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It's been four days since shit hit the fan, and it's actually crazy how fast things have returned to normal. Less than 24 hours after the impact, Jeremy and Victor were functioning at about 85% of their usual capacity. By 72 hours, Christina and Reid were too.
Re-entry goes perfectly, but Christina is dreading boarding the Navy ship. She's always been wary of doctors, but she's especially scared of them today. She feels fine, aside from the fresh scar sending occasional rushes of pain down her side.
The only reason she even tolerated the chest tube in the first place was because of her inability to breathe, leaving her feeling so out of it that she'd do anything to ease the sense of constriction in her chest. But she has no idea what the surgeons will want to do once she steps onto that boat, and that unknown terrifies her.
They've been bobbing in the ocean for thirty minutes. Jeremy and Victor have climbed down from their seats and settled across from Christina and Jeremy. The conversation they're having is reminiscent of one you might have on the school bus headed to a field trip in grade school.
But Christina's not participating. She's frantically trying to get a hold of a signal— in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, no less— in order to look up the treatment for a collapsed lung.
"Who are you trying to text?" Jeremy asks, looking over at her screen. She turns it away from him as subtly as possible.
"No one, I just…" She's unable to come up with an excuse before mercifully, her search goes through, interrupting her rumination.
She clicks on the first link, which loads slowly, but not as slowly as before. "Tina?" Reid asks when she doesn't finish her sentence.
She quickly skims over the treatment part of the article. Treatment options may include observation, needle aspiration, chest tube insertion, nonsurgical repair or surgery. They already did that for her… so does that mean she's in the clear?
Depending on the cause of the pneumothorax, a second goal may be to prevent reoccurrences. An injury caused her lung to collapse: there's no way to prevent a reoccurrence other than trying not to get injured like that again…
She scrolls down to the bottom of the article where there's a section called 'Ongoing Care'. You may need to avoid certain activities that put extra pressure on your lungs for a time after your pneumothorax heals. Examples include flying, scuba diving or playing a wind instrument.
She's pretty sure reentering Earth's atmosphere and feeling all the g-loads associated with that would be included in the category…
She takes a deep breath, scanning her body. Both lungs fill to the same capacity. The left side hurts just slightly, but she is able to breathe with ease.
"Is it your lungs?" Victor asks, moving to get up. She shakes her head.
"No, I'm fine… I swear…" she knows that she doesn't have a great track record of telling the truth in that regard, but she really is trying to change that.
"'I'm fine' as in 'I'm slowly dying and don't plan on telling anyone' or…" Victor says sarcastically. She shrinks into her seat, her face flushing slightly.
"I'm really sorry…" she says, so quietly she's not sure anyone can hear. "Just talk to us, Tina… what's going on?" Reid pries gently.
"I…" It's so stupid. They're not going to understand, but she can't lie to them. Not after the events of the past few days. "I'm nervous about what they're going to do to me when we get onto the ship… I… I don't want to go through anything like that again." She keeps her head down as she speaks, switching her phone off.
Reid leans in from his position across from her, to look her in the eyes. "You're not going to have to go through that again unless your lung collapses again and judging by the lack of wheezing… I'd say you're in the clear," he says, placing a hand on her knee.
Christina nods… she really hopes that he's right, but he isn't a doctor. He can't know for sure. She doesn't say anything in response, just quietly tries to convince herself that he's probably right and silence her spiraling thoughts.
"Nana?" She glances over at Jeremy. "It's okay. We'll be here the whole time. Even if they do end up needing to do something, you won't be alone."
That sentiment does make her feel better. He's not promising that nothing bad is going to happen, because he can't. But he is promising that no matter what happens, they'll be there for her. And she knows that's true.
—
They have gurneys available for all of them when they land on the Navy ship, but all of them refuse. The doctors and nurses in the medbay perform checks on all of them. Both the routine checks, and a few more specific to their individual injuries.
They check Reid's awareness level and pupils in the same way Christina did regularly on their mission. They clean Jeremy's wound thoroughly, re-bandage it and make sure Victor has the same range of motion in both arms.
And for Christina, they listen to her breathing from a million different angles and get a chest x-ray. You can see the scarring on the x-ray but there isn't any fluid in the lungs and they both look even. One of the doctors even compliments their ability to get an effective chest tube working in space.
After that, the flurry of medical personnel leave the room, leaving just their crew. All four of them immediately FaceTime their families, retreating to separate corners of the medbay.
Bobby answers before the first ring can even fully go through. "You scared me so badly." Is the first thing he says. "I'm sorry…" she apologizes, biting her lip.
He sighs heavily, "It's okay… I know you… and you were in good hands, I just worry." He gives her a tense smile. "Did the doctors give you an all clear yet?"
"I think we're waiting on that right now… they listened to my breathing and said everything seemed okay," She explains the best she can.
"But you can breathe okay? It doesn't hurt?" She nods and then shakes her head to each question. "Promise?" he asks and she can practically feel his anxiety through the phone.
"The only thing that still hurts is the scar from the chest tube, but even that isn't too bad," she tells him honestly. "I trust you… but I'm still really anxious to see you tomorrow." She smiles at that.
"Me too! Just don't hug me too tight…" she says with a laugh.
Twenty minutes later, everyone's wrapped up their conversations with their families and the lead doctor returns with the x-ray results. She explains everyone's individual results for the tests they ran, but the general sentiment is that everyone seems overwhelmingly healthy considering what took place four days before.
She texts Bobby with the results and the doctor leaves. She should feel satisfied with that assessment, but her brain is still convinced that there's some other scary test yet to happen.
"Was that it?" she can't help but ask aloud. They didn't whisk her away to surgery or offer her any hardcore pain medication, and her brain can't seem to comprehend that.
"Seems like it… I told you, there's really not much they're going to do since you're breathing well on your own." Reid replies from his own bed in the medbay.
And he's right. The next time a nurse comes in, it isn't to run more tests; it's to let them know that it's time to turn the lights off.
Christina turns over as the room goes dark. She tries to settle her body down enough to fall asleep. But it's not just the receding anxiety that's keeping her wired… it's also a feeling of loneliness. Which is silly, considering her crewmates are just feet away from her. Somehow, that meager distance still feels way too far.
She tries laying on her other side, but the feeling doesn't change. She turns over again with a huff of frustration. Not a single position is comfortable and it doesn't even have anything to do with her injury.
She's facing Victor, who is completely still, but she can just tell he's not asleep yet. Jeremy and Reid are across from them. She cranes her neck to see them. Jeremy is the same as Victor, but Reid is on his phone– she can tell by the obnoxious amount of blue light emanating from his section of the medbay.
Now that she's seen it, she can't stop noticing it and the light is preventing her from sleeping even more… she turns over again. She can't see the light facing this way, but she's still not comfortable.
She groans as quietly as possible and decides she's just not going to sleep tonight. Okay, maybe it's a bit dramatic to come to that conclusion after five minutes of trying, but it's hard to imagine that rest is on the horizon for her at all.
"You okay, Tina?" Jeremy asks, pushing himself slightly upright in the bed across from her. "Yeah… I just can't get comfortable… you guys are too far away…" She says it mostly as a joke, so she's a little surprised when all three of them agree.
"We should push the beds together." Again, it's a joke (kind of). "I second that." Jeremy agrees, already sitting up properly. She laughs… there's no way he's being serious. But Reid gets up too and before she can backtrack, they're both figuring out a strategy to push their beds together.
The beds themselves are actually quite big… definitely enough space for two people each. And if they push the railings down, they could quite feasibly fit all four of them within arms reach of each other.
Jeremy and Reid assemble their glorified pillow-fort, using an extra blanket to cover the already tiny gap between the two beds. "You wanna share with me, Nana?" Jeremy offers, making their side extra comfortable by adding more pillows. She nods before she can stop herself, and gets up, crossing the room and climbing into his bed.
She settles down and then Jeremy slips in next to her. Reid and Victor settle into their bed in a similar position, with Reid and Christina in the middle. She giggles slightly at how silly it is. They're four, full grown adults, sleeping in a makeshift bed together like siblings on vacation after quite literally flying to the dark side of the moon.
She gives Reid and Jeremy their space and tries not to touch anyone, but as she grows more tired, she leans into Jeremy without thinking. He doesn't push her away or complain, just shifts slightly to accommodate her, wrapping an arm around her like a protective brother.
There's no where else she'd rather be…
(She re-thinks that statement just a little bit when she wakes up in the middle of the night to Reid kicking her in the side.)