by Laura Lam
Naomi knew before the doctor said anything that she was losing the baby, and that she was bleeding enough that the doctor was worried. Instead of a conversation where the doctor walked her through her procedures and made sure she was sure of her decision, the abortion done on the plastic-lined teenage bed of her old room, Valerie drove her to the hospital herself. Naomi’s memories fractured at that point, from the pain and the drugs that followed as soon as she was through the double doors.
She remembered the chill of the metal forceps. The coolness of the jelly for the ultrasound. The same doctor was in the hospital, waiting for her. Her filter mask was discarded, anonymity gone in the shape of her nose and mouth, the stitched name tag declaring her Dr. Pillai. Her eyes were sharp with a warning not to let on that Naomi had just seen her at Valerie’s home. It was an act of trust, for the doctor to see to Naomi herself rather than passing her on to someone else. Naomi groaned with the pain, a low and ugly animal sound. She still nodded her understanding.
Naomi listened as the doctor said that her embryo was a blighted ovum, which sounded strangely poetic to her. She’d treated how many plants in her life that had been affected by blight? Leaf curl, or the fire blight of pears, apples, or raspberries. Fungal or bacterial pathogens burrowing deep into healthy plants or fruit. Seven weeks into her pregnancy, the gestational sac was there, but there was no sign of the foetal pole on her ultrasound. The egg had never developed into an embryo. It was lost.
Yet the sac had still implanted on to the uterus, and for all the blood, it wasn’t releasing. A missed miscarriage, they called it.
Dr. Pillai walked her through her options. Naomi could go home, rest, and hope it eventually loosened and released on its own. If it still hadn’t shifted in two weeks, she’d have to return and have a dilation and curettage—essentially, a legal abortion, as the embryo had been established as no longer viable. Naomi would pretend that she’d never even known she was pregnant and was in town only to see Valerie.
Naomi opted for an immediate D&C. She couldn’t wait for two weeks while NASA training continued. She wanted this over and done. Her body had beaten her to the inevitable conclusion. That was all.
Valerie had hovered, then disappeared, probably to call Cole. Would he fly out? Did Naomi want him to?
Naomi swallowed pills to soften her cervix. Valerie returned, asking if she should stay, but Naomi shook her head. Valerie gave her hand a quick squeeze, told her Cole was flying out, and then she was gone.
Naomi lay on the bed in the hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and the psychosomatic scent of blood. She wished Valerie hadn’t told her Cole was on the way. They’d put her under, and Naomi couldn’t wait for the room to go soft, like she was wrapped in eiderdown. Her tongue was dry. She kept asking for water, but the nurse gently told her no. Not yet.
There was another exam, the feeling of the doctor’s hands on Naomi’s belly, between her legs. As the medicine took hold, all grew fuzzier. Naomi floated away as the doctor opened her up, reached within, and withdrew a tiny cluster of cells that were already dead. In five minutes, it was gone. Naomi’s life trajectory had been realigned to where it was seven weeks earlier.
Naomi came to gradually. Valerie had paid for a private room, and Naomi was absurdly grateful. She lay there, a heating pad on her belly, her eyes on the ceiling.
She would have gone through with the original abortion. She knew that. She wouldn’t have regretted it. Nevertheless, she was oddly relieved the choice had been taken from her. What had happened to her seemed selfish and not at the same time. If the condom hadn’t broken, she never would have had to ask herself these questions. But it had.
Naomi never asked Valerie how much it cost to have Dr. Pillai come to her house. Or how much the visit to the hospital cost, paid out of pocket so Naomi wouldn’t have to go through NASA healthcare and potentially answer questions she didn’t wish to. Naomi was all too aware that most women didn’t have the access or resources she did. Some of the financially privileged ones, if they needed an abortion, could go up to Canada, or down to Mexico. Or fly to Europe and pretend they were having a restful holiday near Lake Como. For so many, it was out of reach. Child number one, then an IUD, and that would be that.
Dr. Pillai came to her, first thing the next morning, alone. She said that the blood tests indicated that she had previously undiagnosed polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS. That explained the irregular periods that often disappeared for months at a time. Naomi had always put it down to stress and the amount of exercise she did, but it turned out her hormones were off-kilter. Slightly higher androgens. It’d been surprising she’d fallen pregnant in the first place—often women with PCOS had fertility issues. Dr. Pillai told her to keep using contraceptives, but with her symptoms, there was a low chance it would happen again without treatment. She probably only ovulated once or twice a year, at most. There were pills she could take, to regulate her cycle and hormones. IVF would be an option if, down the line, she changed her mind, though there were no guarantees.
Naomi pressed her lips and nodded, taking it all in. She hadn’t wanted a child, not then. It was strange, to know the choice could be taken away from her. A pity Haven had been shut down. Having the knowledge that she could have grown a baby outside her own body would have been reassuring.
Cole arrived hours later and took her home from the hospital. His face was pinched, wan. He was the one who cried, strangely, even as Naomi’s eyes stayed dry. He kept apologising, over and over. Naomi grew tired of saying “it’s all right, it’s not your fault.” Why was she the one offering comfort?
He held her hand the whole plane ride, and his palm was clammy. She resisted the urge to pull it away.
He carried their bags up to their apartment in Houston and helped her on the stairs. She leaned on him. The pain was lessening, but every step still echoed in a stab in her abdomen. She wanted to sleep, to forget. Cole hovered, offering her drinks, or food. When she snapped at him to leave her alone, his face shut and he closed the door with a slap. She opened her mouth to call after him to apologise, but she was too grateful to be alone.
She slept more than she ever had in her life. Over twelve hours a day. A few sleeping pills to chase away consciousness when she was awake long enough for her mind to start spinning again.
A week later, Cole urged her to sit up, to dress. It was their one-year anniversary—he’d made the reservations months ago. Wouldn’t a good meal help?
She squeezed herself into a black dress, painted her lips blood red. Cole was in better spirits and kept up a steady flow of conversation as Naomi picked at her pasta and drank one too many glasses of the expensive, thick red wine.
When they were back at home, alone, she opened her mouth to tell him. That she’d known about the pregnancy, that if her body hadn’t rejected it, she would have ended it the same day. She should tell him about the diagnosis, warn him that years later, their expected path might not be as smooth as they’d planned. Before she could, his mouth was on hers, his fingers trailing down her arm, her torso. The bleeding had stopped, only the barest tenderness remaining, and so she let him unpeel the dress, let it crumple on the floor. Lost herself in the lines of his body. If Naomi was honest with herself, those wordless moments had always been the best part of their relationship—their bodies understood each other. It was the words that got in the way. The expectations.
Naomi went back to training, desperate to catch up after her recovery. She pretended she’d contracted a virus, and no one questioned her. Naomi would come back from the Johnson Space Center long past sunset. Each night, she’d stare at Cole’s sleeping back, silently promising him that tomorrow would be the day she came clean. The days kept passing, one after the other, until she’d left it too long. The silence became its own lie, one she was unable to unpick. She often wondered, over the next few years, how he would have reacted. Back then, she’d hoped he’d have been supportive, that he’d understand. Much later, she suspected she had been ri
ght not to tell him. That her intuition had been its own warning.
No one at work knew. None of her friends from undergrad or grad school, most of whom had already drifted away, since Naomi was terrible at keeping in touch. A pregnancy that ended before it could truly begin. A missed period that turned into an ellipsis of a promise, then an interrupted dash.
How many women had kept their lips tight over stories of abortions? Farmers’ wives who knew one more baby would mean her other children going hungry. Another with narrow hips whose first birth had nearly been the death of her. Women who could barely afford to feed and house themselves, much less someone else. Those who had faced violence or had abusive partners who would use a child as a weapon. A trans man who would have found pregnancy distressingly dysphoric. A woman who felt the movement within her grow still, but there was still technically a heartbeat. Or women who, plain and simple, didn’t want a child and knew their own body, their own mind, best.
The only one who knew her secret was Valerie. It didn’t occur to her until much later that, if Valerie had wanted to, she could have used that information against Naomi like a knife.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
126 Days After Launch
5 Days to Mars
123 Days to Cavendish
If they’d gone through a wormhole, they would have technically died. So would her child. So would everyone else on board. They’d blink into nothing, shifting from one point of the galaxy to another in an instant. The blueprints of the women and everything on the ship would reassemble in an instant, using new matter, new cells.
If someone were watching the ship from the outside, it would seem as if the ship disappeared, as it moved through space faster than the speed of light. Yet inside, it was all strangely anticlimactic.
They’d closed the covers over the window for additional shielding, but it didn’t feel as though they were going any faster than they had since they’d reached full ion acceleration. Inside the warp bubble, it was exactly the same. It was the universe outside that shifted.
Naomi thought her body would still recognise that something fundamental had occurred. She almost wished they could blink out, splinter their matter, devolve into negative energy just for an instant. Like being reborn.
When they arrived at their destination, the warp bubble devolved. Again, they felt nothing.
Hixon raised her fist in triumph, peering at the screens. “We’ve done it. All systems nominal,” she said, with an attempt at composure, but her voice was tight with excitement.
Lebedeva slumped in relief, though she also seemed curiously disappointed by the lack of fanfare. Hart offered Hixon a smile. “You did it, Hix.”
“Our location?” Valerie asked.
Hixon’s face was smug. “Right where we want to be, according to atomic clock projections. Five days’ travel back to the warp ring.”
Valerie had clenched her left hand into a fist, which she released. Naomi’s mind caught up with her body, everything slotting back into place. Her hand went to her belly.
Hart unstrapped herself, floating over to Naomi unsteadily. “We’ll check, don’t worry. Right after—” She grabbed an emergency sick bag from beneath Naomi’s seat and twisted, retching. The smell reached Naomi and threatened her own stomach.
Hixon drifted over. “You okay, babe?”
Hart nodded. “Just nerves. I’ll check myself over, after Naomi.”
“I also feel queasy,” Lebedeva admitted, and the rest of them blinked at her in surprise. She must have felt absolutely wretched to admit that much. Naomi had a bit of nausea, but not much more than she had throughout the pregnancy so far. Perhaps at some deeper level, their bodies did know they’d moved thousands of miles in a few minutes.
“I’ll scan myself,” Naomi said. “You rest, Hart.”
“If you’re sure,” Hart said, faint.
Valerie’s voice was sharp, authoritative. “Hixon, Lebedeva, run diagnostics again. Hart, when you’re settled, look over everyone’s vitals. We’ll meet at eighteen hundred hours. We deserve a damn good meal after this. I’m busting out my chocolate reserves.”
“You’ve been hiding chocolate from a pregnant woman?” Naomi asked, mock hurt. “That’s just cruel.”
Valerie was buzzing, hardly able to stay still. It was infectious—they were the first humans to successfully navigate a warp drive. To travel thousands of miles in an instant. Naomi smiled through her nausea.
Naomi left to the sound of Hart retching again.
Once she was back on the ring, Naomi counted each step to the med bay to distract herself. She wouldn’t stress until she knew if there was something to stress about.
The autodoc scan made its whirring noises. She lay in the tube the same size as the empty cryopods in the storage bay. The nausea faded to a dull ache.
She had no spotting. No cramping. She felt exactly the same as she had on the other side of Mars.
The other side of Mars. Jesus.
A corner of her mind still feared that now she’d decided to keep it, even though she wasn’t the superstitious sort, fate or the universe would find a way to play its trick on her.
The machine beeped. Naomi counted down from ten, preparing herself. The cover of the autodoc pulled back. She rose, the slight swell of her stomach already making her move awkwardly.
Naomi loaded the facsimile of herself, then her womb.
Twenty weeks, almost twenty-one. The foetus moved, from time to time. At night, if Naomi was very still, she could sense the shifting.
On the scan, the chest contracted and relaxed, almost like breath. The room filled with Naomi’s slow, sure heartbeat and then beneath: the faster fluttering. The foetus was halfway through gestation. There were ten fingers, ten toes, tipped with soft nails. The whorls of fingerprints had formed. The eyelids were translucent, and the face showed the barest hint of eyebrows and eyelashes. The child would have dark hair, between Naomi’s brown hair and Evan’s black.
Six and a half inches long. Ten whole ounces. The little thing would fit into her hand like a kitten.
Naomi bowed her head in relief.
“Congratulations,” she said to her belly. “You continue to boldly go where no baby has gone before.”
Naomi had the right angle this time—she could see the sex. There was no hidden Y chromosome on board. The foetus would be assigned female at birth. Valerie had guessed correctly.
The door to the med bay opened. Hart’s head poked in, her temples damp with sweat. Her eyes went to the scan and she visibly relaxed.
“Still there,” Naomi said. “Not lost in space.”
“Thanks for that horrible mental image.” Hart took in the angle. “A girl.”
“Yeah, looks like. I didn’t mind either way. But I guess the all-female mission continues.”
“Got any names picked out?”
“Nope. Not a one. Think I’m still afraid of jinxing it. How are you feeling?”
“Better. Not exactly looking forward to voiding the contents of my stomach once we do the proper jump, though.”
Naomi exhaled. “Five days. Then goodbye, solar system.”
“I thought I’d be ecstatic, but I’m all deflated,” Hart said. “I know it’s just the adrenaline comedown. I’ll rest in here, so I can come back kicking at dinner. Don’t want to dampen Jerrie’s moment.”
“Hixon will understand,” Naomi said. “This is strange for all of us.”
“What… what do you think Earth will do?” Hart asked.
Naomi let out a breath. “I don’t know. I think they’ll have to cave, won’t they? If Valerie threatens to interfere with things on the other side.”
Valerie wouldn’t threaten to destroy the warp ring near Cavendish until moments before the jump, when it would be too late for Earth to interfere. They’d have to send through a probe.
“I’m still horrified but I’m also…” Hart trailed off.
“Weirdly hopeful?” Naomi finished.
Hart’s should
ers rose, then dipped. “Yeah. I want a break from Earth and all its bullshit. I want a chance to make things better. Why let Cochran come in and take the credit? As soon as there are boots on the ground loyal to him, with all the colonial baggage that implies, that’s it. There’s too much money to be made.” Hart jumped up on the autodoc, sitting cross-legged. “They’ll push us out of the way.” She counted on her fingers. “Valerie for stealing and being too damn rich in the first place, you for basically being her daughter, Lebedeva for being a foreign national of an enemy state that would also just love to lay claim to Cavendish, Hixon for being gay, and me for being bisexual and black to top it all off.” She held up her palm, five fingers splayed. “I’m tired. I’ve been tired. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Naomi whispered. “I’m tired. And scared. But still weirdly hopeful. My other fear…” She paused, weighing her words. “What if—what if Valerie isn’t the person who can make Cavendish what we need it to be?”
Hart’s head jerked back. “You’re expressing doubts about Valerie?”
Naomi shifted herself closer. The comms in the room were off, but she kept her voice low anyway. “Not doubt, exactly. But she’s still angling to be the leader, isn’t she? No one coming to the planet without her say-so. Moulding a whole generation.”
“Power corrupts absolutely, and Valerie’s already had more power than most,” Hart mused. “It sounds so rational, on one hand. They put women and children in the lifeboats first on a sinking ship. But, I mean, how does she plan to filter information to the children? What will she censor, omit, change?”
“You speak like she’ll become fascist,” Naomi said. She wasn’t sure she was suggesting Valerie would stray that far.
Hart gave a shrug of a shoulder. “I always go right to the worst-case scenario. It drives Jerrie up the walls. You can’t deny that history is written by the victors. Valerie will weave a narrative.”