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Claire swept through the main corridor, sprinting past the operators’ workstations, her breathing too ragged to answer Topaz’s cry of “Did you find it?”
She ran through the final corridor to the medical bay, rushing to the quarantine room and pulling on the door.
It didn’t move.
“Colton!” she yelled.
He was already unlocking the door from the inside.
He yanked it open, and she ran past him to Henry, removing the needle from the container and squirting out the air bubble.
She glanced up at his IV, shut off the flow of the medication-laced one, and injected the antidote into the second bag.
She put the needle down on the table by his bed and backed up, watching Henry’s monitors. It’s not—Claire almost bumped into Colton as he moved closer to the bed.
They looked at each other, and she caught the question in his eyes. She turned back toward the monitors. Why isn’t anything changing?
Dr. Hampton appeared in the doorway as Henry’s breathing slowed, and Claire felt her own chest tighten as she watched him. This can’t be happening. I met him less than 12 hours ago. He can’t just die now.
Henry was the one who’d wanted to believe her.
Why wasn’t she facing this instead of him?
Why was he the one struggling for oxygen?
And then his breathing stopped.
Claire couldn’t look at the monitors. Couldn’t watch them tell her what she already knew.
A half-choked sob reached her ears, and she turned to Colton. Tears streamed down his face as he looked at his friend.
Without thinking, she took his arm. “Colton, I’m so sorry.”
He held back another sob. “You shouldn’t apologize, Claire, you tried to save him—”
A groan interrupted him, and Colton darted to Henry’s side, a silent, pained-looking Dr. Hampton close behind. “Henry—?”
Henry’s eyes opened. He took a shaky breath, and then another. “…Colton, what happened? Are you okay?”
Colton laughed, startling all four of them. “I’m fine, Henry. I’m great.”
As she swiped the tears from her own eyes, Claire saw him glance at the ceiling, and she could have sworn he mouthed, “Thank you.”
____________________________________________________________________________
“You should be resting.” Dr. Hampton folded her arms.
“It’s been a day,” Henry answered, “and all the tests came back negative.”
“Still.”
“Dr. Hampton—Autumn”—Henry caught her very slight smile—“thank you for everything you did to save my life.”
Her smile faded. “You don’t need to thank me. It’s my job, number one, and number two, I didn’t do much of anything.”
“You figured out the problem and administered medication.”
“My uncle would be proud.”
“And you cared.” Henry looked her in the eyes. “I—heard you and Colton talking.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “Maybe we could keep that conversation just between us, then. I asked Colton the same thing.”
“Then he will. And so will I.”
____________________________________________________________________________
Claire felt the eyes of the off-duty station guards, engineers, and doctors as she entered the rec area to meet the others for breakfast. In spite of yesterday, these people still didn’t trust her. She could feel it.
She thought about what happened. Her time with Henry and Colton had been cut short by her stepping out to report what happened through her CID, and then she and Alex had been summoned to the general’s office for another discussion of rebel activity.
And poor Alex and Topaz didn’t even get to see their friend until later that afternoon, after the three of them completed a patrol.
It was only one flight around the station, and then another one near the moon, but during that time the other pilots and operators had learned of the part she played in saving Henry’s life, and they’d had nothing but smiles and respectful nods for her ever since.
It wouldn’t last.
She knew that, just watching the behavior of the others at the station.
Claire couldn’t tell what they were thinking, but she knew how much they distrusted her, how much they’d like to remove her from their station, from their lives, if they could.
She was sure, if they could get in touch with the rebels, they’d be more than happy to give her back to them, to let them—
“Claire.” Colton’s quiet voice broke through the beginnings of a horrible memory, pulling her back to the present where she stood between tables.
He stood a few paces in front of her, and when she looked at him, he gestured to a table for five off in a corner. “Want to sit?”
Why are you talking to me? Don’t you know everyone’s marked you now?
Without answering, she hurried over and dropped into a chair.
He sat across from her.
“You shouldn’t sit with me,” she muttered, “everyone will hate you.”
“I’d have to care what they thought to be worried about that.”
She hesitated, then whispered, “Thanks.” She let her breath out, tried to still her trembling hands. “For—for saying something back there. You have no idea what you just did.”
He gave her a sad smile. “I think I do.”
She shuddered.
“Claire”—his voice pulled her back again—“I didn’t get a chance to say it before, but I’m sorry for pulling my weapon on you in the medical bay.”
She felt her mouth twitch into a smile, now remembering her conversation with Topaz less than 48 hours before. “You didn’t know, Colton. And actually—I appreciate how you try to protect your friends.”
“Well, thank you.”
“How’s Henry, if you know?”
“He’s okay.” Colton swallowed hard. “Thank you for finding the antidote and getting it to him in time.”
“You’re—you’re welcome. Henry is—he matters to me too.”
“I know.” Colton smiled. “If you don’t mind telling me, how did you know how to use the IVs?”
“Well, I wanted to study medicine, so whenever I could, I snuck over to the medical section of whatever training facility I was at.” She smiled at a memory.
“Thank you for doing it.”
She glanced around the rec area, trying to see if any of the others had arrived yet. “So, did you get to talk with Henry today? Or did you only have time to ask how he was doing?”
“We had a few minutes. He told me he was doing fine. He managed not to let on about”—Colton stopped, as if he’d said too much.
That would be a first for him. He measures his words almost as much as I try to measure mine. No. Maybe more.
“Is he having aftereffects?”
“Not…physical ones,” Colton said slowly.
He doesn’t trust me to know. Even after—or does he somehow know about my nightmares? And he thinks my hearing about Henry’s problems will make it even worse for me?
Colton fiddled with a ration packet.
“The memories may never leave him,” Claire said suddenly, “but he has you, and Alex, and Topaz to fall back on when he needs to. I won’t tell you to be patient with him if he gets upset or otherwise reacts to what happened, or tell you to listen when he needs you to, because you’ll already be doing those things.
“But I will tell you that there may be times in the future, long after today, when he might need you to be there and do those things again. So—I guess, just try to be ready.”
Colton gave her another sad smile. “Thank you…It would surprise me if those memories ever did go away completely…I’m sorry you know about that personally.”
She tried to shrug it off, then stopped. “Thanks. It—means a lot to me that you all care. I just—I can’t—I don’t—”
“…You don’t feel it’s safe to accept it?”
She shot a look at him. “Not for me—it’s not that.” She fumbled for an explanation. “It’s—I—Henry was almost killed.”
“Not because of you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re the one who figured out where Hughes was. You’re the one who got the antidote from him—you do excellent work with an electrical pistol, by the way. Alex said the station guards had no trouble from him—but what happened to Henry was in no way your fault.” Colton looked at her. “Is that…why you didn’t come back to see Henry last night?”
She looked away. “How did you know I didn’t?”
“Topaz told me. She said Henry asked about you.”
Claire looked at her lap. “Oh.”
Colton put the ration down and rested his arms on the table. “Can I tell you a story?”
She glanced up at him. “Uh…Sure.”
“Only a week after this station’s first battle, there was an engineering call to the medical bay. Something was wrong with a computer used to keep medical records and supplement dispensing information.
“An engineer had just come back from another call, so he got put on it. And he met this doctor who was kind, warm-hearted, friendly—but the engineer didn’t see that at the time.
“He also didn’t see it when a certain pilot and a certain operator were kind to him. Because this engineer had seen his father, who also repaired things—a freelance worker—do a series of repairs for this pastor. A good Christian man, if you know the type. And this pastor cheated him on the bill. The father didn’t receive a dime.
“And I don’t know if the collection agency the father went to considered it scrap money—which it certainly wasn’t to the family—and just didn’t want to go after it, or if the agency somehow had personal ties to the pastor—I don’t know.
“But that instance stuck with the engineer, and so to him, the doctor’s quiet offer of friendship looked like another scam, as did the offers made by the pilot and the operator.
“But, of course, the doctor didn’t give up. I think he…I think he sensed the engineer’s loneliness and knew how much he needed someone to care. Sensed that, even after eight years of separation from his parents—save for the letters they exchanged, and the video chats they had—and eight years of ostracization from his fellow engineering cadets, he hadn’t been numbed to the feeling of isolation…that he was desperate for a friend.
“Of course, the doctor was bound to run into the engineer again, and each time he did, the offer still stood. Until finally, the engineer snapped. He told the doctor he was content to be on his own, that he preferred it to being part of an unsteady friendship in which he would constantly be waiting for the other shoe to drop. Know what the doctor said?”
“…What?”
“Henry told me, ‘Where I grew up, we didn’t wear our shoes inside the house. We left them at the door.’” Colton cleared his throat. “And that’s the story of how we became friends. You…you understand his point?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“To a lot of people, it might not sound like anything, becoming friends with someone. And I’m happy for them that that’s the case. For me, it felt like taking a huge risk. But I’ve never regretted it, for either of us. And I’m very good at regretting things.”
Claire snorted without meaning to. “What do you have to regret?”
She caught the flicker of sorrow in his eyes as he returned her gaze. “Eight years ago, I aced a test, then got on a bus.”
She dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you to apologize for. You know the pain of separation as well as I do––better than I do.”
They sat in silence.
Claire glanced over Colton’s shoulder and caught a few people staring at them. Their steely eyes met hers, and her heart sank for Colton in spite of what he said.
As if feeling their eyes, Colton turned around, but he barely spared them a glance as his gaze swept the room, stopping at the entrance as if waiting for his friends.
He spoke again. “Not every house is a safe place, even if you can see the shoes by the door. Even when it feels like a safe bet, trusting other people is always a gamble.” He turned back to her. “But here…there are some people worth betting on.”
Thank you for reading “Substance” (Part 3). Read Part 1 of the next episode “The Birthday” here.
The previous installment of this series is “Substance” (Part 2). Read it here.
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Note: Everything I write is written without AI—even if I do use a lot of em dashes.