dependent. 24-hour care. Cost: $8,700/week.
Silas filled out forms outside the ICU. He checked "highest level," saw the price, checked "opt out," then checked "highest level" again. A nurse approached, handing him coffee: "You need rest, Mr. Reed. Your wife's condition… is long-term."
Long-term. The word was worse than "terminal." Terminal was an end, a release. Long-term was a tunnel, endless.
He drank the coffee. It was bitter, no sugar—he'd forgotten the sugar packets. He remembered how Jasper used to remember, taking the cup from his hand, adding one cube, stirring three times. "You don't like it too bitter," she'd say. "Your tongue is sensitive."
Now his tongue tasted only iron. He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror; his gums were bleeding. He hadn't slept properly in three weeks, hadn't done anything properly but count her breaths, count his money, count the days left.
Finn Thorne appeared then.
Not in person—a letter. Handwritten, in an ink Silas didn't recognize—too dark, too even, as if brewed from plants, the color of those century-old botanical illustrations in the herbarium.
*"Silas:
Heard you've stopped searching. Correct. Medicine has reached its end, as it did for me thirty years ago.
But the end is not the finish. The end is a door, requiring the right key.
I am still in Zurich. The flower in the greenhouse has bloomed, for the first time in thirty years. It only blooms in a specific kind of air—the kind your wife breathes.
Come, or don't. But do not come with hope. Hope is heavy luggage, and the road ahead is long.
F.T."*
Silas read it seven times. On the fourth, he noticed the postmark—mailed three days ago from Zurich. But he'd only told a colleague "I've stopped" yesterday, in Chinese, in the hallway, with no one around.
On the fifth, he saw the paper's edge. A faint pattern, visible only in light: leaves, ginkgo leaves, the same fan shape as the tree outside.
On the sixth, he fixated on "thirty years." What had Finn "endured" thirty years ago? At conferences, he'd spoken of a "near-death experience," never "medicine reaching its end."
On the seventh, he noticed his hands shaking—not from fear, but something more primal: hunger, thirst, the unconfirmable ecstasy of a man walking in the desert who sees an oasis.
He showed the letter to Jasper. She could no longer speak, but her eyes could read. She read slowly, her pupils lingering on "specific kind of air."
Then she closed her eyes—not from tiredness, but a deeper reaction, like resignation, like fear. Silas took her hand, the right one that still moved slightly, and wrote in her palm:
Go?
She opened her eyes. Looked at him. For a long time. Then she wrote in his palm, slow, slow:
Go. But don't… trust the flower.
That night, Silas did two things.
First, he searched everything on Finn Thorne. Academic databases, news reports, death records. Finn Thorne, Swiss Academy of Sciences fellow, born 1948, disappeared for three months in the Miao region of Guizhou in 1987, found "in excellent physical condition but with severe memory loss," awarded the International Botanical Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, no family, no spouse, no early photos.
Only one. A 1986 conference group photo, young Finn in the corner, holding a plant with black leaves.
Silas zoomed in. Black leaves, ginkgo-shaped, veins glinting in the flash like metal, like scales.
Second, he returned to the herbarium and unlocked the inner room of Jasper's lab. The photo was still there, the map still there, the network of red lines still there. But he found something new—a hidden drawer, locked in the carved leg of the desk.
He pried it open.
Inside was a notebook. The cover read "F.T., 1987." Finn's. Silas flipped to the first page: handwritten German, which he couldn't read. But the second page had a drawing: a plant, labeled Qing Nang, next to a woman—identical to the woman in the old photo, but in a hospital gown, tubes in her wrist.
Third page, fourth page, more drawings. More tubes, more plants, more women. Not the same person. Different women, different ages, different faces, but the same hospital gown, the same wrist, the same tubes.
The last page held only one sentence, in English, the same handwriting as the letter:
"The seventh. Finally mature. But Qing Nang took it. I will find the next vessel."
Silas closed the notebook. His hands shook. He remembered Finn's conference speech, about "life-changing plants," about "the miraculous cure by a Miao girl."
He remembered Jasper saying "it's not a plant."
He remembered "vessel."
When he returned to the hospital, Jasper was awake. The ventilator hummed rhythmically, like a giant, artificial heartbeat. Her eyes brightened when she saw him, then dimmed.
Silas set the notebook where she could see it. He said nothing, only watched, waited.
Her eyes moved. From the notebook, to his face, to the window—nothing outside but Boston's winter, gray sky, bare branches.
Then she closed her eyes. A tear slid from the corner, stopped by Vaseline, forming a small, glistening bead.
Silas wrote in her palm:
You knew?
She opened her eyes. Looked at him. Nodded.
Always knew?
Nodded.
Why didn't you say?
She looked at him, long and hard. Then she wrote in his palm, with her left hand, the one that no longer moved well:
*If I said, you'd search. If you searched, you'd die.
Finn killed my mother.*
Silas stared at the words. He remembered "the seventh" in the notebook, remembered "finally mature."
Then you let me go to him?
Jasper's eyes closed, then opened. She wrote:
*Because only he knows the way.
But the way to save me is also the way to kill me.
You choose.*
Silas looked at her. Her face was thin, pale, surrounded by tubes, like a grafted plant—roots rotting, but a last green on the branch.
He remembered their first meeting, her handing him coffee in the lounge, saying "one sugar, you don't like it too bitter." He remembered getting lost in Edinburgh's cold rain, her laughing "this way we can walk longer." He remembered her burnt eggs, her voice counting leaves, "Qing Nang" muttered in her sleep.
He remembered how much time she had left.
I choose, he wrote in her palm, I choose you to live.
Jasper looked at him. Something in her eyes—not gratitude, not sorrow, something deeper, unnameable. Like release, like farewell.
She wrote one last word in his palm:
Hurry.
When Silas left the hospital, Boston was snowing. Snowflakes landed on his face, not melting, like a cold, persistent touch.
He remembered Finn's letter, "specific kind of air," black leaves, "vessel."
He remembered Jasper saying "don't trust the flower."
He remembered how much money he had left. One hundred twenty thousand dollars. Just enough for a one-way ticket to Zurich, two weeks' stay at the foot of the Alps, a bet on a miracle that might not exist.
Or enough to bury her, if he failed.
He stood in the snow, clutching Finn's letter, Jasper's jade bracelet in his pocket, three million dollars' worth of despair in his chest, and an impossible plan he'd just decided on.
Not to be a hero. Not to save the world.
Only for the woman who wrote "Hurry" in his palm, and a leaf he didn't know if he should believe.
The snow fell harder. Silas walked to the subway, to the airport, to a language he didn't understand, a world he didn't know, a faith he couldn't grasp.
Behind him, in the hospital window, Jasper's eyes were open, watching the snow fall. Her left hand clenched under the quilt, nails digging into her palm, using pain to fight the cold erosion spreading through her spinal cord.
It was not ALS. It never had been.
It was something older, hungrier. And Finn Thorne, the man who killed her mother, was the only one who knew how to feed it—or kill it.
She'd sent Silas to him because she had no choice.
But she knew that when Silas pushed open the greenhouse door and saw the plant blooming for the first time in thirty years, he would face a choice—one she couldn't make for him, one that might make him lose her forever.
Don't trust the flower.
She repeated the words in her heart, like a spell, like a prophecy, like a final warning she couldn't deliver.
Snow fell on the window, blurring the world. Jasper closed her eyes, and in the rhythm of the ventilator, waited for the next chapter of fate.