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Show Nocturne/ 3 patients on the floor, wondering what would finally take them and when. The conversation played out similar to a game of Clue, moving figures and tiny weapons from one room to the next. Anika wanted to be more like Sydney. Whenever Sydney arrived for the shift everyone looked for some sign of burnout. But her light laughter and her genuine interest in whether they had slept well disappointed them every time. At the beginning of each shift, she dusted her face with multicolored powder that made her look like she actually saw the sun. Anika looked at the nursing board and made a list of all the patients. One of them had to die within the week, at least one. There were so many ways for them to die: seemingly innocuous factors could become catastrophic. Anything could threaten a weak immune system, even something tiny like a cough or a kiss. Critical condition seemed to hinge on factors like those-coughs and kisses-and whether or not they were permissible. Anika reasoned that with a lottery in place, death looked like risk or coincidence, even fate. But beginning the death pool eventually made Anika feel guilty, and she never spoke about it. Anika was likely the real reason that talking on the unit at night was not allowed. Her loud voice carried. In college she thought about majoring in acting. She was the daughter of parents who did not think acting was practical. Despite hours in chemistry lectures and not on the stage, hers was the voice patients could hear down the hall. She did not know much about privacy; neither did she care about maintaining it. Sydney took Anika's list from her hand and wrote down her wager. Anika's pocket-sized notebook became a ledger. In whispers, they introduced the concept to other nurses. Some of them sat with the ledger on the laps for several minutes looking at |