If one were to watch this scene unfold in any other place—daycare, pre-school, a playdate—nothing would seem abnormal. Two girls huddled between toy furniture in a corner of a room, deftly picking up tools and presenting them to each other as if they know exactly what the other needs, toy spoons and giggles in the air. All of this might make a viewer smile and marvel at their innocence. All of this might make one believe, for a second, that everything is normal—except for the fact that the girls are wearing masks, one green and one pink; through all of their medical commands, we never once see their mouths. Except for the fact that their heads are shaved, so that their hair is thin and fluffy, like that of a baby who hasn’t fully grown in their hair yet, instead of thick and black.

Even in the face of their most joyous moments, the children bear hints of their abnormality, their illnesses, their inevitable fates. Because in normal daycares, when volunteers take kids to wash their hands, they won’t tell the volunteers that they can’t, because they’ve just had a shot due to chemotherapy and water will cause an infection. In normal daycares, workers don’t need to sterilize every toy, table, and cubby after the kids leave. But in the Palliative Care Center, even in these moments when kids are bursting with energy, their eyes squinted in a way that you can tell they’re grinning, full-on, like every other child does although you can’t see it through their masks, grinning as if they could never be so in love with life—we are reminded of their incoming deaths, that silently haunt the space.

On the surface, the Palliative Care Center may seemingly reek of death—but upon closer look, you see parents and doctors trying their best to fill their kids’ lives with happiness and meaning. You see that this center is a place of life, and of hope—not hope for a longer life, but a fuller one, that’s surrounded by love and ends with a peaceful, less painful death.