Hellen

I stared at my sister; not sure I’d heard her right. We were sitting on the ship. Simon was fast asleep in Sarah’s lap as she told me what illness he’d developed. 

“Are you sure he has it?” I asked for the tenth time in less than two minutes. 

“For the last time, Hellen, I don’t tell lies about a person’s health. Mother taught us better than that.” 

“Sarah, how would he get pneumonia? He hasn’t been ill since we got on. Seasickness doesn’t cause that fatal of a health issue. I would be much less surprised if he just got smallpox or something similar, seeing as to all of the colonists on this ship probably haven’t properly washed in weeks, months even.” 

“I’m not sure, but any child can get this illness. He could’ve gotten it at any point in time.” 

Charles stirred. He slowly sat up and questioned us, “What’s going on?” 

“Simon has pneumonia,” my sister answered. 

“What? Isn’t pneunomia like a super dangerous sickness or something?” 

“It’s pneumonia, and yes, it is.” 

“Well, can you heal him?” 

“I’m not sure,” she said gravely. “That would take really advanced medicine. A cure hasn’t been discovered yet.” 

“Can he recover without a cure?” 

“It’s extremely rare. At his age, I don’t think it would be likely.” 

“But—but you’re nineteen! You’ve got the intelligence; couldn’t you find a cure yourself?” 

“It isn’t that easy, Charles. It takes decades for people to find cures for this sort of thing. We’ll be on this ship for six weeks. Simon might not have that long.” 

“What do you mean, you can’t find a cure on your own?! Simon’s my only younger sibling! He can’t just die!” 

“I can’t control that, Charles!” 

“Everyone please just stop arguing!” 

I hadn’t even realized that Philip had awoken, but he seemed to have been listening for a while. He slowly rose, then stiffly gripped my shoulder and directed me out of the cabin once more.