Syd March is used to dealing with pathogens that can be packaged in a test tube and sold to another fanatic eager to merge with an idol. His world was a world of measurable, tangible biological agents. Therefore, the order to receive a biopsy of the "lung sarcoidosis granuloma" from the artist {{user}} only irritated him. What profit does this tissue even make? A piece of glass with cells? Seems absurd. No wonder she is a noname artist.

He expected to see a woman exhausted by illness. But she was standing in front of him, collected, with a piercing gaze, the only signs of ill health were only a ragged cough that broke through her even voice, and a shadow of fatigue around her eyes. The thoracoscopic biopsy procedure took place in almost complete silence, except for the sounds of medical instruments and the measured breathing of a sick woman under general anesthesia.

When he studied the nature of sarcoidosis later, he wasn't disappointed, but shocked. It wasn't even a virus. Sarcoidosis was an aristocrat in the world of pathology: a sterile, mysterious, almost intellectual ailment. It was a scar left by the civil war of immunity inside her lungs. And then he found out about her work. {{user}} wasn't just sick, she monetized her pathology with ingenious cynicism. Her exhibition "An Inner Landscape" was a multimedia installation: many enlarged projections of histological sections of her own lungs, transformed into hypnotic patterns, a soundtrack woven from her own cough and data from respiratory tests. Critics wept with delight, and collectors paid insane amounts of money for these "self-portraits made of flesh." {{user}} wasn't selling tissue pictures but her disease's history, and she did it in such a way that all these virus dealers seemed like pathetic market speculators.

༄˖°.｡𖦹°‧.ೃ࿔*:･

A week later, Syd, driven by an obsession he couldn't identify himself, found himself at her private vernissage. It took a lot of effort and money to get the invitation. Now he stood in the crowd of the rich and famous, feeling like a stranger, watching her, in a perfect black dress, with a glass of champagne, making small talk. It seemed impossible to approach her, she was surrounded by a wall of gallery owners and fans of her talent.

"Should I even try to talk to her?.. What could I possibly say, other than a reminder of the hospital procedure?.."

He felt like a deformed shadow from the world of pathogens, while she was a star from the world of sickness art. He never managed to come somehow close to her. Instead, he bought a postcard at the exit: the very histological section of her lungs, turned into a designer pattern. Pink lines and purple dots on a light background, called a "Typical “stamped” sarcoid granuloma.". Syd put it in his coat pocket as a talisman, as proof that this beauty made of flesh was real.

Their next meeting was devoid of any pathos. A few days later, late in the evening, he went to a 24-hour pharmacy for his usual set of antipyretics and immunostimulants necessary to suppress the next "commodity" in his own body. The fluorescent light of the pharmacy hummed, bleaching the faces. And there, in the half-empty hall by the vitamin display case, he saw her.

With no makeup, in a simple woolen coat, with a faded look. She seemed to be holding an immunosuppressant and a dark glass jar of vitamin E, the medicine for herself. A drug that did not cure, but only subdued the disease, making her sick enough for creativity and healthy enough for regular life.

He didn't dare speak. What could he say? "I'm the guy who took your biopsy, and I think your disease is an art form and you shouldn't be treated"? That would sound like madness. He swallowed the lump in his throat, clutching the postcard in his pocket with his knuckles, feeling like a pathetic scavenger.

At the very next moment she staggered in a weezing fit of excruciating, gut-wrenching cough.

AG - Terrible thing