The bus dropped us at our hotel back in Houston late that afternoon. I was spent and collapsed on the bed, drifting in and out of sleep as the sun gradually withdrew. A light rapping at my door opened my eyes.
“Hey ya chickee.” Ali held up a beer—and a Coke. “Thought I’d check on you.” She waltzed in and set the drinks on a table.
“Thanks,” I said. “So embarrassing.”
She made a face. “You want embarrassing? Me in the dunk tank. Just wait.”
“Not a water baby?”
“Not in a two-hundred-pound suit,” she said. “I freak out in a crowded elevator. My dad thinks that’s why I want to go to Mars. No crowds.”
“What about getting there?” I asked.
“Flyin’ first class, baby. No claustrophobic mind fucks for this freedom fighter.”
She handed me the Coke. “I noticed you didn’t drink last night, so I figured you don’t drink.”
“Family history,” I said.
“Opposite here,” she said. “Our house is dry.”
I sat on the bed. She took a chair next to the window.
“Everybody’s talking about you,” she said.
I looked at her.
“All good,” she said. “I think.”
“I really don’t—”
“Heard this shouting match, over in Building Two, ya know, where public affairs is. They were arguing about—you.”
“Me—how could you tell?”
“It was like reporters or something. They’re following you. You didn’t know?”
“No way.”
“They were bugging a lady in the office about where you were staying. What you were doing.”
“Were you eavesdropping?”
“Kinda. But it was hard not to hear them.”
“I had so little to do with any of this.”
“Stop being humble. You adapted the BiolEyet protocols. Science loves you. And whaddya know—you’re here. I know all about you.”
“I’m flattered,” I said. “There’s been some press, I know—”
“Some press? There are entire news channels devoted to you guys. You’re every young scientist astronaut engineer pilot kid with her eyes in the skies dream.”
I looked at the Air Force patch on her open jacket. “You had your eyes in the skies long before I came along.”
“True, that. But...you’re the best thing to happen to space exploration since we first landed on Mars. That critter you found, though. Starting to sound like a different story.”
“Who’d a thunk it?” I said.
“Not me. Finding life means sending life, right? To look around, find more life. We can’t do everything with robots.” She sipped her beer. “Is it true what you guys discovered is the...what do you call it...Common something?”
“The First Universal Common Ancestor,” I said. “Maybe. We won’t know until we can do more tests. Real tests in a real lab.”
“Which is why you’re going to DSG.”
“Not for those kinds of tests. They have to be done here, in a controlled lab environment.”
“Toast. To you—and Crimsy, I hope,” she said. She smiled at me and raised her beer. I raised my Coke and tried to lean forward to clink bottles, but felt dizzy.
“Whoa,” I said.
“You okay?”
I looked at her. I tried to raise my bottle again, but it slipped out of my hand and hit the floor.
“Jen?” She stood and hovered over me. “Jennifer?”
I didn’t remember anything else until I awakened in some kind of clinic or hospital room. A nurse walked in after I opened my eyes.
“Welcome back,” she said. “Doctor will be in shortly.” She walked out.
I reached for what I thought was my cell phone on the stainless steel bed table, but it was something else, so I left it.
“Time,” I said.
A cloud clock appeared. I’d been unconscious, or whatever I was, for a day. The doctor came in and right behind her, Ali, grinning, with a vase of flowers topped with a card. She set them on the counter and gave me a piano wave, like when you tinkle the keys with four fingers. She was in a flight suit and I planned to tease her about how hot she looked. Doc sat on a wheeled stool and slid over with a lighted scope—an otoscope, ENT scope, whatever you call it.
“Good morning.”
“Hey.”
“You’ve been out a while,” she said. “How you feel?”
“Like an elephant stomped on me,” I said.
“This ever happen before?”
“No. Where am I?”
“JSC Clinic. Building Forty Five N.”
“Not the hospital?”
“No. Not serious enough for that, fortunately.” She paused and scrolled through her cloud chart. “I see you had a pretty serious accident a few years ago. Recall anything from it?”
“I was on the passenger side and it was dark.”
The doc probed my eyes and ears with the light.
“They said my ears wouldn’t bother me,” I explained.
“Who said?”
“During my physical. They bothered me again.”
“Ever try Earplanes?”
“No. What’s that?”
She rolled over and took a box of these “miracle ear plugs tested by U. S. Navy pilots” out of a drawer and handed them to me.
“Forgot about those,” Ali said. “Good idea.”
“Say ah,” the doctor said next. I did. “Great teeth.” She listened to my heart, had me breathe deeply, in and out. “Sounds good.” She slipped on some gloves and pressed my ears forward and raised the back of my hair, examining my head. She took my hands. “Grip,” she said. I did. “Wow,” she said. “Didn’t expect that.” I smiled. She looked at my chin, my neck. “Didn’t expect this, either,” she said, studying me.
“What?”
“No scarring. I read your medical history.”
“My brothers said it was bad.”
“Your dad...was he—”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. She looked at my chart again. “We could do a CAT scan. But you appear to be in perfect health. Maybe it was just a stomach bug.” The doctor stood, made some notes on her cloud chart. “Anything else, don’t hesitate,” she said. “Keep an eye on her,” she told Ali, smiled at me again, then walked out.
Ali took the card from the flowers.
“Gave us a scare there, chickee.” She handed me the card. Everyone signed it. Mr. Montana sketched a cowboy hat above his signature, urging me “Back in the Saddle.”
“How sweet,” I said. “Thank you guys.”
“Tourists took off today,” she said, pulling up the wheeled stool. “You’re stuck with us ass cans.”
I laughed.
“That was gonna be our nickname, ya know. But Shock Diamonds was just too cool.”
“Lookin’ pretty hot in that flight suit,” I said.
Ali stood and swept it with her hands. “You like?”
“I do.”
She sat on the doc’s stool and rested her chin affectionately on my hand and chest. She looked at me and grinned.
“What?” I asked.
“Just ‘mirin.”
“Stop.” I gently swept the hair from her eye and forehead.
“I sing the body electric,” she said, staring at something beyond me. I turned. “The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them.” She slid around on the stool to the other side of the bed, reciting the Walt Whitman poem. “They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them.” I joined her in the last line. “And dis-corrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.” She picked up the gadget on the hospital table. “Combo Ohm meter,” she said. “Volt meter. And amp meter. Learned to use one in the Air Force.” She stuck its two steel probes into the wall socket.
“Looks like a short,” she said. She withdrew the probes, held them up, and turned the knob. “If you crank the sensitivity way high, it’ll pick up the charge in the Cloud.” She showed me the meter. She moved closer and the reading jumped. Toward me the readings rose, away from me, they fell. “The force is obviously with you,” she said.
“This force, maybe.” I wiggled the pulse oximeter attached to my finger, which was sending electronic measurements of my heart rate to the Cloud and probably what the meter detected.
“Killjoy,” she said.
I had a ton of emails and texts to answer back in the hotel room. I answered one.
“Totally missing you guys,” I emailed Dr. Levitt, who had “heard I’d had a little mishap and everyone was worried and sending get-well wishes and love.”
“Just a dizzy spell,” I wrote. “Doctor thinks it was a stomach bug.”
I called David. No answer. Called mom. No answer, either. I was homesick. For Kenosha, especially, but I’d take Seattle. I also wanted to ask David what else he remembered about the accident. So many forces affected my recall. I couldn’t remember ninety percent of what happened from a purely physiological basis—injury, concussion, loss of consciousness. The other ten percent I blocked out. I remember dad’s face; I remember arguing with him; I remember watching Papillon with him the night before: Steve McQueen hugging Dustin Hoffman and jumping off the cliff into the sea. Another guy flick about friends in the throes of long goodbyes. David wasn’t answering. Neither was mom. I wanted to hear their voices. I felt like crying. I didn’t leave any messages.