Ghost station, p.12
Ghost Station, page 12
Why does that somehow make her more uncomfortable, like he understands her a little better than she would like him to?
Ophelia adjusts the chairs once more, moving hers to face straight toward the door and then stepping around to angle the patient one slightly toward the window. Maybe their seeming cooperation last night was all a front, but if so, she was going to take advantage of it for as long as she could, until she could convince them to actually trust her.
“Hello?” a soft voice calls from behind her.
Ophelia spins to see Liana poking her head through the half-open door, her expression uncertain. “Hi, good morning!” Ophelia says, a little too loudly, too cheerily, as she waves Liana in.
Take it down a notch, Phe, and maybe the caffeine with it.
But she can’t help it. It’s not just that Liana came, that her plan—okay, if it can be called something as formal as a plan—is working, and the accompanying elation. It’s also the overwhelming relief of being back on familiar ground, doing what she does best. Even if it is on a creepy planet in a creepier-still hab.
Ophelia steps back, moving out of the way, making room for Liana to enter.
Liana hesitates, then heads toward the closest chair—the one Ophelia has designated in her mind as the patient chair—before stopping herself. “I don’t … I don’t know how to do this,” she admits, turning to Ophelia, her hand resting on the plastic back. “I’ve never been in any kind of … session before. Except for our postmission debriefs. And the meetings after—” She cuts herself off.
Ava.
The urge to dig right now is a sharp pinch in her gut, but Ophelia ignores it. She closes the door and heads around to the other chair. “It’s okay,” she says easily, as she sits down. “This is just a conversation, not a test. There are no right or wrong answers.”
Liana, rotating to follow Ophelia with her gaze, gives her a skeptical look, eyebrows raised.
Ophelia smiles. “Okay, yes, there are responses that might generate concern, but I’m pretty sure we’re not there yet.”
Liana’s expression smooths out a little, and she takes her chair, sitting on the edge, as if she might leap up at any moment.
Ophelia leans back in her chair, giving off a deliberately relaxed but attentive vibe that she hopes will inspire the same in Liana. “How did you sleep last night? Did you find the iVR band helpful?”
Some of the tension eases from Liana’s shoulders, and her face brightens. “Yeah, actually. It was great. It felt so real, just like when you showed me. I almost expected to wake up to the sound of the mynahs.”
“That’s exactly what we’re aiming for,” Ophelia says. “Any glitches or issues?” Her fingers twitch involuntarily for the sensation of her pen in hand, but taking notes always seems to make reluctant patients extra skittish, especially in the beginning.
Liana pauses. “Just a bit of a headache.” Her hand flutters up to her forehead and then back down to her lap. Her fingers are squeezing together, interlocking, releasing, interlocking again.
“Totally normal,” Ophelia says. “One of the possible side effects. It’ll get better. But if you need a pain reliever, I’m sure whoever is in charge of the medikit would…” She trails off at Liana’s wince.
Then it clicks. “Ava was in charge of the medikit,” Ophelia says.
“Yeah,” Liana says with a rueful smile. “Like I said, she liked taking care of—”
“What the hell, Birch?” Suresh’s voice is tinny and echoing when it bursts to life in the room over their wrist-comms.
Ophelia and Liana both jump, startled.
“Did you take my good moisturizer again?” Suresh continues, his outrage only slightly muffled by a burst of distant static. “You know what this canned air does to my skin. I’m drier than a fucking sand lizard. Where are you?”
Liana rolls her eyes with fond exasperation. “He always does this,” she says. “Accuses people of taking stuff and it’s right there in his bag, probably hidden away for safekeeping.”
The two of them, Suresh and Liana, seem the closest of the remaining team members, but more like siblings competing over Dad’s attention than anything else. Ophelia makes a mental note.
“Maybe we could…” Ophelia holds out her arm, showing Liana that she’s turning the volume down.
“Oh, right. Sure.” Liana turns hers down as well.
Ophelia lets a beat of silence hang to allow the distraction to fade out and the silence to return.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Ophelia says after a moment, “PBE therapists have required therapy sessions as well, when back on Earth. And I had no idea what I was doing the first time, either, despite desperately wanting to be in this chair.” Ophelia taps the side of the seat beneath her. “You’d think it wouldn’t have been that hard, since I know how the other side works, but if anything, that just made it more difficult.”
That, and because lying in sessions, while expected, is frowned upon.
Liana gives a tight nod, but she’s studying her hands, back in her lap.
“I can’t read your mind. As silly as that sounds, a lot of people worry about that,” Ophelia offers. “I’m not even trying. It’s only what you feel comfortable sharing, and then, hopefully, as you get to know me, you’ll want to share more so I can help more.”
Liana fidgets with the cuff of her jumpsuit. “Right.”
“How about if I start? You get along with your team, but I know that you miss Ava. That she was a good friend to you. That you’re struggling with what happened to her.” That last is a guess, but not a big one.
She nods, mutely.
“Is there something I can help you with? Something you’re having a harder time with?” Ophelia tries to tread lightly. It’s an impossible balance to find sometimes, wanting to help, needing information to help, but also trying desperately not to come off as the pushy asshole poking her nose where it doesn’t belong.
“Not really.” Liana stares out at the window. The dull brightness of the snow beyond reflects back on her face. She looks so small and vulnerable across the short distance between them. Ophelia feels a wave of empathy for her.
“I just … I hate that no one talks about her anymore,” Liana says finally. “It’s, like, Ava died and now we’re all supposed to pretend that she never existed!” She folds her arms across her chest.
Ophelia nods. “For some people, it helps to talk about the person who died. For others, it reminds them too much of the loss. They need to contain their grief, only letting it out privately or when they feel they can manage it, which may not be often. It may look like they’re pretending she never existed, but they’re feeling it in their own way.” Ophelia wonders which one drove the person leaving the paper flowers for Ava in her bunk, someone who wants to remember or someone desperately trying to forget.
“That’s dumb,” Liana protests. “We should be able to feel this together. We lost her together.”
“I know, I get it, but people don’t work like that.” Or so she assumes. As someone who, like Liana, wanted to talk about things but was forced not to, Ophelia can only speculate on what her mother was feeling or not feeling. Years later, her own emotions are still conflicted, tangled-up knots of love and hate and confusion, which is why she keeps them tucked away. Her mother won that battle by default.
“I guess … I’m just wondering about how it works, then. Getting past it and, you know, forgiveness.” Liana shifts uneasily in her chair. “How does that work if you can’t even talk about it?”
Ophelia’s attention snaps into hyperfocus, but she remains still, calm. No need to spook Liana. Figuring out what happened to Ava isn’t what she’s here for, except in whatever way understanding that might help her better understand them. “Forgiving someone or being forgiven?” Ophelia asks.
Liana doesn’t answer; her gaze is fixed on a distant point. “If you did the right thing, the only thing you could do, then—”
BAM. BAM. BAM.
The loud pounding at the metal door explodes in the room, snapping the fragile thread of conversation and the nascent bond between them.
The door swings open before either of them can respond, and Kate sticks her head in, her hair rumpled and face pale except for bright patches of color on her cheeks. Liana jumps to her feet, looking ashamed, like an upper-level manager caught with naked persons cavorting on the background of his screen.
“Excuse me,” Ophelia says sharply. “We’re in the middle of a—”
Kate’s gaze snaps to Liana, her mouth tightening with displeasure. “What are you doing? Didn’t you hear me?” Kate demands, holding up her own arm and the attached wrist-comm.
Ophelia steps in before Liana can respond. “We turned down our wrist-comms so that we wouldn’t be—” she begins.
Kate’s eyes go wide. “Why the fuck would you do that?” She shakes her head, making a dismissive sound of disgust. “It doesn’t matter. Come on.” This last is directed to Liana.
“What’s wrong?” Liana asks, following her out the door.
“We can’t find Birch,” Kate says grimly, the words drifting over her shoulder back toward Ophelia. “He’s missing.”
12
When Ophelia reaches the hub, just behind Kate and Liana, Severin and Suresh are standing together, near the long table, talking quietly. Suresh is explaining something, his hands shooting out wildly to either side in large gestures.
“What happened? What’s going on?” Ophelia asks as she approaches.
“We’re trying to work that out, Doctor,” Severin says, without looking at her. He sounds calm, unconcerned, but the tension in his shoulders and arms, folded across his chest, is screaming, loudly. “Go on.” He nods for Suresh to continue.
Suresh, after a sideways look toward Ophelia, shakes his head. “Not there. But I checked both bunk rooms, and all the permanent suits are accounted for.” His usual teasing tone has flattened into something sharper around the edges.
Ophelia’s heart plummets; they think he’s outside. That he’s left the hab.
Just like Ava.
“He wouldn’t do that,” Liana says, standing with Kate on Ophelia’s left side. An odd beat of silence holds among the four of them. “He wouldn’t,” she insists.
Unless it’s not a matter of choice, of Birch choosing to do anything. Or, rather, that rational thinking and logic would have anything to do with his choices. The drumbeat of fear that began with Kate’s declaration of Birch as missing grows louder inside her.
“Did he say anything to anyone before—” Ophelia begins.
“No one has seen him since last night, and we can’t reach him on comms,” Severin says.
“What about the temp suits?” Kate asks.
Suresh hesitates, turning toward her. “That’s a little more complicated.”
“What the fuck?” Kate demands. “You’re the inventory guy.”
“Yeah, but I inventoried for a team of five during prep,” he argues. “Temporaries are usually packed as a set of six.”
“You don’t know if Montrose left one out because we weren’t at that point anticipating the doctor, or if one is missing,” Severin says flatly.
“Correct,” Suresh says.
Strange, but not impossible that an afflicted Birch would bypass his regular suit to dig out a temporary from the crates. Ophelia had an ERS patient once who was convinced that Montrose was intermittently screening his private QuickQ conversations (likely) and that it was triggered every time he used a word starting with the letter M (definitely not). So many sessions involving the awkward phrasing “your parent who is not your father.”
Perhaps Birch’s paranoia extended somehow to his regular suit and the tracking connected to it. It’s hard to predict how someone, caught in loops of irrational thinking, would behave.
He cut them open; it’s like he was looking for something …
Ophelia flinches but forces herself to remain focused, in the moment. Not the past.
“If he’s out there, we should go look for him.” Ophelia takes a half step toward the airlock.
“No,” Severin says. “Conditions are improving, but I’m not risking the rest of my team. We won’t have any way of knowing which way he went, if he’s even out there.”
“He wouldn’t—” Liana begins again.
Kate cuts her off with a sharp look. “It could have been forty-five minutes ago or hours,” Kate adds. “Any trace of his path would probably be wiped clean from the storm. We’d just be wandering around, gormless.” She shrugs tightly. “Maybe fall into a crevasse.”
“But we can’t just stand around here and wait,” Ophelia protests. And wait for what? The storm to clear so they can find his body?
In her mind, Rueben Monterra, smashed and broken on the garden terrace below her office, blinks up at her, his bloodied mouth moving. Ophelia shudders.
“Protocol says a thorough sweep of the hab,” Severin says.
“You’re joking,” Ophelia says in disbelief. “You’ve looked for him in here already, haven’t you?”
“A preliminary search isn’t the same as—” Liana says.
“This isn’t a cozy little Grant Park gated mansion, Doctor,” Severin says. As always, his voice is mild while his words are cutting. “While the hab is meant to keep us alive, it’s far from a perfect system.”
“He could have fallen and struck his head in a far corner of some hab unit,” Kate says. “Or come up with an embolism, run into a slow leak, and tucked himself away in a hypoxic delusion, or fucking choked on a meal-pak.”
All true, theoretically. But clearly there’s a reason why they’re worried about the suits and whether Birch might have taken one.
Or maybe she is once again focusing too much on her worst fear—another patient with ERS that she was not able to help. She has to concede that is at least a possibility.
Ophelia nods curtly in acknowledgment.
“We need to go,” Liana says. She’s shifting her weight from foot to foot, like an impatient runner at the starting line. “Now. We need to find him.”
Severin nods. “Liana, Suresh, search the C side again. Make sure you check every space large enough to fit a person, and even the ones you think might be too small. He could be disoriented. Hiding.”
If someone fails to respond to comms, you treat it as if they’re completely incapacitated and incapable of behaving rationally. Ophelia knows that. And yet she had never considered exactly how frustratingly difficult acting on that principle might be in a live environment. It’s impossible to predict what Birch might have done, where he might be, when all the logical options have been eliminated.
“Kate will take the A side, and I’ll handle syscon, the galley, and the central hub,” Severin finishes. “Keep the common channel open, and call for help if you need it.”
Based on her previous experiences, Ophelia half expects an argument about who is going where, doing what.
But Liana immediately hurries off, with Suresh at her heels.
Kate lingers, though, her gaze caught with Severin’s in another of their silent exchanges.
After a moment, Severin’s mouth tightens and he jerks his chin toward the table, off to the side.
Ophelia follows the motion to see a familiar case on the table; she missed it before. It’s not the medikit, though, which would have made more sense. No, it’s the thin gray case with the bright red markings and the code lock. The gun.
As she watches, Kate crosses the space in a few efficient steps and unlocks the case, removing the weapon.
“Whoa, whoa! What are you doing?” Ophelia steps forward, arms stretched out to block her path. “This isn’t necessary. If he’s ill or hurt, he’s not a threat. Even if it’s ERS, most patients are absolutely no danger to anyone other than themselves.” With a few … notable exceptions.
“Plenty of ways to lose your grip out here that have nothing to do with ERS,” Kate says grimly, stepping around her to head toward the A side.
What is that supposed to mean? Ophelia’s arms sink slowly to her sides, then she turns on Severin. “You’re seriously going to let her do that?”
He doesn’t look happy, but he lifts a shoulder in a minute shrug. “It’s self-defense only. Kate knows that.”
Ophelia stares at him, then shakes her head, neck so tight the muscles creak with the movement. “Fuck that. Now I’m judging you.”
Then she takes off after Kate.
* * *
This unit is one of those that Ophelia checked with Severin yesterday, on the same side of the hab as her now-office but closer to the central hub. It looks virtually the same as it did then, except for the piles of swept-up debris.
Kate doesn’t bother to look back at her, pushing farther in to check under the lab tables and associated desk.
When Kate’s finished—a quick, efficient search, only made threatening by the weapon in her hand—she pivots and heads back toward the door, forcing Ophelia to step back out into the corridor to get out of her way.
This happens twice more before Kate stops at the threshold of the next unit.
She turns to face Ophelia. “If you’re going to follow me, Doctor, you might as well make yourself useful and check the other hab units on this side.”
Ophelia doesn’t move.
Kate sighs. “Think of it this way: the sooner we find him, the better off he’ll be. And if you find him before I do, you don’t have to worry about this.” She waggles the gun in a way that is disturbingly nonchalant.
Without waiting for an answer, Kate pivots and heads into the next unit.
As much as Ophelia hates to admit it, Kate has a point. It’s not as if she’ll be able to stop Kate from doing, well, anything. And if Birch is in trouble, they need to find him, fast. Tailing Kate is not exactly increasing their odds of finding him, which is the first—and primary—problem. The more time ticks away, the greater the chances that he’ll be in real trouble when—and if—they find him.
Ophelia turns on her heels and heads to the next hab unit. The closed door is heavy but manageable.
