Orbital

Fifty-Two Outpatient

I know I saw someone through the window. My module ending up adrift right as I discovered the missing canister is no coincidence. Someone wanted me dead — and still wants that to happen.

Warren checks my wounds and fusses over some monitoring equipment while I sit here and privately fume. I can’t make a big deal about what I saw right now. I’m in a rather vulnerable position. I just have to give the swelling a few more hours then make my way to my lab where I can make a secure connection to Earth and tell them what really happened.

For the time being, I have to wait this out and not mention that I saw someone try to kill me — because that person is on this station, possibly in this room.

I watch Warren out of the corner of my eye. It’d be very easy for him to do something now that would end me. A bubble in one of the tubes feeding my fluids… “Accidentally” give me the wrong medication… Hell, he could just put a pillow over my face and say I suffocated from fluid build up. How many coroners have ever looked at a body with this kind of damage?

Although, from Warren’s reaction, I can tell this is mostly superficial. I’m bruised and swollen, but nothing appears to be failing. Still, he knows a hell of a lot more about how the body works and can be made not to work than I do.

“Okay, David, just sit still for a while,” he says, heading for the door.

“You’re leaving me?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of boring in here. I hate hospitals.” He taps a wrist display. “I’ll monitor you from this. If you’re still experiencing pain in an hour we’ll see about medicating that. For now I just want your body to do its own thing.”

“Taking advantage of millions of years of adapting to harsh airless environments?”

“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“Thanks to duct tape and my brain.”

He glances at my space suit and shakes his head. “Your brain. Good one.”

He’s probably an amazing doctor and saved my life, but I’m kind of glad when he leaves. There’s not much point to arguing with him that the primary reason I’m alive is because I figured out how to survive in space a little longer than a human should be able to.

Let him think that his god-like powers are the reason I’m still alive.

Despite the pain, or because of it, I manage to doze off a little.

I wake up a little while later to the sound of a sponge being wrung into a bowl. When I open my eyes, Samantha is gently washing my forehead.

I get self-conscious about my little towel then realize that I’m covered with a thin blanket.

“How’s it going?” I give her a smile.

I can see from the reaction she’s trying to hide that I’m still hideous.

“It’s okay, you can say it,” I tell her.

“I once set my American Girl doll on fire. She looked better afterwards than you do right now.”

“So the make out session has been canceled?”

“Uh, yeah, for the time being. Have you looked at your lips?”

“Puffy?” I run my tongue across them and feel how cracked they are. “Oh. Gross.”

“I’ll put some moisturizer on them. To be honest, we got to put a lot of things all over you.”

I try to make a growling sound and fail miserably, only producing a pathetic gurgle.

“What was that?”

“I think I’m thirsty.”

She puts a straw to my lips. “Sip.”

Water trickles out the corner of my mouth. She uses a towel to wipe away my spittle.

“Thanks.”

“What were you thinking, David?”

You know, I’m getting tired of people acting like I tried to win the Darwin Awards. I made a friggin’ space suit from duct tape! And they all act like I tried to do a jet ski jump into a toilet bowl.

“I don’t know, survive?”

“We would have come and got you.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know? And when? Warren says you guys didn’t even know that I wasn’t here until I smashed into the airlock.”

“I was looking for you. There were comm problems, so we couldn’t hail the whole station.”

Of course there were. Whoever decided to maroon me had this planned out pretty well. They covered all their bases.

What I wonder is if they were just waiting for me to do something stupid that took me to a remote section of the station — or if they were planning on pulling this ejection stunt on my lab?

“What were you doing in there?” asks Samantha.

My survival depends on nobody really knowing what I was up to. I think I like Samantha, but I can’t tell her.

“I was curious about the station.”

“So you go walking around at three in the morning?”

“It’s not my preferred nocturnal activity, but I was bored.”

“Next time, come knock on my door. That will be a lot safer.”

I give her a weak smile. “Noted.”

“Of course, who knows if we’ll be up here on the station at the same time again. Maybe that window just closed.”

“Warren says I’ll be fine in a few days.” I raise my arm and look at my sausage-like fingers. “I think this is already starting to go down.”

“That’s good, but the shuttle will be up here for you tomorrow.”

“Shuttle? What shuttle?”

“The one taking you home. You can’t stay up here like this.”

Damn it. I can’t leave now. My best chance at catching whoever did this is while I’m still up here with them. Once I’m gone and they return to Earth, we may never have another chance.

“I can’t go back.”

“Are you insane? You almost died twice.”

I grab her wrist and squeeze. “They can’t send me back.”

“Not my choice.”