Atmosphere: A Love Story By Taylor Jenkins Reid - 13

First Griff’s voice gone.

Then Hank’s.

Then Steve’s.

Now Lydia’s.

“Ford, we read you,” Joan says.

Joan is now all Vanessa can hear, all that lies between her and isolation.

With the hand that’s not pressed to Griff’s suit, Vanessa bangs on the side of the airlock, trying to get someone’s attention and wake them up. The force of it pushes her backward. She rights herself.

“LYDIA!” she screams. “STEVE! HANK! SOMEONE!”

The ghostly quiet of the shuttle overwhelms her. Suddenly she becomes aware of her body floating in microgravity. The slowness, the absence of both feet on the ground. She has never felt the full scope and terror of floating the way she does in this moment, tethered to nothing, unable to move.

“Ford, the cabin pressure has returned to safe levels and the airlock is fully pressurized. We want you to bring Griff out of the airlock.”

Vanessa closes her eyes. This is another thing she learned as a child. That the world beyond the edges of her eyelids can and will be a dangerous place. But that she can hide from it for whole seconds at a time when she closes her eyes. So she stays there, and breathes. In once, out once.

When she opens her eyes again, she is surprised by the steadiness of her voice. “Copy that, Houston. Preparing to enter the cabin.”

She takes her hand off Griff’s stomach; it’s no longer needed to protect him from the lack of pressure. And then she starts to open the hatch.

Once it’s open, she begins to swim out of the hatch to the mid-deck with Griff in tow. She takes off both of their helmets.

She can work her way out of the pants of the space suit. But it is hard to maneuver the torso piece without assistance. The suits are designed for crew members to assist each other when getting in and out.

Vanessa begins to panic, claustrophobia setting in. She thrashes against the suit, which only makes it worse. She cannot lose control of herself right now. She counts her breaths and then she moves her shoulder in a way that feels unnatural, as if her collarbone might snap.

But then she stops.

Because there, floating toward her, is Hank. His entire body is swollen. His face is mottled, his skin covered in a rash so severe that for a moment, she thinks it is blood. But she realizes the blood is under his skin. She wants to ask him if he’s okay.

But there’s no doubt.

Hank is dead.

She closes her eyes and screams, breaking herself out of the rest of her suit. She has never heard her voice do this: it is a raw screeching sound. When she finally gets the suit over her shoulders, it catches against her forehead and scrapes the skin above her eye.

But then she slithers out of it.

She manages to remove Griff’s suit, too, with somewhat less agony. Then she pulls down his cooling suit, exposing his chest and stomach, so she can assess his injuries. The shrapnel did not break through his skin, but there is already visible bruising across his lower stomach, extending up into his chest. He must be bleeding internally. There is no way to know, right now, just how bad it is.

She should have told him not to leave the airlock hatch open. One small shake of her head would have prevented this.

She could not have stopped the leak. That would have happened no matter what. But she could have prevented the blow to his chest if only she hadn’t gone along with his stupid fucking idea. Instead, he is floating in front of her, unconscious.

Vanessa looks down to see Hank underneath her. She closes her eyes. Do not think of Donna pregnant this past summer. Do not think of the smile on Donna’s face the night they announced they were engaged.

Vanessa sees another pair of feet between the mid-deck and the flight deck. She moves toward them.

When she gets to Steve, she holds in a yelp. He is lifeless, drifting. Dead man’s float.

There are droplets of blood in the air around him, which he must have coughed up. She puts her hand to his neck and checks his pulse without an ounce of hope, confirming what she already knows.

How can her heart sink in microgravity? But it does.

She does not want to think of Helene and the girls. Her stomach turns as she imagines Apollo waiting by the door.

She does not want to think of just how alone she herself will be in this world without him to guide her. In this ship, out in space, inside her own head.

She inhales. “Houston, this is Navigator. Astronauts Steve Hagen and Hank Redmond are dead. John Griffin has suffered potentially critical internal injuries but is breathing. Do you read?”

She can’t fall down in microgravity, but the idea sounds so nice, right now. To let go and land on her knees and throw herself onto the ground.

“Roger that,” Joan says, her voice so gentle that Vanessa wants to cry. “We read that Hagen and Redmond have died. We have vitals on Griff. We believe Danes is alive as well. Please confirm.”

If Donna and Helene are listening in on the loop from their homes, Vanessa just told them their husbands are dead. Her throat constricts and goes sour. She swallows hard.

She looks to her left and then her right, and then, finally, up. That’s when she sees that Lydia is floating near the ceiling, one arm stretched out. Vanessa finds her way to her and places two fingers on her neck.

“Houston, I can confirm Lydia Danes is alive,” Vanessa says.

“Copy that, Navigator, ” Joan says. And then, her tone almost breathless: “Thank you.”

Vanessa looks past Lydia and sees where the hole was. She can barely stand to look at it. Such a fragile, cheap repair, and yet—if applied seconds earlier—might have saved them all.

“Houston, Danes found the leak and sealed it with a clipboard and duct tape.”

Joan is quiet for a moment. Vanessa is now hanging on her every word.

“Roger that,” Joan says. “Cabin pressure is now approaching 10.2 psi. We believe that with monitoring, we can keep it stable long enough for you to get everyone home.”

“It was the last thing Lydia did before she passed out,” Vanessa says.

“Yes, Navigator, ” Joan says. “That is our conclusion as well.”

It was Lydia, of all people, who had saved them. Saved her. Vanessa laughs for a moment—the sound has a dark tinge to it, an uncontrolled terror. She knows that if she keeps laughing, it will be exactly like crying. It will take over her body—her horror shaking within her to get out—and she will not stop until it is far too late. She is teetering on the edge of mania, and it is so tempting to give in to it, to lose all touch with what is happening and let her mind leave her.

But she can’t.

“Lydia has the bends,” Vanessa says.

“That is our estimation, yes,” Joan says.

“How long does that give her?”

“She needs treatment within ten hours,” Joan says. “Griff maybe sooner. We cannot be certain due to the internal nature of his injuries, but we are tracking his vitals and we are formulating a plan. We believe it is possible to have you home in as little as three revs.”

“Four and a half hours? Is that even possible?”

“We believe it is. We will begin deorbit as soon as we can.”

Vanessa closes her eyes. “How soon until you have the deorbit plan?’ ”

“Confirming landing sites, back to you ASAP. In the meantime, we ask that you prepare the deorbit checklist and, as you do, that you leave the biomedical sensors on Griff and attach a set to Danes as well, so that we can monitor her vitals from here alongside his.”

“Roger that,” Vanessa says. And then she cannot help herself but to confess. “Houston . . . we . . . we left the hatch open.”

“Copy that,” Joan says. “We already suspected that was how Griff was hit. We are just glad you were not. We need you up there. Back to you soon with our contingency deorbit plan.”

“Copy.”

Vanessa takes in a full deep breath and looks around the ship. An entire crew unconscious or dead.

She is a mission specialist. But she has been begging to be given a chance to pilot this thing for years. And now, ironically, she will finally get what she’s asked for.

She can do this. She has never landed a space shuttle before—not even in a simulation—but she will do it today.

And so, as Mission Control comes up with the plan, Vanessa grabs the deorbit procedure checklist and reads it.

She has to stabilize everything in the orbiter—nothing can be free-floating, all must be strapped down. This usually refers to things like microphones and sleeping bags and binders, the items the crew needs. She had never, until this moment, realized it would ever refer to the crew themselves. She has to strap them in.

She considers the seats in the flight deck. After all, there are four of them. But she needs full use of the flight deck to land.

And so, for Steve and Hank, she settles on the airlock.

She nods, swallowing. A droplet of blood floats past her, and she pulls away. She grabs a Huggies wipe from the stash that has been ripped off the wall. She takes the wipe, opens it fully, and touches the corner of it to the blood droplet as it passes through the cabin. It absorbs into the sheet, gone from the air.

She begins with Steve. She tucks the wipe into the front pocket of his shirt and then grabs his hand. She can’t imagine not talking to him every day. Not calling him when she’s afraid she’s screwed something up. She has always understood that Steve being ten years older than her has allowed her to put more faith in him than he probably ever asked for.

But now, looking at his face, she regrets so sharply that she never told him how much his guidance meant to her. She had just left it for him to glean from her high fives and thank-yous.

“Steve,” she whispers to him. “I have to put you in the airlock, okay?”

Her throat catches as she sees his expressionless face. But there is no time for that. She pulls his body toward hers and swims slowly through the mid-deck.

She pushes him inside the airlock and knows that she will need to shut the inner hatch to keep him from floating back into the mid-deck. Before she does, she wants to tell him that he’s the best commander she ever had. But she knows what he would say to that: I’m the only commander you’ve ever had.

Anyway, it would feel awfully final. It doesn’t need to be like that. She closes the door.

Afterward, she takes Hank and pulls him toward the airlock, the same as she did with Steve. She tells him that his joke earlier about getting home in time to watch M*A*S*H was funny. But she cannot bring herself to reassure him about Donna and Thea. All she can think of is Donna bringing Thea to the Outpost last month, Hank showing his baby girl off the entire night.

Vanessa snaps herself out of it. This is not something she can indulge right now.

When she gets to Lydia, she looks at her face. It is swollen but peaceful, without any of Lydia’s usual consternation. In this one acute moment, Vanessa regrets not trying to understand Lydia better when they were both on Earth. Joan was the only one who had ever really tried, the only one who had ever seen what Lydia was capable of. Joan had tried to tell her. Vanessa sees that now.

Carefully, Vanessa unzips the top of Lydia’s flight suit and applies the sensors for respiration, temperature, and heart rate. She zips it back up and takes Lydia’s hand in hers for a moment. She squeezes. Wordlessly, she pulls Lydia to the flight deck and puts her in the chair behind the commander’s seat. She buckles her in.

Then Vanessa takes Griff in her arms and carries him to the flight deck, putting him in the seat next to Lydia. And in a moment that she does not know is happening until it is over, she leans forward and kisses him on the temple.

“ Navigator, this is Houston.” Joan. Finally, Joan is back.

“Copy.”

“Prepare for a contingency deorbit. We can land at Edwards in three revs. They have full trauma center capabilities. We are going to begin the deorbit checklist.”

All on her own, Vanessa will need to stow away all the equipment—including everything that was torn off the walls—and shut the payload doors. Then she will have to get in the pilot’s seat and begin the process of reentry.

She has been through enough in her life to know that there is no value in long-term thinking right now. In a crisis of this magnitude, you are best served by evaluating second by second.

So Vanessa does not imagine herself back on Earth. She does not imagine landing this shuttle. She does not imagine preparing for reentry.

Instead, she imagines strapping the lockers back onto the walls.

That, she can do.

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