A Cosmic Kind of Love(80)
“Of course.”
“Did you send the chapters to Scott?”
“Uh, not yet. Tomorrow.”
Hallie sat up. “Are you sure? Because you know you don’t have to send him anything.”
I smiled in reassurance. “I’m just being a perfectionist. But I want to send it to him.”
Nodding, she sank back against the couch instead of on me. Between that and the fact that she kept shooting me glances out of the corner of her eye, I knew she wanted to say something.
“What is it?”
Hallie chewed on her lower lip in thought.
My brows drew together. “You can talk to me about anything.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I have to ask, and I really want an honest answer. I don’t want you to think about us or anything else, just what’s in your gut. . . .”
“Okay?”
“Do you . . . Do you want to go on another space mission? I know you didn’t when you got back, but with some time and distance, I thought maybe—”
“No.” I cut her off gently. And I meant it. “I have no doubts in that regard. I know with certainty I don’t want to go back.”
“But in your videos, you seemed to love it, and I can’t get that out of my head. I’m afraid you’re missing something without it.”
“Hallie, I loved my time in space. I loved training for it. I loved my crew, and I miss them, and I miss the buzz and atmosphere at NASA. I miss being a part of something truly important to humanity’s progress. I do miss all of that, and I would never trade that life-altering experience for anything. But I don’t want to go back into space, and here’s why: that first experience can never be replicated. So that’s one reason. And two, and this is me being completely honest, I didn’t love being an astronaut enough to deal with the toll continued space exploration would take on my body.”
Her expression slackened with surprise. “How bad of a toll?”
“It can be bad,” I told her honestly. “Never mind the fact that we’re exposed to radiation, increasing the risk of cancer. There are other health risks. We exercise up there to slow the process, and it helps, but we still come home with a reduction in bone density and in muscle mass and strength. We can build that back up. My bone density is almost back to its normal levels. I check in with my doc every couple of weeks. I should hopefully be back to normal in another few months.”
“What? How did I not know this?”
“It’s not a big deal,” I promised. “And I got my muscle and strength back up to where I was before I went on mission with a lot of therapy and hard work when I returned to Earth. All of that is fixable. What isn’t is the ramifications on our cardiovascular system.”
“What do you mean?”
“Zero gravity changes the way the blood flows around our body. Our blood pressure gets very low. My motor skills were off when I returned home, and I felt faint a lot. I had to get a transfusion of normal saline to get my blood pressure back up to where it needed to be. The big thing I was warned about and advised of, as we all are, is that over time we can develop heart and blood vessel problems that you’d expect in someone much older. That increases our chances of heart disease and strokes. I also didn’t wear glasses before I went up into space. When I got back, I had blurriness that I didn’t have before, and now I need reading glasses, and who knows if that’s permanent or not.” I shrugged.
Hallie processed this, slack-jawed. “But . . . but there are men who go up there all the time.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “And they are very aware of the risks and what they’re putting their bodies through in the name of science. We need to know what space travel does to our bodies so we can figure out ways to stop it in order to travel farther into space, in order to get to Mars, for instance.”
“But you don’t want to risk it.”
I smirked. “I know it’s not heroic to admit, but I didn’t like how I felt when I got back. Up there, zero gravity is amazing and exhilarating, and I have never slept better in my life. But when I got back, my body felt foreign. It wouldn’t do what I needed it to do and, yeah, I worked hard to find my normal, but it took some time. For someone like me, someone as physical as I am, I found that daunting. It was the reality of what they’d warned me about before I went up. And in all honesty, and I admitted this a little in my later videos, I wanted to come home by month four. I missed life on Earth.” I chuckled at the thought because I never thought I’d say it after the shit I’d seen in the air force. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d take that job over being a fighter pilot any day of the week. I’m always going to be a scientist over a soldier. So, yeah, I miss NASA. I do. I miss the mission. But I don’t miss space as much as an astronaut should.”
Hallie reached out to stroke my cheek, and I leaned into her touch. “You amaze me. You are heroic. And you’ll find your way, Chris. I know it.”
Words that felt like too much too soon to share bubbled up inside me, and so I kissed her, hard, before they poured out of me.
Hallie
I was still reeling from what Chris had divulged about the toll on his body from his time in space as he switched the volume up on the TV and we settled back in. Barely paying attention, all I could think about was how selfishly glad I was he wasn’t going into space. Not just because I’d miss the hell out of him and fear for his life every second of every day, but because I’d also worry constantly about what it was doing to his body.