Issuu

Everything seemed frozen in time. The clip in the metal carabiner opened and shut slowly, and every breath felt thick, leaving little room in her lungs. On the last latch of the lengthening climb, she finally reached him. His gold-sheened helmet shielded his face from view, but his suit was definitely compromised. With the normal nudge of everyday people asking for a wake-up call, the company tugged for a sign of life as they reached his position. “Alex?” she tried. No response. “Joelle, hold onto the panel,” RJ’s eyes ripped to the protruding object. “It’s heavy and is leaching the oxygen from his suit.” Her hands felt around the edge of his cinched tether, as Rolphe detangled another kink in the line. “On three . . .” Her voice echoed against her helmet space. “One . . . “A scattered patter of rocks peppered her shiny mesh sleeve. “Two . . . “ The tether started to unravel. “Three.” Too like a corpse, Alex jerked toward Joelle, and his tether was free. Stringing him and his panel along felt like they had caught a fish in a forsaken lake. As they reached the door of the hold, the tiny rocks picked up like a small rain that clipped RJ’s helmet just enough to startle her. Nothing new, but she shook her head like a foreigner to this expanse, where two suns wrapped cloaks of ringed white around the planets, which were in oddly spaced rows far from reach. Rolphe swam through the door just before RJ’s hand hit the close button. RJ knew, only too well, that they had only seconds to work. RJ was short for Rylie Juniper. But, growing up, she didn’t feel much like a Rylie. A decided premed, she got into the field because of all the reasons humankind gets into medicine. But, through the clinical years, she realized she hated the bureaucracy and the death, and transferred to physics and biology. Finishing her PhD in Biophysics, she had registered with the aeronautical program and had been accepted into NASA’s space force, where she planned on experimenting with new ways to do medicine—particularly the part where anti-gravity regions are useful laboratories for non-scaffolded 3D-printing. But she was here, a 33-year-old looking at the face of the world she had known for 4 years. RJ Vember couldn’t help but be transported back to the memory of a lost patient she had seen just before switching fields. He had been medevacked from France, and she remembered his eyes opening and shutting like a computer screen turning on and off. His eyes were white, just white. “Alex, wake up!” Joelle had launched her helmet somewhere beyond the bay and was shaking him. “Hey, hey,” RJ pushed her hand against Joelle’s shoulder, “What we need is a kit right now. Get me compression, okay?” Joelle snapped back to no-emotion mode like they were trained to do, gathering supplies, while Rolphe assessed the patient. “No response,” Rolphe clicked off a flashlight he had been using to probe Alex’s eyes. “We need to dislodge. Bandage ready?” RJ ripped her gloves off. Her hands were shaking. Why were her hands shaking? “Ready,” Rolphe gripped the panel.