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"Could you hand me some aspirin?" Jeremy asks Reid and Christina who are closest to their convenience first-aid kit.
Reid untethers the bag from its hold, turning to Jeremy, "Yeah, are you feeling okay?"
"Just a little headache, I'll be fine." Jeremy assures him, gratefully accepting the two pills Reid hands him.
Everyone returns to their tasks. Jeremy's headache subsides when the medication kicks in and the crew almost forget he asked for it in the first place. Almost.
—
It happens in slow motion from Christina's perspective. Jeremy is using a pair of scissors to open a stubborn food packet. He drops them, letting them float in the air in front of him for a moment, until he needs them again. The second he reaches out to grab them, the capsule jolts slightly.
The movement isn't significant enough to injure anyone badly, but it's ill-timed, causing the still open scissors to slash Jeremy's lower arm. He hisses, pulling the instrument away with his free hand and closing the blades so they can't hurt anyone else.
"Woah, okay…" Christina jumps into action first, grabbing his arm and keeping it steady. Victor pulls out one of their first-aid kits. He hands her gauze first and she presses down on the steadily bleeding laceration. Jeremy winces, looking away.
"It's okay…" she says, her hands shaking— wait, why are her hands shaking? She's not panicking, she's not injured, she just ate lunch… so what's the issue?
"It stings…" Jeremy complains.
Jeremy's sweating and he looks extremely pale. "It's really not that much blood…" she tells him, hoping it's a psychosomatic symptom.
"Yeah…" he's shaking too. Initially, her hand was keeping his arm steady enough to apply pressure, but now they're both shaking together. She feels herself starting to sweat as nausea swells.
"Christina?" She swallows thickly, looking up when Reid calls her name. "Are you okay?" She nods and does her best to hum positively.
"No. You look terrible… what's wrong?" She takes a shaky deep breath. "I don't…" her hands are too shaky to keep pressure on the wound anymore. Victor's gloved hands replace hers as Reid pulls her away.
"Mmmm…" she whines anxiously when the movement makes her even more nauseous. "Hey, you're okay," Reid feels her forehead. Her vision blurs and for a moment she's certain she's going to pass out.
But something kicks in under the surface. Adrenaline, probably. She gets the feeling that something is extremely wrong…
She blinks, clearing her vision. Reid comes back into focus. He doesn't look well either… his hands shake as he tries to get her finger in a pulse oximeter. "Reid, I…" she doesn't finish her thought. Reid's eyes roll into the back of his head. "Reid!" Her voice breaks.
She weakly pushes him to the side and finds that Victor has also fainted. "Nana," Jeremy's voice is full of fear. "I know, Jere…" she's not sure what to do.
"Integrity, what's going on?" Mission control is anxious too, she can hear it.
"Nana, we're gonna die!" Jeremy sobs, reaching for her before he loses consciousness too.
"No…" she feels hungry for air, like she's not getting enough. That's probably panic, but something tells her to listen to that instinct. She grabs an oxygen mask, feeling her vision darken at the edges during the time it takes her to pull it out and unfold it, before finally bringing it up to her mouth.
She takes a big, gulping breath of oxygen and relief floods her system. Jeremy's still bleeding, and that feels like something she should fix first. A small, manageable task. One thing at a time, Christina, she tells herself.
She grabs the gauze and a large bandage— now floating inches from Victor's outstretched fingers— and wraps it around Jeremy's wound as securely as she can manage.
She still feels like shit, but the pure oxygen is helping. All of their systems are in order; they shouldn't be breathing in anything harmful. But that's the only explanation she can think of, so she grabs the other oxygen masks and secures them on her crewmates.
"Houston…" she says, bringing the mic up to the clear plastic mask. "Christina, what's wrong?"
She blinks back tears, "I don't know… I think some kind of toxin is in the air, but all of our systems look fine…" She still feels short of breath, and a little dizzy, but she has to figure this out for her friends: she has no other choice.
"Okay… talk me through everything that happened in the lead up to the onset of symptoms." Christina starts from lunch and narrates everything that occurred afterwards to when she first started feeling ill.
"Okay, it seems everyone started feeling sick after Jeremy started bleeding? Am I wrong?" She blinks at that. What could the connection possibly be there?
A wave of deja vu washes over her and for a moment, she's terrified that this is another scary symptom, but then bits of pieces of the memory come to the surface. It's not something she's actually experienced… a dream? No… a show, then.
Oh…oh. There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy where a patient's blood caused the doctors to feel unwell and collapse. That was a patient though… they were on chemo, and she's fairly sure that, combined with the medications she had been taking, was what had caused it.
That's crazy though… or is it? It's based on a true story. Right…
"You think he has toxic blood?" She questions before she can think twice about it. "Well… it's our running theory. We're looking into it. Are you feeling well enough to check everyone's vitals?"
She nods and goes around the cabin, making sure everyone's vitals are within normal, or at least safe, ranges. "Nana…" she snaps her head up.
Jeremy's looking up at her with glassy eyes. "Hey," he reaches for the oxygen mask, "No…you need to leave that on." She says sternly, which gets his attention.
"What happened…?" He asks, looking around. She tries to block Victor and Reid's unconscious bodies from his line of sight, but she's unsuccessful. "We're still trying to figure that out…" She is not looking forward to telling him that he is now a walking (floating) biohazard.
She doesn't dare touch the bandages on his arm; she just has to pray they stay on. "Are you okay?" He asks, reaching out to her with still-shaking hands.
"About the same as you," she says with a forced smile that he probably can't even see behind the mask.
"Then I'm really sorry…" She shakes her head because unless he is aware that he has potentially toxic blood— which she highly doubts— then he has no reason to be sorry.
"Jeremy… were you taking any medications before this?" She asks even though she's sure mission control is already looking into it. "No." He says that way too fast. "You're sure?"
"I think I would know…" he says with a slight laugh. "Do you like… smoke weed?" She's taking shots in the dark at this point. Jeremy's eyes widen at the question. "No… what is this about? Do you need to give me something?"
She doesn't answer. "What about supplements, herbs…homeopathy, literally anything you were putting in your body?" He blinks at her, looking terrified. "I…"
"You're not in trouble…we just need to know." She tells him. "Catherine had me on some supplements before the launch…" he says quietly.
"Okay. I'm gonna have mission control look into that…" she relays the information back to the ground before finishing her check-up on Victor.
"Christina…" Jeremy tries to get her attention again.
"Yeah," she turns back to him, giving him her full attention again. "Is this my fault?" She sighs deeply. "No, there's no way you could've known that this would happen…" he sees right through that.
"So it is me…" she shakes her head. "Nana, please just tell me the truth…"
She averts her gaze, hoping that mission control will interrupt them with new information. "Tina," he pleads. "We all started feeling sick when you started bleeding… that's our only lead right now. But it doesn't necessarily mean anything yet."
He looks more confused than anything else. "How is that even-"
"Catherine provided us a list of the herbal supplements, and we're thinking that a few of them could have interacted with the Aspirin to create a toxin. It's not deadly, but all the symptoms you guys have experienced are consistent with exposure." Jenni informs them.
It's now that Jeremy starts to tear up. "I'm-"
"Hang on," Christina holds up her hand. She has questions about what needs to be done before she can comfort Jeremy or try to wake their crewmates.
"Is there anything else we should be doing?" She asks mission control.
"Oxygen masks are spot on, that was a good call." She feels her cheeks flush slightly with a strange sense of pride. It really was entirely her intuition. "There's not much you can do except wait for the toxins to get filtered out of the air: that could take a few hours. Your oxygen supply will last, so don't worry about that. And of course, keep us updated."
Christina nods, taking mental notes. "Okay, thank you for figuring that out so quickly… I was kind of lost…"
They wrap up their conversation and she turns back to Jeremy… who is now quietly sobbing.
"Oh, buddy…" he turns away from her, catching the tears with his sleeve before they can float away. "It's okay!" She exclaims, at a loss for what else to say or do.
"I almost killed us!"
"No… no, you didn't… okay? I'm not mad, they're not mad-" she tries to reassure him, but he cuts her off.
"They're unconscious!" He cries, waving his arm around them. "Jere… you didn't do this on purpose. You couldn't have known."
He remains silent, head in his hands. "This isn't your fault, okay? I know that this is bringing up a lot of complex emotions, but I need you to focus on feeling better first." She grabs his shoulders and squeezes them gently to emphasize her point.
He nods, but the tears don't stop. "Okay…" she takes a deep breath. "What's your worst symptom right now?" Hers is probably the tremors followed closely by the lightheadedness.
"Nausea…" She fishes around for an emesis bag, just in case.
As she hands it to him she feels someone knee her in the back. There's only one person that could be. She whips around to see Reid disoriented and flailing as he tries to find his bearings.
"You're okay," she pulls his hands away from the mask. He immediately relaxes when he sees her, already seeming exhausted from the effort it took to panic.
"Don't feel well…" he mutters, his eyes slipping shut. "Yeah… me neither…" she sighs. That piques his interest. He opens his eyes again, looking around at the rest of their crew.
"Ike-" he says, the panicked edge returning to his voice. "He's fine," Christina assures, resting a hand on his shoulder in what she hopes is a grounding gesture. Reid looks at her like she's crazy, before he begins to pick up on the details he'd missed before.
"Do we have a gas leak?" She shakes her head. "It's a really long story… all we can do is keep the masks on for a few hours." And make sure Jeremy doesn't start bleeding again.
Reid does not seem satisfied with that answer, but he also doesn't seem to have enough energy to push back. "You okay, Jere?" He asks, looking past Christina to where Jeremy is still crying.
"Mhmm…" Jeremy mumbles. Reid looks to Christina with a frown. "He's having a hard time…" she lowers her voice, "emotionally…"
"What the hell happened?" Reid asks again. She shakes her head. She cannot have this conversation again, especially since Jeremy hasn't even had time to process the news yet. It's probably best to do the explaining when Victor's awake anyway.
"Tina…" Jeremy's voice is no less timid than it was before. She turns back around. "I need to go to the bathroom…" He admits, avoiding eye-contact.
She bites her lip subtly. She's not too thrilled about the idea. In fact, she'd like for him to keep all of his bodily fluids inside his body for the foreseeable future. But that's not possible, and she can't ask that of him regardless.
She keys the mic again, "Is it just the blood or do we need to be worried about other bodily fluids?" She asks, noticing how Jeremy tries to shrink himself down in his corner of the capsule.
"This is kind of uncharted territory… but our med-team is saying that it's very unlikely for anything else to be a problem considering he stopped taking the supplements during the second half of quarantine."
She nods, feeling marginally better.
"Go ahead, bud…" she tells him with a nod. He scurries off to the bathroom and she finds herself grateful that he's able to take the mask with him.
"What's worrying about his blood?" Christina sighs, rolling her eyes slightly and running a hand through her curls before turning back to Reid. "It's-" Victor stirs with a gasp, cutting her off.
"It's okay," he grabs her hand before she can grab his. "Tina…?"
"Right here," she squeezes his hand.
"What happened…?"
She takes advantage of the time that Jeremy spends in the bathroom. "Apparently, Catherine had Jeremy taking some herbal supplements before the launch. And apparently, those supplements, mixed with aspirin and his blood created a mild neurotoxin."
They both blink at her for a few seconds.
"Doesn't feel very mild…" Victor remarks.
"Maybe don't tell Jeremy that… he feels really bad about it." She's almost positive he can hear at least some of their conversation through the bathroom door, but she hopes it's not enough to send him into a spiral again.
"This is a lot to process…" Reid says, scrubbing a hand over his face. "No kidding…" Christina agrees.
—
After four hours, mission control informs the crew that they should be able to safely breathe without the masks. By this point, the worst of their symptoms have subsided, and they're fairly certain they'll be able to tell almost immediately if the air isn't safe given the rapid onset of their symptoms earlier.
Victor goes first and after a few minutes, everyone joins him in putting the masks away. The air is 100% oxygen again and there's no trace of neurotoxin to be found… they just need to pray it stays that way.