Work Text:
"Grace." My gaze drifts diagonally across my laptop screen. I'm not really reading any of what I just typed, so I blink.
"It's time." Stratt and I sit in conference rooms, day in day out, meeting after meeting. We only move around if someone else needs the room we're in, and sometimes sit in a nicer conference room, but that's typically reserved for when other people attend the meeting as well. They're all Stratt's meetings, of course, and I just feel like an appendage to her. Not that I've even had the time to mind all that much. She is running a tight ship on the Chinese aircraft carrier, to be sure.
I lean back to stretch my shoulders and upper body. Stratt holds a thermometer in my face.
𝐸𝒜𝑅𝐿𝐼𝐸𝑅:
It probably started with Stratt having me woken up at 3:45 AM. Some other big heads were flying in to discuss our astrophage farm, how to translate the in-computer, on-paper calculations into an actual, working breeding environment. Naturally, the numbers on the small scale did not quite match the big plan.
Though I could have done with more sleep, and seeing my watch make 4 AM, I did find myself getting excited. Ironically, we waited another 45 minutes on the flight deck in the pouring rain before the helicopter touched down. I feel like Stratt still doesn't tell me the most important things.
I say we, but it was just me. By the time Stratt came out too, my feet were soaking wet in my shoes, and there was no time to change into anything dry for the rest of the day, when talking about astrophage right through until the afternoon.
When I turned in to my bed that evening, I just felt wrung out because I had been up so long, and the next day I felt like I'd gotten just a little too little sleep. Sometime in the afternoon, I started to cough.
Dry and bringing up nothing at all, at first, the next day is just a little more. The day after that, though, I started bringing up phlegm. Yuck.
I must have caught something, somewhere on the ship. Maybe it's the tail end of that cold that went around a few weeks ago. My own throat felt a little scratchy at the time, but that was it.
Stratt hasn't said anything to my faint noises, grunts and hrumphs, as I try my best to swallow down the roughness in my throat and ignore the weight in my chest. But now it's been days and I figure I must be getting over whatever this is. That's when Stratt finally looks up from her own laptop.
"You've been coughing for four days." She is expectedly blunt, except I don't expect her to point out my coughing.
My mind feels dull, trying to explain myself. "It's just a virus or something going around." Something always is; the Chinese ship isn't that different from a middle school. I wave off the fact that talking made me feel a little out of breath, so I just look at Stratt, waiting for her to tell me to get back to work. God knows I should; there's so much to do.
I'm surprised when she doesn't.
"Have you been to the medical bay?" She takes her hands off her keyboard and I see her fold them in her lap under the table. Meanwhile, I sit here without poise, leaning forward. Our little floating city has it all, but I shake my head. "No."
Stratt doesn't take her eyes off of me. She musters me carefully, having no doubt honed in on the red rimming my eyes. "Get yourself seen, then." The subtle lines around her eyes deepen, when I don't move right away. "Can I send you there?"
I don't know, can she...? Stratt can do just about anything she wants, I've learned quickly. Apparently, she can also read minds because, before I can say anything else, she adds, "What I am asking you is, are you able to walk there on your own?"
Why wouldn't I be, I think, if wearily and I push myself up to standing with my hands on the table. "Yeah." And if I can't, some seaman will sooner or later take pity on me.
I sway, and out of the corner of my eye, Stratt looks at me, dubious. Just before I stumble out of the room on my own, I hear her laptop snap shut. She catches me by my upper arm. My jaw slackens as I stare at her.
"Come on." She doesn't take any pause, her hand slides lower down to my elbow and she nudges me forward. I amble past the door before I half turn back around. "My laptop..." I make an effort of thinking about work, but she just shakes her head.
I sit on the exam bed with my shirt off. Stratt stands behind the curtain partition to give me privacy, but she is still listening.
The Navy flight surgeon, who listened to my chest and now clips a pulse-ox to my finger, is more comfortable with Chinese, obviously, which I'm sure he knows I don't speak. But Stratt does. After a well of silence from me, she looks from behind the curtain. "The doctor thinks you have pneumonia." I get an X-ray of my chest, because what's a little radiation.
Back to now, Stratt tells me, "Take your temperature again."
I grunt in response. We made a deal that, if I go over 38.9 degrees Celsius, I'm back in bed. Over 39.4 and I go straight to the medical bay.
But I have the chills and full body aches are creeping up my back. Even though I took some medicine two hours ago, I can tell the fever either already came back or never left. Still, I take the thermometer and put it under my tongue. I wait a minute or so, with Stratt again not taking her eyes off me, until it beeps.
A frantic little alarm, telling me that the reading is 'high' and a very brief glance at the display is all I get before Stratt has her hand out for the thermometer back.
38.8. Yes...! I mouth thanks to the thin air before looking back up at Stratt.
The creases around her eyes could mean any one of so many things. "This isn't good," she finally says. "Maybe you ought to be in the medical bay to be observed."
"No–" I sit up straighter, but so quickly that this sends me right into another coughing fit. I bend forward, coughing until my eyes start watering, until they are squeezed shut.
"No," I wheeze out just as soon as I recover. I don't want that, it feels excessive. Plus, we have an agreement.
There's too much to get done. I haven't told Stratt this—for one, I think it makes me come across as too self-involved—but I really want to stay working on this project, right up until the astronauts launch into space.
Stratt sighs, but I don't think she's actually unhappy with my tenacity. I realize that she brought not only the thermometer but a bunch of other supplies from the medical bay. She puts four different blister packs of pills on the table.
"Are you nauseous?" It'll be her headache if I hurl on this nice big mahogany table, but I'm a grown man and I can grab a trashcan. Besides I shake my head, no. "Take one of each." She pushes a glass of water across the table. "Pain medicine, something more for the fever, an antibiotic, and a steroid," She supplies.
I make a face. "I probably don't need all this."
Stratt just gives me a stern look. I sink back in the chair. And into my cardigan.
The pills don't go smoothly down, but I hesitate to take more than a few sips of water at a time.
Despite my confidence, I do find myself feeling a little queasy about half an hour later. I put a hand on my stomach and knead my knuckles into my abdomen...Then I end up rubbing my fingers over my chest. I have got all these twinges between my ribs. I tell myself that the pain killer and fever reducer just need some more time to work. I wonder if I'd feel better about the wait if I had actually eaten something this morning but, dang it...I just couldn't push past my lack of an appetite.
While I briefly let my gaze drift around the room, I try my darndest to not give Stratt anything to admonish. That said, I don't think she's searching to; she doesn't look up from her work. She only switches her focus between the screen and the stack of papers she has next to her, if anything.
I shake my head to myself. There's only a bunch of arithmetic on my laptop screen, it's easy enough. Stratt wants me to talk about this stuff at our next meeting in about 20 minutes...I'll get it done in time. I just need to concentrate.
Then it's me, Stratt, Dimitri, and Bob Redell sitting at that long table. Our meeting is ticking close to 45 minutes.
The medicine now—still—definitely doesn't work well enough, but I also don't have it in me to get up and excuse myself just to get another dose. And it's not even Stratt—she let go of her idea of sending me off to bed, I think—who looks at me the most closely, but the other two. I try to seem oblivious to it, but I've kept sinking down into my chair, until it ends up being my turn to speak.
There are probably a dozen places I could have hooked into the conversation, being the world's astrophage expert currently, but I don't have it in me to do so. Now I get the last word on our farm layout, and what that means compared to the calculations we initially worked with a few months ago.
"...We're limited by the–" I cough again. I've only been getting a few words in before needing to clear my throat each time. "The–" The actual acreage of the Saharan astrophage farm is what limits our astrophage breeding. As I get myself to stop coughing, I take a long but careful breath. My fingertips are touching the table, I'm standing and keeping myself upright on them in lieu of fully leaning forward.
I wipe non-existent sweat from my forehead. I'm still shivering, there actually isn't any sweat on my face at all. I clear my throat again. "Which means that currently the actual doubling time equals to–"
I run out of steam, out of breath, mid-every sentence. My lungs feel like they're full of wet sand. I take another breath but genuinely wheeze. I feel heat rise to my face. "It equals to around–"
"Grace, you good?" Asks Dimitri. And Bob says, "Yeah, you look like shit." I see Stratt shoot him a look, but he just shrugs.
"Yeah, sorry, can I just," I turn to Stratt, not sure what kind of look I hope to see on her face this time. Well, it's not one I can decipher as I waffle around my intention to ask permission...Screw that, I just need to go. "I think I need to step out for a second." And nobody says anything, as quickly as I'm out the door.
I don't go very far, just stumble into the nearest bathroom, where I hang my head over the sink and splash some water in my face. My head felt hot moments ago, but when I see myself in the mirror I just look pale and awful.
I shuffle back, but Dimitri and Redell are already gone. Stratt's eyes are on the door as I open it into the conference room, which means she's looking at me, too.
"That was disrespectful," she says in such a flat tone that I freeze.
I might literally freeze in my cardigan. I'm weirdly uncomfortable wearing it, it feels heavy on my sore shoulders, but it's the only thing keeping me from shivering visibly. Then Stratt passes over her own comment.
"I had to tell doctors Komorov and Redell that you'll share your latest explorations with them in writing." I guess, this is Stratt-speak for 'You're being a huge inconvenience, Grace'.
My eyes feel heavy, my whole body does. I grab the back of a chair. My chest might feel like wet sand, but my legs feel like concrete. I only have half of an apology. "Sorry, I...I thought I explained everything, it wasn't much but..."
She cuts me off: "You didn't finish a single sentence."
I look at Stratt, confused. My brain feels hot and slow. This isn't the time for me to be sitting back down but I know that I can't stay standing up. I hastily, as much as my aching body allows, pull out the chair to slump down on. I run my hands over my scalp...but touching my own hair makes my fingers ache.
"There's another meeting in 15 minutes." Our schedule is tight today. "Drink some more water in the meantime." That's all Stratt gives me.
...How the tables have turned.
I sit in the next meeting with Stratt, and I wish she'd send me back to my cabin now. I wish that I had told her how bad I actually feel when I had the chance, and that I hadn't been too stubborn to do so. And I would really like to lay my head down on the table for a minute or so.
I do spend those 15 minutes allotted to me on about half the glass of water. Now I just feel queasy—actually nauseous—again. Every time I even just shift around in my chair slightly, my abs cramp from coughing for four days straight.
I'm grateful that this meeting, at least, doesn't really need my attention, and my attendance only because Stratt wants me to stay. I'm not asked to say or explain anything, I just listen. Or I try to. I find it really hard to focus on what she's talking about to the representative from France...Or maybe it's Canada.
"Dr. Grace?" Stratt calls on me suddenly.
I think I drifted off... Before I can drum up a proper response, I need to cough again. This one makes my chest feel even heavier than the one before. In fact, I don't manage to put as much force into it this time as the last time, either, like I'm tired of coughing—from coughing.
"Are you all right?" With too many eyes on me, I realize that she must be asking on behalf of our foreign company.
I do dig up the decorum to nod, "Yeah. I'm okay," I turn my shoulders slightly towards the other woman, though that's where I realize how far I sank down in my chair again. "Don't worry."
The conference room blurs right in front of my eyes for the rest of Stratt's meeting. When her guest leaves, I struggle to get out of my chair but manage to get to my feet. I just want to lie down in my bed. With my tail tucked between my legs, I feel somewhat ready to ask Stratt to reschedule whatever else she has planned for me today, and to make my feeble promise to make up what I miss.
"Grace, sit back down." Stratt says with a certain urgency before I can even attempt it.
I groan. I'm dizzy...the room tilts with me.
In what feels like just moments later, I flinch hard from the touch against my arm.
"Dr. Grace." My ears ring, hearing my name. Stratt's face is a white smear in the light above me. I'm flat on my back, but I see her hand hesitate above my shoulder.
My head is spinning. It's been weeks, and I nearly forgot that I'm on a ship, but all of a sudden I remember.
Stratt grabs my arm. "Do you know what happened?"
No. I try to shake my head, but I'm not sure the gesture actually happens. I also don't understand the look she gives me. It is an unnaturally close perspective of a woman I've pretty much only seen from the other end of a conference room table. And yet, the stiff and unfamiliar pressure of her hand is what keeps me from spinning off axis.
"Am I still sick...?" My response rattles from my chest where breathing aches deeply. I let myself lie perfectly still. I just heave another breath before everything goes dark.
.........
......
...I can't make a lick of sense of what's being said beside me. Then, I realize it's Chinese again. Ah, so I haven't completely lost it with my brain boiling. What a relief.
I try to move but my limbs feel like lead, while my heart is racing, and my clothes are glued to my skin with cold sweat. Still dizzy, I squint my eyes at the overhead light, then look down at the gray nylon cuff squeezing my bicep.
"You fainted, Dr. Grace." Stratt's voice comes at me like I'm hearing her through a tin can. She stands next to me, on my back on the nice table, with her arms crossed over her chest.
The flight surgeon from earlier in the day and a medical technician are also here. The latter takes my temperature in my ear this time. After the beep, I hear about the state of me through Stratt's translation. "Your fever is high. Your heart rate is up and your blood pressure is low."
And my head hurts, I think I hit it. It seems like a lot is wrong with me.
When Stratt asks if I ate anything the day before, I can only shake my head, no. I already felt nauseous then, and I only a drank a few sips of water. As the direct consequence, I feel something cold wipe the back of my hand and flinch at being poked with a needle.
"You are also dehydrated."
I'm sure I just don't faint again because I'm already lying down. "Sorry," I finally slur, finding it hard to keep my eyes open.
After some fluids through the IV, I still don't feel miraculously better but I've maybe stopped feeling worse. I'm shivering hard, more than the on-and-off chills I got running down my back earlier. What's worse is my chest really hurts and yet despite that I still really need to cough.
I sit up, against my own dizziness, and as I gather also against the flight surgeon's wishes. After a good minute of coughing, it not calming down, I think I'm going to throw up from the phlegm that sits in my throat. Lying flat didn't help matters. The technician hands me the trashcan from the corner of the room before I actually get up. I quickly hug it to my body and gracelessly hang my head over it.
I retch, but nothing comes up. Eventually the sensation in the back of my throat goes away.
"The medicine from before didn't help," I lament. My eyes close again without any effort, and I think everyone in the room, the doctor, the technician, and Stratt are going to let me go to sleep.
"It's not for the coughing." Stratt informs me instead of actually letting me drift off. I open my eyes again only to blink up at her. "It will ease up once your infection clears."
She rolls up my cardigan and makes me lift my head up to put it underneath.
Ah. That's why I'm so cold. Although, I shouldn't be, but my body isn't done with the fever.
I have to believe her, since I'm too tired to ask more questions, let alone complain.
What is Stratt going to do with me, though? The threat of putting me in a hospital bed looms over me. I just want to curl up in my bunk, pull the blanket over my head and go to sleep...
"I don't have anyone available to me who can just sit and watch you," Stratt says.
That makes me feel horrible. I'm poked in the crook of my other arm, and any color I just got back in my face drains out of me again. After half the bag of saline, I'm allowed to sit up. Other than that faint whiff of autonomy from it, though, it doesn't make me feel good.
My mind fuzzes up again too soon....
......
...I can only assume that I did get carted off to the sick bay when I see the cannula still in my hand, but when I turn my head more, slowly, I realize I'm in my cabin in my bed.
I guess I'm still worse than I thought I was, though: I'm hallucinating, seeing Stratt next to me. She notices me looking at her. "Drink some more water," she tells me, "But slowly."
After I let myself believe that it's not my imagination, I realize where Stratt is sitting. She's at the small desk, bolted to the floor of the cabin like every other piece of furniture, next to my bed. She has her laptop open in front of her. My laptop is on the desk too, but closed.
My head feels heavy and my throat feels hot and I want to drink something, but I'm confused. "Wait," I say, "what are you doing here?"
She looks at me without any hint of surprise at my question. "As I said before, I have no one else to watch you."
"What? So, you...?" I'm dumbfounded.
"I need you close to where you are needed, Dr. Grace."
Oh...So she argued with the doctor for my sake; I don't have to be in the sick bay. While that doesn't even remotely answer my question, I'm willing to let it go and take the relief I feel in its place.
"Then I can get back to work. I can—" I reach for my laptop. Stratt tuts at me before I can get to it.
"No," she says simply and nudges my hand off the desk. "I said I need you close, but you can't work right now."
"Why?!"
Raising my voice is a mistake, as I throw myself straight into another coughing fit. And again I feel so out of breath and dizzy that I think I'm going to throw up.
Stratt waits until I'm done; I really make her point for her. "Because you have pneumonia."
I lean back with my mouth open, but my eyes only so. Breathing hurts, I can feel the muscles sucking in between my ribs. I blink a few times, until the blurry, teary vision I got from coughing so hard clears. Stratt, rather patiently now, explains the details to me.
"I have strep?" I sound incredulous.
"You have pneumococcus."
Pfft. Which is still a strep bacterium...but I'm not going to argue right now. I really do just feel too bad.
A healthy adult gets an ear infection or maybe bronchitis from that. Old people and people with bad immune systems get pneumonia. I'm a middle school teacher, my body can handle all sorts of germs. But Stratt tells me the on-board doctor thinks I'm just that susceptible from being sleep deprived.
To be fair, right now I do feel like I could sleep for a month straight, maybe more. But my internal clock knows I shouldn't be sleeping in the daytime and, looking at my watch, it's still only the afternoon.
"Here," she repeats, still holding the glass of water. I take it this time, but I still don't drink.
Stratt walks to the in-room sink and turns it on, then comes back and hands me a damp washcloth. I put it up on my forehead.
"Take your temperature again."
I find the thermometer on my nightstand. 39.2°C despite the medicine. I'm definitely too close to our agreed number for anyone's comfort—mostly my own. My brain takes a regrettably long time to make the conversion to Fahrenheit this time around. Stratt also frowns, though not full-on.
"Keep this on," she gestures to the washcloth on my face. I will, it's nice and cool.
"You know I don't tolerate dissent very much?" Stratt says flatly, though I can't help imagining that she says it more gently than I have ever heard her talk.
I want to laugh. If only that didn't hurt so much. Instead I grimace. Is she trying to be funny? Probably not. I don't see so much as a smile edge into her's expression.
Stratt left her laptop open, but I still have all her attention, and I don't know how to feel about that. She puts her hand on my wrist and feels my pulse. I can hear myself breathe too fast and too shallow, but when she lets go she comments, "Not too bad."
Her tone is so dry, and yet that's exactly what makes me feel even just a little bit better. I sigh, careful this time, even as deep in my lungs rattles.
"I don't know what I'm doing here," I admit, "Or...I guess, what you're doing here." Stratt looks at me, waiting for me to explain what I mean.
"Like," I try, "You probably have work to do that I'm keeping you from doing." Guilt creeps into my chest, makes breathing even harder along with the pneumonia.
"You aren't," she says simply.
Right...She brought her laptop. She was working while I was passed out. Stratt looks at me, as if waiting for me to make a better argument. I can't and I don't.
We've been sitting together at the same conference room table for days, weeks. Why is this so awkward?
"Sorry," I mumble...It's awkward because I'm diseased and useless.
"The IV fluids were a supplement, not a replacement," Stratt finally says to remind me of the glass of water still in my hand. "I can't have you down and out for an indefinite amount of time."
I take a few sips, and though still reluctantly, she seems to be happy enough with that as she turns back to her laptop.
"Now, could you try getting some more sleep? I'm told rest is important for your recovery." Stratt puts the distance between me, her, and what she says; said as if she's never been sick herself. I don't even feel like laughing this time, but still find that strangely funny.
I clumsily tug on my pillow to put it up against the headboard, and lean back instead of lying flat down completely.
Only once I close my eyes, and drift off again, do I realize that she did joke. Hah...