Work Text:
Job security wasn’t ever my first priority, when I picked my career. If it was, I guess maybe I’d have decided to be a doctor or a nurse. As long as there’s sick people, we’re gonna need someone to take care of them. And there’s always gonna be sick people.
Instead, I became a radiographer.
Can I tell you a secret? When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor. My parents didn’t pressure me into it or anything. Actually, they made it clear that the only thing they wanted was for me to be happy. But that was even more pressure, because often enough, for no good reason, I wasn’t. I guess I always just felt like I had to make up for it all somehow. Do something for the greater good, in exchange for my own existence. To my teenage mind, that meant being a doctor. Fixing people.
I used to tell people the reason why I didn’t make it through med school was because my maths skills weren’t up to scratch. Everyone finds that understandable. Most people also aren’t that good at maths. Actually, my maths skills are fine. I just couldn’t handle the pressure. It was all a bit dramatic, looking back on it, but at the time I… yeah. Couldn’t take it. Dropped out.
Anyway. That was all a long time ago, I don’t dwell on it. I picked up some part time jobs and saved up some money, then I went on a road trip across the USA with a friend who was originally from Tucson. When we got to California, we both just… stayed there. It was hard, being on the other side of the planet from everyone and everything I’d ever known. But nice, too. Lots of people move to California when they want a new start.
So. Job security. People are always gonna need doctors and nurses, but medical imaging relies on the machines to be of any use. But I kind of like it that way. Sometimes I feel less like a healthcare worker, and more like a jockey, coaxing results out of a huge and expensive mechanical horse. Or a lion tamer or something. There’s a lot more to it than just pushing buttons. You have to develop a rapport with the patient, explain the process, get them in position. You need to be able to interpret the images a bit as well, so you know if you’ve gotten a good one that the doctors can use, or if you need to take more. My favourite thing to do is ultrasounds. Sometimes I get so, like, absorbed by it, it’s like the ultrasound probe is part of my arm. The readout on the screen is another sense just like my eyes or ears. I’m the one diving through the layers of tissue, peering back and forth. Observing.
My family and friends back home were all like, if you wanted to get a job in healthcare, why did you go and do it in America? Their healthcare system’s terrible. Which is funny now, because I think in the future we’ll be looking back and saying we didn’t know how good we had it. It’s already getting harder. Tighter staffing, less resources. A couple of years ago, a bunch of our orderlies and janitors and kitchen staff got new jobs. Making black tiles to pave over the Sahara. We got most of them back after it was done, but not everyone. I guess a lot of people took it as their wake-up call to retire early and spend more time with their family, or pursue their dream career, or join a cult. Since the world’s ending, and everything.
Yeah. You get used to it.
My parents and my brothers back in Brisbane, they say the summers there aren’t as hot anymore. My mum’s side of the family in Penang all say it’s just as hot there as it ever was. Both sides of the family say it’s flash-flooding every rainy season. And all over the world, the oceans are rising.
Meanwhile, I’m still doing what I’ve always done. Just me and the ultrasound machine.
“Okay, all done,” I tell the patient, and I wipe the gel off his calf.
“How does it look?” he asks. He’s a slightly crotchety old man, reminds me of one of my neighbours. I never used to talk to my neighbours much, but these days, you tend to worry about people. Check in on anyone you haven’t seen around in a while.
“The doctors will look at the results and let you know,” I reply. “I’ll take you out to the waiting area, and somebody will come and escort you back up to the ward.” I’m just the technician. It does look like he has a pretty decent blood clot in there, so they’ll have to anticoagulate him, I guess. But it’s not my job to diagnose people.
I help him up off the bed and into the wheelchair, then push the wheelchair back out into the waiting area of the medical imaging department. On my way back, the in-charge waves to get my attention.
“Hey, Linda, you haven’t been for your break yet, have you?”
“Nope,” I reply.
“Okay, off you go. See you when you get back.”
I head off to the break room, get my lunch out of the fridge, and start making a cup of coffee. Today, I’ve brought a mug that says “Have A Rad Day!” with the nuclear symbol behind it. Some people favour travel cups, or they have just one mug they leave at work, but I bring a different one every day. I kind of have a collection, so I like the excuse to use them all. And it makes me smile.
I used to date a guy who was like that, but with dorky novelty t-shirts instead. Neverending supply of them. Actually, that was how we met, because I was out for a trivia night with some mates from work, and I was wearing a shirt with a pun about x-rays on it. He asked me where I’d gotten it. We chatted for a bit, I suggested he should join my team, and it turned out he was crazy good at trivia. Less good at noticing when he was being hit on.
Wow, I haven’t thought about Ryland in ages.
With most exes, this would be my cue to wonder how they were doing these days. Not so with Ryland, because he makes international news every now and again, so I don’t even have to Facebook stalk him. Speaking of which, I think I remember they’re going to be launching the spaceship soon. Today or tomorrow. I reach for the remote for the break room TV.
I don’t have to look far to find out. All the news channels are covering Project Hail Mary, 24/7. I was right, the launch is tomorrow, early in the morning.
They’re doing a basic overview of the ship’s mission plan, and the astronauts who will be on board. I watch, half-interested, as little inset portraits of them are displayed on-screen. The captain, the engineer, and the scientist. I’ve probably heard or read all their names before, but I don’t remember them. I have a pretty good memory for faces, though.
It’s the third face in the lineup that nearly makes me drop my sandwich.
It’s a mistake, right? The news program has already moved on to something else, something boring and technical about the ship’s specifications, and I’m half-convinced I imagined it. Or the news got it wrong, somehow. Somehow.
I take my phone out of my pocket, and type “hail mary crew scientist” into a search engine. The results pop up, and it takes me a moment to sort them all out. It looks like the primary and backup scientist for the mission both died, in what some headlines are calling a workplace accident, and others are calling potential sabotage. I’d believe it. People are saying the astrophage is actually the Rapture, or Mother Nature’s justified revenge for global warming, shit like that. Either way, they were suddenly down two scientists, and had to scramble for a third. Apparently, the option they’d settled on was Ryland Grace.
What a crazy coincidence. I feel nauseated dread in the pit of my stomach, like I somehow made this happen just by thinking about him. It’s like when you’re at work and you remark how quiet the shift has been, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose. But that’s stupid. They would have planned this in advance, he would have had heaps of training. They don’t let you become an astronaut just because you have a PhD in biology. My ex-boyfriend has a PhD in biology, by the way. If you talk to him for more than five minutes, it’ll come up.
Okay, that’s unfair. Maybe he’s mellowed since we dated. We ran into each other briefly at a mutual friend’s birthday party maybe a year after our breakup, and I remember exchanging a nod and an awkward smile.
God, I feel like I’ve seen a ghost. It’s a bit like that time when the sensor on one of the hand washing sinks in medical imaging was broken, and it kept turning itself on and off at random intervals, and my coworker Jason said it was haunted. I’m not normally superstitious, but it was right around the Ghost Festival— which we never even celebrated except for the year after both my mum’s parents died— and it was a night shift, and that was enough to make a chill run down my spine.
Maybe I am superstitious.
It seemed like Ryland dropped off the face of the Earth after he joined the Hail Mary people. Now I know why. He was busy training to become an astronaut.
… That doesn’t really sound like him, though. I mean, I used to give him a hard time about having his head in the clouds, but I didn’t mean it like that. It’s more like, he was absent-minded, preoccupied, always halfway out the door when you were talking to him. If it was five years ago and I were feeling more bitter, I’d describe him as a commitmentphobe. Not the sort of guy to stick his hand up for a suicide mission.
Way to prove me wrong, I guess.
It’s been such a long time since we dated, so I’m not gonna kid myself that this has anything to do with me. That’s human nature, though. He’s the one going to space to save the world, and I’m down here in the medical imaging department, thinking about how these vast cosmic events affect me personally. It’s just so weird, having someone you used to know move from the category of a person you could get brunch with one day if you wanted, even though you probably won’t, and into the category of a person you’ll only ever see again in history books.
Ryland always liked to have the last word in an argument. So did I. That became a bigger and bigger problem towards the end of the relationship, the fact that neither of us could ever let something drop, but didn’t have the guts for a serious fight. We’d just end up circling around each other, pissed off and miserable, until one of us cracked and either cried or apologised.
So much must have changed, between now and then. I wonder what happened. I guess he’s been on the Project for years now, working side by side with all these people trying to save the world, something must have rubbed off. Or maybe it’s that he’s still a teacher at heart, and he did it for the kids. That seems most likely.
Either way… he’s actually doing it. Fixing things. I feel a wild spasm of hope, the first time I’ve felt anything like it in years. I’d never have called him reliable, but Ryland’s stubborn. If anyone has a chance in hell of figuring something out, it’ll be him.
The news has moved on to a different topic, but I raise my goofy novelty mug to the TV in a salute.
I’ll have to make a note of what time the launch is going to be. No way it’ll be visible from here, but I’ll still stand outside, and look up at the sky, and see him on his way.
I parked my car at the trailhead and killed the engine. The strained silence that I’d so far been managing to ignore seemed to expand to fill the space inside.
We sat for a moment. Ryland chewed his gum loudly, but didn’t say anything. I sighed.
“Let’s just get out there and try to have a nice time, okay?” I said.
“Sure,” Ryland said.
Twice a month I went for hikes with this local birdwatching group. Birdwatching wasn’t super my thing, but they were a nice bunch of people, and it got me out of the house. I joined a trail running group before that, and they were all way too intense. Anyway, my birdwatching friends knew I’d been dating the same guy for almost a year, and I’d mentioned he was kind of into outdoorsy stuff— well, I’d mentioned he rode a bike and enjoyed long walks on the beach, which was close enough that they kept asking why I didn’t bring him along and introduce him.
I’d been trying! I thought it would be really fun and he’d get a lot out of it! He was into the lab kind of biology, not the nature kind of biology, but it’s all connected. Only, the last few times he’d agreed to go, something had always come up at the last minute. He sprained his ankle, or he had some kind of work related emergency that he had to deal with over the weekend.
This time, we’d had a fight the night before. Not a big one, and we both made up and said sorry before we went to bed. I wasn’t gonna let Ryland wriggle out of it again. But maybe this was a bad idea.
I pushed open the car door, double-knotted the laces of my hiking boots, and stood up. Ryland got out of the car and came to stand next to me. He wasn’t exactly dressed for the occasion, in jeans and the same pair of low-top Converse sneakers he always wore. Honestly, it was lucky I wasn’t still doing the trail running thing, I’d have never convinced him to come to that.
It looked like most of the usual crowd were there, standing near the entrance to the trail, chatting. It was a mostly middle-aged group, but with a few people in their twenties and thirties, well-supplied with cameras and bird identification guides and backpacks full of snacks.
I took a deep breath, and made the plunge.
“Hi, guys!” I called out, striding forward. “You’ll never guess who I finally brought!”
There was a round of waves and and friendly greetings.
“Everyone, this is my boyfriend, Ryland,” I said, trying to encourage him to step forward. He gave a tight smile, and waved back. Everyone in the assembled group called out their names one by one, and I could already tell he was retaining precisely zero of them.
That was okay. It’s pretty overwhelming to be the new person in a group where everyone already knows each other. He could get to know a few people one-on-one as we walked. I cast around for the nearest convenient person to try and strike up a conversation with.
“Hi there! My name’s Tom, just in case you didn’t catch it before.”
Tom held out his hand, and Ryland shook it.
Tom was a good guy. He worked at a tech startup, and his salary was probably more than everyone else in the group combined, but he wasn’t one of those tech guys. Still, I could see Ryland noticing this— Tom’s ridiculous overpriced sporty smartwatch, his North Face jacket, his DSLR camera with the huge lens slung around his neck. I could see his hackles going up, and I felt a sense of foreboding.
“So, Linda’s mentioned you’re a cyclist?” Tom tried.
“No,” Ryland said pleasantly. “I’m not a cyclist. I ride a bike to work. And I don’t do it because I like it, I do it because I don’t get paid enough to own a car.”
“O… kay,” Tom said, polite social scripts thrown into complete chaos. “And you’re a teacher, right?”
“I have a PhD in biology,” Ryland said.
“Yep, that’s right, he teaches middle school,” I said over the top of him. “Oh, hey, is that Joan over there? I haven’t seen her in ages, I think I’ll go say hello!”
“All right,” Tom said bemusedly, as I grabbed Ryland by the hand and towed him away. “Let’s catch up later.”
Okay. Backup plan. Joan was always up for a chat. She was retired, and came to these things pretty consistently for the company.
“Hey, Joanie!” I waved her down, overenthusiastically. “Did you get to meet my boyfriend, Ryland?”
“Oh, how lovely!” Joan said, immediately bustling over.
“Ry, meet Joan,” I said. “We should walk with her! She’s into gardening, she knows a ton about the environment and plants and everything.”
“Great!” said Ryland, floundering a bit. “Nice to meet you!”
This would work. Joan would like Ryland. She would think he was cute, because he was. And Ryland would like Joan, because she was a nice old lady. So he’d be fun and easy to talk to, because he was capable of doing that when he felt like it.
“And you’re a teacher?”
Joan and Ryland were exchanging conversation, and so far nothing had gone too horribly off the rails. I relaxed ever so slightly.
“Yeah, middle school science,” Ryland said easily this time, face practically glowing. This was a perfect topic to start off with as we began to walk. Ryland loved his job, more than pretty much anything, and he loved talking about his students.
“My granddaughter is planning on becoming a teacher! She wants to teach high school English,” Joan said.
“That’s so awesome!” Ryland enthused. “It’s such a rewarding career, she’ll love it.”
“I hope so,” Joan said.
“She’d be better off focusing on math or science, though,” Ryland said. “Those are in higher demand, it’ll be easier for her to get a job. I mean, teaching high school English isn’t exactly hard, you could basically train a dog to do it.”
Ryland gave an awkward-sounding laugh as his advice went down like a lead balloon, and I fought back the urge to stomp on his foot. I was wearing hiking boots, he was wearing canvas sneakers, it would definitely get the message across.
“Sorry, he’s joking,” I cut in. “The science department and the English department at his school have this rivalry going on, it’s a whole thing.”
“Uh, yeah, totally,” Ryland said. “I mean, teaching English is important as well. She should do whatever she’s most passionate about. You can’t teach if you don’t care.”
I could tell he really did mean that last part. I just wished he’d stuck to saying that, and not the rest of it.
“Oh, well, yes, she absolutely loves it!” Joan said, regaining her equilibrium. “She’s not even out of high school herself yet, but she’s got so many ideas for how she’d design her curriculum…”
And they were off, but I didn’t let myself relax again. Joan spotted some interesting fungi, which Ryland admired. Ryland told a funny story about a couple of his kids eating mud on a field trip. They were eleven or twelve, so they should have really known better, but there was a dare involved, so I guess that explained it. The whole time I was on alert for Ryland to stick his foot in his mouth again, or get in a strop over something nobody else would ever care about. Ready to leap in and make his excuses or soothe over an awkward moment. But nothing happened.
… Why was I so worried, again? Ryland was a grown man, with a job that involved a lot of talking to people. He could carry on a conversation without my help, he presumably did it every day.
I wasn’t used to seeing him like this, I realised. Relaxed, almost happy, chatting about something inconsequential. Maybe because everything between the two of us felt like such a fucking minefield, lately.
It wasn’t even a bad fight last night. It was something about the washing up from dinner, which Ryland refused to do on principle unless it was his turn on the chore chart. I’d had a pretty shit late shift, and I just wasn’t in the mood, and I guess he thought I was being lazy or a drama queen or something. Anyway, he said it wasn’t his turn. I said he was being immature, and we were adults and supposedly partners, not housemates in a goddamn undergrad sharehouse, and why did we need a goddamn chore chart. Then the conversation moved on to his piles of laundry which he always said he was just about to put away whenever I pointed them out, and my towering to-be-read pile of romantasy books that basically lived on my bedside table collecting dust, and the random diorama he was halfway through making for his classroom which had been taking up half the dining table for a month and a half, and all my kitchenware that didn’t quite fit in the kitchen cupboards and lived in a box in the hallway that he always bumped into with his bike when he was bringing it inside, and some of that was breakable and would it kill him to be more careful, and…
Well. Petty bullshit like that. Ryland thought I had too much useless crap, just because I owned a semi-decent rice cooker and more than one pillowcase. I retaliated by saying he owned almost nothing and still managed to be a complete slob with it. I don’t think we were actually fighting about the washing up. Not really. That’s just how it always started.
“Hey, look,” said Tom, grabbing for his camera. “There’s a California Quail.”
Everyone stopped to very quietly ooh and aah at the small bird scratching and foraging at the edge of the trail. Tom tried to creep a little bit closer without scaring it off. I drank a mouthful of water.
I was tossing and turning in bed next to Ryland last night, trying to fall asleep, and I couldn’t help the thought that maybe we just weren’t meant to be.
I’d never dated a guy like Ryland before. I mean, first of all, he was way smarter than any of my previous boyfriends. Sweeter, too. He had that dorky charm that just made you wanna eat him up. And if he would ditch the glasses and get a more flattering haircut, he’d look like a movie star. Not that I wanted him to do that! I liked him better the way he was. I just felt like he was kind of out of my league, and he probably knew it.
I’d voiced that thought to one of my friends once, and she got so mad. Like, telling me it was the other way around, that I was a gorgeous genius and he should feel lucky to have me, and all that stuff you’re supposed to say to your friends. I didn’t really think that was true, though? She was just trying to make me feel better.
Ryland had never been in a serious relationship before, I was pretty sure. Neither had I, at least, not one where the guy actually wanted it to be that serious. I’d never lived together with a boyfriend before. Never had thoughts about maybe one day getting married. And Ry said he wanted all that, too. Aside from the occasional fight, things were pretty stable. We were past the silly infatuation phase of our relationship, we had our regular “date night” scheduled once a month, and we had sex like…
Kinda like ticking off a box on the chore chart.
There was a rustle of leaves as the quail startled, and scurried off the path and into the underbrush.
“Aw, damn,” said Tom, lowering his camera. “It jumped.”
“Get any good photos?” someone asked.
“Maybe one or two,” Tom said. “I’ll have a look later, let’s keep walking.”
The track got slightly steeper, and everyone’s pace decreased in deference to the slower walkers. Ryland and I fell towards the back of the group.
“Hey,” Ryland said, nudging me with his arm. “You were right, this is nice. Thanks for inviting me.”
A peace offering. I was still a bit annoyed with him, though.
“Thanks for making the bare minimum effort not to be a dick to my friends,” I replied.
“What,” Ryland said, rolling his eyes. “Just because I wouldn’t kiss up to Mark Zuckerbird over there?”
I snorted, reluctantly amused. Ryland didn’t miss it, grinning triumphantly.
“Mark Zuckerbird?” I repeated. “How long were you holding on to that one?”
“... A while,” Ryland admitted. “I mean, c’mon, he’s got Silicon Valley jagoff written all over him. Am I wrong?”
“Not wrong,” I said.
“Is the size of the camera compensating for something?”
“Shut up.” I ducked my head, trying not to laugh. “He’s actually really nice.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll take my chances with Joan, instead,” Ryland said.
God, he could be such a judgmental asshole sometimes, but I really couldn’t stay mad at him.
“Well, let’s go hang out with her some more,” I suggested, linking my arm through Ryland’s.
We caught up with Joan again. I swapped a few recipes with her. She told me and Ryland embarrassing stories about her grandkids, and we both laughed at all the right parts. It was all good. We were out there enjoying the fresh air, and Ryland was finally meeting my friends, and he was actually holding my hand as we walked along together.
Maybe it didn’t matter that Ryland and I argued all the time, as long as it wasn’t about anything serious. As long as we made up afterwards. The important thing was, I thought, we were both headed the same direction.
I’m running late for work.
“Late” actually means I’ll get there just in time for my shift if I really hurry on my way from the car park, but I hate that. I like having enough time to put my stuff in my locker and take a deep breath before the day starts.
It was just a bunch of little things piling up. My cat had a hairball on the carpet right before I left, and I didn’t want to leave it sitting there all day, and then I seemed to hit every red light on the way to the hospital. My shifts start before most of the nine-to-fivers head to work, so you wouldn’t think there’d be that much traffic, but it’s always just enough to make you feel like you’re stuck in it.
The car park that I use is about a ten minute walk from the hospital, and so I have to really book it. Still, something makes me stop, and glance up.
The sun is mostly up, but there’s still some bright pink staining the lower half of the sky, and electric orange streaks of clouds above the city. It’s a perfectly ordinary, breathtaking, everyday sunrise.
We might all be dead in thirty years. One of my cousins is saving up to move, because her apartment is on a stretch of built-up coastline that might slide back into the ocean any day now, but she’s having trouble getting a better paying job. I’m about to walk into a building full of sick and suffering people, and do my limited best to help them.
But the sky is so beautiful today. I hope, in the future when we’re all freezing and starving and dying, at least we’ll still have mornings when the sky is beautiful.
Oh, shit. Now I’m really going to be late.
I practically sprint the rest of the way to work, and take the stairs rather than waiting for the unreliable elevator. I get there a bit out of breath and frazzled, but I don’t mind. It was worth the extra time.
“Decided to show up early today, huh?” my coworker Sarah teases, putting her stuff into the locker next to mine.
“Just thought I’d keep you company,” I reply, smiling. Sarah’s always late, so at least I’m not the only one.
It’s not until later on that I remember.
I’m halfway through positioning a young woman with a probably cracked sternum for a chest x-ray, making idle conversation to take her mind off things.
“Did you hear, they launched the Hail Mary today?” she says. “Apparently it’s going to be, like, thirty years before we hear anything back from them. I don’t really get it. Won’t the astronauts all be too old to do their jobs by the time they get there?”
“It’ll be less time for them, I think,” I reply, digging deep to try and remember literally anything about my physics classes besides what’s directly relevant to my job. “It sounds fake, but the closer you get to moving at lightspeed, the slower time goes.”
“You’re kidding,” the patient says, eyes wide.
“Nope, that’s really how it works,” I reply. “Let me help you sit up a bit, I just need to put this hard board behind your back.”
The launch was this morning. I’d forgotten all about it. Just life things, getting in the way.
But… I did look up, on my way in to work. I don’t know if it was at the right time, and it probably wasn’t in the right direction, either. But down here on Earth, I was looking at the sky.