Spoiler! :
She floated. Their ship drifting, with no determinable goal...
No, drifting wasn’t the word for it. She had the sensation of moving very fast, in a very definite direction. The forces of the black hole sucked the ship in further and further, gobbling down anything it could in an attempt to fill its empty void of a belly.
Inside the ship though, those forces felt very distant. There was nothing outside to determine anything about how they were moving. There was just that feeling… That feeling of unseen motion.
Her patient – her employer, her master, her murderer – breathed in and out, the raspy sound all that broke the silence in the ship. Tubes were hooked up to him, running in, under, and over his skin. To some, it might have seemed gruesome. To her, it seemed normal. After all, she’d been working as a nurse, placing tubes like that, for how many years?
Really… How many?
She’d shut off the monitor that showed her his heart rate, along with a lot of other things that took up power. They were running short on that now, and even if she’d long since given up hope of rescue, she felt the need to conserve power. To give them a few more short minutes to live.
In the years they’d drifted, they’d always had air, thanks to the filtration systems her patient’s company had developed. They’d had plenty of nutrients to keep them going (she’d put herself on an IV drip, after the solid food ran out). That had never been a problem. She’d always known he’d stored too much… She’d always known they’d die long before the nutrients ran out, their life leaving them for one reason or another.
After going into the black hole, all the filtration systems had stopped working. They were going to run out of air. It was only a matter of time…
So, she conserved power.
“I hope you’re happy,” she said to her patient. Her voice rasped, like her patient’s breathing; she hadn’t spoken much in the last few years. There hadn’t been much point after her patient’s condition worsened. She was not of the belief that people in a comatose state could hear what was being said to them, or that it would even matter if they did. She’d always considered the idea to be as ridiculous – talking to an empty shell.
But no one else was on the ship to hear her… Why not blame him, aloud, for everything that had happened to her? At least her last few breaths of air might garner her some satisfaction.
“Everyone said you were crazy to launch yourself on that space mission,” she continued. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy. “In your condition… Everyone said it was insane… But you just had to go anyway. And haul me along with you, to take care of you… Never mind about my family… Never mind about my friends…”
Her family… Only one of them had been left when she’d gone. Some cousin she’d met maybe twice. She hadn’t been able to remember his name even back on Earth.
Her friends… Shasha – or was it Shawna? – had loved sports and books equally, sneering at anyone who tried to tell her such interests could not coexist in one person. After High School, she’d married Jeff. How she could remember his name when she couldn’t even remember Sha—as’ was a mystery to her.
The man whose name had started with a ‘T’… Trent? Tommy? Tate? They’d gone out a few times. Had a real pity party before she left; though nothing had pointed them toward being truly serious before, by the time she was set to launch they’d become convinced that they were meant to be together forever, if only she hadn’t needed to go off into the final frontier with her pushy boss.
Alexa – Or… Anna? – and the one who’d taught at the local elementary school and always had a funny story to tell about one of the little brats...
For so long, she’d clung to the little bits of information about them. She remembered their favorite movies, their favorite memories… But some of the basics she’d forgotten to focus on were gone. Like their names…
She leveled her gaze at her patient. His name, too, was a mystery now. Lost in space. Perhaps she’d blocked that one out on purpose, though.
“Did you ever really think you were going to survive the journey?” she asked hoarsely. “Was traveling into space just something on your bucket list? Something to do before you dropped dead?” She trembled. And then she started to yell.
“Why would you drag so many people along with you, if that’s all it was?”
So many people… All on that huge spaceship… All there when things began to go wrong. All of them dead now. Caught in the explosion that had rocked the craft, or starved now after so long in the tiny escape pods.
Her patient’s pod had been larger than all the others. Better equipped. He’d spared no expense, saving his own life even though he was already on the road to death.
She’d gone over the last days so often… Those memories, and the memories of her life on Earth were all that she had left to keep her from going mad.
If they had ever really saved her from that fate…
Floating in a cold, metal coffin, with no other stimulus… She’d relived every memory, over and over again.
But she’d neglected the names.
She hadn’t realized until it was too late.
How could she have realized earlier?
How could she ever guess that she’d forget even her own name?
Unsteadily, she crossed the ship to the patient’s bed. She unhooked all of the tubes. Watched him until the breathing stopped.
Had the pleasure of making sure he died first.
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