Gravity

There was no hope of reconciliation, he could see that now, in the coolness of her gaze. Nothing left to do but be civilized it.

He glanced away, suddenly unable to look at her. “I just came by to wish you a safe trip. And a great ride. Give me a wave so often, when you pass over Houston. I’ll watch for you.” A moving star was what ISS would look like, brighter than Venus, hurtling through the sky.

“You wave too, okay?” They both managed a smile. So it would be a civilized parting after all. He held open his arms, and she leaned toward him for hug. It was a brief and awkward one, as though they were coming together for the first time. He felt her body, so warm and alive, press against him. Then she pulled away and started toward the Mission Control building.

She paused only once, to wave good-bye. The sunlight was sharp in his eyes, and squinting against its brightness, he saw only as a dark silhouette, her hair flying in the hot wind. And knew that he had never loved her as much as he did at that very moment, watching her walk away.

July 19

Cape Canaveral Even from a distance, the sight took Emma’s breath away. Poised on launchpad 39B, awash in brilliant floodlights, the shuttle Atlantis, mated to its giant orange fuel tank and the paired solid rocket boosters, was a towering beacon in the blackness of night.

No matter how many times she experienced it, that first glimpse of a shuttle lit up on the pad never failed to awe her.

The rest of the crew, standing beside her on the blacktop, were equally silent. To shift their sleep cycle, they’d awakened at that morning and had emerged from their quarters on the third floor of the Operations and Checkout building to catch a nighttime glimpse of the behemoth that would carry them into space. Emma heard the cry of a night bird and felt a cool wind blow in from the Gulf, freshening the air, sweeping away the stagnant scent of the wetlands surrounding them.

“Kind of makes you feel humble, doesn’t it?” said Commander Vance in his soft Texas drawl.

The others murmured in agreement.

“Small as an ant,” said Chenoweth, the lone rookie on the crew.

This would be his first trip aboard the shuttle, and he was so excited he seemed to generate his own field of electricity. “I forget how big she is, and then I take another look at her and I think, Jesus, all that power. And I’m the lucky son of a bitch gets to ride her.” They all laughed, but it was the hushed, uneasy laughter of parishioners in a church.

“I never thought a week could go by so slowly,” said Chenoweth.

“This man’s tired of being a virgin,” said Vance.

“Damn right I am. I want up there.” Chenoweth’s gaze lifted hungrily to the sky. To the stars. “You guys all know the secret, I can’t wait to share it.” The secret. It belonged only to the privileged few who had made the ascent. It wasn’t a secret that could be imparted to another, you yourself had to live it, to see, with your own eyes, blackness of space and the blue of earth far below. To be pressed backward into your seat by the thrust of the rockets. Astronauts returning from space often wear a knowing smile, a look that says, I am privy to something that few human beings will ever know.

Emma had worn such a smile when she’d emerged from Atlantis’s hatch over two years ago. On weak legs she had walked into the sunshine, had stared up at a sky that was startlingly blue.

In the span of eight days aboard the orbiter, she had lived one hundred thirty sunrises, had seen forest fires burning in and the eye of a hurricane whirling over Samoa, had viewed an earth that seemed heartbreakingly fragile. She had returned changed.

In five days, barring a catastrophe, Chenoweth would share the secret.

“Time to shine some light on these retinas,” said Chenoweth.

“My brain still thinks it’s the middle of the night.”

“It is the middle of the night,” said Emma.

“For us it’s the crack of dawn, folks,” Vance said. Of all of them, he had been the quickest to readjust his circadian rhythm to the new sleep-wake schedule. Now he strode back into the O and C building to begin a full day’s work at three in the morning.

The others followed him. Only Emma lingered outside for a moment, gazing at the shuttle. The day before, they had driven to the launchpad for a last review of crew escape procedures.

Viewed up close, in the sunlight, the shuttle had seemed bright and too massive to fully comprehend. One could focus on only a single part of her at a time. The nose. The wings. The tiles, like reptilian scales on the belly. In the light of day, had been real and solid. Now she seemed unearthly, lit up against the black sky.

With all the frantic preparation, Emma had not allowed herself to feel any apprehension, had firmly banished all misgivings. She was ready to go up. She wanted to go up. But now she felt a twinge of fear.

She looked up at the sky, saw the stars disappear behind an advancing veil of clouds. The weather was about to change.

Shivering, she turned and went into the building. Into the light.

Half a dozen tubes snaked into Debbie Haning’s body. In her throat was a tracheotomy tube, through which oxygen was forced into her lungs. A nasogastric tube had been threaded up her left nostril down her esophagus into the stomach. A catheter drained urine, and two intravenous catheters fed fluids into her veins. In her was an arterial line, and a continuous blood pressure tracing danced across the oscilloscope. Jack glanced at the IV bags over the bed and saw they contained powerful antibiotics. A bad sign, it meant she’d acquired an infection—not unusual when a patient has spent two weeks in a coma.

Every breach in the skin, every plastic tube, is a portal for bacteria, and in Debbie’s bloodstream, a battle was now being waged.

With one glance, Jack understood all of this, but he said nothing to Debbie’s mother, who sat beside the bed, clasping her daughter’s hand.

Debbie’s face was flaccid, the jaw limp, the eyelids only partially closed. She remained deeply comatose, of anything, even pain.

Margaret looked up as Jack came into the cubicle, and gave a nod of greeting. “She had a bad night,” said Margaret. “A fever. They don’t know where it’s coming from.”

“The antibiotics will help.”

“And then what? We treat the infection, but what happens next?” Margaret took a deep breath. “She wouldn’t want it this way. All these tubes. All these needles. She’d want us to let go.”

“This isn’t the time to give up. Her EEG is still active. She’s not brain dead.”

“Then why doesn’t she wake up?”

“She’s young. She has everything to live for.”

“This isn’t living” Margaret stared down at her daughter’s hand. It was bruised and puffy from IVS and needle sticks. “When her father was dying, Debbie told me she never wanted to end up like that. Tied down and force-fed. I keep thinking about that. About what she said…” Margaret looked up again. “What you do? If this was your wife?”

“I wouldn’t think about giving up.”

“Even if she’d told you she didn’t want to end up this way?” He thought about it for a moment. Then said with conviction, “It would be my decision, in the end. No matter what she or anyone else told me. I wouldn’t give up on someone I loved. Ever. if there was the smallest chance I could save her.” His words offered no comfort to Margaret. He didn’t have the right to question her beliefs, her instincts, but she had asked opinion, and his answer had come from his heart, not his head.

Feeling guilty now, he gave Margaret one last pat on the shoulder and left the cubicle. Nature would most likely take the decision out of their hands.

A comatose patient with a systemic infection already on death’s threshold.

He left the ICU and glumly stepped into the elevator. This was a depressing way to kick off his vacation. First stop, he decided he stepped off on the lobby level, would be the corner grocery for a six-pack. An ice-cold beer and an afternoon loading up the sailboat was what he needed right now. It would get his mind off Debbie Haning.