The Fireflies

The writer is in a hospital in New York, convalescing. He finds out that Mrs. Carter, a woman he knew in Penang, Malaya, in the nineteen-twenties, is a patient in the same hospital. They send each other messages through the nurses. They help him recall Nancy, whom he met out there, and married. He met Mrs. Carter on a ship going to the Orient, when he was 22. She was 30, the mother of three small children, & seemed much older to him. Later he realized she was not so old & he enjoyed many parties she and her husband gave. He finds out that she has cancer and will not live much longer. Her last message is "The fireflies that lit up all at once." This makes him remember a certain kind of lightning bug in Penang. Huge numbers of these insects perched in trees, lit up suddenly and gave the whole tree a glow.

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