Atmosphere(49)

Ray stands up. “Flight, Surgeon. I’m concerned about Griff’s heart rate.”

This is the fourth time Ray has noted this, but now his tone is calmer and less animated, which has an inverse effect. Joan turns to him. She can tell from his pale face and wide eyes that he’s exerting a lot of effort to control himself.

Jack: “What are we at?”

“Twenty-one bpm and it is growing more irregular.”

“How irregular?”

Ray checks the instruments again and swallows.

As Ray begins to speak—his face somber—it is as if someone has turned down the volume of Joan’s world. Every word exchanged between Ray and Jack feels muted—muffled and unreal. She can see Ray frown. She can see Jack slam his hand down on the top of his console.

But she cannot make out a single word.

Later, she will realize that she actually did hear all of this. That she stored it away to process when she could face it. It will come back to her in flashes much later.

“His temperature has fallen.” “We’ve lost heart-rate signals.” “Do not tell Ford.” “Even if she got to him in the next thirty seconds, I don’t believe—”

But right now, it is as if Joan has left her body. Her view is from ten feet up in the air.

She can see herself in her chair. Her hair falling out of her ponytail, her eyes bloodshot.

Now everything is moving backward. She can see herself coming in to work this morning, then going to bed last night. She can see herself waving goodbye to Griff in the parking lot at JSC before he went into quarantine. She can see him talking to her in the pool at Steve’s house, swimming up to her. She can see him greeting her that first day at the apartment complex.

She can see the past, but it is now tinged with the excruciating inevitability of the present moment.

How has she never seen where this was headed, when it was so painfully obvious?

You absolute child, she thinks. He was hit with shrapnel from an explosion two hundred miles above Earth, and you thought he’d survive?

An abrupt and violent silence crashes into the room, and she snaps back into the moment.

She sees the blood drain out of Ray’s face. “Flight, Surgeon. John Griffin is dead.”

Joan can feel the liquid iron core of the Earth pulling her toward it, down into the depths of a hell she does not believe in.

Hank is gone. Steve is gone. Now Griff is gone, too.

He’d once told her she was a romantic, and she hadn’t believed him. How had he known her better than she’d known herself? The Joan he saw that day had been closer to who she was than the Joan she had seen in the mirror her entire life.

Vanessa’s voice comes in clear: “Houston, this is Ford. I have attempted to tighten the latches but cannot pull the doors flush. We have an approximately one-centimeter gap.”

Joan closes her eyes. She can’t understand how she’s going to get past this moment.

She squeezes the pen in her hand so hard it cracks, the sharp edge cutting into her palm.

She has her whole life to grieve. She has just a few more hours here at this console.

“Houston, come in. This is Navigator, do you read?” Vanessa says.

Pull it together, Goodwin.

Joan has never called herself Goodwin in her own head before. And now she wonders who’s speaking to her.

“Don’t tell her,” Jack says. “We have to focus on the latches.”

Joan looks at him. She knows it is Vanessa’s only chance at staying focused enough to save herself and Lydia. It’s what has to be done.

But she’s not sure she can bear to do it.

Let’s fucking go.

“Navigator, this is Houston,” she says. “We believe you should move on, given the time constraints. Assuming the rest of the latches connect down the line, we believe we have viability.”

“I disagree, Houston. I believe that I should keep trying to—”

“Navigator, move on. We do not have time.”

“Are you okay, Goodwin?” Vanessa says. “You do not sound well.”

Jack looks at Joan. He shakes his head. “Our job is not to tell her the truth, our job is to get her home.”

“Navigator, yes. We are still confident about the PLBDs at this time. Please continue to the eight aft bulkhead latches.”

Joan can feel that her soul has gone dormant. Her mouth is moving, but her heart is not here anymore. She knows she will get through this—these hours will pass with one outcome or another, and she will physically survive it. But she is not sure, when it is all over, if she will ever come back to herself.


Vanessa can hear the unsteadiness in Joan’s voice. But if Joan does not want to tell her what’s causing it, there’s a reason.

“Roger that,” Vanessa says.

Vanessa maneuvers over to the aft bulkhead.

Each one of the eight latches snaps into place sequentially. That is sixteen of thirty-two down. Both the top and bottom bars of the capital I are done, however imperfectly.

She imagines the feel of her feet on the tarmac, the relief of seeing the doctors rush into the flight deck to save Griff and Lydia. She thinks of the way the air will smell to her, full of dirt and fuel.

Steve had told Vanessa that getting off the ship was like walking into your house after a long vacation. That you will get that rare moment of smelling the familiar scent of Earth, before you grow too used to it again to sense it.