Patch visits Marty Tooms and watches a storm fade outside as Tooms reflects on love. Tooms calls it a kind of "medical marvel" because it overwhelms the body and mind, while Patch insists it is an emotion. Their exchange turns personal when Patch asks whether Tooms has ever felt it himself.

Tooms admits he did, once, long ago. He describes falling in love at seventeen with the only schoolmate who came to work his family’s harvest, and says that shared summer gave his life meaning. Although the relationship brought repeated heartbreak, Tooms says they truly lived and loved each other without condition, and that memory now sustains him as he faces death.

Patch recognizes the feeling and calls it "color in the dark," a phrase Tooms immediately understands. Pressed for details, Tooms says the image he holds onto is a single smile, the only one he ever needed. The conversation briefly humanizes Tooms and links his memories of love to Patch’s own lifelong grief and devotion.

Then the discussion returns to the missing woman Patch still seeks. Tooms tells Patch he cannot say where she is, and Patch realizes from Tooms’s expression that the reason is simple: Tooms does not know. When Patch sees Tooms glance toward the approaching guard, Blackjack, Patch understands that Tooms is still withholding something important.

Desperate, Patch grabs Tooms’s hand through the bars and begs him not to leave him with nothing after everything that has happened. As Blackjack comes closer, Tooms promises to see Patch next week. When Patch silently asks whether Tooms will finally tell him what he does know, Tooms nods, giving Patch a fragile new hope.