LITMIR.BIZ

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One: How would these tears have dried on a microscope slide? Spiky or like a web of fractals, like that strange theory she’d once read which hypothesized that different tears produced different crystalline salt structures.

      She looked away from his eyes, not wanting to see him through the wavering watery line, or the horror there. But that coping mechanism fritzed and she had to reach for any other information to sedate her emotions.

      “Lia?”

       What else?

      Something…

      Prolactin.

      Useless Science Fact Number Two: prolactin was somehow present in tears—a hormone initially believed only to govern lactation and the reason babies instinctively suckled. There was no way to stop it.

      “Lia?” He said her name again, confusion present in his voice. As if she shouldn’t experience grief. Like she wasn’t a human who’d gone through loss in the past, who wasn’t having her third round of grief in a handful of months, just because he’d wanted to share those old pains with her, or know her. Never wanted to let her close enough to love her, just close enough to fool her into thinking she’d finally found someone who would.

      Lia never cried.

      Ophelia had, but only when she was alone. She needed to be alone now.

      He said her name again, but she could only shake her head, her eyes fixed on the little closet at his shoulder.

      Why was he still standing there? Didn’t he have any decency? Couldn’t he see that she…

      The ring. He hadn’t taken it; she still felt it weighing her palm down.

      When she gave it to him, he would go…

      She thrust it forward, finally looking again at his face, his horrified face.

      Enough. He had to go.

      She opened her mouth to tell him, but a short, choked hiccup came out instead, and in her own horror, she slammed her free hand over her mouth to hold it.

      “Lia?”

      He had to stop saying her name like he could make her stop feeling by him being horrified by it.

      One step forward came with his word this time, so her knuckles touched his chest.

      The brush of his hand on her well-padded arm got through the grief fogging her brain.

      He thought he could be horrible and cruel and then just…what? Comfort her? Maybe tell her to stop being dramatic?

       No.

      She peeled her own hand from her mouth and slapped his hand away hard. Then again, because it wasn’t far enough. She’d come all this way, and now all she wanted was distance.

      Distance and getting rid of the ring, which he still hadn’t taken. A quick survey of his attire provided an array of pockets where she could stick the cursed thing. She found one, and as soon as she’d stuffed the diamond band inside, she shoved at his chest.

      “Lia, you have to take a breath. Calm down.”

      “Stop saying my name.” She panted the words, because she was only half functioning on intention.

      “Okay, but you have—”

      “Get out!”

      West lifted both hands, palms forward, to stay her, and backed warily out the door.

      As soon as he stepped through, she took two big steps, made sure it was as closed as possible, then flipped the locks.

      She crawled back into bed and pressed her face into the pillow to muffle the sounds she couldn’t stop.

      It was done. It was over. She’d wanted to know what she’d meant to him, and now she knew. But she’d always known that, in the back of her mind. She’d just let herself pretend otherwise.

       CHAPTER THREE

      WEST PUSHED INTO the clinic early the next morning, before anyone else had arrived, and flipped on the lights before heading straight for the supply room.

      He’d endured many sleepless nights when he’d first arrived at Fletcher Station, but with the absence of dark, there was a healthy insomniac population for him to blend into.

      Last night, he’d been unable to will away the image of her with tears on her cheeks, the complete breakdown of the steel-framed woman he’d known. In the moment, he thought he’d heard everything she’d said to him; he’d tried to listen, but it wasn’t there in his head. All the times he’d concentrated, pressed the mental replay, all he got was the vision of her shaking and crying, and the understanding that it would take a long time to scab over.

      Worse, he couldn’t shake the notion that he’d ruined her as badly as he’d ruined Charlie. Yet more proof that he shouldn’t be trusted with the psychological well-being of anyone.

      The only good thing a sleepless night afforded him was early breakfast and getting to lock himself away before she arrived for her first shift. If he was lucky, he could busy himself counting everything, a task that would minimize contact with other people, while staying mostly out of sight. For her.

      Instinct said give her time. Trust Jordan to be there for her to lean on as he was sure she had done at the start. But it also said keep an eye on her. Because he just wasn’t sure how bad this could get. He prayed not as bad as it had with his brother, but then Lia wasn’t an addict. She had Jordan looking out for her. Maybe he should quietly ask her to keep a closer eye…

      He opened the digital inventory and sent it to the office printer. Working on paper would be easier on his fried brain, and anything he could do to make today easier, he would. Including throwing himself into monotony, testing the status of everyday machines used for testing and upkeep. Centrifuge, autoclave and irradiator for sterilizing equipment that would be reused—something he’d never encountered in any other hospital but was in Antarctica. Everything brought onto the continent had to be shipped out again, including all forms of garbage.

      He left in nine days.

      “Are we having fun yet?” Jordan asked after throwing away the last bits of a stitch kit Lia had used on a butter-fingered galley cook, her second patient of the day.

      As part of her first day on the job, Lia shadowed Jordan to learn her way around and get a crash course in station medicine, which was like some cross between a small hospital and field medicine. “Oh, sure, nothing like stitching up a hearty thumb slice to get the party started.”

      “Or an asthma attack.”

      “That was the first party of the day,” Lia corrected her thumb party joke, finishing up the file entry for the thumb.

      She’d expected to struggle to find the old Lia, the version of her that Jordan knew, but a few minutes with her almost maid of honor had her stepping into London Lia’s shoes once more, the ones she hadn’t been strong enough to cram onto her metaphorical feet with West last night.

      Not that she had to try too hard in that regard. Of all the people in her life, Jordan, who’d known her since medical school, was the most likely to be accepting of changes to the Lia she knew. But it was just one more thing on an already overwrought mind and Lia didn’t have it in her yet to try and sort out who she was supposed to be while trying to sort out everything else. While still hollow and cold from last night’s official breakup. Breakdown. Whatever. From feeling him very close by, but knowing she wouldn’t be welcome if she spoke to him, that she shouldn’t even want to speak to him, that he’d never smile for her again or cuddle under a warm woolly blanket with her to watch some silly movie with more special effects than story.

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