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Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim -Dory (Finding Nemo)
The lake is cold and clear and rushing in so fast and she surges forward with a deep breath and then she's out, she's out of that goddamn pod and kicking her legs out frantically and then shes up up up and the surface of the water breaks over her forehead. If she had a spare breath in her lungs she would scream, but she just paddles, not even real strokes, but like a dog, or like a child.
"Arms out in front of you honey, that’s great. That’s really good, now swim to me sweetie."
She can barely swim in a straight line, the view of the shore rocks in her eye line and seems to stretch out in front of her for infinity, but finally her stomach brushes sand and she's on land, Jesus Christ she's home. Her entire body aches as she heaves herself ashore, lake water down her throat and limbs shaking. She caresses the sand and it smells so good, the earth smells so perfect and comforting and she could stay here, she could sleep. But when she closes her eyes all she hears is "Get up Stone, get your ass up and run, Doc!" , and she remembers she has another 5 laps on the course to go and her NASA trainer, a retired jarhead with a stern face but an easy laugh is screaming in her ear. She puts her palms flat on the sand and she takes a breath and then another, looking at her hands that are still shaking, no polish, torn cuticles.
“Mommy can you paint my nails for school?”
She lays there propped up on her hands for five minutes before she pushes herself up and as she rises the sun hits her face and it's blinding, the sun that she saw in the distance out the shuttle windows is still there, still shining. Matt used to joke about skin cancer, about the rays at this altitude cutting right through the shuttle and cooking them to a crisp. And she desperately wants to hear his laughter again, wants to hear him jokingly offer to put sunscreen on her back. She imagines him floating out there cold and shriveled and she thinks I'm home, you helped bring me home, thank you, I'm sorry, goodbye,. And as she takes her first steps across solid land to the nearby treeline her legs do not give out.
“Mommy!” “Hiya sweetie, did you have a good day at school today?”
The rescue comes two hours later. The helicopter pilot bundles her in a thick itchy blanket and gives her a respirator. She tries to talk, to tell them she's fine, just bone deep exhausted but they keep pushing her to lie down in the back of the copter and and she doesn’t want to lie down, doesn't want to risk falling asleep and never waking up, or worse wake up to the sound of the controls of the escape pod beeping a cacophony of warnings in ear. They debrief her in the hospital, then they debrief her again. The only reason she hasn't been mobbed by the media is because NASA has her on lock down. They pump her full of drugs and nutrients. And she sleeps for days and when she wakes up it hits her like being sucker punched to the back of the head. What happened to her, that it's finally over. She stays for a month, exhaustion, malnutrition, PTSD, etc. etc. and at the end of it she calls a cab and arranges in a very quiet and tired tone over the phone for a United flight back home
"So Missus Stone, she will need a another booster shot at her next checkup..."
She doesn't really go home. There's a mob of media and well wishers. She reads in the paper at the motel continental breakfast that there's going to be a welcome home parade. She would have known this if she hadn't switched her iPhone off as soon as she left the hospital. She just wants quiet. Not real quiet, she's had enough silence, "In space none can hear you." etc. to last a hundred lifetimes. She just wants a white noise machine or an episode of Seinfeld in the background while she cooks or does yoga . Something to distract but not impose on her. After a week at the motel she thinks the girl at the front desk must recognize her from the news and the thought terrifies her. She checks out later that day.
"Hush little baby don't say a word...."
She thinks about Matt sometimes, about visiting his family or his grave. He talked about an ex-wife and a son he didn't see much. She thinks about his family and she wonders if she could handle their grief on top of her own. When Sarah died she went numb, all that driving to nowhere, trying to move forward but never getting anywhere. Because she wasn't moving on, she was running away, but even on a space station she couldn't outrun her grief. It nips at her heels constantly and then, just when the exhaustion hits, it tackles her to ground and holds her there, spitting in her face. Sometimes she feels like she's still spinning over and over out there in the black, like the vertigo you get when you're seven years old and you've just discovered you can spin around so fast the world disappears and you're just a body in space, but then you stop and sway and try and right yourself and your stomach lurches with adrenaline and nausea, a natural high. But she's been a body in space, she doesn't want to be just a body, a piece of space debris, any more. So she decides. She makes calls and makes plans and she goes to Chicago and meets Matt's ex, a kind brunette named Pamela who makes her coffee and wipes tears from her eyes as they talk and shows her pictures of her 9 year old son, Max. When she leaves they hug awkwardly and Pamela whispers "Thank you, for telling me what happened." She says "No, thank you" and means it.
"Momma why did he die? I miss him.." "It was Mr Fish's time sweetie, he had a good life, and I know he loved you very much."
She still has nightmares, debris streaking through the sky and comms screeching and Matt's voice in her ear getting farther and farther as he drifts into the deep space. She still jolts awake, gasping, thinking her oxygen has run out. But little things keep her grounded. Birds outside her window waking her up at 5 am. A cup of coffee so hot that when drunk it burns all the way down. Her Netflix queue playing constantly. Sometimes she walks out to her little back porch overlooking a field of overgrown pussywillows and looks up at the stars and thinks that it's such a long way to fall, but she did, she fell home by taking that one giant step not for mankind but for herself. If she was a braver person she could say she beat it, that the cosmos bent to her will when she escaped. But she knows that despite it being endless dark and cold that the universe gave her mercy mixed with luck. Mercy that she once prayed for to be delivered to a hurt little girl but never received. A belated hail Mary. She thinks of children like hers, dreaming of seeing the stars up close and she thinks No you really don't. Stars are not meant for close-ups. Icarus burnt up when he flew too close, and then it happened to her. Humans, they never learn.
“I’m sorry Dr. Stone but the subdural hematoma is much to severe…”
She goes to Sarah's grave in the corner of a small cemetery 10 miles from home. She used to go to her grave monthly, she would force herself to go even when just the thought of seeing the headstone felt like being pushed off a cliff. When she approaches the grave she sees that someone has kept up the upkeep of the site, the grass is still a respectable height and there are fresh daisies in a vase to the side of the headstone. Next to the vase is something that makes the breath catch in her throat. A dirty stuffed animal fish gazes up at her from glassy plastic eyes. Sarah loved Pixar movies, she remembers sitting on the couch cuddling with her as they watched DVDs. Her favorite had been Finding Nemo. Sarah had been a happy child but very nervous. Whenever she had gotten scared or upset she would take comfort from the story of a lost little fish and a parent's love. She had made it a ritual for Sarah. She had promised her that she would always find and rescue her daughter from harm. She had said “Whenever you get scared just remember what Dory says sweetie, just keep swimming ok? Everything's going to be ok." Just keep swimming. She had swam out in the black and had nearly drowned and had come home still gasping for air. She picks up the Nemo doll and dusts it off. It had been Sarah's favorite toy, her comfort item she took everywhere with her and had slept with at night. The toy is dirty and damp but the eyes still shine with cartoon happiness. She clutches it to her chest and wills herself not to cry. Keep swimming, keep swimming. She thinks of Matt, of the other astronauts, of being lost in space and being terrified and being angry and being numb, and most of all she thinks of herself on the couch in the dark with Sarah's blonde head in her lap fast asleep as the Finding Nemo dvd menu plays for the 3rd time that night. I promised I would always find you, she thinks. But you found me sweetie, all the way out there. Remembering Sarah had brought her home.
Sweetie... shhhhh shhhhh… I know your ear hurts honey, I know, mommy's gonna put on a dvd for you, ok honey?
"You have to learn to let go," Matt had said. And space had taught her a new perspective about loss, using the absence of of oxygen and gravity, and the loss of hope. She thought she knew everything there was to know about loss. But she had learned that having something taken from you and letting it go were two very different things. She thinks she finally gets that now. A few weeks later another doll sits eternal vigil next to Nemo. A little Wall-E with big puppy dog eyes and friendly waving claws, another of Sarah's favorites. A space explorer just like her mother, she had gotten her the doll when she first signed up for the program a year before Sarah's accident. She lays it there and tells Sarah that Nemo is for her, but Wall-E is for Mommy. A reminder to herself that survival doesn't mean anything unless you really live, that hope can find you no matter how lost you are, and that despite the fact that space tried to kill her, it also gave her new purpose.
It's gonna be one hell of a ride.
I don't want to survive. I want to live! - Captain (Wall-E)