Chapter Text
It was long since the first time that Taylor had gained consciousness in an unfamiliar place.
Presently laying in a bed, the first bed they’d had the chance to sleep in nearly two years, covered by sheets and a blanket—an actual blanket, not Mylar-lined insulation—surrounded on all sides by dark blue walls, they were relieved to wake without finding themself among the wreckage of another crash-landed ship or somewhere aboard the doomed Celadon shuttle.
If they’d had three guesses as to where they were, every one of them would be “someplace on Earth”. There was a tall floor-to-ceiling window in the corner of the room forming a furnished nook where the walls met. Though they couldn’t see anything through it, the glass frosted and smooth, the light coming through it was a soft, warm hue. Beside the window, a round ottoman sitting in front of a comfy-looking armchair, a small table, and a shaded floor lamp were all positioned atop a tufted, circular rug.
Finally able to sit themself up, Taylor noted two things. Firstly, the floor looked to be covered in dark brown matte sheeting, like linoleum without the classic shine. Secondly, they were hooked up to medical equipment by the hands and arms. Fourth guess: hospital.
There was an intravenous line in their left forearm, a pulse oximeter gently clamped over their right index finger, a tube running elegantly over their ear from inside their nose securely fastened to their left cheek, and a rubber wristband fixed to their right hand with a long cord that, Taylor reckoned, plugged in somewhere among the organized mess of wires hidden behind the notably silent heart rate monitor—a quirk that they were grateful of, given how tranquil the lack of a constant beeping had been. If this really were a hospital, it was incredibly high-class.
Lifting their legs to kick the covers back and dismount from the bed, they struggled to gather enough coordination to figure out what to do about the wires and tubes, and that was in addition to the weight of overall bodily weakness.
With the dawning awareness of the fact they had finally been rescued, Taylor would be jumping with joy if they weren’t so damn exhausted. Although the finer details escaped the grasp of their memory, they were at least home in one piece.
Or, presumably, they were home. They had not yet discounted the idea that they may still be floating in space, albeit onboard more sophisticated cruiser.
Choosing the way of least resistance, Taylor cast off the pulse oximeter and wristband to free their right arm. Having swung one leg at a time over the left side of the bed, they placed their bodyweight down with gradual precision to prevent a head rush as they stood, their left hand clutching the I.V. pole.
Even through a pair of socks, the floor underfoot was chill to the touch. They shuffled toward the room’s exit, a closed door with a port to pass things through at waist-height, wheeling the pole beside them with each slow step.
They had been dressed in a comfortable set of clothes which were—in their mind—akin to nurse’s scrubs though, comparably, constructed from a warmer, much denser textile. Taylor found it difficult to stop themself from fidgeting with the bottom hem of their shirt, studying the pleasant texture between their thumb and forefinger.
Upon closer inspection, the door, from the inside of their room, had no handle, only a metal push plate on the lefthand side. Yet the door, when Taylor pressed up against it, did not budge.
“Locked?” they whispered, the rough dryness of their throat stifling the sound of their voice. They could feel the tube in their nose, too. It ran down their esophagus. Now that they had noticed it, it was hard to keep from taking dry swallows, as if poking at it from the inside.
Window panels to either side of the door provided them with a glimpse into the hallway outside, but very little leverage to peer very far in either direction. Though it was illuminated, apart from the diffused lighting and beige walls, there wasn’t much of anything to see.
After lifting a hand to the door and giving it a firm series of knocks yielded no reaction, they sat themself down on the chair near the large frosted glass window. It gave them a bit of time to think, now that the fog in their head was clearing.
Their legs were stiff, the muscles weak, and their feet ached to walk on. Sitting down after standing drew their attention to a cold, nauseous feeling in the pit of their stomach that they hadn’t noticed upon first waking up. There was a dull ache in their head like a sinus infection, their cranium feeling compressed from all angles, and a tightness in their ribs that made deep breaths an effort to take in. Sitting in the ambient calm of the room all around them at least dampened their disorientation. In the quiet, too, it was easier to hear the sound of footsteps coming from up the hall.
A petite, dark-skinned woman in a smock, mask, and transparent face shield stopped on the other side of the door.
“Cadet Taylor?” she asked, her voice muffled behind the glass and her full suit of PPE. “Sorry it took me so long to get here. Scrubbing in and putting my gear on takes a bit of time, slows me down.”
Taylor stared at her through the window from the seat of the armchair, gripping their I.V. pole, trying to use it to rise to their feet again.
“Oh, you don’t have to stand up!” she said, urgently letting herself in with the beep of a keycard swipe. “I’ll come to you.”
Regardless of her interjection, Taylor sat back down in the chair as their legs buckled under them.
“Sorry, I don’t normally come in without asking first,” she apologized, letting the door shut behind her. “I didn’t want you to topple over.”
She padded over, her feet in sterile shoe covers, and helped herself to the ottoman to sit in front of them, inching it backwards to put some space between them.
“I’m Dr. Asamoah, I’m here to walk through some things with you,” she explained. “And, if you have questions for me, I hope I can answer them.”
Slowly repositioning their limbs, a little at a time, Taylor sat back and made themself comfortable.
Taking a thick plastic clipboard out from under her arm, Dr. Asamoah thumbed through a few pages with her gloved hands before she shifted one documents to the front of the stack and set the clipboard down on her lap.
“I can see that you’re up and about,” she remarked. “How are we feeling?”
Sighing, Taylor gave themself an anchor; they cupped their left hand in their right and glanced down, gently tapping the back of their knuckles against their palm.
“I’ve felt better,” they replied.
Before Dr. Asamoah could ask her next question, Taylor took another chance to speak.
“What hospital am I in?” they asked. “Is this UT Austin?”
Dr. Asamoah paused and looked down at the form. “Well, Taylor, that’s something I am supposed to be asking you but… I can mark that… off of your questionnaire.”
She removed a pen from the middle of her papers to circle a pair of bullets from a list halfway down the page, which she promptly crossed out.
“To answer your question, we are on Serenity base Delta, in my quarantine wing.”
“I’m on the moon? Like, Earth’s moon?” they asked.
“Yes, the moon.” Dr. Asamoah replied. “Do you remember how you got here?”
Taylor thought for a moment and shook their head. “No, I don’t,” they answered.
Dr. Asamoah idly tapped the pen against her clipboard. “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”
“I was in a shuttle, and- oh!”
Startling Dr. Asamoah, Taylor sat up with a look of realization on their face.
“I was with a rabbit, his name is Hydrox, is he… where is he?” they asked, illustrating with their hands approximately how big he was. “He’s black and white, with ears that stand up…”
Dr. Asamoah simply nodded and jotted something down in the margin of her document. “I don’t have anything about a rabbit but I’ll make a note to find out for you, okay?”
Crestfallen, Taylor frowned and returned to holding their own hand in their lap.
“It seems like you aren’t able to remember much from your rescue. Maybe we can skip down a bit…” she muttered.
Using her pen as a pointer, Dr. Asamoah skimmed through the lines, turned over the form, and glanced across a page full of text too small for Taylor to read from where they were sitting, especially upside-down.
“I’ve got your health summary, here, if you’d like to go over it,” she said, clearing her throat behind the respirator mask.
Despite the content of what she had actually said, it was less of a genuine offer and and more of a rhetorical phrase to introduce the breakdown of their medical chart.
“Good to see you’re able to get up and move,” she began. “On arrival, you presented with cerebral edema, some swelling in the brain, and we had you on pentobarbital to reduce it. On your scan yesterday-”
“Yesterday?” Taylor interrupted. “I don’t know what you… I don’t know what that means—when was I here yesterday?”
Dr. Asamoah, even with most of her face obscured by PPE, seemed as calm as she had been when she first sat down. But, before she could answer them, Taylor pried further.
“And can I just… why are you in this… this-” they stammered, unable to finish the question as the words to label anything on her person escaped them. “Is… am I contagious with something?”
Dr. Asamoah moved the clipboard and rested it lengthwise across her lap, freeing up her hands to gesture with them as she spoke.
“Generally speaking, it is standard procedure to quarantine anyone entering base. My wing—this series of rooms—is for sick-on-arrival and injured-on-arrival, incoming,” she said, gestured toward the door with her hand, and pointing laterally up and down the hall as if she were standing in it, giving directions. “Since you came from an unknown environment, we have to hold you in this wing for a twenty-one day minimu-”
“Twenty-one days?”
“I- yes, I understand three weeks is a long time, but this is a precaution we take to keep illnesses from entering base. And, thankfully, you’ve already been under observation for five of those da-”
“Five days? I’ve been… I’ve been out for five days?!”
Taylor’s posture went slack, letting themself collapse backward in the chair. Thoughts swarmed, incoherent and noisy and hard to tune out, as they glanced around the room, shifting their gaze from one spot to another each time their vision began to unfocus.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this to come across as such a shock,” said Dr. Asamoah. For the first time since she walked in, she seemed worried.
“Is- I… I just,” Taylor faltered, pressing their hands to their face to rub softly at their temples. “Is there something wrong with me?” they asked.
“No, no, you’ve been recovering remarkably well,” she reassured them.
“Then why have I been unconscious for five days?”
“On pentobarbital, you were in a medically-induced coma to- just hold on, let me finish,” she said, interrupting herself to keep Taylor’s reaction under control while she explained, “I promise you, I assure you, this decision was weighed against other strategies and it was the lowest-risk, most neuroprotective way to get you going again. Okay?”
Taylor nodded, understanding, despite the sullen expression on their face. “Do I have brain damage, then?” they asked, trying not to expose their internal catastrophizing.
“Now that you’re awake, the neurologist will want to come visit with you and, if there’s anything he’s concerned about, he’ll let you know. But, if you want my opinion… You seem to have been through quite a bit but it isn’t as though you were clinging to life. You’re bouncing back quickly. If you weren’t, you’d be in the clean room,” Dr. Asamoah said, reassuring them.
They appeared to relax, if only marginally willing to accept the influx of new information being thrown at them.
Dr. Asamoah continued, saying, “I’m sure Dr. Ochoa will let you know this, too, but memory loss isn’t uncommon with injury to the brain. Over time, you might start to remember things, or you might not… but the important thing is that you’re cognizant, talking, ambulatory—and, as of last night, breathing without the ventilator.”
Still looking glum in the face, Taylor fidgeted with the waist hem of their shirt again.
“So I’m under quarantine.” They quietly mulled it over in their head. “Is there anything I can… do? Or am I going to be stuck in this room for two more weeks?”
“We’ll keep you in this room for today and tonight,” she said. Dr. Asamoah placed a hand down on her clipboard, making a ‘right here’ sort of gesture as she spoke. “Tomorrow morning, depending on what Dr. Ochoa and I agree with, we can discuss moving you out of this wing. You’ll still be in quarantine, mind, but one of the regular rooms.”
“Okay,” they said, not knowing what to do besides agree with her.
“I’m sorry, if that’s a little discouraging… but, on the bright side, we can get you some food in you once I get your NG out,” she told them, pushing the ottoman back as she rose to her feet again. Dr. Asamoah tucked her clipboard under her arm again. “Can I help you over to the bed? It’s easier if I have a bit more leverage.”
“What’s easier?” they asked but, nonetheless, accepted her help in the form of an outstretched arm for balance.
“Removing feeding tubes,” she answered simply. “Now, up we go-”
Dr. Asamoah, though she was a stout woman and no fewer than six inches shorter beside Taylor, clearly had a fair bit of muscle beneath all her scrubs and gear. She braced her patient as they stood, one arm firmly supporting Taylor’s midsection while the other handled their I.V. pole. Slowly turning them around to face her, she placed both hands on Taylor’s shoulders. Taking her cue, they sat down on the edge.
“Alright, Taylor, go ahead and tilt your head back for me, just a little,” she instructed them.
Upon complying, Dr. Asamoah cradled their jaw and peeled the adhesion strip pressing the hollow tube from their cheek. Once it was free, she pinched the tube and, in one long, gentle tug, efficiently pulled the length of it from their esophagus.
Left to quietly sputter as Dr. Asamoah removed the near-empty bag and wrapped it in the extracted feeding tube, Taylor’s hands went to their face. They swallowed dry mouthfuls of saliva and sniffled while pinching their nostrils halfway-shut as the momentary onslaught of strange sensations subsided.
Dr. Asamoah bundled together the mess of plastic medical waste and disappeared behind them, around the corner of the wall directly behind the bed. There was a crisp fwip sound, and she emerged with a tall, lidded biohazard wastebin, which she set down on the other side of the wall, closer to Taylor’s bedside.
“They’ll want this out here when they bring the service cart through,” she said, apparently making a note to herself.
Briefly, she disappeared again around the corner and returned with a handful of tissues, handing them to her patient. Taylor gingerly held the bulk of them to their nose and took a sharp breath in through their nostrils, dabbing generously to keep their face clean.
“Bathroom is in there,” she said, pointing into the alcove she had just emerged from. “There isn’t a door, for safety reasons, but it is, at least, tucked away in there, to give you some privacy.”
“If you’re hungry, I can go fetch some food. Limited to non-solids for now, of course, but we have a decent mix. Tomato soup, miso, or broth, fruit smoothie, jello, all kinds of teas and coffee—hot or cold—and, hopefully, some pudding. Any special requests?”
For the first time in a while, Taylor was relieved enough to crack a pleased grin. On their tired face, the contraction felt foreign to their weakened muscles. “Can I have a serving of everything?” they asked.
“Can’t let you go overboard, since you’re still acclimating, but I’ll try to come back with as much variety as I can, okay? Sound good?”
Taylor nodded and gave Dr. Asamoah a thumbs-up from the bed, lifting their legs to recline after their short trip around the room. With the bin situated closer to the bed, they easily trashed the tissues balled-up in their fist.
“Do you want your I.V. out, too?” she asked, “Now or later?”
“The sooner the better,” they told her.
Dr. Asamoah disappeared into the bathroom for a third time and came back after having slipped another set of gloves on, over top of the pair already covering her hands.
“If you want to take a shower this evening, it’ll be easier without this thing still stuck in your arm,” she said, making quick and tender-handed work of the port’s removal.
Indulging their squeamish side, Taylor averted their gaze to keep from seeing any of it, examining the surface of the dark blue wall as a passing distraction.
When Dr. Asamoah had finished, she made her way over to the wastebin and scrapped the used line, rolling it up in her top-most pair of latex gloves. They fell into the biohazard trash with a shallow thump.
After disappearing into the bathroom a fourth time, Dr. Asamoah returned with a sterile cotton wad and came around to Taylor’s side to press it to their arm. She patted off the glob of beading blood and fluid before securing it with a length of beige wrap, which clung and fastened to itself with a spot of pressure from her thumb.
“Last thing I wanted to ask you, before I forget,” said Dr. Asamoah, “I received your records from Earth and noticed you had prescriptions for estradiol and progesterone, but I take it you haven’t had any access to medications in a while.”
“In space?” they said, chuckling inwardly. “No… no, I haven’t had access to… to anything, no.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said. “Well, our pharmacy has a stock of both, if you’d like to have me renew your prescriptions and put you back on them while you’re here.”
Taylor paused and stared blankly for a moment.
“We can bring your doses in the mornings with food service, after moving you out of this wing sometime in the next day or two, if you would be interested,” she explained.
They nervously pressed with their teeth into their bottom lip, giving the prospect a great deal of thought.
It should have been an easy choice, they thought. This should be an automatic yes. But, for some reason, the question brought forth a queasy uncertainty.
“Can I think on it?” they asked, heaving a deep breath.
Dr. Asamoah nodded several times. “Yes, of course,” she said. “And, if you need me, there’s a call button on the wall, and the right side of the bed.”
She adjusted the clipboard under her arm, almost ready to leave, patted herself down as she turned away, and froze as she remembering something.
“One more thing,” she uttered, quickly pivoting on her heels.
The Doctor stuck her hand into a large pocket on the side of her smock, pulling from it an air-tight pouch covered in biohazardous markers.
“You had this on your person when we removed your clothes and atmo,” she said. “One of the base technicians said you might want to have this back.”
Dr. Asamoah handed it Taylor.
Though puzzled, it did not take them long to recognize the device sealed inside. Feeling the scuffed edges under their fingertips through the surface of the plastic film, they were certain it was their communicator.
They wasted no time tearing it free, yanking apart the seal at the top of the bag with both hands.
Upon powering it up, a series of messages filled the screen in quick succession.
EF: Taylor?
EF: Are you there?
EF: Base supervisor just told me there was a damaged shuttle pod in hangar bay intake, do you read me?
EF: Respond as soon as you get this.
EF: Please tell me you’re okay.