The Astronaut's Wife

by Robert Tine

  “Please, Mrs. Armacost,” said Reese quietly. “Captain Streck’s wife is already over there. Any questions you have will be answered down at the—

  Jillian turned and ran back into the house, Reese following in her footsteps.

  “Mrs. Armacost, please don’t make this more difficult than it is already.” Jillian vanished into the kitchen. It was here that Reese found her, gazing at the television set while Nan wrapped Jillian’s sliced opened finger.

  “Mrs. Armacost,” said Reese, “the Director wants…”

  “Shush,” said Jillian. She did not even so much as glance in his direction.

  There was a reporter on the television set, microphone in hand, standing in front of the chain-link gate at the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Cape. It was odd that the reporter would be doing his standup from outside the complex; there was an elaborate press room inside the space administration building. It could only mean that there had been a complete press lockdown on the story.

  The television correspondent more or less confirmed the suspicion. “All we know for sure— and we don’t know much—is that both men were outside the orbiter, performing repairs on a communication satellite. The condition of Armacost and Streck, as well as the well-being of the rest of the shuttle crew, is unknown at this time…

  While the reporter signed off and threw the story back to the network, Jillian turned to Reese and looked him square in the eye. Her voice was eerily calm.

  “Is my husband dead?” she asked.

  Reese shook his head apologetically. “Ma’am, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the condition of your husband. I have been sent here by the Director to—”

  “Is my husband dead?” July asked again, her voice edged with a tinge of hysteria, as if the false calm was melting away and she was just barely holding on to her feelings.

  Reese shrugged. “To be honest, ma’am, I just don’t know. Details are very sketchy.”

  “If you don’t know,” Jillian said coldly, “take me to someone who does. Now.”

  She looked at the man’s starched shirt, as stiff and as spotless an officer’s whites, his crisp perfectly cut suit, that smooth shave, and the shine on his shoes and felt contempt for him. He was down here whole and healthy while her husband was deep in space, far beyond rescue, dead in the silence of space.

  Reese shrugged. “That’s what I’m here to do, Mrs. Armacost. Captain Streck’s wife is already there.”

  Nan grabbed her sister roughly by the sleeve and tugged her toward the door. “Come on, July, let’s get over and there and find out what the hell is going on.”

  Sherman Reese stepped between then. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding as if he were genuinely sorry. “I only have security clearance for Mrs. Armacost.”

  “Then you better get security clearance for Mrs. Armacost’s sister, mister, because—”

  Reese looked beseechingly at Jillian. “Please, Mrs. Armacost, could you tell your sister—”

  Jillian nodded and tried to stand straight. It was odd; she did not feel the desire to cry—not yet, anyway. She turned to Nan.

  “It’ll be okay, Nan,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as possible. “I’ll be okay.”

  “You sure?” Nan’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’m sure…”

  The radio was on in the no-frills government car that carried them through the quiet suburb.

  “NASA is now officially confirming that Commander Spencer Armacost and Captain Alex Streck were outside of the space shuttle Victory when there was an explosion on the communication satellite on which they were doing repairs…”

  Reese looked worried as the words spilled out of the radio, but the young woman did not appear to be listening to the grim report. Rather, she was engrossed in the world beyond the window of the car. It was a fine Florida summer evening. People were sitting on their lawns, laboring over barbecues, lazing in swimming pools. Kids rode bikes. Life was continuing even as hers might be coming to an end.

  3

  The fluorescent lights of the bare corridors of NASA headquarters washed any remaining color out of Jillian’s face. The only sound was the clip of their footsteps on the white linoleum and the annoying hum from the lights. Jillian was numb and silent. Sherman Reese was silent as well, reserved and speechless the way people are when they are in the presence of tragedy that does not really concern them, not directly anyway—it was the sort of situation that leads people to say, “I don’t know what to say.”

  As they walked the labyrinthine hallways they passed some staff members. Jillian did not know them, but they seemed know who she was—they glanced at her ashen face quickly then looked away just as quickly, as if they were catching a glimpse of a condemned prisoner on her way to the gallows. One or two flashed sympathetic smiles—not at Jillian, but at Reese, none of them envying the grim task of escorting a woman who might or might not have become a widow in just the last few hours or so.

  It was with some relief that Sherman Reese delivered his charge to her destination. It was another bare, windowless, fluorescent-lit room, a wide conference table and a set of chairs the only furniture. On the wall was a monitor showing the activity in Mission Control. There was no sound coming from it.

  Seated at the table was a lone woman. She was older than Jillian by a number of years— somewhere in her middle forties—and her pale face was lined with grief. Jillian knew her well— it was Natalie Streck—but had she not known her from happier times she probably would not have recognized her now. Her shoulders were slumped, her eyes dark, red-rimmed, and hollow. She looked as if she had aged a decade in a matter of minutes.

  Jillian rushed to her and threw her arms around her. “Oh, Jillian, "Natalie cried into Jillian’s shoulder. “Oh God…” Both women gave into their tears and Sherman Reese stood off to one side, his hands thrust into his pockets frying to look as if he wasn’t there.

  Natalie pulled out of the embrace and looked into Jillian’s face. “They’re so far away, Jillian,” she said softly, fighting to keep down her tears. “Alex and Spencer, Jillian, they are so far away. And there’s nothing we can do for them.”

  Jillian stroked her hair and rocked her in her arms as she might a little child. “Shhh, Natalie, shhhhhh…”

  “Oh. Jillian. He’s dead,” Natalie wailed. “I know he’s dead. I know he’s dead. I can feel it.”

  Jillian felt herself go cold, as if she had stepped into a freezer. If Alex Streck was dead, then Spencer was dead as well.

  “What have they told you?” Jillian asked.

  Natalie shot a cold glance at Sherman Reese. “Nothing. They won’t tell me anything.”

  Both women turned on Reese. “Why?” Jillian demanded. “Why haven’t we been told anything?”

  Reese shrugged and felt useless. “I’m sorry. I have not been authorized to say—”

  At that moment, as if on cue, the door to the conference room opened and a man walked in. He was a distinguished-looking white-haired man whom Jillian recognized as the Director, a man she had only met at official functions—a quick handshake, sometimes followed by a photograph, and then the great man passed on.

  “Sir,” said Reese deferentially and motioned toward the two women like a headwaiter showing a diner to his table, “these are Mrs. Streck and Mrs.—”

  “I know who they are, Sherman,” the Director said imperiously. “Mrs. Streck, Mrs. Armacost… First, let me tell you that your husbands are alive.”

  Both women felt as if great weights had been lifted from their shoulders.

  “Oh, thank God,” breathed Natalie Streck.

  “They’re back on the orbiter now,” the Director continued, “and we’re going to bring the orbiter down just as soon as we get a window.”

  “Can we talk to them?” Jillian asked.

  The Director shot a look at Reese and then looked back to the two women. He shook his head. “That is not possible, Mrs. Armacost. I am afraid that both Captain Streck and Co
mmander Armacost are unconscious at this time. ”

  “Oh my God,” said Natalie Streck. “Are they badly hurt? Are they in pain?”

  The Director did not answer the questions directly. He slipped around the questions like a boxer avoiding a punch. “We have an MD on this mission, ma’am, who has done his best to make them comfortable. Furthermore, we-are monitoring all their vital signs from down here at Mission Control. They are both stable but, at this time, they remainunconscious.

  Vital signs, thought Jillian. That was NASA-speak for her husband’s life.

  “What happened out there?” She heard her own voice ask a question, and was surprised to hear it.

  Once again the Director tried to avoid the question. “All the information we have at our disposal at the moment is extremely sketchy, Mrs. Anna-cost—unreliable to say the least. I wouldn’t want to venture an opinion—”

  Jillian was in no mood for obfuscation. “What happened out there?” she snapped, cutting the Director off. The man looked at her with hard eyes for a moment. He was not a man who was used to being interrupted by anyone, least of all an astronaut’s wife. Still, there was something in the look on Jillian’s face that told him that she would not stand for any circumlocutions on his part.

  “Your husbands were outside the orbiter,” he said slowly. “It was a perfectly routine task. They were engaged in repairs on a satellite. There was an explosion and…” The director looked over at Reese, then back at Natalie and Jillian. “We lost contact with both astronauts…” He shifted uncomfortably and looked down at the floor. “We lost contact with both of them for about two minutes.”

  Jillian’s gaze lost none of its intensity. “Two minutes? You lost contact for two minutes?”

  The Director continued to look at the floor. Suddenly the buzz from the fluorescent light seemed very loud.

  “What do you mean,” said Jillian, “lost contact?” There was no doubt in the tone of her voice that she was going to get a straight answer.

  The Director glanced at her and then back down at the floor. “They were off radio and out of visual contact” he said. “After the explosion they drifted behind the shuttle. We had to bring the craft around one hundred and eighty degrees to get them.”

  “They were all alone,” said Natalie Streck, her voice shot through with tears! She shivered at the thought of her husband floating alone and hurt in the middle of so much nothingness.

  It was plain that the Director had decided that he had heard enough of wifely hysteria. “But now they’re back on the shuttle and they will be back down here just as soon as we can manage it,” he said briskly. He gestured to Sherman Reese urging him forward. “Mr. Reese here will stay with you until we can take you to your husbands.” He changed to a more human pitch. “I’ve worked closely with both Spencer and Alex, and I know they are both strong and courageous men. I’m sure they are going to be fine. I give you my word.”

  With that, the Director turned and with a nod to Reese, as if handing the two women officially to his command, left the room. There was a sense that the Director was glad that the interview was over and done with. He had more important things to do.

  Natalie and Jillian did not care if the Director had stayed and held their hands. NASA, the space program—none of these weighty matters were of the slightest significance to them now.

  “They were all alone out there, Jill,” said Natalie tearfully. “They could have been lost forever.”

  Jillian put her arms around Natalie and held her close. “It will be fine, Natalie. We have to believe that. That’s all we can do. Get them back down and get them home. Then everything will be all right. Understand, Natalie?”

  Natalie Streck did her best to nod and smile, as if she really believed what her friend had said. She pushed her face hard against Jillian’s shoulder, burrowing for comfort.

  Sherman Reese pointed to the television monitor mounted on the wall above them. “This monitor will show the view from the shuffle as they land. Would you like me to get the link up? You’ll be able to see the whole thing from here.”

  Neither Natalie nor Jillian heard him; they had traveled too far into their own grief to care what anyone said to them. There was a very long silence as Reese waited for an answer, for a set of instructions—anything—from the two women. But nothing came—and nothing was going to come from either of them.

  “I’ll get the link up,” said Reese, as if to himself. He got busy doing whatever it was he had to do.

  Natalie and Jillian paid no attention. As with the Director, they didn’t care about Sherman Reese, either.

  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.