Schiller found the room Oakes was in without much effort. On his way over, he had seen a group of people cursing as they headed elsewhere. When he asked, he learned there was a madman in their dormitory, and they had no choice but to go stay somewhere else.
Schiller knew the madman was very likely Oakes, but when he pushed open the door and saw Oakes's current condition, he was still shocked.
Oakes had been a burly man. The first time Schiller met him, he had been surprised by his sheer size. When he stood beside Lisa, if Lisa was a Barbie doll, then Oakes was the largest teddy bear imaginable—tall and broad all over. The young nurses said he could get stuck in the hospital doorframe.
But now he had lost a great deal of weight, almost half his former width. Working on a space station might have been grueling, leaving little time for exercise, but wasting away to this extent was still astonishing.
He had shaved off most of his beard. Though it made him look much younger, it also made his pallor more apparent. His condition resembled Lisa's somewhat, perhaps even worse than hers.
As Schiller approached, he heard Oakes muttering under his breath. He seemed to catch Lisa's name, so he said, "Oakes, can you still hear me? Lisa is fine. She asked me to come find you."
A glimmer of light flashed through Oakes's murky eyes, but his auditory system seemed unable to connect to his brain. He soon stopped responding.
Schiller had no choice but to risk stepping closer. He had deliberately worn a white coat when he came, knowing that Oakes felt favorably toward doctors. Even ordinary people, after suffering a disaster, became markedly more stable when they saw something resembling a