Several pages torn from a hospital admission register, with jagged edges along the binding holes. Bed numbers, names, ages, admission dates—all written line by line in the same person's handwriting throughout. In the age column, the youngest was nineteen, the oldest seventy-six. All admission dates were crammed into the three weeks before the disaster, with more patients each day. By the last page, there was no room left for names, so they were squeezed down the margins in increasingly smaller handwriting. The same phrase appeared repeatedly in the remarks column: "Family has been notified. Cause unknown."

What you think"Even before the disaster began, this place was already packed with people. One line per person. Behind every line, someone was waiting."

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