Samantha was dischargedtwo days later and spent the next few days doing her best to catch up on work. It seemed like an impossible task. She wasn’t sleeping well and was tired all the time. Typing with her healing fingers was uncomfortable despite ibuprofen and the aloe gel Kristi had given her. Worse, her body couldn’t tolerate extreme cold, not even with all of her layers. The moment she stepped outside, she began to shiver, her frostbitten skin to ache. She had no choice but to operate the telescope remotely, doing what she could from the science lab on station and getting help from the other astronomers—Kazem, Greg, Bai, and Nick—with tasks that needed to be performed in the Dark Sector Lab.
Everyone on station seemed to know what had happened. They had been incredibly kind to her. They got her coffee, brought her snacks, carried her tray to the dish pit. Analise Weber, a young woman she barely knew who worked in the galley, gave her a pair of hand-knitted socks to keep her feet warm.
Jason had come up to her in the galley to apologize. “Sorry I was such an asshole. I’m really glad you’re going to be okay.”
“Thank you, Jason.”
She saved her breaks and free time to be with Thor.
Kristi and Decker said he was recovering quickly, but she knew he was frustrated.
“Go easy on yourself,” she’d told him this morning when the pain of his physical therapy exercises had left him tight-jawed and angry. “Three days ago, you almost died. I know you’re not used to physical limitations, and pain really sucks. But you can’t storm your way through healing. Your body needs time.”
Kristi had ducked inside the curtain, holding a tiny paper cup with two pills in it. “Or he could take his oxycodone an hour before starting his exercises like his excellent nurse suggested.”
“Fine!” Thor had snatched the cup from her hand, tossed the pills back, and swallowed them without water.
Kristi had winked at Samantha. “For a Viking, he’s a teddy bear.”
It was both touching and distressing to know that what he suffered now, he suffered for her sake.
But the hardest part of Samantha’s day came at bedtime. Every night, she had nightmares, not just once a night but two, three, or four times. It had gotten to the point now where she dreaded going to bed.
After supper, she tried procrastinating in the lounge, watching some weird B-movie with a few of the others until it was late. Then she made her way to the infirmary, hoping Kristi would let her visit with Thor—or sit beside him if he was asleep. When she reached the infirmary, she discovered that Kristi had already gone to bed in the adjacent sleep room and Thor was awake and sitting up, reading something on his phone.
He smiled when he saw her. “Hey, what are you doing up?”
“I just wanted to check on you.”
He arched an eyebrow. “At midnight?”
She leaned down, kissed him. “Why not?”
He set his phone aside and took her hand. “You’re having trouble sleeping. Nightmares?”
She nodded, sat. “It’s not like most bad dreams, where you wake up and then go back to sleep. They come again and again.”
“Have you talked to Decker or Kristi? That’s post-traumatic stress.”
She shook her head. “It seems stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s real.” He seemed to study her. “Can you tell me about it?”
“Do you think that will help?”
“It can’t hurt. You need to talk to someone.”
Samantha drew a breath, steeled herself. “In one of the dreams, I’m trapped beneath the station alone and my body starts turning into ice. I try to get away, but the ice creeps up from my fingers until my entire body is encased like a piece of fruit stuck in an ice cube. I can’t run. I can’t scream. I just lie there, terrified and trapped in the ice, until I wake up.”
He took her hand, held it fast. “That’s not far off from what almost happened. I’m so sorry, Samantha.”
“The other dream is worse.”
He didn’t push her, but waited.
“You and I are in the ice tunnels running from Steve, who has a knife stuck in his abdomen. He should be dead, but he’s not. He chases us and then shoots you. You fall to the ice, and your blood spreads around you.” Tears filled her eyes, her throat going tight, the horror of the dream only too real. “I try to gather it up so I can put it back inside you. I claw at the ice, trying to get it all, but… Then I wake up feeling sick.”
“Hey, come here.” He drew her against his chest with his good arm, kissed her hair. “I’m safe. We’re both safe.”