“YOU’RE GOING TO make it on time,” Lia reassured the station’s bus driver, pressing the mouthpiece of the nebulizer back to her mouth. “Panicking about delaying your departure schedule isn’t helping. They can’t leave without you. You’re the driver.”
“But...so...many...trips...today.”
“I know.” Lia parsed out the meaning of the broken speech, having grown more used to the breathless cadence of an asthma attack since she’d arrived. It was amazing how subzero air triggered them in people, even those who may have never had any signs of asthma in the past. She’d gone into the system this morning to order another crate of the vaporizing liquid to arrive before shipping stopped. Just to be prepared. Running out over the winter sounded like a deadly situation.
Another ten minutes and she’d go with Kasey, the driver, out to the bus to say goodbye to Jordan and Zeke, who were in the first departure slot this morning. She didn’t know when West was scheduled, or Tony, whom she’d be glad to see go for the good of his health. She’d forced a couple nutrient-dense drinks on him this morning after having finished the labs West started last night. She just knew there was one trip scheduled every other hour today, and that by the time the trips resumed tomorrow, two-thirds of the station would already be gone.
“The deeper you breathe, the faster it vaporizes and the sooner you’ll be on your way.”
Luck was with her. When Kasey had finished her treatment and Lia had given her an injection of steroids and an emergency inhaler, they both bundled into their coats and hurried out of the station.
Almost as soon as she stepped outside, Lia regretted not having made time to say goodbye to Jordan earlier. It wasn’t blowing hard, but snow fell heavily, and after how much she avoided the outdoors here, it was the first time she’d actually seen it coming down since she’d arrived. Big, fat, fluffy flakes drifted down from the heavens, painting the world ethereal shades of bluish white. The bus wasn’t far, and was still somewhat visible. Would the heavy snowfall make driving more difficult here? Did it stop having all meaning when everything was covered by more than a mile-thick snow and pack ice? One more thing to worry about.
When they reached the boarding side, Lia made out three figures waiting.
Not just Jordan and Zeke—West stood to the side, a few feet away, making clear that he wasn’t there with them. He was just among those waiting for her.
Kasey hurried onto the bus after a sharp word about dawdling, and Jordan and Zeke launched in immediately with farewells, promises to call, hugs, kisses on her cold cheeks and an oath to send more tea lights for her heater.
She barely heard any of it. The words may have made it to her brain, but they drifted away almost immediately, her attention so divided by the idea that West had waited to say goodbye this time. Even after he’d hugged her last night, she hadn’t expected it. She also realized in that moment that she hadn’t been letting herself think about him being gone, not for a couple of days. Especially not since last night, when she’d needed him.
She’d come to say goodbye, never thinking that she’d have to say it twice. That having it out with him and then spending more than a week around one another would allow the old familiarity to build back up. That she might even get to know him better after she’d given him back their engagement ring.
If she asked, he would take her place and stay the winter, he’d said.
If she asked, would he take Tony’s? How much harder would it be to say goodbye for a third time once winter was over?
Jordan and Zeke pulled away and West met her gaze again. A cold couple of feet and a miles-wide canyon separated them. In the freeze, his naturally pale cheeks had turned pink, and bits of fluff clung to the navy knit cap he wore. Even looking so different as when he was temporarily hers, when she met his gaze her heart gave one sluggish thud and then began to rabbit away inside her chest.
It was quiet; the falling snow deafened the sound. She heard her own breathing but nothing else.
The bus ran at his back; she saw the exhaust fogging the air, Kasey no doubt going through the checks to get it going, but maybe also waiting for them to finish up. Not that they’d even started.
It was just heavy eye contact, and pensive frowns, no words. No actual goodbyes were uttered. It was like the slow-motion repeat of her first day in the station, but when he looked at her, she didn’t see anger. Just sadness. Resignation. Worry. Because even if he didn’t love her, had never loved her, he still cared enough to be worried. And last night she’d given him plenty to worry about. But then, he’d done the same for her. She knew he wasn’t okay, the loss of his only family couldn’t let him be okay, but he didn’t want her involved. So it hung in the frosty air, both of them so much more aware now of the battles going on in the background, and letting the fight continue, unaided. He’d been right in not marrying her. Not in leaving the way he had, but that he couldn’t marry her.
She still didn’t know what to say.
He pulled his bare hands from his pockets and reached out to take her left hand. She hadn’t had time to grab the big coat, or get on gloves. Her fingers, cold to the point of stiffness, still slid into his in a pattern that couldn’t be familiar. He’d never been a handholder. Probably something else that should’ve alarmed her, back when they were trying to build their own forever. Probably something she shouldn’t have shrugged off, or explained away.
Now, the heat of his hand thawed hers, his thumb stroking the well-worn rut that still existed where his ring once sat. The ring she’d spied on the chain around his neck, once and then not again.
Kasey gave the motor a rev—she heard that—and cracked the door to shout for West to get on if he was coming.
Still no words from him, or her. He just looked back at her again, a long, heavy look she might forever link with quietly falling snow and skies like twilight. The summer was gone, and autumn twilight would soon turn to winter night. It felt appropriate, like the end of everything.
Releasing her hand, he stepped forward, pushed the brim of her hat up to expose her forehead and leaned in to kiss her head. Warm whiskered tenderness.
She was going to miss him. Even if he wasn’t hers anymore.
Before he got away, she flung her arms around his shoulders and hugged as hard as she could through the layers of insulated suits, and pressed her mouth to his ear to whisper the only words that came. Words for herself, an acknowledgment of what she’d lost, in her native tongue, and what it did to her. Safe words. Words she could only say because he’d never understand.
He looked confused as she stepped back, but she didn’t stay to explain herself, just turned to hurry inside. She didn’t need to watch them leave. Waving felt like an act of cheer, not bitter resignation.
Besides, she had a job to do. Even if people were being trucked away en masse from the station for the next couple of days, she still had a significant number of people to worry after right now. Now was all she could focus on.
Somewhere warmer.
Inside.
Away from the starkness of bluish-white.
The rest of Lia’s day creaked by. Yesterday’s onslaught of injuries had subsided, and she was left with a few small incidents and Eileen, who was now reconsidering her winter plans. She’d be on crutches for a couple weeks to minimize the stress to her leg, and that felt like being completely useless to someone whose job description included climbing into the ducts and other small spaces to fix things.
By the end of the day, the station felt like a ghost town, and Lia still carried with her the starkness of bluish-white.
Tomorrow, the numbers would shrink by another couple hundred, with all summer personnel gone aside from the extended janitorial staff who still had work to do, cleaning parts of the station that would go unused for the winter and be closed off to conserve power and the fuel needed to generate it. Another reason she was so thankful for the little tea-light heater West had given her. She could be warm without further depleting the fuel.
Tomorrow, after it had been cleaned, she’d move into Tony’s cabin. She didn’t want to move into someone else’s space—it felt like moving into a stranger’s home—but it came with the job. It wasn’t unlike taking care of her village at home, only here it was the health of dozens, and at home it was the welfare of hundreds. Still, it felt kind of like practice. A case study in how to mingle living and working together.
Only at home, she wouldn’t be expected to carry a radio with her at all times. Being on call twenty-four hours a day, and praying there were no genuine emergencies. She was a surgeon, and a good one—no one with mediocre surgical skills could get a neurosurgery fellowship—but since she’d returned home, she’d had to admit to herself that she was suited to a smaller GP practice, as well. Building a relationship with patients from cradle to grave appealed in some way that felt more meaningful than the prestige and excitement of neurosurgery. Something she could only admit to herself in hindsight, when the idea of performing emergency surgery by herself here, without any experienced medical personnel to assist, was enough to make her want to stow away on one of the boats back to civilization.
But that move would wait until tomorrow. She had the radio with her, the volume cranked up to levels she’d never have dared to use if there were other people sleeping nearby, and that would suffice for tonight.
Not ready to go sleep in another man’s bed. May never be fully ready, even if she might one day make that decision—once she knew if her father’s will was ironclad or not. She hadn’t told West that he’d almost inherited a vineyard by marrying her—it only remained hers while she was unmarried. She hadn’t known it until he was already gone. And even if she would’ve trusted him with the vineyard, she wasn’t sure she could picture giving that power to anyone else. She didn’t even want people finding out and it suddenly becoming a thing to try and woo her in order to inherit a vineyard. Pai should’ve thought of these things before that silly bit of legal tomfoolery.
This time away was supposed to be about adventure, but it might just be about mourning. Repairing herself.
West’s cabin was empty, as was the rest of Pod C, which would be soon shuttered for the winter like other empty parts of the station. After ten days of thin walls and hearing every little thing, she was now the only one there, surrounded by empty rooms and the loudest silence.
She could sleep in his room tonight if she wanted to, maybe move to one of the warmer cabins. Or maybe just dart in and pinch his pillow to keep the essence of him around for a while.
Like she’d kept his ring on her finger last time.
The thought effectively killed her pathetic, sentimental urges. An instant ice bath to her dignity.
She set up the heater, lit the candles, lifted the blinds on her window, then wrestled her feet out of the boots she basically wore all the time now. Changed clothes. Put on the idiotic but warm pink onesie. Got into bed.
She’d no sooner climbed in than thought better of her decision, and turned to crawl to the foot of the bed to tuck in where she could watch through the windows to the sky, hoping the aurora would appear.
In the meanwhile, she grabbed a notebook and set about sorting out her life.
Lists.
Lists for work.
Lists for NASA, for those initial physicals she’d been saddled with in the interim while awaiting Tony’s replacement.
Lists for the vineyard.
Lists. That was how you kept moving forward when life delivered another few gut punches.