Kim, seeing the confusion on her face, started to show cracks in his fearless facade. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Colonel,” he said, emphasizing her rank. Making his rejection about that. Making it about being a good, rule-abiding Laconian and not the ragged mess that was her face.
Tanaka felt her cheeks getting warmer, and her eyes began to itch at the corners. Fuck me, am I getting ready to cry because some fucking JG bartender doesn’t think I’m pretty enough to screw? What is happening to me?
“Of course,” she said, horrified at the thickness in the words.
She stood up, careful not to knock over her bar stool, and turned away before pretty little Lieutenant Randall with his fearless smirk and his dimpled chin could see the water in her eyes. “Colonel,” Kim said, an edge of surprise or worry in his voice. Good. Let him worry. Tanaka left without answering.
On her way out the door, she caught a glimpse of herself in a wall-mounted mirror. The angry red topographical map of her cheek. The way the skin pulled at her eye, giving her a slight droop to the lower eyelid. The white ridgeline where the school medic had sewn her face back together after James Holden blew it apart.
Am I ugly? a voice in her mind said.
It wasn’t her. It was a small voice. A child’s. Tanaka could almost picture the face saying it, curly red hair and green eyes and a nose covered in freckles. The face was looking up at her, on the edge of tears, and hearing those words come out of her mouth broke Tanaka’s heart. The memory was as clear as if she’d lived it, hearing the pain in her daughter’s voice and wanting to wipe the thought away and kill the little boy who’d put it there. Knowing she couldn’t do either. Love and pain and impotence.
Tanaka had never had a daughter, and she didn’t know the fucking kid.
She clamped her jaw until she could hear her own blood rumbling in her ears and the memory faded. She tapped at the handheld wrapped around her arm and said, “Get me an appointment with the medical division.”
“What can I schedule you for, sir?” the girl asked. She was probably just a little south of thirty. Dark-haired, round-faced, with an olive cast to her skin and a professionally pleasant demeanor.
There’s something wrong in my head, Tanaka thought. A ship started going dutchman, and then it came back, and whatever saved it broke me. There’s something wrong in my mind.
“I was injured,” she said, and pointed sharply at her wounded cheek. “In the field. I haven’t been at a real medical center since. I wanted . . . someone to check the regrow.”
“I’ll let Captain Gagnon know you’re his next patient,” the dark-haired girl said. She hadn’t been born yet when Laconia became its own nation. She’d never known a universe without the gates. She was like looking at a different species. “You can wait in the officers’ lounge if you’d like.”
“Thanks,” Tanaka said.
Twenty minutes later, she was having her face gently pressed and prodded. Doctor Gagnon was a short, thin man with a shock of bright white hair that stood nearly straight up from his head. He reminded Tanaka of a character from a children’s show. But his voice was deep and somber, like a priest or a funeral director. Every time he spoke, she felt like she was being scolded by a puppet.
A series of images glowed on the wall screen. Several pictures of her cheek, both inside and out. A scan of her jaw and teeth. Another of the blood vessels in her face. She could see the ragged mark where her old skin ended and the new growth began more clearly in the scans than in her mirror. The sense of something new growing in her, replacing her flesh with something else, made her uncomfortable.
“Yes,” Gagnon said in his bass rumble, sounding disappointed. Maybe in her. “The damage was significant, but this is repairable.” He waved one hand at the image of her jawline. The broken teeth and healed fractures showing up as jagged lines against the smooth white.
“And the cheek,” Tanaka said, not making it a question.
Gagnon waved that away with one impatient flick of his tiny hand. “The field work wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t say that. But there’s no texturing or tone-matching. If we don’t do that, you’ll wind up walking around with half your face looking like a newborn’s ass. But the medic on the Sparrowhawk did a decent job with the vasculature. I was worried about the potential damage to the jaw. If the bone was in danger of dying, we’d want to replace the whole thing. But . . .”
He gestured at the images of her, of her inner flesh, as if she could judge her health for herself.