An Astronaut's Life

by Sonja Dechian

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Lucas.’

  But it was not the kid’s voice.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘He’s having a nightmare all the time now. Why do you let him watch all those things on the iPad?’

  It was Gina’s mother, of course.

  ‘What things?’ I said.

  ‘He wants to come home to you. He’s asking for you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Ma, Ma, Ma. He calls out. Can you come get him?’

  ‘Now? No, but wait, Gina’s got the car.’

  ‘Oh my God. I’ll bring him to you.’

  She hung up. I closed my eyes and must have slept a few seconds, then I picked up my phone to check the call had in fact taken place.

  I got up and put on some pants. I called Gina at work to tell her what was happening and we had a disjointed conversation as I waited for the headlights of her parents’ car to light the front window.

  ‘Your mum’s here,’ I said finally. ‘I should go.’

  By the time I’d unlocked the front door, Mrs Lim had parked against the kerb. I went over and lifted Lucas from his car seat. He appeared to be asleep but he opened an eye as I nudged the door shut with my thigh.

  ‘I sleep in with you?’ he said in a baby voice.

  Gina’s mother rolled down the passenger-side window and shook her head.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said

  ‘It can’t be helped. You doing some work to the yard now?’ She gestured at the marquee the cops had set up.

  ‘Yes, a bit,’ I said. Gina hadn’t told her?

  She handed his schoolbag through the window. ‘Bye bye, my bunny,’ she called, and pulled away without seeming to notice the police van or the glowing lights at the back of our house.

  I carried Lucas inside and slid him into our bed.

  ‘Everything’s all right, Ma,’ he said sleepily.

  I pressed a palm across his forehead. He felt warm but okay.

  ‘That’s right, you’re home now.’

  He did not seem upset and it crossed my mind he might have pulled a turn just to come home.

  ‘But did you get the Captain?’ he said.

  This seemed urgent, but he was asleep again before I could make sense of what he meant. I pulled the sheet to cover his shoulders and took his school bag off to the kitchen.

  When I reached in to clear his lunchbox, I was met with a mess of cardboard. It was some sort of art, I could see now—an owl with a bulbous head, and red eyes. This was the Captain? I managed to manoeuvre its wings back into position but the head was crushed, so I lay it on the bench and left the heavy chopping board on top to flatten it.

  The backyard was empty. Had they finished for the night? Screens still blocked my view of their work and cast shadows on the grass, but a scattered pattern of upturned dirt suggested the cops had started and thought better of another twenty or so excavations.

  Our yard looked worse than a crime scene: it looked as if it was three quarters of the way into one of those renovation TV shows, right at the point where the team is forced to wonder if they will ever have the place ready in time for the family about to return home.

  Back in the bedroom Lucas had folded himself into the sheets on my side of the bed, so I went around to Gina’s side to get in, where I would not disturb him. As I lay down he shifted and pressed against me.

  ‘You’re so hot,’ I said, but he was asleep. I lifted him away and slid out of bed again, this time to open the window. How could that little body produce so much heat?

  After all this, I knew it would be some time before I could get back to sleep. My mind found the sound of a radio in the distance. I caught pieces of a tune but I couldn’t hold them for long enough to make out a song. Was it the cops playing music? I tried to think about it, if it would be appropriate, but I reasoned just because your job is digging for bodies doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have music while you do it.

  I wondered if I should call Gina again. We’d left things on an uneven note; maybe she was waiting for my call. I resolved to text her. She had enough going on in the lab that night, by the sound of it.

  All OK here. Lucas is asleep, doesn’t seem upset at all. Hope your night is better, hope to see you soon. X

  I wasn’t sure why I said that last bit, but I couldn’t take it back. I tried to imagine her face as she reached into her pocket and took out the phone, but no picture came to mind.

  Gina would have two or three patients on a night shift. She’d wire them up and put them to bed and I’m not sure what next, but when I thought about her, I saw a small room with monitors that showed the patient’s vital signs, as well as grainy videos of the beds where they slept.

  The small room was where Gina sat during the night and watched over her patients, making sure they didn’t pull off wires in their sleep or do anything else that would compromise the recording of data. People were always saying what an interesting job she had. They thought it must be revealing to watch strangers sleep, intimate—did people talk in their sleep, did they snore, or fart? They did all three, but there was nothing so special about that; it gave her no deep insights. They were just strangers, just sleeping, their beating hearts only lines on a screen. None of it was very interesting to her.

  That night, I’d later learn, we’d talked too long at the kitchen table and so she’d rushed in, late, and dumped her handbag on the desk, forgetting to put her lunch in the fridge.

  Only one of her patients had been wired up and Louise, the woman who’d done the evening shift, apologised with a long story about why she was running so far behind.

  Gina had only time to glance at her patients’ details on her way to their rooms. An older man was the one already wired up. He was engrossed in a TV segment about robots so she left him alone. The robots were made of smooth white plastic and were about the size of ten-year-old children. The other patient was a late middle-aged man with a round face and a catalogue of medications to recall before they could get underway. He listed off examples of his sleep problems. Patients always thought it was something unique about them and their specific experiences that brought them here, but this was almost never the case.

  ‘I’m going to start wiring you up,’ Gina said. She was not a doctor, but most patients found the distinction unclear. ‘There’s going to be about twenty different leads but they’ll be plugged into this monitor, which sits about here on your body, so if you need to get up for the loo it’s okay, it all goes with you too. All right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘And if you knock anything off it’s not a problem, I can see on our screen so I’ll come and fix you up.’

  He nodded.

  ‘So we’ll start with the legs. These need to go down inside your pants and out the ankles,’ she said. ‘That’s the way.’

  Gina enquired about the man’s work as a way to make him more comfortable while he reached into the leg of his trackpants. He told her he ran an online business with his wife, selling some sort of imported homewares, Gina thought maybe he’d said rugs and lamps. Thi
ngs had become difficult for them, he said, what with keeping up with trends and the falling dollar and people’s ability to buy directly from overseas. The world had changed so much and so fast, he said. Maybe stress was a factor in his fatigue?

  ‘It may well be,’ Gina said, presuming the man had mistaken her attempt at small talk for a deeper investigation. ‘Now, put your arms up? This one is to monitor your breathing, so I’ll just slip it around like this. That’s the way.’

  ‘I’ve already had a lot of tests, but so far it’s just a bit of blood pressure and, whatever they call it, the restless leg syndrome.’

  ‘That can be a pain.’

  ‘I’m not even sure it is that. That makes it sound simple, as if it’s just my legs.’

  Gina gave an understanding smile.

  ‘Now I’ve just got to prepare the skin on your face and scalp for the electrodes,’ she said and showed him what looked like sandpaper. ‘This is just an exfoliant. It’s like a free facial really.’

  The man forced a smile.

  ‘Just relax, now,’ Gina said.

  ‘I can’t shake this crawling feeling.’

  ‘Am I hurting?’

  ‘No, I mean, in general, when I’m trying to sleep. The “restless leg” thing.’ He tried to make quotation marks, but Gina had blocked his arm as she attached electrodes to his scalp.

  ‘Take your glasses off for me?’ she said. ‘I’m going to do these ones for your eyes. They’ll let us know when you’re dreaming. But don’t worry, we won’t see your dreams.’

  This was another of the little jokes she always made, but the man didn’t show it if he thought it was funny at all. He closed his eyes again.

  ‘I’ve got to put this to your nose next,’ she said. ‘Do you have a blocked nose?’

  ‘Not really. I have a spray.’

  ‘Let’s do that first.’

  She waited while he did his nasal spray then he sat back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

  ‘How’s that feeling?’

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t mean to sound like this, it’s just, it’s been a long time feeling something is wrong.’

  ‘So what do you think it is?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought maybe a brain tumour, but I had the scan.’

  ‘And you’re okay?’

  ‘It’s not a tumour.’

  He said this in an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent but not a very good one, and it struck her that he’d used this line before, maybe trying to show his wife how he was still himself, or maybe on his doctors to lighten their load as they tried to break it to him one more time: there was nothing they could do.

  Gina laughed to be kind, and that made him laugh, too.

  ‘Let’s tape all these wires, get them out of your way,’ she said.

  Later that night, Gina took a walk along the corridors. She did that sometimes, before she ate. Her shoulder had been bothering her and walking helped to loosen it, so she took a couple of flights of stairs before she went back to her patients, stopping to get her lunch from the fridge—but, of course, it wasn’t there, she’d forgotten to put it in. She returned to the small room and couldn’t be bothered heading back to heat up her food, so she ate it cold there at the desk.

  Gina watched the rise and fall of her patients’ lungs mapped out on the screens in front of her. The older man was in a dream. The man with the bad feeling was in a steady sleep. She saw him stir as the light of his phone came on to alert him to a message. He was unsteady as he rolled over to read it. Then he sat up. He brushed the electrodes by his right eye as he put the phone to his ear. Gina went on eating and looked away from the screen to give him privacy.

  When she checked back it seemed no one had answered, and now the man was typing a message. His heart-rate was elevated. She waited until he’d finished before she set her lunch on the desk to go in.

  The man was sitting with his head in his hands.

  ‘All right in here?’ she said.

  She heard his voice break in the dark.

  ‘It’s my wife,’ he said. ‘She’s said she won’t be there. She’s leaving.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. You can go. We can do this another time, once you’ve sorted it out.’

  ‘She says she won’t talk, there’s nothing to talk about, she says. How can there be nothing to talk about when she’s just said this?’

  ‘Did she say anything, before?’

  ‘Nothing. No, nothing was wrong with us. And by text message. She sends a text message?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t sound fair. Maybe try to tell her that you won’t stop her if she needs to go, but a conversation will help you make peace with it.’

  ‘Okay, I will. Can you say that again?’

  Gina repeated what she’d said, but she had not meant it to be sent verbatim to the man’s wife.

  He sent the message and held the phone out to show her.

  ‘See, here’s what she said.’

  Gina read the message. It seemed abrupt and cruel, but there was also a tone of resignation that made her withhold judgment.

  ‘How long have you been together?’

  ‘Nineteen years. My second marriage.’

  The phone buzzed and Gina passed it back. He read the message and sniffed. He held it out to Gina.

  I just really can’t do that right now hon, really sorry and maybe in time we will talk.

  Gina thought how strange it was to see two middle-aged adults communicate in this way. She wondered if, at our worst moments and in the privacy of our relationships, we are ever much more than teenagers.

  ‘I’m sorry this is all happening. Should I take off your wires then?’ she said.

  The man started to cry and Gina put an arm across his back. She felt the hospital stretch out around them with its warren of hallways and identical rooms, elevators that opened on both sides into a maze of car parks, and at the centre of it all those beeping machines strapped to so many indistinguishable patients.

  When a phone rang, she assumed it was the man’s, but when he turned it up his screen was dark, so she reached into her pocket.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to get this,’ she said.

  She walked away.

  ‘Hi, what’s up?’

  It was me. I asked her how she was.

  ‘Oh, fine.’ She must have left the room and found a place in the corridor. ‘Maybe don’t ask,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just your mum called. She’s bringing Lucas. She said he had another nightmare.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘It’s fine, he’ll be okay. I just wanted to let you know.

  Apparently it’s my fault.’

  ‘I never said it was.’

  ‘No, your mum told me that.’

  ‘She’s probably just tired. This is late for her. Why don’t you pick him up?’

  ‘You’ve got the car.’

  ‘Ah, shit. How’s he going to get to school then?’
>
  ‘I don’t know, I hadn’t thought yet. We can walk in.’

  ‘You know how tired he gets.’

  ‘I’ll get us a taxi.’

  ‘I should see if Marilyn can get him on her way.’

  ‘Let’s sort it out tomorrow. You can’t call her now.’

  ‘No, look, I’ll come home, I’ll do it.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Well, I do.’

  Gina slipped off down the hall and through a door into a stairwell. She guessed she’d offended me, suggesting I could not even sort out a way to take our child to school, but she didn’t care much about that.

  ‘One of my patients just had a text from his wife saying she’s leaving him,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Was it unexpected?’

  ‘I think so. He seems upset.’

  ‘So he’s not staying in for the night?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I feel bad for him, but honestly, I don’t want to deal with it. Maybe that’s how the wife feels.’

  ‘He’s that bad?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. He’s nice. But it’s not my business.’

  She was quiet.

  ‘I better go, your mum will be here,’ I said.

  Gina didn’t say anything.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘You know those bodies are the first thing you’ve been interested in,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘For a while anyway.’

  ‘You know that’s not really true.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Have I done something?’

  ‘I don’t know, have you?’

  I thought about what I had done. Small things, maybe. I had been closed and distant. I had prevented serious conversation about my career and about our finances, but only because I was out of my depth. I had told some small lies, mainly lies of omission, like about the course, which I had not gone back to, and about one particular job interview that I had turned down for reasons I did not want to explain.