© Copyright 2012 by J.M. Sloderbeck
Published at Smashwords
Cover image courtesy of user Sweetie187 at flickr.com
© 2012 J.M. Sloderbeck
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The following story is a work of fiction. All names, people, locations and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to people, alive or dead, events, organizations or locales not otherwise acknowledged is coincidence.
Kaseem met Rory Donner early in high school, as pretty and smart a girl as he’d ever seen, and all he ever wanted was for them to be together forever. Even though she’d left him behind, he’d never forgotten his old flame. Now he was about to find out if she had forgotten him.
Her hair was still as rich and bright as he remembered, even after an unkind hand had shorn it short, nearly to her ears. The splash of it was the only color in that lonely room, and Kass’s eyes locked onto it. Her pale face was still touched with freckles, but now it was also lined with exhaustion. Other than the white hospital gown she wore, her only adornments were a pair of Velcro straps at her wrists binding her hands to the bars of the bed.
“Hello Red,” he said. She looked nothing like the woman he remembered: once she had ambition and drive, and her eyes were firmly set on the stars as her ultimate destination. It was impossible to look into those eyes now since she kept turning her face away from him. Perhaps it was shame, or perhaps it was something more than that. Her vision seemed to be shadowed by some unspeakable horror, something only she could see.
“Didn’t think you’d come,” she said.
“Of course I would. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten to see you, but …” Kass’s voice faltered and stopped for a moment. That viewing room was uncomfortably bright. Glaring fluorescent lights washed out the walls and ceiling overhead into a blob of formless, unshaped emptiness. There were countless sets of eyes staring through a glass window behind him, and another camera was monitoring them from a nearby corner. It felt dehumanizing, degrading. He felt naked in front of them. In front of her.
Red had been ambitious ever since he’d met her, back when they were a pair of starry-eyed kids. The next Space Race was on, the fastest push to interstellar exploration seen in a hundred years or more, and all Kass had in mind was the prettiest girl he’d ever met. They dated on and off during those years, but it was obvious that Red had something much bigger in mind for herself. She became the youngest M.D. to ever graduate from the Reed-Hastings Space Academy, boarding the E.S.C. Pearce as Chief Medical Officer. It was the hardest day of Kass’ life when she said goodbye.
“What.”
“Huh?”
“But what?” For the first time since he stepped into that room, Red finally looked at him. Her eyes twitched, shifting back and forth imperceptibly at and around him, as if he wasn’t quite in focus. “Didn’t you want to come?”
Kass knew he wasn’t as smart as Red was, could never be as smart as she was. When she’d succeeded in school, succeeded in life, he’d faltered and failed. She had conquered the world, and Kass had let it pass him by. Maybe that explained why she’d left him behind, but he’d never been able to lie to her, and he couldn’t start now. “Yes, I did. It’s just been so long since you responded to my emails or answered a vid-call. They … the Academy doctors said I should ask you what happened. On the Pearce.”