Work Text:
Please, swallow your pride
if I have things you need to borrow.
For, no one can fill those of your needs
that you won’t let show.
Waking up brings a jumble of bodily sensations along with regained consciousness. To synthesize it into one phrase is almost impossible, but if I had to try, I would describe it as falling out of a tree into an electrical power plant. Not sure why a tree would be looming over a power station, but I have found one out here in space. In other words, my skin is burned, my muscles are shot, and my bones are still getting used to being back where God intended them to be. It’s unsettling. Rocky points out my corporeal vulnerability every moment he gets, but it’s hard to appreciate until being presently confronted by it.
Rocky!
I look over at him, my head and neck aching, and see him where I tossed him in his enclosure, still laying there limp. I have no idea if he is alive or not. Fear and despair are overwhelming me; I have to look away.
I straighten my head, and again my whole upper body aches. I can tell I’ve been burned pretty badly, and I probably am concussed from when I hit the console, and my muscles are angry in general at having to push back on some serious g-forces, but I can’t account for the soreness. It’s like I’ve been handled pretty roughly, like those Monty Python dummies that they would toss through the sky and drag off the back of cars and throw down the stairs. Funny stuff, but kind of worrying right now. What did Armando do?
I take off the oxygen mask and wince at the feeling of the cold, recycled air now circulating through my windpipe and lungs, which have no doubt been chemically burned pretty bad by the ammonia on Rocky’s side. I go to sit up and assess myself, propping myself up on my elbow, but immediately come crashing back down to my bunk. I’m screaming in pain, splintering up my shoulder, which ignites my throat in more pain, threatening to kickstart an infinite loop of pain noises, so I clamp my mouth shut and kind of whimper through gritted teeth until I can get a grip. My arm is on fire. I can feel the heat radiating from it in big, throbbing pulses against my torso. It’s such an alarming sensation that I grab the quilt and pull it down to look for myself to ensure I'm not actually in flames.
Oh, crap.
The blood drains from my face and head. My lips dry and my hearing fades like I’m back in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab playing with the IVME kit underwater. I might throw up, which would be bad (hydrochloric acid plus chemical burns? Not good!). I actually might crap my pants—or, medical gown. Whatever. I try to take some deep breaths, but that makes my vision grow shadowy at the periphery, so I stop. I use my good hand to prop myself up and look again.
My arm has been amputated just above my elbow. The stump is wrapped tidily in white gauze. In fact, the gauze wrap covers all the way up to my neck. The burns from that blast of heat must have gone too deep in my viscera. Lamai’s medical bot is pretty incredible, but even Armando has limits. The antibiotics we were sent with were probably intended to fight off a UTI or bronchitis, maybe general infection if one of us had a Rogozov incident. Not to treat deep-skin gangrene from what was, for all intents and purposes, an explosion. Just amputate, at that point. Do away with any chance of a more serious infection, sepsis, blood poisoning. That’s what they did in the Civil War. Three out of every four surgical procedures in the Civil War were amputations, usually to remove shattered limbs, my junior high school teacher mind provides. Not helpful. Civil War surgeons could lop ‘em off in two minutes. I wonder how fast Armando managed. It watches me ambiently from the ceiling. Probably pretty quick, if this soreness is any indicator.
Okay.
I have to think productive thoughts. I sample my thoughts for the productive ones. Things like: how long is it going to take to heal from major amputation? Is the ship alright? What tools, equipment, and processes in the lab require two hands? How much did my arm weigh, and will my weight loss factor into calculations that need mass? Dr. Umurhan had arthritis in his hands; do I remember any single-handed techniques he used when I was on my rotation in the jelly lab? Can the ship controls be used single-handedly, or will I need to modify them? How do I modify ship controls? Can the ship controls be reconfigured? Can I use a steak knife with one hand? How will I wash my hair? How will I floss my teeth? How will I put latex gloves on? How will I tie my shoes? How am I going to get used to this? Will I ever feel at home in my own body again?
Okay.
No more sampling. I have more than enough thoughts. I try to categorize them and organize them into something manageable, but I end up bursting into tears. I want to kick and punch and swear and rip my hair out, but everything hurts too much to do any of that. I often forget or refuse to acknowledge or even just straight up reject my vulnerability here in space. I like to think that I effortlessly be, that my existence is always linear and intentional and easy, drawing from an endless source of energy. The kind of existence that’s only real in junior high physics, where resistance and fatigue and fate and injury and death and indolence aren't factored into the equation. Nevertheless, I’m still intimately subject to the unforeseen, and it’s as real as a freakin’ diesel locomotive.
My sobbing surprises me. Deep, gasping sobs that make my chest ache, tears streaming out the corners of my eyes and dripping into my ears. It feels awful and unsatisfying. The impossible burden is resting on one shoulder now. I can’t do this. I can’t. I tried telling them from the get go, and it’s annoying that this might be the one thing I end up being right about. I can’t do it. I can’t even take up the challenge of being, let alone surmount—let alone bear—the unforeseen and unchosen. I can’t do this.
I look over at Rocky, who is nothing but a motionless shadow in my blurry eyes. Get it all out now, I tell myself. If by some miracle Rocky is still alive, he’s not going to need to deal with my meltdown on top of everything else when he comes to.
I must reach an abnormally high level of stress because the nanny arms are triggered into action. It whirs over from the ceiling and unclamps the vice on my IV tube. It releases a sedative in my bloodstream, which hits me almost immediately. It’s like getting a roundhouse kick to the head from Jesus. I’m out before I can even fully register how good it feels.
I’m up and moving when Rocky wakes up. I’m a lot more than up and moving, really. I’ve been making slow progress in the lab, processing the samples from Adrian. It’s tough doing this one-handed. It feels like a stupid gag my lab mates and I would have done in grad school on a slow summer afternoon. I get frustrated easily and give up regularly, kicking my rollie chair across the lab. My tantrums don’t last more than a few minutes, usually subsumed by fear of failure, overwhelming guilt when I look at Rocky, and the obnoxious weight of responsibility. Besides, I’m lucky I still have my right arm. Despite the setbacks, I managed to do some mad science with my sample containment chambers, run some diagnostics on Hail Mary, and do my best to nurse Rocky back to health.
“Where is appendage, question?” I expected Rocky to notice almost immediately, but his question still knocks the wind from me.
“Oh, yeah. Well, I got hurt pretty badly by the heat in your enclosure when I moved you. My arm probably took most of the damage. Humans are pretty good at repairing ourselves, but sometimes it can be too complicated, or the recovery is too risky, so it’s best for us to just…remove the limb.”
Rocky absorbs this. He takes a long time to speak, which is unusual for him. When he does, his words are slow, deliberate, and very weak. “It will grow back, queessttiioonn?”
Ah, crud. I’m not really prepared to have this conversation, but I can’t lie to him or put this off for another time. “No, bud. I’m, uh…” An amputee? Permanently like this? Never going back to how I was before? “I’m stumped for good.”
The humor is lost on Rocky or he understands and simply ignores it. It’s probably for the best; I’m not sure this is the healthiest way to cope with disembodiment. “Repeat.”
I sigh. “My arm’s gone.”
“How will we complete mission, question?”
What kind of question is that? “We’ll just…do it. I don’t know what you mean.”
“This is big problem for mission. One thumb for entire ship. Big big big big problem. We need to fix now. Right now.”
“There’s nothing to fix, Rocky.” He’s really agitated by this, and it’s agitating me. Probably there’s some way we can jailbreak Armando and turn it into something more useful for science and repair tasks, but my brain isn’t solution-minded right now. It’s mope-minded, catastrophe-minded. Plus I would miss my on-demand coffees if we gave Armando sentience, or whatever Rocky’s plan here is.
“Must fix!” Rocky is usually more articulate and quick with his thoughts. To be entirely fair to us, we aren’t exactly in a state to be batting a thousand, or a hundred, or however much baseball players are supposed to bat.
“I know you’re wrapping your head around—”
“What head, question!? No understand no understand!”
“I mean, coming to terms—” I cut myself off. That’s another idiom. I go to smack my forehead to relieve some frustration, but I’m telling my left hand to do it, and my left hand is drifting eternally through deep space. It’s absurd, and it almost makes me laugh. I can only consider laughing because of the remnants of the narcotics I got from Armando. They’re still making me a little loopy, which is great because if I had to experience this sober, I would probably be in the fetal position on the ground crying again. Instead, I take a deep breath. I’ve been brushing this internal confrontation off to the side. Yes, my arm is gone, and I think I’ve accepted that, but I’ve strategically and artfully ignored the practical, emotional, and existential ramifications of this loss. It shouldn’t surprise me that Rocky is the one to burst through that wall and hold these emotions up to myself and force me to reckon with them. “Let’s just…not worry about this right now. It’s not important.”
Rocky makes an indignant sound, still worked up. “Not important, question? Is very stupid thing to say!”
“I know, but—”
“Defeatist!” Where the heck did he learn that word?
“Rocky—”
“What about EVA, question?!” The implications of this on my ability to spacewalk are, as an Eridian would say, bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“When, question!? Figure it out now!”
“You’re asking for answers I don’t have yet! Look, I know it’s freaky. You’ll get used to it. I’m sure as heck not used to it, but I’m getting there. We’ll sort it out in time. Right now, we just need to focus on recovering and studying the samples. To be honest, I really can’t handle anything else. It’s going to take me some time to think through this.” Understatement, but I’m not sure if concepts like distorted body image exist for Eridians. “It’s a human thing; you know my brain takes a while to process. Please understand.” So much goes unsaid between Rocky and I all the time. The longer we cohabitate, the more we perceive those unsaid things. I’m leaning on that shared sense heavily now because I just don’t have it in me to be any clearer.
Rocky quiets. “Understand,” he says, resigned and still bitter. He knows what I’m asking for, or he’s worn himself out, or a bit of both. Thank God. We take a moment to collect ourselves. We must look pretty ridiculous: a poorly mummified man in a medical gown with buns out panting at a lawn decoration splattered with mercury making agitated whale noises. “Is painful, question?”
“Yeah.”
“Sleep soon. I watch. But before, give me you updates.”
I sit down and do so, recounting the decaying orbit, checks to the remaining seven fuel tanks and hull, my doped-up idiocy with the alien terrarium, atmosphere replication, and unintentionally almost killing Rocky while I was playing nurse for him. By the time I list off our most pressing tasks, I’m exhausted. Partially because I’m exhausted and partially because I wasn’t aware of the amount of things I’ve accomplished in between our fishing trip and now.
I try to put on some clothes. I’ve been avoiding this since I started moving around for fear of doing something wrong and tearing myself asunder, or something. Instead of going for my coveralls, I just put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Easy.
I kick the mattress to fluff it up and then fall onto it too hard. I’m so tired, though, that the pain hardly registers. Or it registers, and is subsumed by the goodness of being horizontal. My shoulder is pressed against the barrier, blanket pulled up to my chin.
“Grace?” Rocky says softly. I can hear him clicking low in my direction, tapping his foot weakly against the glass.
“Yeah, bud?”
“Please let me fix.”
I sigh. I’m getting a headache. “Focus on fixing yourself, and then you can work on me.”
“I do both at same time. Please let me.”
Why do I keep fighting him on this? “Okay. Thanks.”
“Thank.” I can hear him shuffling around, much slower than usual but always driven and industrious. After a moment, he calls me again. “Grace?”
I’m too tired to answer verbally, so I just tap the barrier.
“Arm looks like…end of hot dog.”
It startles a laugh out of me. “Thank you.” He must be digging deep to cheer me up if he’s willingly talking about food.
By the time we’re making progress on the newly-named Taumoeba, I’ve come off the narcotics. They were great while they lasted, but they really did make me stupid and useless, and I miss not fighting for my life in the bathroom. After the painkillers, I get shots of Toradol from Armando. It’s a thick liquid ibuprofen concentrate delivered in a huge syringe that burns like dry ice as it slowly enters my bloodstream. But it makes me feel like I could shoot Rocky through a basketball hoop. I feel incredible, and I keep my wits. Plus, the deadened pain helps give me some indication of what everyday life will be like once I’m completely recovered. It’s not the most wieldy tool, given how short it is, but I can still poke buttons with some accuracy (depending on the button), flip switches, and propel around in zero gravity.
When the Toradol wears off, the wound still aches ambiently, which again limits utility. The red scars throb whenever my blood pressure rises, even just by inverting my body. It looks normal enough for this stage of healing, compared to the photos I’ve studied in a wound care textbook. The stitches have all but dissolved, except a few strands in the hardening scar tissue. Sometimes, I go without a bandage. This is probably not advised, but I think it needs some air. The NannyBot usually changed the wrappings when I would collapse from exhaustion, but now that I can get regular sleep and take care of myself, I change the bandages myself. The first time I did it, I made such a racket that Rocky hobbled over to me.
“What happen, question?” He exclaimed.
“Nothing. Ugh, it stinks so bad.” I threw the used bandages at Armando to dispose of and got some cleaning supplies from the lab: a basin, some water, diluted detergent, and a box of cheese cloth wipes.
“Many, many layer dead cell,” Rocky commented. “Fascinating.”
It was the first time I saw the arm. My arm, some might say. There were indeed a ton of dead skin layers. They turned the flesh a shade of grey, stamped with deep impressions of the bandage texture. My muscles had atrophied and vanished. The pucker of skin at the end of the stump where Armando had stitched me up did look a bit like a hot dog. My arm was a skinny, grey hot dog. It didn’t seem like it was part of me.
Rocky watched me intensely as I scrubbed the skin, carefully navigating the tight contours around the scars with a soapy wipe. The dead skin sloughed off in the suds. The water was filthy. I didn’t feel great about putting it all back in the water reclaimer, knowing that I would drink it again, but there really was no reason to be squeamish or wasteful. I’ve consumed worse parts of myself at this point.
“Hurt, question?”
“Yeah, but not bad.” I dried it off with another wipe and held the stump in the palm of my hand for a moment. I could feel the humerus beneath the still-swollen skin, perfectly rounded where it had been sheared in two. My heart was starting to race.
“How is you body image, question?” Rocky asked as he sent a few clicks through me, focusing deeply. I can never feel the sound waves he sends out when he echolocates. The bulk of them are infrasonic, which does have an impact on humans, but it’s mostly imperceivable in small doses, like Rocky’s sonar. I imagined then that I could feel them, on some level. That these sonic manifestations of his interest and concern were no different than the physical manifestations, taking the form of a careful touch or reassuring squeeze.
I didn’t really know how to respond to such a direct question. “I’m getting used to it.” It’s more like, everything is fine and normal until I remember, and then I feel untethered from normalcy. But I’m better at talking myself down from the proverbial ledge.
“Good, good,” Rocky tapped his claws together. He angled the face of one of his carapace sides to me. “Apology.”
I shook my head. “Not your fault.”
“My atmosphere burn you arm. You arm not heal because of burn. Definition of my fault, indicative.” Rocky didn’t usually use other mood particles in his sentences. The interrogative particle occurred most often, and then the propositive, optative, mirative, and so on and so forth. He never expressed the indicative particle because it was always assumed as the default mood. Sometimes, like then, he used it for emphasis, but I would argue that if you stress that a statement is indicative in the context of a disagreement, it isn’t indicative anymore, but we don’t need to get into all of that.
“No. You don’t blame me for almost killing you when I leaf-blew your scabs off, so you can’t blame yourself for this.”
“Leaf-blow did not permanently damage.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Who knows what would have happened if it went differently? I don’t regret anything. It’s a small price to pay.”
Rocky rejects this emphatically. “Too much. Was too much.”
“You’re worth it any day.”
“You mean that, question?”
It’s a valid question. Last time I lectured him about acceptance, I almost immediately told him I meant none of it. “Yeah, I do.”
I’ve been practicing EVAs, and it’s only a little less terrifying than my mind was making it out to be. We started slow. I would maneuver around in the airlock in zero g just to get a feel for the sensation again and try to tamp down my instincts to use my left hand. The most recent development has been tethered spacewalks. I clip into the tether cables and scamper around the exterior handles of Hail Mary one-handed. If I were to screw up badly enough, the computer will engage the hydraulic winch and reel me back to the airlock. Luckily, this hasn’t happened yet.
I’m out again, double checking the mating adapters of the jettisoned fuel tanks. The plan is for Rocky to eventually make new ones so I can have a full fuel load for the trip home. Our progress has been great. My disability has become less of a setback, and more of a relatively easy variable to plan around, all things considered. Still, the ship computer could have done as good a job at explaining the berthing mechanisms for the tanks, but Rocky insisted I go look. All of this stuff had to be originally assembled by astronauts and cosmonauts at the ISS using standard technology. I’m pretty sure the pressurized mating adapters are identical. Why reinvent the Canadarm? In actuality, the adapters were modeled after the Russian and Chinese modules, which means they’re androgynous. Simple, easy, and I don’t have to talk about the birds and the bees with Rocky again. “If I understand your design right, it should work fine. My adapters are universal.”
“You sure, question?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. I will continue with design.”
I almost offer to boot up AutoCAD and help out with the model, but I think better of it and shut up. I’m not an engineer. “I’m coming in.”
“Be careful.”
I shamble back to the airlock, using my patented technique of switching between holding onto the ship with my hand, and jamming my boots into the rungs. I double check the exterior port is closed before opening the airlock and shedding the suit. I’m sucking down a pouch of water when Rocky floats over to me expectantly.
“What’s up?”
“I have something to show you.”
“Ooh, okay. Can I turn on the centrifuge?”
“Yes, and come back. Hurry.”
“Yes, sir.” I’m quick about it, almost falling down the ladder rungs as my body readjusts to Hail Mary’s artificial gravity. Rocky, in his ball, is already waiting for me. He taps the glass. I look over at where he’s pointing.
There’s something on the counter in the lab. It’s a prosthetic arm made of xenonite. I hesitate a moment before picking it up, sensing how hot it is. It’s warm, but safe to touch, so I take it. It’s lightweight, with that faint, tell-tale ammonia odor. Rocky must have given it to Armando to hold until it cooled off enough for me to use. The alien and robot are conspiring against me. Harrowing. There are some straps at the elbow end made out of the same fabric as Rocky’s work belt. “Is this for me?”
“No, is my sixth arm.”
“Sarcasm.” I sit down, wriggle out of my t-shirt and pull the straps up my bicep, stabilizing the wrist of the prosthetic between my feet so I can tighten the straps and fit my stump against the inner struts. Rocky rolls over to me. The apparatus is well-balanced and reasonably comfortable. Like any good engineer, UX seems to be the driving force for its design. There is a main internal bar that mimics the bones of my forearm. Thin cables stretch around it, travelling through the pseudo-wrist and into five thick fingers. Rocky has spun a xenonite “skin” around it, web-like but obviously pretty load-bearing. Aesthetically, it matches his diagrams, his figurines, even his ship, to some extent. Whether or not I'll feel at home in myself is still up for debate, but Rocky is so familiar that seeing himself in me is equally as good. Maybe even better. I’m starting to get a little misty-eyed; I can’t help myself.
Rocky, chittering excitedly, holds up his front two arms in a wait gesture. “No leak yet!”
“I’m trying.”
He focuses, gesturing with his claws in a deliberate and authoritative manner. “Make fist…with mind,” he says.
The sensation comes easily to me; I haven’t been able to turn those impulses off. I know my arm is gone, but I still reach for pencils, try to put my hands on my hips, and type on the keyboard. I imagine balling up my hand. In response, the xenonite fingers curl into a light fist. I squeeze, and the fist tightens. “Whoa.” The word is crushed out of my chest.
Rocky dances around, wiggling his hands. “Now relax fist.”
I relax my hand and nothing happens.
“Is on purpose! Hand locks,” he explains slowly like I’m an idiot, which I am, “so you hold without thinking. Make fist!”
I squeeze and the hand opens. It’s not the most intuitive design, but it’ll help me grab the handholds outside of Hail Mary and hold items, which is what I miss the most. I play around with the mechanics some. I rotate the arm and find that the hand and forearm move together as one apparatus. Fine gestures with my fingers are limited. I can wave, and rub my stomach while I pat my head. Those macro-movements are easy. But I won’t be flipping any Martians off—not with my left hand, anyway. My own biology is to blame for this. The tendons and muscles needed for fine motor skills are in my hands, my elbow, my ulna. The upper arm doesn’t play a huge role in making those movements. Still, Rocky has done the best he can to replace them with the xenonite cables that are now my tendons, responding to the minute stimuli from my stump. Working in the lab one-handed was overly laborious, as was navigating Hail Mary in zero gravity. I’m definitely going to need two hands to install the fuel tanks, or really to do any heavy tasks in the EVA, and the xenonite prosthetic will more than do the trick. I won’t be writing Arabic calligraphy, but I can hold things and maneuver them, and it’ll do great in the lab. Jeez.
“Is only prototype. I fix, improve design, make better. For now, is good for support other hand,” Rocky explains, reading my mind. He pantomimes with his hands, holding an imaginary screw with one hand while twisting it closed (to the left) with the other.
“It’s perfect, Rock. Thank you.”
“Not perfect. But pretty good, yes.”
“Well, I think it’s perfect.”
He angles his carapace proudly. “Thank. But not perfect. Grace biologist need to leave engineering to engineer.”
“Okay, fair enough. Agree to disagree.”
“OK. Fist me with new arm!”
“I’m not doing that. I’ll fist bump you, though.” The xenonite hand forms a fist, which I press against Rocky’s between the barrier. When he presses back, it's like there's no barrier between us. There's a function in here somewhere; his hand meeting the same xenonite that now constitutes my part of my body, even if superficially. When we pull away, I feel somehow complete.