Pupil

It’s a dark reddish orange, the back of the eyeball, when you see it through the pupil. Except for the ivory-coloured optic nerve in the middle, taking sights back one after another, and the blood vessels spidering out from its center across the retina. Nowhere else in the intact body can you see up close bare arteries pumping.

You look in there, in the case of somebody in a coma, to see if the nerve is swollen from brain pressure. But before you do, you check the pupil, the round black silent …