Kate Day - In the Quick

You’ve gone too far, Rachel said. Turn around.

I didn’t answer. I reached the vent, took out the antenna, and quickly began to screw it into an unused port next to the vent. I was sweating hard; my hands were slippery inside my gloves and my visor fogged.

Rachel’s voice came through my helmet again. The loose panel’s behind you—

I looked back the way I came. Amelia was still inside the gyroscope compartment.

I had six screws left.

Tell me what you’re doing, Rachel said.

I’m attaching an antenna.

Amelia’s voice: What antenna?

I turned and we looked at each other across the station’s shining starboard. The sun reappeared and its reflection moved across Amelia’s helmet, made it opaque. I couldn’t see her face but I could hear her breathing.

They’re dead, she said.

I tightened my grip on the handrail and turned back to the antenna. They’re not.

Rachel’s voice was stern inside my helmet. I don’t know what this is about but I want you both to move back to the hatch.

I felt movement behind me. Amelia was pulling herself toward me.

I had one screw left. It was done.

I faced her. They’re out there, I said. They’re alive, and I’m going to prove it.

My tether cord was looped around my left arm and I let go of the handrail to shrug it off. My legs floated out from under me, but my tether caught me. I felt its clip catch. I began to reel myself in.

But Amelia was looking at something. She was moving fast— My tether went slack and I had a sickening feeling of being let go. I looked—my clip floated free. Amelia had seen it before I had, and she scrambled for it. I drifted despite my hands grabbing. My breath was a roar inside my helmet. I was one foot away from the station, three. Four.

The station got smaller. The stars brighter. I saw white feet in front of my eyes. My white feet.

Amelia! Rachel’s voice came through the radio. And Simon’s too. Port side! There, there!

The station slid from my sight as I rotated backward in the air, boots over head, slowly at first, and then faster. My organs swayed; vomit stole up my throat. I waved my arms as the Earth flashed blue and green and white, and the station black and gray.

Then—a strong tug at my back. Amelia had grabbed the loose tether, was pulling me back in. I heard the rush of her breathing, and my breathing. We bounced and our helmets cracked together. I held on and she held on. We spun into open air and the station was upside down, sideways. Amelia’s tether snapped us back. We slid down the starboard and I scrambled for a handrail, an antenna, anything to slow us down. Amelia reached for the loose panel just as both our bodies slammed into it hard.

The panel pinned her hand and she cursed, pulled it free. Our trajectory slowed. Our eyes met through our visors and hers were twisted in pain. She gripped the tethers with one hand, her left. She dragged us to the hatch door, and through it. It shut behind us with a hiss and a thunk, and we collapsed against the wall. She held her right hand to her chest. Her glove was the wrong shape.

How bad is it? I reached for her glove. How bad—

She pulled away. Wait. Her face was gray. Wait for the lock—

Pressurized air rushed around us as we waited for the green light to flash.

Earth’s gravity pressed at my hips as I swung my legs from the Candidate dormitory cot to the floor. Two points of cottony pain throbbed in my ears but every other sensation was muffled. I’d been back on Earth for five days but my vision was still fuzzy, my fingertips dull. My tongue lay flat inside my mouth, dry and inert.

I set my feet flat on the floor. They were swollen three times their normal size with edema and seemed to squish. I stood, swayed slightly, and saw sparks at the corners of my eyes—but I was used to that. It happened every time I stood up and I was beginning to wonder if it would ever go away. I took a tentative step and squirmed at the sensation of my fluid-filled toes against the hard ground. My oversize compression slippers were tucked under the bed and I inched my feet inside.

I had been staying in the Candidate dormitory since I got back, making slow circuits between my room, the cafeteria, and the rehab gym. I heard about Amelia only from Rachel or Simon. I hadn’t seen her since she’d been evacuated from the Sundew almost three weeks ago. I knew she had lost her hand, and I knew she wouldn’t want to see me. So I didn’t go visit her, even though Rachel kept asking me to.

I’d lived at the Candidate dormitory before, the year between Peter Reed and being posted to the Sundew —when I’d walked through the halls knowing I was one of the few in the Candidate program who could expect a job in space, rather than in a control room or lab or training facility on Earth. Back then I’d felt larger than life and prepared for anything. Now everything looked the same but felt different. The colors of the furniture and walls seemed brighter; I felt small inside rooms that appeared taller, or wider.

In the cafeteria I toasted a waffle and put peanut butter on it. I had a vague sense of the noise in the room behind me, but the pressure in my ears made it impossible to distinguish individual sounds, and when I moved my knife across the waffle it made no sound.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. Lion was standing in front of me. He looked tall and healthy; his hair was a brown halo around his head.

His mouth was moving but I shook my head, tapped at my ear.

I can’t hear you, I said, and he leaned closer.

I was able to make out one word. Amelia.

I shook my head and opened my mouth wide, and the pressure released slightly.

Sit with me, he said, and pointed to an empty table.

We sat down and I cut up my waffle into small pieces, the knife and fork cold and strange in my swollen fingers. What were you trying to say before? I asked, probably too loudly, because the people one table over turned and looked at me.

He leaned across the table. Amelia’s being fitted for her prosthetic this week.

I put a piece of waffle into my mouth and chewed it on the left side—the descent to Earth had loosened some fillings in my molars and my right jaw was tender.

You should go see her, Lion said. I was there with Carla.

My throat was dry and I tried to swallow the piece of waffle.

She’s been asking for you, he said. She wants to know why you haven’t come.

Do you know what happened?

I heard.

She doesn’t want to see me. Not really.

Listen. I just told you she does.

Every sound was muted as the shuttle bus lurched through campus. Outside it was early fall and the sunshine made yellow spots on the floor. I watched the spots shift left and then right as we passed flat green fields and squat gray buildings. But when the bus paused in front of the veterans’ hospital I didn’t get up. My body felt anchored to the blue carpeted seat. I hadn’t been there since my uncle was sick and I didn’t want to go back.

The bus moved on and I rode it through its whole hour-long loop. When it reached the hospital stop for the second time I got out. I’d barely been outside since I’d arrived back on Earth, had been existing inside the chilly and still air of the Candidate dormitory for days. A tree stood a few yards away, a maple. Its large yellow leaves trembled in the breeze. The air was warm and humid and lifted my hair from my face.

On the rehabilitation floor a nurse pointed me in the right direction, along a dimly lit corridor that smelled like bleach. I walked slowly, my ears full of woolly pain. The door the nurse had pointed to had a window, and through it I saw a room full of equipment and machines. Amelia was sitting at a table. A metal prosthetic was fitted to her wrist and a woman was adjusting something on its thumb.