Dairy: Christopher Fu (14): reads the white, square sign above the boy’s bed. His hives can be seen through the thin sheet that covers his small frame. Beside him lies an empty syringe labeled: “Antidote (One Dose).” There’s a vast and heavy, white curtain a few feet to the boy’s left, breaking the room into two worlds. The room is filled with the boy’s incessant rasping, as if the room itself struggles to breathe. Positioned above the doorway is a blocky black-and-white camera aimed at the curtain. The camera blinks, and Christopher’s eyes open.

He turns his head to look at the curtain. With a grunt, he sits up and slips out of bed. As soon as his feet touch the floor, the boils pop. Golden pus mixed with droplets of blood oozes onto the clean, shiny, white floor. He feels sharp pangs in his feet, but he ignores them for the curtain. He pads over to it, sticky, yellow footprints trailing behind him. Pulling it back, in front of him lies another young patient, surrounded by plastic tubes that are filled with colorful liquids. A nearby sign reads Dairy: Doron Bacil (11). Christopher’s eyes land on Doron’s hive-covered face, puffy eyes, and bald head.

He thinks of all those times he had seen that dark silhouette of a recumbent figure on a bed like his, and wondered just who it was, all the months he has been here, or at least he thinks it’s been months since he was first rolled in here on a stretcher. He thinks of when the doctor had come into his world today and used that syringe on him. He had felt a little pinch that dissipated into a numbing cold that spread under his skin. But he hadn’t seen the doctor enter the other world. Christopher stands there, and a single tear flows out of his eye and down his cheek, dripping from his chin onto the floor and mixing into the puddle of pus around him.

A series of loud beeps erupt from the heart monitor beside the patient behind the curtain. Within seconds, a half-dozen doctors swarm into the room, the beeping and rasping drown out the cries of “Put that boy to sleep!” and “Somebody do some chest compressions!” One doctor seizes Christopher, arms desperately flailing and reaching out for Doron, and carries him back to bed as another doctor grabs the syringe, refills it with a clear liquid, and injects it into his arm. He turns his head to look at Doron again. His eyes focus on Doron’s pale, cyst-torn visage partly visible in the swarm of white coats around him, as the camera’s click surges above the din, dying away as fast as it came. 

As Christopher’s vision goes black, his last sight of the curtain separating him from 11-year-old Doron Bacil, he thinks: I’m gonna pull the curtain away forever. No more sorries. The camera clicks again, and the boy’s eyes shut tight.

***

A white, metal sign stands proudly in the ornately furnished hallway. It reads: Dairy Cure Advancement Exhibit!

A smartly dressed man walks in. A swarm of news personnel click cameras at him, but he continues walking to the dais. He steps onto the platform and with one grand gesture, the man silences the crowd and speaks into his microphone.

“Good morning, everybody.” He holds a vial to the audience. “Presenting the cure for the dairy allergy: DorBac!” A round of applause rings through the room. He smiles and raises the vial like a sword in triumph after a hard-fought battle. He gestures again, and the applause dies down. 

“An allergic reaction is nature tricking the body into harming itself due to the immune system targeting allergens as harmful imposters. This substance will trick nature right back and stop such a reaction.” 

Three hours later, when the room is empty, the man sits on the dais and holds the vial in his left hand. With a sigh, he takes a photo from his pocket, worn and slightly faded from the past decades. He stares at the curtain dividing his 14-year-old self and the boy on the other side. He stares at that boy, most of his face and body covered by a half-dozen white coats. He stares at his own form, limp and helpless. The man sighs and wraps the vial inside the photo, trying to push it back to that room, back to the world opposite of his. I did it, Dor. No longer must the weak and powerless suffer. No longer must they be weak and powerless.

The man closes his eyes, thinking of lucky 14-year-old Christopher Fu, the boy in the other world who he couldn’t save, and the dozens of other helpless children in the hospital.