Kate Day - In the Quick

I was tired and hungry, but for the first time since I arrived I felt like talking. I felt like showing someone what I’d done. I tried to imagine my uncle standing at one end of the soybean room and nodding with approval, but I couldn’t picture his face. I switched the system off and then on again, but I felt very little watching it; the thrill of what I’d done was gone.

The toothache came back—I knew it would—but instead of a pulsing ache it was a single searing knife point of pain. I stumbled back to the medical supplies and swallowed more pain pills and a muscle relaxer. They did nothing.

In one of the tool cabinets I found a pair of pliers, but I had no anesthetic. I thought of the medical bay at the Gateway—pictured myself lying on the table in the shadowy room, the single spotlight over my head. James’s face appeared over my own; he smelled like salt and coffee. He held a syringe and his fingers were soft and warm against my smarting cheek. When he pushed the needle into my gum the pain emptied from my jaw like sand from a sieve.

In the mirror in the shower module my cheeks were white and my nose wet. My right eye seemed to bulge. I opened my mouth, held the pliers as firmly as I could, and clamped them around the molar. I tasted metal and vomit and pulled hard. There was a sickening crunching sound; the room dimmed, went black—

I came to on the hard floor, my mouth full of blood and spit. My tongue found the tooth—it was still there.

I rolled over onto my stomach and crawled. The pain came in rolling waves now and the corridor seemed to tilt with it. Something was wrong with my eyes; the periphery of my vision kept going dark, like the burnt edge of a piece of paper that has gotten too close to the fire. I kept moving and dragged my body forward with only one thought in my mind—a memory of when my helmet got knocked off at the solar field. When I breathed the silt-filled air and all feeling in my head and jaw disappeared.

It took a long time, hours it seemed, but I reached the airlock and pulled myself inside. The wind was blowing hard and silt rapped at the porthole. I shut my eyes, pressed the button. The wind gusted and grains of silt hit my face like a thousand pinpricks. I forced myself to breathe in and my inhale was like an icy burn. I opened my mouth wide, pushed my tongue into the salty air. My lips went numb, my fingers too. Next my throat and tongue. The waves of pain in my tooth calmed, became ripples on the smoothest water. Then they became nothing at all.

My eyes went flat. My body seemed to disappear. Shapes came together in my mind. They formed something. What was it? A picture of Theresa and James, out in the silt. Theresa’s long hair was loose in the wind, and James held on to her tightly, as if to keep her body from flying away.

Long enough. A voice was loud and insistent in my ear. My uncle’s or James’s. Or my own. Long enough, long enough.

My arm wouldn’t move. I needed to hit the button to close the lock. In my mind I screamed at it to move. I dragged myself closer. I pulled myself up to the button and hit it with my head—

The door shut; the silt fell to the ground. I leaned against the wall and waited until feeling returned to my legs. Then I pulled myself to standing and felt my way back to the shower module, to the mirror. The pain in my jaw was there but far away, like a speck on the ground seen from a terrific height. I braced my hips against the sink, secured the pliers around my molar, and pulled. Nothing happened. I widened my feet; I felt the weight of gravity on my shoulders, like the weight of someone’s hands. I imagined they were James’s hands. He held me steady and I pulled again. Hard. There was a crunch and a suck and a pop, and tears streamed down my stinging cheeks. I held up the pliers and my molar was in them, flat and white on the top, long and pointed and bloody on the bottom.

I sat down on the rubber floor. Minutes passed. Feeling began to return to my face and hands. The shapes of the room got sharper. The square of the sink, the rectangle of plastic sheet that separated the showers. The caged light. The colors became more saturated. Gray and black and blue inside, and through the porthole, coral pink. Sensation returned to my eyelids and my lips and the inside of my nose.

The light changed. It was too bright, the outline of things too distinct. The floor was hard against my bottom, my tooth like a sharp rock in my palm. I wished someone was here, someone to help me up, to press a cold cloth to my cheek. I rubbed tears and snot and blood from my face, put my head in my hands, and pushed my tongue into the tender, pulpy spot where my tooth used to be.

Then I heard a voice, a human voice. Someone calling my name. I lifted my head. But it wasn’t real. I was alone. I didn’t want to be alone but I was.

The voice came again: June, June, June. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. People in suits crowded in the doorway. Amelia, Simon, and Rachel. They held their helmets in their hands and stared.

Were they real?

Rachel moved into the room, bent down beside me, and touched my shoulder. What happened?

Simon pushed in too.

I had to pull my tooth out, I said, and the words came out like a sob.

Amelia reached down with her good hand and pulled me up. She rubbed my head. Look at you. You’re a mess.

I wiped my eyes. I’m okay.

Simon pulled me close and hugged me hard. You were right June. His eyes shined.

Inquiry made contact with NSP, Amelia said. They’re alive.

All of them? I asked.

Yes, all of them. Simon let me go and started talking fast. Anu figured out how to rebuild the communications system. She sent a message—

Where’s James? Amelia interrupted.

I shook my head.

You’re supposed to be with him, she said. You’re supposed to be working.

I was. We rebuilt the cell. But then it all went…bad.

So where is he?

I didn’t answer her. I went to the sink and splashed water on my face and wiped the blood from my cheeks. I grabbed my suit from the corridor outside and pulled it on. We’ll go find him.

The Gateway was an outline of gray in the pink haze. The wind battered the rover as I punched in the code to open the cargo bay door, but it didn’t budge. Amelia parked and we put our helmets on and got out. My stomach dropped. Heaps of silt stood against the bay doors; it looked as if no one had opened them in weeks.

Let’s try the exterior entry hatch. Simon’s voice came through the radio in my helmet.

I led them around the perimeter of the station and the silt popped against our helmets. When we reached the spot where the hatch should be I paused and squinted through the silt. It’s here. I felt along the wall. Somewhere. My glove found the hatch’s groove. I brought my face close to it, dug silt out of the door’s hinges. Then I grabbed its latch and pulled hard, and it swung open with a crunching thunk.

On the other side was complete darkness. We stepped inside. Rachel pressed the button to repressurize the lock. Through the porthole the corridor was an empty black and I felt a deep sense of unease. We took off our helmets, and our flashlights made four spots of light on the floor as we moved forward, through corridors that were like tunnels in the darkness. This route had become familiar over the weeks I’d lived here but now I became disoriented. Walls looked like doors, and doors like walls. In our bulky suits we elbowed one another and tripped on the step-ups and step-downs. The corridor we were following reached a dead end, and when we doubled back, nothing was where I thought it should be. The turn for the central module seemed to have disappeared.

Finally after going in what appeared to be the wrong direction we found it. I shined my flashlight into the galley and stepped inside. Everything was as it had been. Table, chairs. The coffee maker was in its spot, clean and empty. I opened cupboards; plates and bowls and silverware were where they always were.