Archive of Our Own

Don't be fooled by the seemingly cramped-space of the Mary; you can fit quite a few elephants in just the storage room. I've counted three so far.

The first one is obvious, one that has made a home in the Mary ever since I decided to turn around and save Rocky and consequently destroy any chance of returning to Earth. The no-going-home thing isn't a huge deal, as much as Rocky likes to bring it up with an air of suffocating guilt as if he personally barred me from my home-planet. To be honest with you, I don't really mind. I knew I didn't want to return to Earth as soon as the sun began to set on Rocky and I's little space opera adventure, although I felt insane for even considering the thought.

No. No. That elephant in the room, Elephant #1, is not about my lack of ability to return to Earth, or the fact that I will never see another human being again. It's about the likelihood that survival on Erid will be impossible, that this four-year sojourn will end with me starving to death. That's if I can even survive the trip there.

As awful as the experience of Rocky and I's departure, there was something reassuring hidden inside. In the back of my mind, as I began to prepare the Beetles for their journey home, I had a lot of doubt over whether I'd survive the journey back to Earth. As far as Rocky was concerned, it would be a cake-walk. For all he knew, the overconfident optimist he is (an uncanny feature of most engineers I've known), I would live out the rest of my life happily on my home planet. I wouldn't go insane or starve. I wouldn't fling myself out of the airlock a year into the journey because I felt like the one chance I had at understanding the concept of dying, let alone living, for another person had been wrenched from my grasp as soon as it was handed to me.

No. Rocky would have the best-of Grace in his memory, the greatest hits. My old life is still a shaky, faded image, but I know that the version I showed to him, deathwish-ridden and stir-crazy and breathing recycled air and no real shower in years, was the best one. The only version of myself that mattered lived in those handful of months we shared. I found solace that I would be immortalized to him in that image, martyred as his personal patron saint of long voyages.

But that's not going to happen now, as happy as I am with our reunion.

To be reunited with Rocky and granted this odd trajectory, life together on the same planet, sounds astronomically too good to be true. But I've learnt to not be too blunt on the topic. I can tell when what I say rattles him to his core, makes his sung chords hang an octave lower for the rest of the day, or a week. Makes the nervous fidget of his fingers more severe, punching out the calculations for some grand new impossible function I have presented to him to derive.

It's hard, I'm sure, being the fixer. Especially when you are given a problem that is simply not solvable within our lifetimes. I regard him in the corner of his side of the Mary, threading through xenonite strands with the trained precision of an engineer soldering discrete chips on a PCB while chirping to himself in a quiet sing-songy babble that I can't manage to translate. He's not an idiot. He's the smartest person I have ever met. I don't need to remind him of my mortality, but I can't help it. You only get one death and this one's mine, after all.

You could kill the gravity in the Mary and my feet would still be on the floor from how heavy my heart feels. Every time I look at him, I get that weird sensation. It was even there when I watched his fading signal on my petrovascope after we parted ways. It's a strange thing, that heavy feeling. It sometimes makes me want to throw up. But that's attributed to Elephant #3.

It was around the second year on our journey to Erid that Rocky finalized an alternative to the xenonite ball. It was a form-fitting shield, something crossed between an EVA and a wetsuit. It allowed him, for better or worse, the dexterity to navigate around the Mary in a comparable way as myself. God forbid I die or become too injured to pilot, he could take over.

Deep down, I hoped that he made the suit for more than that pragmatic reason. A hope that could be attributed to Elephant #3, which I have been violently shoving into the supply room with a hope that it will eventually die.

He might have donned the new suit and shimmied in front of me with it on. I may have cried, and hugged him. He may have returned that hug, laced his little fingers into my hair with a grip so strong that it hurt. I might have cried some more until that new xenonite suit was foggy and wet with my tears. He may have not minded. Or, at least, he didn't audibly complain.

Where previously Rocky would announce himself to me by running the surface of his ball into the backs of my legs, not unlike an excited dog jumping on you from behind, he could now perform the all-too-human tap of a finger, a tug on my shirt when I was turned away and not paying attention to him; a curious brush against my face when he thought I was sleeping.

He does that a lot, actually. As much as I am fascinated by his lack of a face, I think he is fascinated by the one I have.

"Humans need touch," he had once said. It wasn't posed as a question, just a very accurate observation. He let the chord hang as he gently pressed a finger against my hairline and ran it down my face as if he was surveying the outline of my side-profile.

"We're social creatures. We need interpersonal contact to survive. Eridians are pack animals too, right?"

"Pack animals, yes. No human word for craved sensation, however. Non-tactile touch is contradictory," Rocky sang. He repeated the movement. It made my eyelids heavy. "Eridian plural are not as ♫♪♩♫ as humans. Hm."

"Yeah. Don't know that one."

"I know. Be patient." Rocky paused in thought. "Promiscuous."

"You think I'm promiscuous? Me?"

"Humans in general. In human media, always touch and grabbing. Pressing orifices on everything. Very unsanitary. Eridians only do this under intimate situations. Even then, rare."

"Yeah, yeah. No eating together until after marriage, I know."

Rocky emitted a little trill that I have come to understand as his laugh. "This is true. Not often an Eridian eats in front of non-mate."

I didn't bring up the fact that, after we began our journey to Erid, he occasionally ate in front of me. Or the fact that he began to insist on watching me. That conversation hung in a precarious position, as precarious as our spot in the vacuum of space.

*****

Eridians like to burrow. I wouldn't be surprised if the most comfortable position for Rocky would be under a layer of soil, the vents on the top of his carapace being the only thing unearthed. Like a crab or a wolf spider, ready to pounce and ambush unsuspecting prey.

I try to not think about this detail when Rocky assumes our near-nightly routine. Using too many hands with too little fingers, he prods and explores the skin of my ribs, my forearm, my hip, my thighs. He pushes his carapace against my side. Burrowing. He is burrowing into me. Not literally; it's probably a subconscious thing. This must be the Eridian equivalent to a cat kneading biscuits.

I wonder what he's thinking, now. Does he want to burrow into me and make a home within my rib-cage? Use the splinters of my bones as kindling for his nest? I'd allow him, as insane and masochistic as that sounds. I'd pry myself open for him if it came down to it.

Imagine that. Ryland Grace, who never told any of his exes "I love you" because it felt too weird, had no problem at all with entertaining the thought of his rock alien compadre nestling inside of his thoracic cavity. Thank god I will never have to interact with another human being again.

Aforementioned rock alien breaks the silence with a, "Sounds different."

"What does?"

He traces a finger along the lower right-side of my stomach. "Do you hurt here question?"

"No, I…" Huh. I try to remember what organs sit in that area of my abdomen. My appendix, maybe? "I don't feel great, but nothing sharp. How does it sound different?"

"Sounds larger."

Well, that's not worrying at all.

If I had appendicitis, I would know. And if what Rocky is "seeing" is the very early stages of it, I will know pretty soon. It could also be nothing. Does Eridian vision operate like an ultrasound where a pocket of gas can be mistaken for a tumor?

I can't help but remember a previous rumination over whether or not Stratt had ordered a preemptive appendectomy before this trip. The lack of appropriate scarring on my abdomen granted me an immediate answer. The most important product of that rabbit-hole, though, was the realization that Armando is not equipped to perform a surgery.

It made me wonder why a flight surgeon wasn't included on the roster for this trip. Once again, I know, suicide mission. But what if something happened after the crew woke up?

I can feel Rocky still against me. I should probably explain what's running through my head. He gets worried, I know. Always worried. Worried that I'm going to fall asleep and not wake up. Worried that I'm going to starve before we reach Erid. Worried that I'm going to trip and somehow damage my frail, inefficient human body.

"It's probably nothing, Rock."

"Organ damaged question?"

"Maybe. What you pointed at is near my appendix. It's a pretty common problem for humans to have theirs become infected or rupture, which needs a surgery. I feel fine, though. It's probably something else."

Rocky, unsurprisingly, doesn't sound satisfied with this explanation.

"Why have organ if it needs to be removed question?"

"You're telling me. I hoped they would've cut it out of me before the mission. They're a leftover from evolution that causes problems with modern humans. Some of us even have extra teeth that end up needing to be removed as well." I open my mouth wide and hook my cheek with a finger. Almost unintelligibly I add, "I bet you can 'hear' the scars in there."

Rocky emits a disgusted little shriek but doesn't shy away. "Grace have teeth removed…"

"Four of them, actually."

I expect him to harp on me being a "disgusting inefficient human", but he comes oddly silent. He taps his fingers together, a little tic that suggests to me that he is in thought.

"Hypothetically," Rocky begins, and my attention may as well be in a choke-hold. "How would Grace remove faulty organ in space question? Would operate on self question?"

I exhale. "If it came down to life and death, I would try, but I don't think it would end well."

"Ship cannot perform surgery question?"

"Nope."

He's tapping his fingers together again. I know what he's thinking. He's thinking what I am thinking. But if either of us is going to say it, it's gotta be him. "If it came down to it, I would be completely fine with you performing an invasive surgery on me despite the fact that we are vastly different species and you can't really see," is something that would take possibly three more near-death experiences and another coma to grant me the resolve to say aloud.

Rocky says something that the translator can't quite pick up. He pauses. I have noticed that this occurs sometimes when he intends to explain something more complicated and is struggling to dumb it down for me. "Rocky would fix," he eventually settles on, his notes coming out clipped and staccato. "If necessary, Rocky fix Grace."

I can't help but consult the laptop. All of human knowledge surely has to include some surgical tutorials, right?

It is on the 2023 snapshot of YouTube that I find several videos. I find one for an appendectomy that is very obviously using a dummy, down to realistic plush organs that live somewhere between claymation and uncanny valley.

I make it about three minutes into the video before my guts begin to recoil, as if they are aware I am perceiving them and are very insecure about the entire ordeal.

I close the laptop. I'm fine. I feel fine. Rocky is just being… Rocky. Always worrying.

But oftentimes correct.

I begin to rummage through the storage room.

Maybe this is nothing, but something else can happen before we arrive on Erid. If we are somehow able to finesse a normal life for me on Erid, it's inevitable that some procedure will need to be done. I'm not getting any younger.

There is a mini-MRI machine on the Mary, so small that it's useless if you need to image anything larger than a single limb or a baby. If there's an MRI machine, then there has to be some contrast available.

I am elbows-deep into the Mary's stash of medical equipment for testing and diagnostics and trying to not think of my chances for survival if I were to develop something complicated like cancer. I suppose I would just have to…

I eventually find what I am looking for. A tiny little bottle of gadolinium contrasting agent.

"Hey, Rocky," I announce while exiting the supply room, bottle in hand. "How well are you able to…uh… 'hear' my insides? Are you able to distinguish veins, for instance?"

"Can hear major arteries yes. Noise from rest of body distorts however."

I gesture with the bottle. "Does gadolinium have a specific resonance to you? Atomic number 64."

"Yes yes yes. Similar texture to Grace's perception organs. Beautiful sounding element."

"Hypothetically, if I ran some of this through my veins, would you be able to obtain a really clear image of my insides?"

"Gadolinium not toxic for human body question? You said humans cannot ingest hard metal. But, yes. Should be able to hear many details. Read Grace's body like a book."

I can't help but flush slightly at that last comment. Rocky sure had a knack of being oddly poetic in this little pidgin language we constructed. "Elemental gadolinium is toxic for me, but this is bound with chelates to make it human-safe."

After hearing Rocky's chirp of acceptance, I add, "You're like a little personal MRI machine, huh? Just as loud as one too."

*****

I have been dreaming about a boy with a smear of acrylic paint for a face.

I don't get entire chunks of my memory via dream. Or, at least, I haven't yet. Instead, I see people or places or scenes in varying levels of context. My mind may be fragmented, but my body isn't. Muscle-memory and physiological responses prevail here. You show me a picture of the rocky coast in Marin County or a forest of redwoods and my heart will do a little flip, like it's pointing at the image and excitedly saying, "Hey! I know that place!"

The boy with the smeared face makes my heart flip in a different kind of way. It's a recoil. Sometimes the blur solidifies enough for me to see a slight expression, the way his voice goes from excited to suddenly dejected as if the carpet was torn from beneath him. "Alright," he says, and collapses into himself like a supernova.

I never get a full scene with him. I never get his name.

I am driving through a forest of corn stalks. They're crunching under the tires. I am driving like I have fallen asleep at the wheel.

He parts through the corn stalks, leaving smudges of acrylic paint on the leaves. He steps in front of the car.

I wake up completely drenched in sweat.

Mary registers my eyes opening and triggers the ambient lighting. Call me the bastard son of Murphy and Schrödinger, because it appears that just acknowledging the possibility of something going wrong may be what triggers its occurrence.

I am in excruciating pain with a source, I realize with grim clarity, radiating right beneath my navel.

"Oh, my gosh," is what I would have said if I didn't feel like Mr. Orange bleeding out in the backseat of a car from a gunshot-to-the-gut wound. But that's exactly how I feel, so I involuntarily groan a, "Jesus fucking Christ" instead. I reflexively press the meat of my palm against my lower stomach.

Rocky didn't need to hear my exclamation to know, he is already in the midst of running towards his xenonite suit and putting it on.

"I knew it. Organ is injured. Organ will rupture. Just spent last four hours on Wikipedia reading about acute appendicitis."

"Do not say that. It's not ruptured." I am sucking in breaths like I am drinking through a straw. Is this what being in labor feels like? "It's… Uh…"

When I was twenty-one, I had my wisdom teeth removed.

The surgeon had recommended I go under general anesthesia. The teeth were impacted in a nerve bed. It would be a very uncomfortable procedure with a high chance of pain if I stayed awake, so they said. I ended up opting to stay awake with only local anesthesia. It wasn't out of a desire to see what the inside of my jaw looked like or to act out some fantasy inspired by Little Shop of Horrors. The simple fact was that I was a poor undergrad without dental insurance and the bill was significantly lighter if I didn't let them knock me out.

I also, most importantly, did not have a ride home. The idea of asking for a ride from one of that year's entourage of roommates or a classmate and having them witness me in the throws of coming down from general anesthesia was incredibly un-enticing.

They gave me goggles, told me to raise my hand if they hit a nerve, and asked me what kind of music I'd like them to blare on the speakers to drown out the sound of my molars being pulverized. I told them to surprise me, which may have been the wrong move. The surgeon, reasonably assessing I was just another run-of-the-mill broke UC Berkley student, put on the often avant-garde 90.7 FM KALX. To this day, my jaw still feels a bit sore when I hear Bowie's "Warszawa", which was probably the worst possible song to listen to while someone stood over you with a scalpel in their hand.

You'd think this would have prepared me for what I am doing right now. It certainly crossed my mind when I made peace with the idea.

It did not.

The scalpel glints in Rocky's hand.

"Grace ready question?"

I have a mirror angled next to me so I can get a full view of where Rocky is about to make first contact. I place the laptop, YouTube video for a tutorial on how to perform an appendectomy paused and loaded, next to it so I can comapre.

He tentatively presses the edge of the scalpel against the skin. I feel nothing. Looks like the lidocaine injection is doing its thing.

"Yeah, Rock. I'm numb. Let's do this."

I can feel the pinching pressure of the scalpel piercing the skin of my belly. No pain. Rocky places the spacer into the incision with no hesitation.

"Armando, administer the gadolinium contrast."

I have an IV in each arm. One for emergency morphine, the other for the gadolinium. I try to not look at the IV's. If I look at the IV's I know I will grey out. I can feel the cold of the contrast entering my vein. I am flooded with the taste and smell of nail polish remover. Rocky perks up a little, no doubt hearing the change in my veins.

"Good good good."

"See everything clearer?"

"High-definition," Rocky agrees. "Human body is like a machine. All wires. Very loud."

I must be lit-up like a dang Christmas tree in Rocky's echolocation.

"That's good. There should be a big artery right there. Can you see it? Hear it. Sorry."

"Stop saying sorry. Yes I can see artery. Very large. Very wet. So wet. Inside of Grace so incredibly wet. Wet wet wet."

Rocky continues to ramble. It makes me realize that he must be just as nervous as I am, maybe even more. He's a blind guy holding a knife after all.

"You need to," I take a slow breath and I replay the video. "You need to isolate it. Like a pipe. Use the uh… the hemostat."

Rocky points his translator at the screen and I rewind it by 15 seconds again. He makes a satisfied chirp and mirrors the video near-verbatim. He already viewed the video and, knowing how Eridian memory works, has the entire thing memorized. This pause-and-play maneuver with me interfering periodically is partly insurance in case Rocky needs to make an impromptu decision.

It is also, as he reluctantly explained to me, to keep him at ease.

I'm not sure why I didn't consider the gravity of his position. It's stupid of me, really. I remember how stressed I was when he was in his own little medically-induced coma and I tried to clean out his vents in an effort to help him. My human ignorance that nearly killed him. I never want him to experience that level of stress with me.

What I would've given to have him talk me through that entire fiasco.

"See, no worries. I'm just like a… A piece of the ship that you're working on. And you're the best engineer."

From my vantage point via the mirror, I get a bird's eye view of the new hole in my midsection. I stare at the forceps sticking out of me until my vision begins to grey around the edges.

"Grace more important than any part of the ship." The lowered octave of Rocky's speech tells me that he is being earnest. "Continue video."

I oblige. "You're going to need to cut another layer deeper. This first step was just to make sure that you don't accidentally cut that artery."

We both watch the video for another 30 seconds. He hesitates before cutting again. I watch him through the mirror. The gash in my stomach is pried open further with a retractor. Rocky's hands are hovering above the incision in hesitation, or perhaps he is waiting for my reaction. I can't stop staring the stack of jarring colors; my iodine-stained peach epidermis, the pink dermal layer, the thinning yellow line of fat, the angry crimson that lays below. Displayed neatly like a stratigraphic column.

It's redundant to say that I am a curious person; of course I am. If there is any universal trait amongst scientists, it's curiosity. It is also, of course, what killed the cat and ate Prometheus' liver.

With that being said, I do wonder if there are certain things that we are just not meant to see. A still-beating heart; exposed internal organs; a flayed and displayed human nervous system, brain-stem and all. The uncomfortable feeling that these images induce is universal amongst mankind, even if they are sometimes accompanied by a sense of morbid awe.

Did Yuri Gagarin feel the same way when he claimed the privilege of being the first human to see Earth from space? Does that primal discomfort extend from the most-base to the existential? Did he feel the thrill of a cresting wave alongside the dread?

I watch Rocky slide two fingers into me and black dots flood my vision.

I was seven years old and crying with a mouth full of blood. My front incisor was hanging by a gum-string, flopping useless and limp as a windless kite. The pocket of freshly exposed gum salty, blood steadily flowing. My tongue kept approaching the wound and retreating like a nervous animal.

"Come on, Ryland. That tooth is hanging by a thread. You need to pull it out."

I shrieked when my mom reached towards me. I was always shrieking and crying and clawing and hitting and—

"Jesus Christ. You are so over-dramatic."

She had given up on me then. I was left with a tooth that was perilously hanging on to my gum, so isolated and loose that I could push it in between my lips and close my mouth around it. It still wouldn't budge.

Or, at least, I didn't dare attempt.

It was uncomfortable but not painful. But I knew that it would hurt. I expected it. I absolutely refused to even tug on it. I hoped that the following day I would wake up and it would have fallen out by itself or it would dislodge while I was eating painlessly.

It eventually did do that, but not after hanging like that for nearly a week.

"You're so over-dramatic."

A mantra, a chaconne, a recurring motif.

"Grace!"

I tilt my head forward, suddenly. I can feel my brain shift in my skull, the slow-drip of saliva in my throat. I feel too aware of my tongue, the sweat beading cold and harsh on my face and neck. It must be the morphine. When did I begin using morphine? I can't recall Rocky's request but some primal muscle-memory propels my hand to move and un-pause the video.

Linda was laying on the bed, her brows furrowed. She looked so out of place then, somehow, my girlfriend of over a year laying on our shared bed in just her underwear.

"You're not in the mood?" There was no inflection in her voice that suggested it was a question. That punctuation was just a formality, as useful as the pretty bra and panties she would sometimes wear in an attempt to tease me. As unsaid as the question-mark was the word "again".

"Yeah, no. I'm sorry. I'm really tired." I scratched the back of my head. I was scrambling to think of something to stave off the inevitable. "We can watch a movie though?"

She sucked in her bottom lip, stared intensely towards the floor at my feet. When she began to speak, her eyes didn't leave the spot. "When will you be in the mood, Ryland? We haven't had sex in over a month."

Never. Never. I don't ever want to have sex with you. You're hot and sweet and we share all the same interests but there is evidently something crossed in the wiring between my eyes, brain, and dick. Am I gay? Sure, let's go with that, certainty be damned. I'm gay and you did nothing wrong and we have to end things now.

But I didn't say any of that. Of course I didn't. Like that loose tooth, I didn't dare nudge it until it was beyond salvageable. Until it hung by a bloody thread that everyone around me was clamoring to snip because just seeing it made them uncomfortable too.

I smiled nervously and pulled my shirt over my head.

The boy with a face made of swirling acrylic paint is reclining against the metal railing of a balcony at a house party. His name flickers in my mind, briefly, suddenly, like a dying candle. Suraj. I remember the mystery cocktail of Everclear and Hawaiian punch and god knows what else in our red solo cups. I remember that he was a Biochem major. We had met in a Physics I lab in our sophomore year and had quickly became friends.

I remember his eyes, vaguely. He had perpetually tired eyes. The kind that, at age nineteen, I found so mysterious and aloof and mesmerizing. It took me over a decade and a coma to realize that he was no more mysterious than me. He simply understood the gravity of this world better than I did. Knew to not take things for granted like I had with everything. Including him.

I had never slept with another guy before, let alone kiss one. I had so much trouble with girls that I assumed, maybe…

It scared the shit out of me. He did, too. Every moment I spent with him felt like the crest of a roller coaster.

Suraj is now standing in the kitchen of one of my dingy undergrad apartments. His arms are crossed. He is looking down at the cheap vinyl floor by my feet with an unfocused gaze that I will recognize several years later.

"Alright," he says. We were getting ready to head out for a movie when it happened. I couldn't help it. I felt like running, leaving him alone in my own apartment. "I'll, um…" He exhaled then, looked up towards me without making eye-contact. "I'm gonna head out, then."

I cried more than Linda while I dumped her. She had this stricken look on her face, red but not teary-eyed. I thought she was angry when it happened, but now I recognize it as something akin to disappointment. She was promised something she never received, despite following every rule in the book for almost two years. I can't blame her. But can you break a promise you never made?

When I dumped Suraj, if you could even call it "dumping" since we never were official, never did anything beyond heavy petting and reciprocated blow jobs and casual dates that somehow felt like so much more, I called out of work and got stupidly drunk alone in my bedroom. I got my first hangover ever after that, off of a cheap bottle of sauvignon blanc that I bought at the gas station on the corner by my apartment. Of all things. Pathetic.

I tried to go for a run after spending the morning hunched over the toilet. I imagined the sweat on my skin as the alcohol bubbling through my pores. I got a mile in before I threw up on the curb. I stood with my hands on my knees, tears and sweat intermingling and dripping off of my nose and landing on the sidewalk next to the Pedialyte-bile cocktail I dry-heaved.

"If you don't allow yourself to be vulnerable, you're going to die alone. You know that right?"

That's fine. I added a wad of spit to the bodily-fluids orgy on the cement.

I kept running.

I was sitting at a stop-light in front of a Safeway in Sacramento when my cellphone began to ring. My mom greeted me when I answered. I quickly shot out a hand to turn down the radio. I assumed someone died.

"Ryland," she began, her voice wet, before proceeding to start our impromptu phone conversation in the most jarring way possible: "I'm so sorry we didn't hug you enough as a child."

"What?" I was staring at the red light of the stoplight, hoping that the moment it changed to green she would miraculously hang up.

"We didn't give you enough affection while you grew up. That must be why… You know."

No. I didn't know.

The therapist tilted her head. She tried so hard to not sound patronizing. I tried so hard to not get up and immediately leave. "You said you cried more while looking at the Yosemite valley than at your mom's funeral. Why is that?"

I didn't know.

"It's just a damned tooth, Ryland. Just pull it out."

Rocky's little hands are inside of me, wedging themselves in between my organs. I feel like I am going to vomit. They wrap around what I believe (hope, god I hope) is my appendix and begin to gently pull it.

I press my hand against my mouth at the sight of Rocky, poor Rocky, hunched over me. The crumpled, mesh-like crystalline structure of the xenonite covering his hands reminds me of blood-soaked plastic gloves. He is trembling.

I am trembling.

"Grace okay?"

I swallow the bile in my throat. "Yeah," I respond, a little crazed. "How are you doing, buddy?"

"Grace," he repeats. I can feel his fingers fidgeting, caressing me from somewhere deep within my abdomen. "Time to remove organ."

"Are you ready for me to cut the thread?" is the question hidden within that statement.

"I'm ready," I breathe. Rocky bobs his carapace. I scrunch my eyes shut at the sensation of his fingers lifting up, the squelching sound that accompanies my body's retraction from his warm hand, from the organ he is wrenching from it. The strange emptiness that follows.

I feel an acute pressure of the scalpel severing the mesoappendix, the thread that connects to me to my appendix.

He makes quick work with cleaning me up. I venture a peak even though it is not necessary for me to know he is performing cauterization; if I couldn't see or hear it, I can definitely smell it. One free hand is preparing suture, another is grabbing a needle driver. If he were a human, I imagine his brows would be furrowed, sweat prickling his forehead. He is as silent as death.

One hand is still holding my appendix. Cradling it.

I have severely overestimated my threshold for pain. Although, this should not come as a surprise. I have significantly less energy in my reserves to work with. When I last had a medical emergency (the severe burning on my arms and chest reminiscent of it), I was still consuming a fairly normal amount of calories per day. On a diet of coma-slurry, I simply don't have the privilege of pain management anymore.

The possibility that this may be a result of a botched operation doesn't even cross my mind at first. I refuse to entertain it. I'm alive. I didn't bleed out on the operating table. Rocky cleaned me up and I immediately had Armando administer an antibiotic and a steroid and some more morphine for measure.

I unsurprisingly fell asleep on the operating table short after. In my remaining moments of lucidity, I watched Rocky. Languid, my brain cloudy and body itchy from the opiates, I could have sworn I saw him regard my glistening, dead organ with fascination, kneading his fingers along the bloody flesh, molding it until it became a mushy pulp.

When I awake, I am in my bed. "Bed" is a loose term. It's a mattress tossed on the floor by the xenonite barrier with a nest of blankets on top of it. I don't remember walking over here.

I can't tell if I am light-headed over the mental image of him carrying my unconscious body to the spot, or due to the fact that the incision hurts to a blinding extent. I lift my shirt to examine the damage. My abdomen looks irritated. Not infected, or at least I don't think so. What isn't stained yellow-orange from the betadine is angry and red and bruised, as if an alien just performed an amateur impromptu surgery on it.

I can hear him slipping into his xenonite suit, quiet melodic chirping as he does so. An idle sound, like humming or whistling. I don't think he is aware that I am awake.

I lay back down and stare at the overhead shelf of xenonite that he often likes to sit in. I briefly think about the supply of heroin. I don't think I am quite at that point yet. It's a dark thought, but I have already decided on several circumstances that would warrant its usage. Right now, just another kick of a less-dangerous opiate and an ice-pack would suffice.

And Rocky. I think that would be nice. I used to never like sleeping next to other people. They were always too warm, or too sweaty, or would wake me up in their attempt to wrap their arms around me. Several years in space and a couple of near-death experiences will change your preferences, I guess.

Isn't it strange, that feeling? I flip through several words in an attempt to classify it; like hunger, in its banality, but refined. A craving. I understand what this means despite not having the muscle memory. I feel as I did the first time I encountered the sweeping italicized letters of partial-derivatives and integrals in my high-school Calculus class and the giddiness that followed. Here's this thing I have been vaguely aware of for years, but never understood. Here's now the proof.

I can feel the presence of Elephant #3. In my morphine- and fever-induced haze it feels less like an abstract concept representing my repressed feelings and more-so like a, well, elephant; it's standing in the corner of the room, large and grey and trumpeting.

I close my eyes and try to go back to sleep. I can feel my heartbeat in the wound, knocking from behind the stitches. I wonder if he can hear it.

I would like him to hear it.

I can feel ghost fingers within my abdomen, poking at my organs. Dexterous little fingers that can weave thread into spiderwebs, can unravel my being at the same time. I'd let him do anything to me. Whatever he wants, I'd allow it.

His little trills and chirps join the vibrating carnal thump. It's off-beat. It's dissonant. It's kind of perfect, in the same way you could appreciate a piece from Ives.

I don't remember being classically trained, but the names of composers sit comfortable in my mind, as undisturbed as the fundamental concepts of differential calculus and cell biology. I can think of the names of pieces that my past life considered favorites, even if I can't recall their sound. I showed several of them to Rocky and have several more on deck. I sometimes purse my lips and feel a slight muscle memory. Embouchure? That's the muscle in the mouth that controls the flow of air from your lips, the muscle that is vital for playing a wind instrument. I must know that for a reason.

I am mapping a Laplace transform in bass cleft when I hear a familiar chord of notes. My name, but it's held an octave higher. It's almost too high for me to even hear.

The chord repeats. He isn't trying to wake me up. He would be saying my name louder and in a register he knows I can easily distinguish. His voice is subdued, withheld. An Eridian whisper. A chorus of flutes held at a pianissimo.

Something touches my face. I instantly recognize the feeling of xenonite, the glass-like tug of it as it slides across skin, the incredible heat barely contained behind the surface. Little fingers brush against my hairline and then pause in an appraising manner.

I open my eyes at that. My vision is obstructed by his arm.

"Hey," I say with a lopsided grin.

"Grace," he responds. He tilts his carapace down until it brushes against my temple and emits a low vibrating hum. I turn my head until my lips catch the xenonite, press them against the surface in a chaste peck.

"Your temperature is elevated," he observes. He doesn't retreat from my mouth against his carapace. "Is normal for healing process question?"

"Kinda." My head hurts. Everything hurts. I feel near delirious. "Not ideal, though. It could be a sign of infection."

Still pressed against me, he exhales a worried chord of notes. "You ingested antibiotic."

"I know. I'll be on those for another week at least. I'm sure I'll be fine. I just need to make sure everything stays clean and my temperature doesn't get too high."

"Yes yes yes. Rocky can do this. Will take good care of Grace."

My heart flutters a little bit. "Okay," I say, voice lower and hoarser than I intended. My eyes feel watery. The pain-killers really aren't helping me out in this department. My entire existence feels like an exposed and vulnerable nerve.

With the hand still resting on my hairline, he gently rubs his thumb on a space in the middle of my forehead. When he speaks, it makes his fingers vibrate ever so slightly. His following notes are clipped and staccato and awkward, forced into a grammar that is as unintuitive to him as his to me. The translator picks it up with ease, displays it to me pristine and undeniable: "I will take care of you."

For once I don't feel like getting up and running.