Birch shifts uneasily in the gray patient chair in Ophelia’s office.
Suresh left a few moments ago, accompanied by Severin. She sealed Suresh’s split lip and the gash under his eye with the portable medical unit from the medikit that Kate brought to her—though neither she nor Suresh was exactly at ease with it so close to his face. He didn’t even protest when she made him wear the safety goggles, which was a relief. Ophelia has basic knowledge of how the PMU works—how everything in the medikit works—but absolutely no practical experience. She’s not that kind of doctor. But she wasn’t about to argue with Severin’s order when it gave her what she wanted—a chance to talk one-on-one with members of the team.
Suresh was uncharacteristically silent the whole time, answering her questions with a word or two and only when required.
The normally taciturn Birch, though, is downright loquacious by comparison.
“I don’t need this,” Birch says, as Ophelia stands over him, holding the med-scanner wand near his forehead. He holds up his bloodied knuckles, the skin split from the impact with Suresh’s face. “Just slap some gel-bands on my hands. I’m not sick.”
Maybe not, but he doesn’t look healthy either, now that she has a closer view of him. His green eyes are bloodshot, and his skin holds the grayish tinge of exhaustion.
“Just hold still. I’m being thorough. Commander’s orders,” Ophelia says.
He narrows his eyes at her. “That’s convenient.”
Ophelia ignores the comment. “You want to talk to me about what happened out there? With the samples?” she asks, keeping her focus on the med-scanner, mainly to give him the illusion that this is a casual, informal chat.
Birch gives a derisive snort. “With you? No thanks.” He scrubs his palms against his jumpsuit, then his right hand drifts over to scratch his left arm, fingers worming beneath the sleeve of his jumpsuit to reach skin.
On the underside of his exposed wrist, Ophelia catches a glimpse of a memorial block—a solid black rectangle. Tradition on the mining stations is to ink assignments on your skin, an indication of the commitment. Like family. And when a significant death occurs, the assignment name is blocked out and covered by black ink, turning it into a memorial band for those who were lost.
“I guess I don’t understand,” Ophelia says. “Even if a sample were gone, it’s not as if you can’t get more.” She tips her head toward the window and the city in the distance.
Birch stops scratching and looks up at her, past the med-scanner wand. His gaze searches her face, and disbelief slowly etches itself in his features. “You really have no idea,” he says slowly.
Ophelia flinches, and the med-scanner wand chirps in protest. Quickly, she readjusts to keep the wand on task.
Birch shakes his head in disgust. “Jesus, how did you convince them to let you out here?”
Her face heats, and the desire to rattle off her every accomplishment, from graduating a year early from Marchand-Brighton to her journal publications on the effects of red dwarf light on the human circadian rhythm, is hard to suppress. Striving to prove herself is as ingrained in her as the repeated scoldings not to thank the help and the inner workings of the T118 station bot cleaner.
It’s not about you, Phe.
“If I’m missing something, why don’t you explain it to me,” she says instead.
He barks out a laugh. “Are you kidding?”
Ophelia doesn’t say anything, and he stops laughing.
“Listen, Doctor,” he says with a sneer. “I realize that you’re used to people cracking open, spilling their guts—”
His words trigger a graphic visual in her mind, and she represses a shudder.
“—to give you what you want, but that’s not going to be me, okay?”
Ophelia moves the wand to hover over his right hand. “Hold it out, please. Palm down.”
“Nothing’s broken,” he protests, but then, with an exaggerated sigh, he does as she asked. She suspects Severin’s lingering presence somewhere in the corridor has something to do with it.
“I realize I’m not your favorite person,” she says after a moment. “But I’m here to listen. To help.”
He remains silent.
“Can you tell me about last night? Why you were really in the airlock?” she presses, as she waits for the wand to finish scanning for breaks and fractures.
Birch sets his jaw resolutely.
When the med-scanner signals that the bones in his hand are whole, she lowers the wand and steps back. He immediately begins scratching at his left arm again, almost as if he can’t help it. But the med-scanner hadn’t reported an infection or irritation. Stress, maybe. One of Ophelia’s patients used to break out in hives every time she had to interact with anyone outside her team.
She returns the scanner to the medikit and settles across from him in her chair.
“Are we done here?” he demands.
“Not yet,” she says. “I want to talk.”
“Seems you’ve already been doing plenty of that,” he mutters, his leg jiggling with nervous energy.
“Are you finding yourself worried or preoccupied with what the others are doing or thinking?” she asks.
Jaw tight, Birch stares at a point across the room, ignoring her.
All right, then. “Have you seen or heard things that couldn’t possibly be real?” It’s a risk, she’s pushing too hard already, but she has to know. “Sometimes it may present itself as someone you know or it might simply be voices in your head that aren’t your own.”
A twitch rolls through Birch, like a full-body spasm. Then he stands slowly to loom over her, fists clenched at his sides. “Is this a game to you?” he demands, his voice low and gritty with anger.
Ophelia retreats slightly in her chair, caught between offense and an instinctive pulse of fear. “No, of course not. I’m just trying to ascertain whether you’re a danger to yourself or—”
“Do you get off on this?” he persists, edging closer. She can’t get up without colliding with him. “This sick, twisted mind-fuck you’ve got going on?”
Ophelia gapes at him. “What are you—”
“Yeah, you do.” A grim smile pulls at his face. “You put that shit in my head with that fucking band.” He jabs his index finger at his temple, revealing vicious, red scratch marks down his wrist. “Now you want me to talk about it.”
“What … I don’t…”
Birch advances on her quickly, and she slides back in her chair until her spine is pressing tight against the plastic.
“What?… You don’t what?” he repeats, in a higher-pitched, mocking tone as he towers over her. “I just happen to dream about that butcher for the first time in years, my brother’s skull bashed in and his brains on the fucking floor, and you’re here with your ‘new system’?” Spittle flies from his mouth, landing a lukewarm splotch on her upper lip. “I see my brother calling to me from outside the hab, pleading with me for help, and that’s a coincidence?”
Her ears are ringing, a high whine of panic and confusion, like a drill through her brain.
“I don’t understand,” Ophelia finally manages through dry lips, her tongue a dying husk in the bottom of her mouth.
Birch leans down, bracing himself on the arms of her chair, bracketing her in place and baring his teeth at her in a grin. They’re pink. As Ophelia watches, a trickle of blood seeps out from his gums and into the seam between his front teeth.
What the fuck.
“You enjoy screwing with people’s heads. Just like your old man. Well, not exactly, huh?” He raps his bloodied knuckles against his skull. “Mine’s still intact.”
Her throat closes off, sealed tighter than the imaginary Bray family vault everyone is so obsessed with. Her lungs rebel in her chest, struggling to take in air.
This is not … He cannot possibly … No one … I can’t.
Her shock must show on her face.
“Yeah. Maybe we should be the ones asking the questions about you, Dr. Bray,” he snaps. She tries not to flinch at the smell of hot metal and sweat emanating from him, the spray of saliva and blood against her skin. “Are you hearing voices? Seeing people who aren’t there?” He mimics her again. “If anyone is a danger to the rest of us, it’s you.”
Birch leans closer still, and she turns her face away, her heart beating a frantic tattoo in her chest. “You think I don’t recognize you?” He breathes against her skin. “I knew the moment Severin sent us your mission profile, Lark Bledsoe.”
Though spoken in a harsh whisper, the name seems to echo in the hab, in her head.
Birch pushes off her chair in disgust. “You look just like your father.”