Chapter 10 #2
I’m both relieved that the med bay door opens, and cringing that anyone can walk in.
Then again, I guess there’s no worry about theft on this trip.
Hoping to find some prescription-grade analgesia, I head to the cabinets.
I held it together all day but now that I’m so close, all the pain floods in.
I falter mid-step, bite back a whimper so hard that I feel my teeth rip into my lip and then collapse.
I’m a pro, so I manage to roll in time and hit the ground without doing too much damage.
It’s only when I’m passing out that I can’t manipulate my limbs in time, hence my bruised face and my fucked-up wrist. The fall still hurts, though, and I grimace.
I can practically feel the new bruises forming.
Lying on the cold, hard floor, I feel like crying.
But at least, I tell myself, no one else is around to see this.
Adrenaline burned off some of the alcohol, and my head feels clear enough to process how fucking absurd this is.
I can’t get up, not yet. I close my eyes and rage silently, not for the first time, about the fragility of my body.
Radiation-Induced Neurological Disorder is passed down by the women in my family.
It sounds more extreme than it is these days.
RIND is easily managed as long as you can make use of both a multipronged treatment plan and afford it.
I haven’t had an episode like this in years, and I’m trying not to be angry at myself about it.
I didn’t expect to be on this fucking ship.
I didn’t expect to have to grapple with revealing my biggest vulnerability to strangers.
The problem is that my treatment includes a shot every three days.
Without it, there’s only so much my neural implant can do.
I was due to take my shot this morning, haven’t missed a dose since they released it on the pharmaceutical market.
In its absence, it feels like my body is slowly tearing itself apart.
It sounds so arrogant to say that I can handle that, as unpleasant as it is, but it’s true.
What I can’t handle—what really puts me on edge—is being perceived as weak.
And when you limp around, if you so much as twinge a nerve and everyone flocks to take your workload, well. .. it’s hard not to take it personally.
“Marlowe—”
Fuck.
My eyes fly open in time to catch disbelief rippling across Tanisira’s face.
She drops to her knees beside me and reaches out, but her hands halt mid-air.
She scans my body instead, looking for the problem.
When she can’t find one, her gaze zips up to my busted lip and then my eyes.
The whole time, I’m trying to gather enough energy to move.
“Were you following me?” I snap.
She rears back. “I—Marlowe, you’re on the floor. What happened?”
I go to push myself into a sitting position, but there are only so many times I can tread fire. Sharp pain forces me to whimper. Tanisira helps me back down and I seethe at the situation.
“Don’t move. I’ll call Khrys—”
“No.”
She freezes, looking incredulous. “You might have a concussion. You—”
“I said no.” I sigh. “Please don’t. Just... just go.”
I cannot stand the way she’s looking at me. My stomach clenches, on the verge of rejecting an evening’s worth of food. It might as well; this can’t get much more humiliating.
“Are you insane?” Tanisira barks.
It startles me so much that I flinch, groan in agony, throw up in my mouth, and barely swallow it back down before I paint the deck. Glamorous. But I didn’t know she could even make a sound like that. Her face, usually so composed, is twisted in anger. I watch, shocked, as she collects herself.
“I’m not leaving you here.” The steel in her eyes tells me she means it, even if her tone is back to even-keeled. “I let you lie to me all day about being okay, but this is too much. What do you need?”
“You let me—” I inhale sharply, clench my teeth around the rest of the sentence.
Valeja flashes through my mind. I don’t have the energy to pick apart how shitty that makes me feel right now.
I should have remembered that sometimes ex-military are just as hyperaware after leaving the service as they were during it.
“What,” Tanisira bites down on the word, “do you need?”
I deflate. “The strongest painkillers Khrys has.”
She gives me another sceptical once-over but doesn’t argue.
If I wasn’t so tired, I think I’d be spitting fire.
Instead, I listen to her opening the cabinets behind me, rummaging through the contents, the rattle of pills, crinkle of boxes, and the susurration of packets.
There’s a momentary pause, and I can practically hear her thinking.
Maybe she’s never needed prescription painkillers before and she doesn’t recognise them.
“Read the labels out to me,” I say.
“PanaCure, Nocixene, PainErase, Dolorin, NeuroSyn 23—”
A jolt goes through my body. I gasp, both in shock and pain. “What?”
Tanisira hesitates. In the lull, my pulse surges and rushes in my ears. “Say that last one again,” I practically yell.
“NeuroSyn-23.” She comes back into view, crouches down and holds a box aloft.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” I mutter in disbelief. I’m already ripping into it, pushing through my discomfort out of pure excitement.
“What is it?”
Inside the box sit two pre-filled syringes, packaged up to the high heavens, needles sitting pretty in separate, sealed casing.
I flop back onto the floor and try not to scream in glee, or I might just die.
What are the fucking odds? I grin at Tanisira, even though she looks worried.
I can’t hold back this overwhelming relief. She thinks I’m crazy—I feel crazy.
“This is exactly what I need.”
She helps me onto a bed and brings over a first aid kit.
I’m so elated that I don’t even hate how she has to scoop me into her arms like a child.
I watch her wash her hands and then she wipes away the blood smeared all over my face, sealing my busted lip with quick aid gel.
She tugs up my shirt, as instructed—I would do it myself, but by this point, my hands are more tremor than anything else.
I’m more likely to stab myself in the eye.
Tanisira’s hands are gentle on my body, tucking the hem of the shirt under itself and out of the way.
I hate that I want reassurance for something I’ve undergone a thousand times before, but I ask anyway. “Can you talk me through it, please?”
“Stole my line,” Tanisira murmurs. There’s a wash of cold as she runs a disinfectant wipe over the skin at the base of my spine.
I shiver. “That’s the area cleaned. I’m opening the packaging.
Now I’m clicking the needle into the syringe, making sure it’s secure.
Bracing my left hand on your lower back, holding the skin taut. Are you okay?”
I hum. This doesn’t unnerve me; in fact, it’s the most peaceful I’ve been all day. I’ve been administering NeuroSyn-23 to myself for longer than Vee’s been alive.
“Injecting now.”
There’s pressure as Tanisira pushes the needle into my lower back, breaking the skin and then depressing the plunger slowly and steadily.
I sigh at the sensation; something that used to weird me out now feels like comfort.
It’s slightly sore when she pulls the needle out, but nothing I can’t handle.
Better than the alternative. I close my eyes and wait for the meds to work.
There’s a clink as she disposes of the syringe in the proper container, cleans my skin and then the rush of water as she washes her hands again.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Tanisira asks a moment later. “That was an obscenely large needle.”
“Ironically, I think my nerve endings in that patch of skin are deadened after all these years. It only hurts when I remove the syringe, and only a little.”
There’s a moment of silence. I know it’s coming, so I just wait. It’s not like I can run away, anyway.
“What just happened?” she asks. Before I can reply, she cuts in. “Please don’t lie to me again. Finding you on the floor like that was unfair.”
“Sit down.”
“Marlowe—”
“I’m going to tell you, just sit down. You’ll make me nervous and ruin it. This is the best part.”
When she pulls a chair up beside me and peers into my face, I see the moment she realises I’m already pretty high. Her forehead creases as she looks me over carefully, frowning. “Your pupils have blown out.”
I sigh dreamily. “It only lasts for about ten minutes, but it’s fucking fantastic.”
“You’re high?”
“Wow, judgmental much?”
“I don’t care about that, but you looked so relieved when you saw the NeuroSyn-23. All that just to get high?”
I shake my head, exhale into the crook of my elbow.
I haven’t told anyone about my RIND since I was a teenager.
It goes against all my instincts to do so now, but in the short time I’ve known the captain, I’ve learned that she is determined.
She probably would have let me continue lying to her about it.
.. If she hadn’t found me on the floor like a gasping fish.
I would never want anyone to walk into something like that without warning.
Well, at least I’m high for this bit. There’s always that fear of not being believed, that my disability is too invisible to be serious, to affect me this badly. Attention seeker, liar, lazy—I’ve heard it all when people with chronic illness have confided in others.
“One of my ancestors was a cargo carrier transporting materials to Mars for the first colony. It was really good money, and it was easy if you had the temperament for it, so no one really looked too hard at the implications. Turned out that multiple six-month-long round trips in space? Bad idea. All her descendants inherit Radiation-Induced Neurological Disorder, otherwise known as RIND.”
“Did Vee?” Tanisira asks, looking genuinely worried. I ignore what that does to my heart and shake my head.