Orbital

Thirty-Eight Impatient

My foot, thankfully still attached to my leg, is resting on the table in the hotel lounge as Warren inspects it.

Presently it’s about a third larger than it should be — and purple. Getting the boot off was a bit of a challenge and the pain was like a thousand hot needles being shoved into my skin — and still is.

Warren won’t give me a painkiller because he’s trying to assess any potential nerve damage. I’m doing my best not to complain because I’ve gathered an audience including half the people on Sagan station.

“So your shoe broke?” asks Tamara.

“Yes. I think there was a problem with one of the joints.”

She picks up the boot and inspects Turco’s handiwork. “What were you doing?”

“Uh, just giving it a flex test.”

“That far away from the airlock?”

“I needed to see how well the gripping mechanism worked.”

“Right. But that far away from the airlock on a first test?”

Whether by intent or accident, she’s put me in a precarious position.

“This model had been tested before…”

“Has it?” She sets the boot back down and watches as Warren touches parts of my foot, eliciting different kinds of pain and accompanying groans from me. “Do I need to call up a ship?”

That’s the last thing I need. She’s obviously worried that I may have damaged my foot to the point that I need Earth-side medical treatment.

Actually…there might have been a touch of hopefulness in her voice. While she hasn’t been outright hostile to me — certainly accusatory — she’s obviously uncomfortable about my presence on the station. Any chance to get rid of me probably sounds appealing to her.

“There’s not much more they could do for him down there,” says Warren. “The skin is bruised, but there’s no frostbite. If Mr. Dixon can manage the pain he should be fine in a while.”

“How long is a while?” I try to ask as nonchalantly as possible.

“Probably just a few hours. The swelling will go down. I’d recommend a good foot massage after that to make sure all the tissue is getting blood.”

He squeezes each of my toenails, making me grunt like a sadist’s piano.

“I think you’ll keep the toenails.”

“Well, that’s a plus.”

Warren picks up my shoe. “Maybe you hold off on testing any more footwear for a while? Do your employers have other work for you to do up here?”

“Scads,” I reply, using that word for the first time since my SAT.

Attwell is standing over Warren’s shoulder, staring at my over-sized foot. “How the hell did you make it down here?”

I nod to Turco. “She helped. I figure it would be better to have first-aid in a gravity environment instead of in free fall.”

“Too bad,” says Warren. “I would have loved the practice.”

“Next time I’ll be more considerate.”

Warren closes his medical kit. “Good thing Samantha was there to help in time.”

“Yeah…she did take her sweet time,” I say in jest.

“I was waiting to see if you were going to explode.”

“The human body doesn’t explode in space,” says Warren.

“I know. But one can hope.”

Technically, I’ve seen a person explode in space. But it’s an experience so morbid that I don’t care to ever describe it to anyone.

“Keep your weight off the foot for a few hours,” says Warren as he stands up to leave.

“Is it better to do that down here or up in zero-gravity?” I ask.

He shrugs. “We still don’t have enough research on that to tell you. If you’re willing to let the other foot go through the same trauma after this one heals, we could try a controlled experiment with one in gravity and then one weightless.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking. “Maybe I’ll just let that be a mystery and take my chances down here.”

The onlookers begin to go back to work one by one, now that the emergency and novelty is over. I get plenty of well wishes from everyone, but I can also sense that they’re looking at me, wondering if I just bring bad luck with me. That’s a good question, even coming from me.

I’m finally left alone in the lounge and use the time waiting for my foot to go back to normal to file a report on my laptop. Tamara had fetched it for me from my room. I trusted her to go in there because she can always waltz in anytime she wants. And the less distrustful I seemed, hopefully would make me more trustworthy.

The pain is still really, really intense but is gradually fading. I spend at least twenty minutes trying to write the first paragraph of my evaluation because I can’t concentrate.

Since this is an actual AstroFirm report, and anybody could read it, I’m intentionally vague on certain details. I just say that I was doing a flexion test and a seal gave way. I already suspect that the range of motion I put the shoe through was beyond what the engineers were anticipating. Also, there’s the chance that the material the 3D printer used for that joint wasn’t up to standard — something I should have tested for if I wasn’t so eager to play space spy.

“That looks almost normal,” says Samantha as she steps into the lounge with a towel covered tray.

I glance down at my foot and notice that it’s close to the size of my other one. “Yeah. Sorry you don’t get to see an amputation.”

“Next time.” She gives me that smile that’s either very mischievous or sinister.

“You bring your dinner down so you can watch me suffer?”

“Almost.” She takes the towel off the tray and reveals a steaming bowl of water and a wash cloth. “Warren said it would be a good idea to start stimulating the tissue now. And it might still be painful for you. So, win-win.”

Despite her mocking cruelty, she carefully lifts my foot and places a warm towel underneath then begins to gently wash the skin with warm water.

At first I feel the skin pricks again, but soon they fade and give way to genuine pleasure as she uses her fingers to knead the muscles of my foot while avoiding too much pressure on the swollen areas.

I know this is clinical, but there’s something sensual about the way she’s doing this. Technically, she’s not even on the station roster as medical staff.

“This is very kind of you,” I say, for lack of anything intelligent.

“I almost became a physical therapist; then realized I liked chemistry better.”

“Physical therapy’s loss.”

She winks at me. “Not completely.”

I try to pretend this is about as interesting as getting a tooth filled and not that an attractive, brilliant woman with mysterious, if not deadly intent, is caressing me.

“Feel better?” she says, drying off the foot.

“Very much.”

Her eyes narrow. “Want me to massage the other?”

I feel a range of emotions at the way she just asked that question. I nervously look around to see if the lounge is still empty, feeling like a teenager sneaking behind the school bleachers. “Well, since we’re already here.”

She reaches into her pocket and drops something on the table. “Then how about you tell me what this is all about?”

I stare down at the little box I’d tried to pull off the hull of the station.