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I nearly didn't realize it in time.
The problem was, I'd been expecting the test integration of Taumoeba into my coma slurry diet to give me some digestion issues. I wasn't cutting down on my essential nutrients yet—I wanted to save the onset of all those associated diseases to when we finally landed on Erid—but Taumoeba should have been a good calorie supplement to fill me up so the coma slurry would last the trip. The abdominal pain and nausea and constipation—I had hoped I'd be spared, if only to avoid Rocky's complaints about my noisy gross digestive system, but it hadn't surprised me.
But I switched back to straight coma slurry the next day and the pain didn't fade. In fact, it got worse. It was only then, two days later, that I started to worry that there was something more significantly wrong with me and my squishy insides.
I didn't tell Rocky right away. I knew Armando didn't have the capability to do an ultrasound of my gut; the medical resources the Hail Mary had were good but only intended to keep humans alive for a handful of months. But Stratt had also pirated the entirety of the internet so I fobbed Rocky off and holed up in bed, googling my symptoms and cross-referencing the results with medical books. Then I checked for differential diagnoses and crossed my possible diseases out one by one.
The pain had migrated to the right lower quadrant of my abdomen; it was sharp and definitely counted as 'acute'. I had a low fever and nausea and all the peritoneal signs came back positive.
So. I probably had appendicitis.
I could do some blood tests to rule more things out. But I was pretty sure I was right. And that was a problem.
On Earth, in California, appendicitis was easy to treat: a spot of surgery, the offending appendix removed, and you were free and healed with a relatively short recovery time. It could get complicated if left too long, though, and I was pretty sure I was already pushing it; the last thing I wanted was a burst appendix falling apart in my abdominal cavity and all the infection that would ensue. But Armando was no surgeon, and I wasn't sure I'd trust it, anyway, not when it hadn't been able to do anything when Yáo and Ilyukhina had died.
And I wasn't capable of doing it myself. Which left the only other person on this ship: Rocky.
I'd thought before that I'd trust Rocky with anything, even open heart surgery, and I really, truly did. Given a few hours to read up on a topic Rocky could blow any equivalent human out of the water, and his adaptability, intelligence and dexterity gave me absolute confidence in his ability to do anything he set his mind to. The real difficulty would be on my end: my confusing squishy organs and the time limit we were on, my incompatibility with his atmosphere, and, most concerningly, the fact that the only anesthesia the Hail Mary had was local.
I was lucky enough it had that. I was lucky I'd even have enough painkillers to last out the inevitable recovery period. After burning my arm in superheated ammonia I'd significantly depleted our stock, but even though the Hail Mary hadn't been designed for abdominal surgery it was at least prepared for a few traumatic injuries among the expected three people who were supposed to live aboard. A memory floated up from the depths of my mind: Stratt on Stratt's Vat, talking about the necessary astronaut requirements. "No appendixes," she'd said. "It's too risky. Easier to get it out first."
But I hadn't been an astronaut; I hadn't even been on the potential crew list. I pressed my hand to my abdomen, palpating the area and hissing through my teeth at the spike of pain. Well, I trusted Rocky a thousand times more than Armando, and having appendicitis before I was dying of nutritional deficiencies was definitely preferable to after. Or worse, waking up from a coma to find out it'd been removed in my sleep. The very idea made me shudder. Yeah. This was much better.
Though Rocky didn't exactly agree with me.
"What?!" he screeched, at a pitch and volume high enough to make me wince. "Grace dying, question? Grace needs Rocky to cut open squishy insides, question?!"
"Not dying!" I explained hastily. "Well, I might die if I don't do anything, my appendix bursting would be… bad bad bad. But this is a pretty common and simple procedure on Earth, and we've got some medical equipment in the manifest, I think—"
"Cut. Open. Squishy. Insides. Statement," Rocky repeated with heavy emphasis. "All Rocky hears in Grace's insides is tubes and bags of liquids and flesh! I am engineer, not a doctor!"
The Star Trek reference made me smile. "Yeah," I said. "But I trust you."
Rocky made a sound more like a boiling kettle than anything I'd heard from him before. He started pacing back and forth in his ball, the facets clunking with each side-step. "Think about reality! We have incompatible atmospheres, Rocky cannot touch you or your tools—"
"I know you've been working on flexible xenonite," I said, and Rocky spun around and half-tilted his carapace to give me the Eridian equivalent of a stink-eye. "As long as you have enough manual dexterity I know you can do it—we can look up instructions and see what we need. You're good at making stuff!"
"Flexible xenonite heat dispersion not perfect yet," Rocky grumbled. "Grace wants more burns, question?"
"You won't have to touch me directly. Come on, Rocky. Please. I'm not gonna be able to do it myself."
Rocky stilled, and then his carapace dropped to the floor. "Disease very serious?"
"Yeah," I said. I swallowed and blinked hard. "And I don't want to rush you, but every day I'm going to get worse. So the sooner we can do it, the better."
Rocky made a grumbling noise. "Fine. You find procedure and learn it. I fix up suit. Then…"
"You'll help?"
Rocky let out the Eridian equivalent of a sigh. "I help."
So that was how I ended up here: sitting on a makeshift surgical bed we'd built from scrap parts, completely naked except for my socks. I'd considered asking for a little more—I knew surgery was usually done with a cover and we could probably fit half a sheet in the autoclave—but Rocky had tilted his carapace in a particular way and I knew he meant "Yes, just make this whole thing more difficult." Fabric interfered with his senses and surgery was delicate work.
Rocky was in the xenonite suit he'd had to cobble together, and I knew it pained him that it was more unfinished than not. He'd recycled some of the panels from the ball he'd pulled apart, and three of his legs had limited mobility, stuck in blocky xenonite sheaths. Two, though, were encased in a xenonite so delicate it was almost invisible, tiny faceted panels that looked like fabric; I wasn't ashamed to say I was awestruck.
"Wow, that's amazing, Rocky! It still holds in your atmosphere? How did you get it so fine?"
Rocky preened and even let me try to touch his hands; they were warm, just on the verge of too warm, but it almost felt like we were touching skin to claw. "Experimental still. But passes all atmosphere tests, don't worry."
He was so capable. I knew I would be in safe hands. "So, should I…"
"Lie down," Rocky instructed. "Time for anesthetic, question?"
"…Yeah," I said, and strapped my legs in before I laid back on the bed and tightened the one around my chest. We'd arranged it so I would be lying at a slight downward angle, my head pillowed so I would be able to see what Rocky would be doing. Seeing my own insides wasn't something I particularly wanted, but if any trouble arose that I could notice with my eyesight I had to know. Rocky sterilized the outside of his xenonite gloves (we'd considered nitrile ones on top but they were too weirdly shaped for his hands) and picked up the injectable anesthetic.
It almost reminded me of a much worse time in my life. But this was Rocky, not Stratt and Carl and the humans I'd left behind; this was Rocky, who'd risked his life to save mine, who I trusted more than anyone I ever had or ever would. I had put my life in his hands so many times already and this was just once more.
I still had to close my eyes as he injected me, but I opened them again as he drew the needle from my abdomen. Rocky was moving a little stiffly; I thought he might be worried.
"I'll tell you when it's working," I said, and Rocky hummed a discordant note.
"Grace stop talking. Should not move."
"Right," I said. Of course it was best if I didn't move. "Okay. How about… I tap the bed once if I have something to say, and twice if it's something urgent?"
"Yes." Rocky said. "Hopefully not urgent."
"I'm with you there, bud." The sensation had rapidly faded from my abdomen, and it was surprising how much pain I suddenly wasn't in. Maybe I should've been panicked, but I couldn't muster it up. "I think we're good to start."
Rocky did a whole-carapace shiver, then visibly settled himself. "Okay. Grace stay silent, order. Cutting now. "
I tried to keep my breathing even and steady, counting them in and out. Rocky had decided to make his own suite of surgical tools based on the human ones, which meant they were perfectly adjusted for his grip; the xenonite scalpel was an unusual muddy brown color but had been polished to a shine. Rocky studied my abdomen and groin for a moment longer, then reached out and sliced me right open. My skin parted like butter under his knife. I couldn't feel a thing.
It was something to know what he was going to do and something else entirely to see it. The fatty yellowish flap of my omentum hung partway into the incision, open to the air.
Wait. That hasn't been in the diagram I'd drawn out. I tapped the bed; Rocky paused. "That's the omentum; you should be able to clamp it back."
Rocky hummed a brief sound of assent and grabbed a clamp with his other hand, then used it to expose the red, fleshy muscle underneath. I swallowed and tried not to feel nauseous as Rocky meticulously sliced through each layer of muscle, then stopped at the peritoneum above my abdominal cavity.
The air should have felt warm; since Rocky's suit's thermal insulation wasn't up to his high standards he was slowly heating the room. But my skin prickled with goosebumps, a strange shivery feeling rolling down my spine. It wasn't fear; I had never feared Rocky after we'd met and started talking. But I didn't know what else it could be.
His focus entirely on my open wound, Rocky reached for the tray beside him and picked up a set of scissors as his dexterous fingers pulled the peritoneum out like skin. Then, a snip later, he was inside.
"So many flesh tubes," Rocky muttered, tilting his carapace toward me as he used his fingers and tools to investigate my abdominal cavity. But even as he said it he treated me and my myriad flesh tubes with care; I felt no pain or discomfort as the xenonite slowly stained red with my blood. Rocky had always been like that, I thought; he'd complain about how leaky I was but allow me a hug, watch me sleep and tell me to stop for food and water. He was digging around in my guts and not for a second did I not trust him with my life.
I was totally justified in thinking he could do open heart surgery on me and I could leave it in his hands. I smiled at the thought and Rocky chided me: "Grace stop moving."
Amused despite myself, I focused again on keeping my breaths even and quiet. Not silent, never silent, not to Rocky who could hear the blood rushing in my veins and the gurgling of my gut, but he was doing this for me and my randomly failing human body; the least I could do was try not to make it harder.
A few minutes later Rocky made a triumphant sound and gently cradled my appendix as he pulled it through the hole he'd carved into me. It was visibly inflamed and looked frankly awful, like it was on the verge of disintegration. "Disgust disgust disgust," Rocky was saying, "why Grace's organ meat sacks so fragile and gross?" But he was carefully following the procedure I'd only had to explain to him once for him to grasp, adept with his handmade tools as he extracted it and tied up the artery, then sliced it straight off.
It did look like meat when Rocky set it aside on a separate tray. Wet, bloody meat that had come from my body, that Rocky had held gently in his hand. There was something incredibly intimate about the thought. If he'd been holding it without the barrier of xenonite, it would have burnt right there and then, that was how incompatible our atmospheres were; he had touched me claw-to-skin once and marked me permanently, a scar I couldn't help but love. It was proof that Rocky had nearly died to save me, proof that his love for me matched the love I felt for him, a feeling that was so much more than anything I had felt for anyone else before.
But we couldn't touch again except through a barrier, even though his xenonite engineering was utterly faultless. So all I had was this: his sure and delicate handling of my organs while he was wrist-deep inside me.
That was weird, wasn't it? It was very weird. It was weird to think of my best friend as someone I'd want to do surgery on me; it was weird that Rocky was the first and only person I'd felt like this about. But did it matter? I'd never see another human again, and I'd make the same choice every time if it meant I could save Rocky's life.
Rocky had finished while I was trying not to watch. He'd acted swiftly and efficiently as he cauterized the area and was now starting to close me up, a human suture in one claw and his grip more awkward for it.
He'd been inside me, closer than anyone ever had before, and I almost wished he could have gone deeper. That there'd been some reason for him to cut open my chest, to hear and touch the beating muscle of my heart; maybe that would be close enough. Did he even know how much he meant to me? Probably. I had never made a secret of it.
Slowly but surely, my layers of flesh were sewn up. Rocky's delicate xenonite limb-coverings were soaked with red up to the second joint, my blood drying against the warmth of him. Every one of my myriad liquids would dry up on him right now, I thought, but once he'd fixed the temperature problem, maybe we could finally have some facsimile of touch.
I dreamed of touching him; I dreamed of him touching me. I was so incredibly lucky that I had him and yet I still ached for us to be closer. Rocky would literally ignore his disgust at my squishy insides to carve me open and sew me shut, and somehow, for me, it still wasn't enough.
Sensation was coming back to me as Rocky sewed the final layer of my skin closed; I could almost pinpoint the prick of the needle and the warmth of Rocky's touch. My breath left me in a sigh as Rocky finished the last stitch and pulled back, leaving me bereft and suddenly cold.
"Grace?" Rocky said.
"Sorry," I managed, shaking myself out of it. I abruptly wanted to cover myself; with feeling came pain, and I should probably get in bed before it hurt more than the current low ache. "Thank you, Rocky," I added, hoping he could hear the sincerity in my voice. "I know it wasn't easy for you, but—I trust you with my life."
"Yes, yes, yes," Rocky said, and wandered over to the sink to wash his gloves. "Rocky knows. Grace very bad at hiding thoughts."
My smile came much more naturally. "Yeah, well, if you were less competent maybe I'd have lower expectations." I gingerly unstrapped myself from the bed. Ouch. Bending was a mistake. I grabbed a sterile pad from the cabinet we'd left nearby and cleaned my newly sewn wound before strapping a bandage to it. "One point for Doctor Rocky; if anything else goes wrong with me—"
"No no no, no jinx!" Rocky exclaimed. I had no idea when he'd learned about jinxes. "No more nearly dying, no more cutting Grace open, no more covering Rocky in your leaky insides!"
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," I joked to Rocky's bewilderment; we hadn't gotten to Shakespeare yet. "Come on, just some leaky insides? For science?"
"Disgust disgust disgust," Rocky said again, but as I levered my body up to standing he came to stand next to me, a solid, warm pillar for me to brace myself on. "…But if Grace needs, I will help. Of course."
"Of course," I repeated, feeling unaccountably warm. "Well, I'll try to keep my insides inside and dying to a minimum, yeah? And don't forget I'll need more antibiotics."
Rocky nudged my shins gently and supported my hobble to grab a surgical gown to pull on. He continued to stay close as we made our way out together to where, before the surgery, I'd put together a makeshift bed on the floor. "Yes, Rocky never forgets. Grace should sleep. I will watch."
I carefully dropped down to the bed and gratefully clutched at the blankets. Rocky hovered right by my head as I looked up. "I mean it, you know," I said, exhaustion grasping me in its claws. "I trust you to do anything to me if you need to. If you want it."
"Grace sleeps now," Rocky repeated. "Should not tempt fate."
I huffed a faint laugh. "Yeah. No dying, right?"
"No dying, order," Rocky said, and as sleep took me, I could hear him settle in to watch.