SEVENTY-ONE

 

 

LIGHT CREAKED INTO Émile’s head through itchy, irritated eyes. His groan sounded hollow. He shifted an arm. He wasn’t wearing a suit. Sheets rubbed flesh. His eyes stung. LEDs shone too brightly on the ceiling over him. A big face mask covered his mouth and nose, hissing cold air. He reached and pulled it away on elastic straps.

“Leave that on,” someone said. “You need the oxygen.”

He raised himself up on his elbows and sharp pains shot through all his muscles, like every part of his body had run its own marathon. A nurse crossed the small bay between a dozen other sick beds. He was in the hospital on Baie-Comeau. She put a small hand on his chest and tried to push him back and replace the oxygen mask. She succeeded at neither.

“What happened?” he said.

“You’re really lucky, monsieur D’Aquillon,” she said. She was in her mid-forties, black-haired and dark-eyed. She indicated a hard-faced woman in a pilot’s suit leaning against one of the ward’s doorframes. “A rescue team found you around sixtieth rang. You almost suffocated. Your oxygen supply had run out. You also suffered from decompression.”

“How’s Marthe?”

“Who?”

“My sister.”

The woman in the pilot’s suit frowned and stepped closer.

“I found you, monsieur D’Aquillon,” she said. “There was no one with you.”

Cold terror leapt into his stomach. “She was with me!” he said, sitting up fully despite the nurse’s pushing hand. Pain lanced every muscle but the horror in his chest was worse. “I strapped her to me!”

A growing sort of horror and loss crept into the pilot’s expression.

“I’m sorry, monsieur D’Aquillon,” the pilot said. “You were alone. Unconscious. It was lucky that we found you at all. The transceiver in your suit was almost out of power. I didn’t see anyone else.”

“She was with me!” he said.

The pilot’s shoulders slumped slightly. “I’m very sorry, monsieur D’Aquillon.” Then she backed out of the room altogether.

The nurse was teary eyed and her small hand pressed again on his chest.

“You need oxygen, monsieur D’Aquillon,” she said in a quiet voice.

She stopped trying to push him back and just put the mask over him again. He breathed, numbly. The nurse backed away too. He stared at his sheet-covered toes, rubbing every so often at watering eyes. But soon, rubbing didn’t help anymore. Tears spilled down his cheeks, around the mask.

He’d been holding Marthe. They’d been strapped together. He’d found her in time. He’d traded helmets with her so that she could breathe. She’d been breathing. He’d been holding her.

His throat tightened painfully over silent weeping.

Marthe had been with him. He’d had her! They’d side-stepped most of the storm.

He slumped onto his side. Every part of his body ached in resonance with the throbbing in his heart. This wasn’t a death like Thérèse had nearly had. Marthe hadn’t been looking for it. She’d been doing her job, living. A storm had taken her, with the predatory zeal of a shark. Venus had consumed her.

His body shook. Tears ran faster.

His little sister was gone, the chop-haired little girl who’d wanted to keep up with him and Jean-Eudes around the habitat. The one who’d gotten spanked for hitting him with a piece of cable, and who had come to him for comfort. The girl who’d become a hard-ass and had started to run the family. Marthe was gone, blown away like a leaf. He’d loved her. His tears were volcanic, drops of acid from the depths he’d been raised in, radiating stinging pain.