The Astronaut's Wife (4 page)

4
The space shuttle
Victory
flew noiselessly though the sky, dropping thousands of feet in a matter of seconds until it was over the lush green landscape of Florida.

Jillian watched the vehicle intently while listening to the dispassionate voice of the pilot of the
Victory
reporting from the flight deck of the spacecraft. He was a man that Jillian did not know well and she would not normally have recognized his voice. “Thirty feet at
235
knots. Twenty at 225
_{. . .}
ten feet at 220. Eight at 215
_{. . .}
five feet at 210 knots
_{. . .}
almost down now
_{. . .}
two feet at 200. One foot. Zero. Ground Control, this is
Victory,
we are down.”

From somewhere in the building Jillian could hear the sounds of cheers and applause. The pilot, however, was not celebrating—not yet. He still had a very large vehicle traveling at a very great rate of speed to slow down and bring to a stop.

“One hundred and fifty knots,” he intoned.
“One hundred knots. Eighty knots. Sixty-five knots, 30, 15, 10 knots
_.
.. We are stopped. Ground Control, this is
Victory.
The voice seemed to lighten slightly. “This is
Victory,
come and get us.”

Almost as the words were broadcast a cavalcade of emergency vehicles raced out onto the tarmac strip of the runway, the red and blue lights on their roofs bright and sharp, glancing off the gray of the dawn. There were two ambulances, one each for the injured men, as well as a phalanx of other trucks that Jillian could not identify.

A feed from a news reporter came out of the monitor, as a bulletin was made to network headquarters in New York City.

_.
“...unprecedented actions on the part of NASA to take care of its own. The
Victory
was just a few hundred thousand miles into a three-million-mile mission when the accident occurred and the decision was made almost instantly to cut the mission by eighty percent to bring the injured men home. You have just seen a rare dawn landing of a space shuttle. NASA and the two injured astronauts were lucky that there was a weather window open so soon. It’s something of a miracle
_{. . .“}

Jillian’s only idea of a miracle had nothing to do with weather windows. The miracle was that her husband had been hurt far out in space and now he was on earth again. Now she wanted to see him, to see for herself just how miraculous this had all been.

The reporter continued.
“The two astronauts, Armacost and Streck will be medivaced to a hospital facility here on the base...”

 

The hospital was as calm and as white as the conference room and the same fluorescent hum seemed to have followed Jillian here like a fly she could not get rid of.

Jillian stood at one end of the corridor with the doctor taking care of her husband. At the far end of the corridor stood Natalie Streck with the doctor who was overseeing treatment of Alex. Between the two, in the middle of the corridor, still feeling like a fish out of water, stood Sherman Reese.

Jillian hung on the doctor’s every word. He was young and seemed competent—plus he was reporting nothing but good news. Her spirits rose with every word.
“He’s breathing on his own,” the doctor said. “His vital functions are good and strong. As far as we can tell, there has been no brain damage. It should only be a matter of time before your husband regains consciousness.”
Jillian nodded, and then looked down the corridor to Natalie. Her doctor had his hand on her shoulder, and Jillian could tell that the news she was getting was not so good.
“What about Alex?” Jillian asked.
The doctor sighed and looked uncomfortable. “Captain Streck is an older man than your husband. There was a tremendous strain put on his heart
_“
Jillian looked down the hail again and caught
Natalie looking back at her, but her eyes were blank with grief.

She had been awake all night, she had been put through an emotional wringer, but nothing would stop her from sitting at Spencer’s bedside, a vigil she knew she had to keep.

Spencer lay inert in his bed, an intravenous tube plugged into the crook of his arm, the monotonous drip the only movement in the room. She fought the fatigue as best she could, but gradually her eyes began to close. The narcotic effects of stress and relief flooded into her body and despite her resolve she felt herself giving into sleep. But the instant her eyes closed, she heard a whisper. For a moment, she wondered if she had dreamed it, then she heard it again.

“Jillian?”
Instantly, Jillian’s eyes opened wide.
“Jillian?” Spencer sounded unsure of himself, as if not quite certain of her name. Jillian stood up and went to the bed, leaning over the bed, looking into Spencer’s eyes. He

looked’ back, gazing into her eyes, as if reacquainting himself with her perfect features. Spencer smiled slightly. “I told you
_{. . . “}
he said groggily. “I told you I’d call.” A great wave of happiness washed through her and she laughed and cried at the same time and

threw her arms around him. “Never,” she gasped through her tears,
“never
leave me again.” Spencer nodded against the pillow. “I promise,” he said with a little smile.
“Never, Spencer,” she said, her voice almost stern. “Do you hear me?”
“I promise,” he said, trying to raise an arm, as if swearing an oath. “I promise, Jillian. I will

never leave you again.”

Their faces were close and he raised his head and kissed her, first on the lips and then on the warm corner of her neck, as if learning her contours again, tasting her, savoring the smoothness and smell of her skin. His lips felt electric on her skin.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, a little smile on his face. “I mean, I know how you hate hospitals.”
This time Jillian laughed out loud, luxuriating in the rapturous delight of his return.
Spencer’s face darkened. “How’s Alex doing?” he asked. “Is he all right?”
The look on her face told him all he needed to know. “Not good,” she said sadly. “The doctors say that there was a terrible strain on his heart.”
Spencer seemed to wince in pain and he closed his eyes. “Is Natalie with him?”
Jillian nodded. “Yes. She’s there.,”
Spencer nodded. “That’s good,” he said.
“That’s good
_{. . .“}
Then he seemed to slip into a peaceful sleep.

Alex Streck had been consigned to the Ultra Intensive Care Unit and lay unconscious, inert on the bed. He had more than a simple intravenous tube in his arm. His chest was dotted with pressure pads,
and a bank of machines monitored every breath and nerve in his body. They whirred and clicked and beeped softly, mechanical guardians that never slept.

Natalie Streck, clothed from foot to neck in a clean suit, slept soundly in a chair at his side. Her face was gray and lined, her mouth slightly open, dead to the world. She was sleeping so deeply that she did not notice what was happening to her husband.

Without warning, his eyes began to flicker and move beneath his eyelids, as if he had slipped into a massive rapid eye movement cycle. Then his cracked, dried lips began to move.
“Spencer?” he whispered, his voice dry and

,,

 

raspy. “Jesus Christ, Spencer
_{. . .}

Natalie did not hear her husband, but the monitors began to come alive. The beeping became faster and more urgent as his heart rate accelerated alarmingly. His respiration rate shot up and a sweat broke on his brow. His eyes remained closed.

“What is
that?”
Streck’s voice was full of alarm and fear. “Spencer, do you
feel that?”
The machines picked up the rising agitation and began racing faster and faster. “What is that? Oh God!” Streck thrashed as best he could in the bed as if trying to run away from his own nightmare. “Oh God, what is that? What’s happening?”

Suddenly, Alex Streck’s eyes snapped open, but they were unseeing, as if he thought himself in an-
other place. “Jesus!” He almost managed to yell this time. “What the hell is that?”

The monitors hit the red zone and an alarm split the air, the loud howl wakening Natalie instantly. She jumped to her feet and rushed to the bedside of her husband.
“Alex? Alex? What’s wrong?”
The machinery kicked up another notch; a second alarm joined the first. Lights flickered and rolls of graph paper, scratched with a crazy quilt of ink, began to pour out of the mouth of one of the monitors.
“It hurts!” Alex wailed. “Oh God, it hurts!”
“Alex!”
Natalie screamed.
“Wake up!”
Somehow, Alex found enough breath in his weakened body to let out a terrible howl.
“Jesus! It hurts so much!”
At that moment, the door flew open and a team of doctors and nurses swept into the room.
A nurse pounced on Natalie and tried to pull her away. “He’s in pain,” Natalie yelled. “He said something and he’s in pain.”

‘‘

“Come with me, Mrs. Streck. Please
_{. . .}
“He’s dying!” wailed Natalie. “Save him:”
“Let the doctors do their work,” the nurse insisted, pulling her away from the bed. ‘‘Oh, Alex!’’
In the bed, Streck began to thrash wildly. A doctor and two more nurses fought to keep him

down on the bed. Alex’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body arched off the bed as if a million volts were running through every nerve, muscle, and synapse in his tortured body. Halfformed words broke from his spit-flecked lips as he struggled to say something, as if he was desperate to speak.

“Jesus, hold him,” said one of the doctors, gritting his teeth. “Don’t let him break out.”

A nurse handed an enormous hypodermic needle to the doctor and without hesitation he jammed the horrific instrument into Streck’s chest and jammed down the plunger, shooting the liquid deep into the astronaut’s body.

The monitors were screaming—all except the one that measured Streck’s heart rate. In a sickening monotone, the machine shut down and flat lined. Abruptly Alex stopped thrashing in the bed, his body falling flat and rigid.

“He’s going,” said one of the nurses matter-of-factly. “His vitals are dropping.” “Not yet, not yet,” said the doctor firmly. “Get ready to defibrillate, nurse.
_“
The nurse grabbed the portable defibrillator and pulled it to the side of the bed. “Paddles,” the doctor ordered. He grabbed the paddles and placed them against Streck’s chest. The nurse watched the machine. “Charging
_{. . .}
Go!”
“Clear,” the doctor ordered.
He gave the dying man an unholy blast of electricity right over the heart, Alex’s body arched

tight again but the heart rate remained at a sickening flat line.
“Still at zero,” the nurse announced.
“Again!” yelled the doctor.
Another powerful charge of electricity surged through Alex Streck’s body, convulsing him

once again.

 

No one noticed that Jillian was watching this terrible tableau from the open door. Leaning heavily against his wife was Spencer. Jillian seemed horrified at what she was seeing. Spencer seemed curiously detached from the proceedings.

Another zap of electricity went through Alex— and as Alex’s body spasmed he opened his eyes and looked directly at Spencer. Jillian saw it, the two men staring at one another and all the action in the room seemed to have stopped, the frantic sound in the room fading away. Spencer looked into Alex’s eyes and nodded to him, a slight move of the head, as if he was saying “okay,” giving Alex some kind of permission.

In that instant, motion and sound seemed to return to the room. Alex closed his eyes calmly and the heart monitor began to climb up from the flat line, working its way back to a weak but steady pace. The doctor and his nurses sighed.

“He’s back,” the doctor whispered. “We got him. It was close, but we got him back.”

A moment or two later a nurse discovered Spencer and shooed him back to bed, clucking like a hen as she returned him to his room. Once Spencer had returned to his room a doctor entered, administered a sedative, and sent Spencer off to a very deep and dreamless sleep.

Then the doctor turned to Jillian. “There’s nothing you can do here, Mrs. Armacost. He’ll be out all night. Why don’t you go home and get a good night’s sleep
_{. . .“}

But there was no sleep for Jillian that night. She tossed and turned in her bed for a while, then threw aside the covers, pulled on a robe, and walked to the French doors and looked out into the still night. The sky was dappled with stars, white points of light that, on another night she would have found pretty and reassuring. Not tonight. Tonight they looked incomprehensible and tinged with evil.

5

After a couple of days of what doctors always called “observation,” Spencer Armacost was released from the hospital, having been awarded a completely clean bill of health. In accordance with hospital policy, however, Spencer Armacost—clean bill of health and all—had to leave the facility not under his own steam but in a wheelchair. Jillian wheeled him to the front door and as the double doors swept open Spencer took a deep breath of the sweet, humid Florida air.

“That’s good,” he said.
“There’s lots more out there,” said Jillian smiling.
_.
Spencer twisted his wheelchair seat and looked over his shoulder at his wife. He smiled

broadly.
“You’ll never guess what you missed, Jillian,” he said. “A very big event.”
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“The President called.”
Jillian brought the wheelchair to an abrupt halt. “The President?” she asked. “Of the United States of America,” Spencer filled in, as if to distinguish him from other

presidents. “He called this morning and told us that me and Alex were true American heroes. He wants us to go to Washington, D.C. so we can shake his hand in the Rose Garden. How do you like that? Being married to a true American hero.”

“I love it,” said Jillian simply.
“I figured.”
“What did you say to the President?”
“Well,” said Spencer, “I said that we would not have had a chance to be great American heroes if he and Congress hadn’t cut our budget and forced us to put a piece of shit exploding satellite into orbit up there.”