For One Nen (25 page)

When they returned to the nurse’s station there were several doctors and nurses looking at their personal computer tablets and talking amongst themselves.

“What’s going on?” Rhys asked the crowd.

“There’s a new ship already being built. The companion hospital was just completed. It will support the workers and their families just like they did here. They’ll be in need of doctors and nurses soon.”

Darcy’s heart skipped a happy beat. She was ready for a change.

That night when she went home, her excitement spilled over and she shared the news with her mother.

“You know our life is here. Your father gave his life for this place. Now you want to run off at the first sign of something better. You think you’re so much better than a real days work. Just go
, like Vincent done.” Her lower lip quivered as she added, “What will our friends think of me raising ungrateful children?”

“Mother, I didn’t say I wanted to leave you. I just think it would be a good career move and…”

“Well just go on. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you now that your father is gone.”

“Mother I don’t want to live in a hospital all my life and if I do this for a while I can save enough to pay the high taxes to move back to
Earth. We could have actual dirt under our feet again. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“If your father could hear you now, all high and mighty. He’d be ashamed. He worked himself to an early death just to give you a better life than what we had on
Earth, renting that tiny house when you kids were little, never making ends meet, finally taxed right off that rock. Now you want to go back to squalor.”

“You’re not hearing me Mother. I could get a high paying position in the new hospital I’m the best third year student they have.”

“Oh! I’m hearing you little girl. Thinking you’re better than your father was. You go ahead and elevate yourself higher than your father if you think you can,” Darcy’s mother said.

“Better than you, at least,” Darcy dared to mumble under her breath as she hurried off to her room to change.

“Where are you going?” her mother asked following her into her room. “You told me you were cooking tonight.”

Darcy ignored her mother’s invasion of her space, which was normal behavior for her mother.

Grabbing the remote to their runabout she headed for the small docking bay.

“Hey now, I’m sorry if you misunderstood what I said. You’re really too sensitive you know. I can’t say anything to you anymore.”

“I have a date, Mom,” Darcy said opening the bay door.

“Well, when were you going to tell me this? I didn’t know a thing about it. When will you get back? You know I can’t sleep until everyone is safe in their bed at night.”

Darcy turned to roll her eyes at her mother, “Everyone?” Darcy said with a great deal more irritation in her voice than she’d meant to reveal.

“So you
do
know we’re alone,” her mother snapped back. “I thought you’d forgotten that your brother left us and your father is dead by the way you leave me alone all the time.”

“I won’t be late Mother,” Darcy said climbing into the bright silver and black runabout. “Have a protein bar. You’ll be fine.” With that, she closed the clear dome over her tiny space shuttle and pushed a button to close the door to their home.

Her mother kept talking but by then Darcy couldn’t hear her endless ranting anymore. She wished more than anything she wouldn’t hear her mother’s guilt-tripping voice ever again.

She flew under the hospital facility in the sky to get to the entire opposite side
, which had become more than a hospital. It was like a small city, with shops and restaurants and businesses of many kinds. Most people flew over or around the mega mansion in the sky, flying by the commercial store fronts. But Darcy loved to fly underneath where she would cut the engine and float. By doing this she could see a tiny blue dot in the sky. She wished she could see the Earth’s moon. She missed the moon the most. She could remember watching it with her father when she was little and living on Earth.

Her father would take her outside at night and show her the giant light that revolved around their planet
; and when she was tinier still, he would toss her in the air, which she loved. He would toss her up over his head and just as Darcy was about to fall back to his arms she felt weightless. She would squeal for just a moment before finding herself back in her father’s strong and safe arms. It was the only time she could remember feeling protected by her father because he never stood up for her against her mother’s malicious words.

She had grown accustomed to remaining silent during her mother’s daily rants
, since it always made it worse if Darcy did happen to interject any positivity or common sense.

She took a deep breath and l
et it out slowly through her clenched teeth. It wasn’t until her breath made a hissing sound that she realized how tense her entire body had become. The knots in the muscles of her neck and shoulders ached. She leaned forward, touching her head to the glass dome of her runabout. Reaching above the control panel she pressed her right hand on the glass. With her left hand she pointed toward the sun, which was the brightest star in the sky.

She put her finger to the window and drew a horizontal line to the left.

“And that’s Earth,” she whispered. “That’s where we lived when I was happy. Vincent was there, even Lena was there and all of my cousins.” She pointed slightly further left to a faint red dot. “That’s Mars.” She followed several of the brighter stars with her finger and sighed heavily and added, “But Mom was still Mom.”

She slumped back in her seat and groaned. She shook her head as if trying to rid
her body of an invisible oppressive blanket of feelings that weighed her down.

“Maybe I’ll just stay right here,” she said to herself with a strong voice. Even louder she said, “Maybe I’ll just stay right here and scream.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

After a long and loud yell with all her might she sat in silence. She looked around the inside of the runabout. As she let her focus drift again to the outside’s enormity of space she had a thought; a very real thought, a very vivid thought. “What if I point this runabout toward
Earth and never look back.”

She knew that she could never make it back to
Earth. Her little space ship wasn’t made for such a great distance. She knew she didn’t have food in her emergency kit to last more than a day. She knew a great many reasons why she shouldn’t just turn the power back on and speed through space until the black void swallowed her up.

She pushed a button and turned the appropriate dials and listened to the hum of her little spaceship. For a moment she didn’t care about anything anymore.

Then it happened, her anger, the only feeling left inside her, swelled into another even louder scream. She screamed until the tears surfaced and flooded her face like a hot and continuous waterfall. She drew her skinny knees tightly under her chin with a tight hug. She cried until her head was clear again.

She opened her emergency doctor’s bag and drew out a clean cloth. She wiped her face and straightened her body in the single seat of the runabout. She waited a moment longer, savoring this moment when no one was yelling at her, no one was expecting anything of her; no one was making her feel stuck. She took a deep breath and did the only thing she knew to do. She pointed her runabout toward the
only person that might save her from her miserable life. She headed toward her evening date with Rhys.

At a restaurant on the edge of the shops district
, Rhys was waiting with a smile. He offered his elbow as they followed the waiter to their table. They laughed and talked. She began to be so relaxed with him that she let herself dream of a future.

“And I think I have a real chance of being head of neurosurgery if I take that fellowship after exams. You’ve got to come to the new hospital for your fellowship. They’re already seeing some patients there because the hospital facility was just completed
. The asteroid is already being mined to create the new colonizing ship, the ‘Arcadia’.”

“Well I don’t know,” Darcy said with a smile
, which she’d caught from Rhys’ infectious exuberance. “I may just stay here.”

“But you have to finish school,” he said.

“Well I plan to do that, silly,” she stated with a relaxed laugh.

“But even the school is moving to the Arcadia’s Companion Hospital; The Celestial Hope.”

“What?” Darcy gasped.

“I thought you knew,” Rhys said with surprise.

“What’s going to happen to the Eden’s Companion Hospital?”

“I told you, it’s just being left here for all the workers, mainly the miners, which built the Eden.”

“But what about my mother?” Darcy asked.

“She could probably stay or she could go to Celestial Hope with you,” Rhys said.

Darcy gave a sigh.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Rhys asked.

“I just wonder about a great many things sometimes.”

Rhys added more white wine to her glass and then positioned himself comfortably in his chair
, waiting; ready to listen to Darcy.

He offered her space to share her heart, he did it quietly, respectfull
y; all with an interested smile.

“I don’t think my mother will leave this place,” Darcy began. “I’m almost certain she won’t.”

“But that shouldn’t affect you,” Rhys said casually. “You can still come visit her.”

“If that were only true,” Darcy said.

“But you can’t stay here just because your mother doesn’t want to leave. I mean you’re twenty-one and still living with your mother. If the school hadn’t been here you would’ve left for medical school on the moon or even the one back on Earth at age fifteen, like every other kid going into the medical field.”

“You really don’t understand,” Darcy began. “I wouldn’t have gone into the medical field if there hadn’t been a school here. I wouldn’t have gone into anything except maybe marriage. There’s little else my mother would allow. She only allowed me to attend medical school because all of Dad’s sisters had been nurses and he told her it was a noble profession. She thought her friends would think highly of her if she sent her kids to medical school.”

“But your brother wasn’t a doctor was he?” Rhys asked.

“No he finished his core studies and left for university on
Earth. He’s stronger and more adventurous,” she said with a smile that didn’t resemble happiness or joy in any way. It was almost an embarrassing, shamed, nervous curve of her mouth.

“But you can’t seriously be thinking of staying here when the medical school is…you’ve just got to go. What will happen to you?”

“What does it matter?” Darcy said feeling the familiar emotion of being completely beaten.

“It matters because you’ll never be certified if you don’t finish the program,” Rhys reasoned with a chuckle.

Darcy dropped her eyes as she swirled the pale liquid in her glass.

Rhys laughed at the absurdity of Darcy’s consideration to quit school.

His laughter faded and still Darcy swirled her wine.

“You can’t be serious,” Rhys said with an appalling glare.

Round and round the liquid circled inside the glass.

“Can’t I say anything to you, to help you make the right decision?” Rhys said.

Darcy sat the glass down firmly but her eyes remained downcast.

“What if I ask you to come with me?” Rhys said softly.

“Huh?” Darcy said, jerking her head up.

Rhys began steadily as he explained. “I would really hate to think that just when I got up my nerve to ask you out…I mean…we’ve known each other for a long time and I wish I would have told you sooner,” Rhys tilted his head as his words became intense. “You’ve got to come. I don’t want to be three-hundred-million miles away from you,” he said as he thrust his hand out to show distance. “I just really want you to come…with me.”

Darcy’s eyes were glassy as she delicately wiped a tear away with the back of her finger.

“Okay,” she said softly.

“What? You will?” Rhys said as he caught his chest. “I thought I was going to have to convince your mother to let you come or something.”

Darcy looked across the table at Rhys. She was not smiling.

“Ah! Really?” he said as he scrunched up his face. “Alright, bring her on.”

That night Darcy slept for the first time in years without having nightmares. Not even her mother’s tapping fingernails on her door could irritate the song out of her heart. She was dressed by the time her mother tapped at the door to wake her but then again, she was always up with her alarm though her mother felt the need to ‘wake’ her daughter and tell her how much time she had before she needed to leave for work. “You don’t want to be late,” she would say in her syrupy sing-song voice.

Darcy had never been late a day in her life.

“Your breakfast is on the table, Darce,” her mother said with a fake sweet tone.