"I just woke up, Rick. I'll have it later."
"Okay but just find them, tell me they're there. I want to know you'll be able to celebrate."
She dug through the cabinet, finally pulled out two packets of birthday cake. Yellow with white frosting. Her favorite. Only she wasn't sure how it would taste when it was all mushed together and compacted for space travel. "Thanks."
"They should have put some in for the birthdays you missed while you were in cryo."
"They didn't. But this is fine. Really."
She put the two packets at the front of the drawer instead of putting them back where they were. Did they really think she was going to wait to eat that second packet? A few months to go and then birthdays would never be a worry again.
"You sound sad, Lyd."
"I'm a woman with limited birthdays left. Should I do a dance?" She winced at her tone; he was just trying to help her deal with all this.
"We're all dying. You just happen to know when and how you're going to go. The rest of us . . . we muddle on without that."
"So I'm the . . . what? The lucky one?"
"No. I mean . . . yes, maybe you are. In a weird way."
"You give the worst pep talks, Rick."
"But they work. Haven't they worked so far?"
She laughed. "Yes. Yes, they have. Don't you have other things to do? Like finding me some decent games to play?"
"I sent you some more of those, too. And some books. You're fully stocked."
"Thanks." She hoped this shipment had better stuff than the last one.
"Oh, and Leighton wanted me to wish you happy birthday."
"He didn't."
Rick laughed. "Sure enough. You're surprising him. I knew you would."
She eyed the cabinet with the locked container, the impervious cryo chamber. She didn't think she was surprising Leighton one little bit, but she'd let Rick have his illusions.
"Specialist Ramirez, it has been two days since I awakened you from cryo sleep. You have not eaten your required daily allowance of nutrition."
Lydia closed her eyes at the thought of food. "Shut up, Vesta." She felt her stomach twist again and opened her eyes, shocked to see she was floating nearly sideways. She normally had great balance—had done gymnastics when she was a kid and was pretty good at the tumbling—but she couldn't get a feel for where she was in space.
Other than floating in it. In a tin can that was never made to house a human.
Her face felt funny, and she touched it—it was puffy. They'd told her that instead of swollen feet she could expect this. They'd mentioned sniffles—what she had was the mother of all colds, not just hay fever.
"Specialist Ramirez, your requirements for food are quite specific. I could recite the list of choices available to you."
"No." She reached for the barf bag, ripped it open the way she'd been shown, and threw up, quite literally up, but fortunately there wasn't much left in her stomach to go. She wiped her face off with the cloth liner inside the bag, then zipped it up and put it in the trash holder. At this rate, she was going to run out of bags.
Her head was pounding—the headache she'd thought had gone away was back in full force after vomiting. Everything was spinning, and it didn't help the sick feeling to know the vertigo was temporary, that her body would eventually figure out that down was wherever her feet were no matter what her brain said.
"What have I done?" She pulled herself hand over hand, grabbing the handholds gingerly, the way she'd done as a kid when just learning to play on the ring-bridge during recess, and made her way to the cabinet that was supposed to hold medicines. "I'm crazy. Totally freakin' crazy."
"There are anti-vertigo medicines in the cabinet, Specialist Ramirez."
"Uh huh." She skipped those trays, looking for one filled with hypodermic needles, and she saw it—behind a sealed clear compartment that said, "Don't open for six months" as if it was a holiday gift. Leighton's sick idea of a joke, no doubt.
She smiled, the half-smile that had never signaled anything good. Maybe he wasn't so smart.
She kicked off, going much faster than she expected, and crashed headfirst into the cryo chamber.
"Specialist Ramirez, slow, gentle movements are recommended until you become accustomed to microgravity."
"No crap." She closed her eyes, the pounding in her head grew worse than before, and the need to vomit followed suit, but she forced it down as she tried to open the cryo chamber.
"What are you doing?"
"I need something in here."
"The cryo chamber is disabled."
"But the emergency hypodermic needle isn't." She tried to force the chamber open, hitting random combinations of buttons, all the while hearing Vesta murmuring zero-G protocols and asking if she could please calm down.
"Why. Won't. This. Open?" Each word was punctuated by an ineffectual attempt to slap the chamber. She couldn't get any leverage, missed the chamber entirely on the last word, and slapped her leg. Hard. "Crap. Crap-crap-crap."
"Specialist Ramirez." Vesta's voice was one of quiet urgency, then not so quiet as she said much more loudly, "Specialist Ramirez, Lieutenant Watson at Mission Control is on the comm for you."
Lydia stopped her idiotic attack on the cryo chamber and turned to look at the main console. "I don't want to talk to anyone," she said between pants.
"Lydia, this is Lieutenant Watson. I'm here whether you want to talk to me or not." A male voice. Soothing. "Can you stop whatever you're doing and focus on me?"
"I can. I'm not sure I want to."
"I understand. Believe me. I've been in Iso sims. Zero G, too. I know it's rough, but I promise you that it gets better."
"Says the guy who had solid ground on the other side of his simulation exit. Not a vacuum."
"True. Also I'm not vomiting like it's my job."
"Don't say that word, please."
"Sorry." He laughed gently. "So what exactly are you trying to do?"
"I'm sure Vesta told you—she sent some kind of alarm, right? Is this on MC-wide radio? Everyone listening in?"
"Nope. I'm in a booth in the back of MC. It's soundproofed and the recordings are close hold. It's as private as we can make it."
She let go of the cryo chamber, pushed off gingerly, and felt her stomach heave again as she began to float. "How generous. Why should I believe you?"
"Because I don't lie." He sounded as if he meant it—but wouldn't a good liar be able to do that?
"Does Leighton know I'm freaking out?"
"He was the one who alerted me that I was needed. I've been assigned as your primary point of contact. My name's Rick."
"What does Leighton think of this?"
"I really am in a soundproof booth so I can say this: he's an ass sometimes. Whatever he thinks of you, who cares? You volunteered for this mission, right? Whatever your reasons, whatever you're going through right now, the fact that you're there, that you volunteered, is not going to change. You're a very brave woman in my book."
"Yeah, I'm sure he agrees with you." She tried to slow her breathing and grabbed the nearest handhold while she leaned up against the row of cabinets, anything to feel that she was on solid ground again. "I was trying to kill myself. In the cryo chamber, there's a hypodermic."
"The chamber's locked."
"Yeah, I found that out, which is why I was trying to break into it rather than the more conventional approach of just opening it. But there's no freakin' leverage in zero G."
He laughed gently. "I know. Sucks. You get used to it, though. You learn to do things—not that you'll need to chop wood or anything."