Vessel

20

AFTER THE FIGHT with Aimee, Catherine stopped sleeping almost entirely. The wine wasn’t always enough to keep the nightmares and Tom’s voice at bay.

She stayed up and watched bad TV, drinking until she either passed out on the couch or fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Sleep brought an increasingly unpleasant selection of dreams: slapping Aimee; Aimee telling everyone at her funeral she was glad Catherine was dead; killing the entire crew of Sagittarius I, laughing the entire time.

Last night, she’d dreamed about Tom. He was sitting on one of the acceleration couches on board Sagittarius. He was dead, his eyes filmed over, his skin pale and faintly green. There were burns down one side of his face.

When he turned to look at her, the burns glinted in the light.

“It’s always been your fault,” he whispered. “Why did you leave us all to die?”

“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered, stricken.

“You should have let me out.” He stood up and reached for her. “You should have died with us.”

Catherine jerked awake before he touched her, and stared blindly up at her ceiling until it was time to go to work.

The hours she spent at JSC were a special form of hell. She’d managed to keep her drinking confined to her off-hours, sometimes sneaking a glass or two of wine with lunch. But as time went on, that stopped working. She started hearing Tom’s voice again, yelling for her to let him out, accusing her of leaving him to die.

Maybe it was inevitable that one morning she filled her travel mug with something other than coffee. Wine wasn’t concentrated enough to get her through the day in an easily portable form, so she filled it with vodka instead.

She promised herself she’d drink it only if she absolutely needed it.

It was a rough day. Her office was too quiet. With the launch well past, there wasn’t anything to help her keep focused. By noon, the mug was half-empty. Catherine idly sorted and cleaned out her email inbox, feeling the pleasant, warm glow of the vodka. She should drink this more often at home. It felt so much more soothing than the wine.

The fuzzy, blank feeling was interrupted by her phone buzzing to remind her of a mission-status meeting for Sag II staff. Shit, shit, shit. How could she have forgotten it?

She stood up, and things stayed relatively steady. All right. She could do this. It shouldn’t be a long meeting. She could just sit in the back and sneak out when it was over. And stop drinking for the afternoon, Cath. Seriously.

The huge conference room was crowded with all the engineers, admin staff—everyone with a hand in Sagittarius II at all. David would be around here somewhere. His department had worked on some of the communications systems. Catherine ducked down in her seat to avoid seeing him.

Aaron Llewellyn entered and went to the portable lectern at the front of the room. Stragglers found seats, and Catherine put her most attentive face on.

“All right, I’ll try to keep this brief,” Aaron said into the mic. “Everything is A-okay with the crew. They’re on schedule to hit their planned arrival at ERB Prime.”

A small cheer went around the room. Aaron went on, checking in with various department heads. Catherine fought to stay awake.

She started when she heard her name. “As some of you may not have heard,” Aaron was saying, “Catherine has been our expert spokesperson for Sagittarius II, and has already made several media appearances to try to make the mission more relatable to the general public.” He smiled at her, and Catherine had a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. “I hate to put you on the spot like this, but why don’t you give us a quick rundown of how it’s going?”

This was like that old nightmare of showing up at school naked. Oh God, she was much too drunk for this. What the hell had she been thinking? She stood and dropped her forgotten notebook, scrambling to pick it up as one of the AV techs handed her a mic. Everyone swiveled to look at her.

“Um. Good. It’s going good.” Was she slurring? She tried speaking very carefully. “After the— Right after the launch the major networks all wanted news—I mean, they wanted interviews. More information. It’s slowed down. Wo-once the ship reaches the bridge, it’ll get busy again.” Catherine couldn’t judge how well she was doing from anyone’s face. Couldn’t tell if she’d faked her way through it or not. Had she said enough? That was probably enough. She handed the mic back to the tech and sat down, her face on fire.

“Uh, thank you for the update,” Aaron said with a frown, and Catherine realized she’d blown it.

She spent the rest of the meeting swallowed up with dread, the anxiety making her more sober by the minute. When the meeting ended, she fled to the refuge of her office. The travel mug sat on her desk, mocking her.

Later that afternoon she got the knock on her door she’d been expecting since the meeting.

Aaron stood in her open door. “Catherine, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure, come on in.”

“Let’s go to my office.”

Catherine’s heart sank. It was worse than she thought. She followed him like a condemned woman, feeling as if every eye was on her as they went down the hall.

Once inside his office, he invited her to sit and then just looked at her. Finally he said, “Was that the first time you’ve been drunk at work?”

Catherine started to argue that she wasn’t drunk, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. It won’t happen again.”

“You’ve had a lot going on lately. I won’t ask how you’re doing. I can see how you’re doing.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I know what a hangover looks like when you’re trying to hide it, and you’ve been having a lot of rough mornings.”

“Aaron, I—”

“Catherine, you don’t want to go down that road. I’ve been there. You’d be surprised how many of us have.” He was looking at her with sympathy, and she’d almost rather he was angry with her. “I want you to take some time off.”

“I can’t. I know this is a bad time right now—”

“You said yourself that you’re in a lull right now until Sagittarius reaches ERB Prime. I don’t want to say I’m suspending you, but if anybody’s earned a leave of absence, it’s you.” Aaron gave her a stern look. “Take the time, Catherine. Go to some support meetings if you have to. Get yourself back together. Okay?”

Bitterness flooded Catherine’s mouth and she felt something surging forward, like a tidal wave she couldn’t stop. There was a letter opener on Aaron’s desk.

Pick it up.

The voice wasn’t hers. She remembered wanting to hurt Cal and the engineer in the hallway outside the archives, seeing them as monsters. Oh, not again.

Instead of a sympathetic, concerned boss, Catherine saw a pale, shapeless mass of flesh and had an overwhelming urge to strike out.

Pick it up.

Her fingers itched to touch the cool metal object, already anticipating violence, while part of her wanted to scream. Not here, oh God please, not here…

She tore her eyes away from the letter opener with an agonizing wrench and realized Aaron was still waiting for her answer. He was offering it as a choice, but she knew better. “How long?”

“We’ll figure that out as we go. For now, let’s say three weeks.”

God. She’d go mad if she had to sit at home for that long. You almost stabbed your boss with a letter opener. That ship has sailed. She nodded. What else could she do? She was damn lucky he wasn’t firing her. If she wasn’t such a public figure, she had no doubt he would have.

“Okay,” Aaron said, standing up. “Go on home. And if there’s anything I can do to help you—anything—I want you to call me. Day or night.”

Catherine stood as well, and accepted the hand he extended to her. “I will.”

“I mean it. We will do whatever it takes to take care of you. We look after our own.”

He wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t altruism, either. Damaged astronauts were bad PR, and that was especially true of her.