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Mindy Park fumbled with the visitor badge as she attached it to her collar while hurrying to keep up with the corpsman who was leading her through the maze of corridors at Walter Reed. Just a few hours earlier she'd been at work in Houston when a priority message had come in from Venkat Kapoor's office telling her that she was being flown to D.C. that afternoon.
The corpsman stopped at a patient door and saluted, leaving her standing there alone, uncertain who was in the room and what she was supposed to do.
The door to the hospital room was partially open and Mindy could hear the soft murmur of a man's voice coming from inside. Hesitantly, she lifted her hand and knocked on the door frame. The voice stopped and a moment later the door pulled open and Chris Beck was standing in front of her. Startled, Mindy took a step back as his eyes flicked down to the visitor badge.
"Mindy Park?"
"Uh, yes. Dr. Beck." Mindy stammered, confused even more as to why she was there.
"Call me Chris. Come in, come in. Mark has been wanting to see you."
He stepped back so Mindy could enter the room. There on the bed was the flesh-and-blood Mark Watney, as much as she could see him with the oxygen mask covering the lower half of face and a tangle of heart monitors, cords, and tubes that were attached to his upper body. Mark was gaunt, so painfully thin she could easily see the milky blue of his veins under his pale skin. Through the clear plastic of the mask, he smiled at her and motioned her to come in, making IV tubes in his arm swing.
"Uh, hi?" Mindy felt stupid as she looked from Mark to Beck, unsure what she was doing in Mark Watney's hospital room. NASA had been very closed mouth about his condition during the entire return trip for Mars and it seemed obvious that he was as worse off as the rumors flying around had hinted.
"Here, sit down." Beck motioned to the chair pulled up next to the bed. "Thank you for coming."
"Thanks, but I don't quite know why I'm here," Mindy said as she sank down in the blue visitor chair. "I mean, it's an honor, but why?"
"I wanted to see—" Mark broke off as coughs racked his body. Beck was by his side in an instant, wrapping an arm behind Mark's back holding him up until the coughing fit subsided. Beck gently lowered Mark back against the pillows, and handed him a glass of water with a straw in it. Mark pulled down his mask and took a few sips.
Mindy stood up, not sure if she should stay or go. Mark motioned her to sit back down.
"Mark is having surgery tomorrow. He wanted to see you beforehand, to thank you." Beck said from where he stood near the head of Mark's bed.
"Thank me? Why?"
Beck started to speak but Mark cut him off.
"To thank you for watching over me," Mark said, his voice raspy and strained. "K-K-apoor told me that it was you who realized I was alive. Without you—" his voice gave out and he looked at Beck with frustration, waving his hands for Beck to takeover.
"Without you we would never have known that Mark was still alive. You saved his life," Beck said.
Mindy shook her head. "No, no it was Dr Kapoor who ordered the satellite images. I just—"
"You were the one who saw those images and immediately knew what it meant. And you and your team watched over Mark the entire time he was on Mars."
"That's my job though- it's what I do." Mindy said faintly, even as she remembered the hours she spent watching Mark's journey to the Ares 4 landing site.
Mark struggled to sit up and against Beck's protest he pulled down his mask. "I was all alone but it helped so much to know that you were out there, watching me," he whispered. "At night when I looked up at the sky and I could see the trail of the satellites and I knew you were there watching over me. I knew I wasn't completely alone." He leaned back and his eyes fluttered close, the rise and fall of his chest easing as he slept. Beck reached down and pulled Mark's mask up over his nose and mouth. With a nod of his head, he motioned Mindy towards the door.
Out in the harsh lights of the corridor, Mindy could see the dark circles under Beck's eyes as he pulled the door closed behind them.
"Is he going to be okay?" Mindy asked hesitantly.
"Yes," Beck said firmly as he rubbed his hand over his face as if to keep himself alert. "The conditions on Mars, how long he was there, and the trip back…he's in rough shape. But he is going to make it. Just needs time and some good medicine and healing. Mark wanted to be sure to see you before his surgery, to thank you. And so did I." He reached out and took Mindy's hand in his own. "I know you think you were just doing your job. But it made a huge difference to us. The still shots you took of Mark, they sent them to us on the Hermes. It really kept us going, knowing that Mark was doing okay and that we were getting closer and closer to him."
Mindy blinked away tears as he gave her hand a squeeze and let it go. "Thank you for telling me. At SatCon, it is living life in one dimension. It is easy to lose sight when we are watching over a mission of what we are seeing. But with Mark…all those months, he was always real to me. Like when I saw the windstorm coming and there was no way to warn him. I never felt so helpless, all I could do was watch the edge of the storm and wait to see if he made it."
Beck grinned. "And he did, the stubborn idiot did and he told me that when he could finally see the sky again he knew you were up there watching so he waved his arms up in the air, hoping you'd see."
"I did." Mindy said with a laugh, wiping away her tears as she remembered. "Sometimes he would make a smiley face with rocks. That's when I knew he was having a good day." Those images she'd printed out and kept taped to her refrigerator. Mark's rock smiley faces never failing to make her grin when she walked into her kitchen.
"Well, thanks to you, there are going to be a lot more good days." Beck gave a smile, before he turned and went back in the room.
Later that night, as she was 36,000 feet in the air, strapped into the jump seat of the Air Force jet she looked out the window at the twinkle of stars in the sky. Somewhere out there was Mars and for the first time in over two years she felt she could breathe again.