Chapter 17 Sem
Sweat dripped from my brow, my arms shaking, palms stinging, blisters forming.
“Sem.”
It was the second time she’d said my name and the second time I ignored it. Redoubling my efforts, I grunted like a caveman. Which, I realized with an exhausted and mildly hysterical laugh, I kind of was.
“Sem, honestly.”
My stick snapped in half. “Shit.”
I gazed up, and laughter danced in her eyes. “You are very stubborn.”
“I just wanted to be able to do one thing,” I grumbled. “Just one.”
This was the longest I’d ever gone without using my empathy.
And maybe it was the same as when any being lost the use of one of their senses, but the lack of emotional input was making me pay closer attention to what I saw and heard and felt.
For instance, the grin she was giving me, it was loud.
That’s the only way I could describe it.
Loud and clear amusement with a side of pity.
She held out her hand. “Let me try.”
Reluctantly, I surrendered my makeshift fireboard and a fresh stick. Then I sat back on my heels and watched in wordless awe as she twirled her hands at bionic speeds, creating an ember in seconds.
“That is completely unfair,” I muttered, sprinkling dry pine needles over the ember.
When I leaned over to blow gently on the tiny flame, I glanced up, catching her eyes on mine, her lower lip tucked between her teeth.
And while she looked away quickly, I didn’t.
I lingered on that full lower lip, the way it slipped from her teeth, wet and glistening in the dim orange glow.
Twenty minutes later, the fire was roaring, and I was still thinking about that lip.
But the change inside the cave was miraculous.
Heat. Light. That nostalgic crackle and pop reminding me of warm nights spent camping on the beaches of Portis.
The relief of knowing that I wasn’t going to freeze to death.
And, maybe most importantly, the knowledge that we could finally eat.
Holding up our MREs, I asked, “Aquilinian spiced veg or New Earth cheeseburger stew?”
“Cheeseburger,” she replied, running her fingers through her hair like it might be tangled, even though it still looked smooth and silky to me.
I ripped the packages open with my teeth, then I walked them outside to fill them with snow. When I gazed up at the sky, I took a breath, filling my lungs with cold, clear air.
The days on Golgunda were short, just over sixteen Standard hours, and the pink and purple clouds of evening streaked above the sun as it sank below the southern horizon.
The wind was calm tonight, and the creak of lake ice refreezing after the warmth of the day tickled my ears.
It was beautiful, peaceful. I wanted to call Elanie out to join me, but we needed to eat.
And then I needed to get the comms working.
And she might try to strangle me again if I did, so…
“This is actually pretty good.” She stirred her stew with a spoon she’d whittled out of a spare branch.
Well, not so much whittled as forced into compliance using sheer bionic strength.
A thing that was, quite frankly, terrifying to watch.
And made me realize how much modern bionics hid their actual strength from the worlds.
“Really good,” I agreed, digging in with the spoon she’d made for me. “And when we’re done, we can use the empty packages for water.”
“Good idea.” The fire illuminated her face, shadows and light playing over her skin.
While the fire sparkled in her eyes, she asked, “Are you happy being a doctor?”
“Happy?”
“Yes, happy,” she said. “It’s a sensation of pleasure or contentment—”
“Two jokes in one day!” I held out a hand for a high five.
She only rolled her eyes. “Well, are you?”
The answer didn’t come quickly, but we had nothing but time out here.
“Being a physician is rewarding, I suppose. I get to help people.” I considered my role aboard the Ignisar, wondering how much I actually helped anyone while catering to the rich and famous on their sexcations. “Or I try to, anyway.”
“I saw the diploma on your wall. First in your class.” She stirred her stew. “From a good school too.”
There was an insinuating edge to her tone. I narrowed my eyes at it. “And now you’re wondering how a doctor who was first in his class at a good school wound up working on a commercial pleasure cruise-liner?”
She shrugged. “You probably could have gone anywhere. Why the Ignisar?”
“This is a long story,” I said, setting down my empty container. “And not a particularly nice one, either. I’m not sure it’s great for dinner conversation.”
“Good thing I’m almost done.” She ate another bite, set her empty container down, and leaned forward. Her eyes were liquid gold. “I’m listening.”
I hadn’t talked about it in years, the incident. The memories were deep, hidden under layers of bitterness and regret. But the fire was warm, the wood crackling, and Elanie was waiting.
“My final residency after med school was at one of the most prestigious military hospitals on Imperion. I had a patient there, the wife of a high-ranking KU official. She’d fallen while they were skiing in the Trasord Mountains.
Hit her head. She had a bleed. It was small, easily treated if we’d caught it in time.
But there was a storm, and it took them too long to get off the mountain.
When she finally came in, she already had widespread damage to her brainstem.
We tried everything: stem-cell regeneration, DNA cloning, even a bio-synthetic transplant.
Nothing worked. It was just”—I shrugged—“too late.”
While Elanie’s brow furrowed, I ran a hand through my hair.
“Her husband was nearly catatonic. Total emotional collapse. I’d never felt anything like it before or since.
He refused to accept what had happened to her.
He couldn’t let her go. Despite how many patient care meetings we had or how many times we described her injuries to him and how she would never come back from them, he didn’t believe us.
This went on for months, and the whole time—” My throat spasmed, cutting me off.
I cleared it gruffly and tried again. “The whole time, I could feel her. For months, I felt her. She was still in there, her consciousness. And she was in misery.”
“Sem, that’s…”
“Horrible?” I suggested when she couldn’t find the word.
“Yes. Horrible.”
“I was the only Portisan employed by the hospital, and leadership didn’t want to hear it when I advocated for her and for what she so clearly wanted.
” I shook my head, trying to force out the memory of the way she begged and pleaded to anyone who would listen to take mercy on her.
“I couldn’t live with it. It was wrong. Nobody should be able to make decisions like that for someone else.
Nobody should be able to decide that their wants and needs are somehow more important than someone else’s.
Nobody should steal someone else’s ability to choose their own fate. Not for love. Not for anything.”
“What happened?”
I lowered my voice. Not because I was worried someone would overhear us in this private cave, but because it was still so hard to say any of this out loud.
“I stayed late after my shift one night and snuck into her room. I told her what I was going to do. I got her consent. Then I implemented our assisted death program, modifying her ventilator so it filled her lungs with nitrogen instead of oxygen. I sat with her until it was over, and she thanked me before she went. It was somehow both the proudest and the most shameful moment of my life. I’d made it look like an equipment malfunction, probably could have gotten away with it too. But I came clean the next day.”
“What?” she blurted out. “Why?”
“Of all the choices I’d made that day, trying to lie about it was the only one that had felt wrong.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Her husband gave me a black eye and a broken jaw, for starters.” I winced at the memory.
“Which would have been worse if security hadn’t stepped in.
Then I was court-martialed and found guilty of malpractice.
The only reason I wasn’t found guilty of murder and sent to prison for the rest of my life was that my father has—well, he had,” I corrected with a sting in my side, “a lot of sway in the medical community. Eventually, I was allowed to practice medicine again, but it didn’t matter.
Everyone knew my name and what I’d done.
The only person willing to hire me after the smoke cleared was Captain Jones.
And the funniest part of this whole thing, if there is a funny part, is that I never even wanted to be a doctor in the first place. ”
“You wanted to be a mechanic.”
My head cocked. “How did you know that?”
“You told me after we landed here, right before you nearly died.”
“I forgot.” I huffed a laugh. “But it’s true. I’d much rather be working on the ship than on her guests. But my father insisted that I practice medicine. And now that I am, he refuses to acknowledge that I exist.”
“Your statement was accurate.” She frowned at the fire. “That was not a nice story. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
I gave her a grateful nod, and we were silent for a moment. Until something occurred to me.
“Can I ask you something?”
She pulled her hair over her shoulder. “Sure.”
“Why Macey?”
Flames licked along her throat. “What?”
“Macey Valentine,” I explained. “You asked me to sing her song at karaoke. Why?”
“Because she’s my favorite singer.”
“Really?” I wouldn’t have pegged her as a lover of Old Earth pop music. Delphinian synthwave maybe. Or Tranquisian classical, listening in her pod late at night while floating her fingers through the air. “That’s surprising.”
Wood snapped, releasing a flurry of embers, and she asked, “What do you know about her?”