Satellite

by Nick Lake

  my right hand moves to the pistol in my waistband,

  takes it out,

  my other hand rises to flick off the safety,

  & i aim, roughly, & maybe it’s growing up in space where u have to be good with ur hands, u get used to needing to be dexterous, or small things float away from u, & u get used to tapping commands into multiple instrument panels or washing with dry soap or whatever—to spotting handholds as u float thru the modules & seizing them, quick, & turning or deflecting ur momentum—

  maybe it’s that—

  or maybe it’s seeing & hearing my mother fall out of the window—

  but it takes me a lot less time than it takes him to turn the gun &:

  to my surprise i am pointing the gun at someone who is in no position to fire in return because he’s still getting his hand onto the grip of the shotgun, & right at that moment a border collie puppy comes flying at him, claws skittering on the floorboards, & jumps up & bites the man’s leg—

  & he sort of jumps around, trying to kick Comet off him—

  & so i fire.

  the gun kicks in my hand, but less than i thought it would—what shocks me is the devastating noise of it, the thunder filling the room, & the guy seems shocked too because he staggers back, but then i realize that’s because:

  he’s bleeding from his shoulder.

  he drops the shotgun & sits down.

  “fuck,” he says. “fuck.”

  i take a step, but i have forgotten my cast & i step onto it & lose my balance—i fall, putting my hands out & the butt of the gun strikes the floor with a hammer sound & there’s pain in there too: my wrist breaking? i wonder, looking at my arm. i lie there winded, before awkwardly shifting myself into a sitting position, bad leg out in front of me.

  my wrist isn’t hurting, but it’s bent in a way it shouldn’t be & i’m sure the pain is not far away. i move the gun to my other hand. like that’s going to do any good.

  i mean, i was aiming at the guy’s arm & i hit his shoulder.

  & that was with my dominant hand. i’m just glad i didn’t shoot Comet, who runs over to me yapping, at least i think he’s yapping, it’s hard to tell with the ringing in my ears, & he shivers with delight when i rub behind his ears.

  “thank u, Comet,” i say.

  “we’re trying to fucking help u,” says the guy. he reaches out his hand for the shotgun. draws it toward him. begins to lift it. “get u out of here.”

  “get me out of here?” i echo.

  he’s staring at me. “Kyle said u looked human. didn’t figure it’d be so spooky tho.”

  “human?” i say.

  he points the shotgun at me. “whole thing is screwed now tho. catastrophe protocol.”

  “what?”

  “if u can’t take the alien, kill the alien. i’m sorry.” he sights down the barrel at me. i am too stunned to do anything with my gun.

  then Grandpa walks in. he enters the doorway, shotgun out in front of him. when he sees the guy pointing the gun at me he doesn’t hesitate for a moment he fires as easy as breathing & the man is thrown back against the wall, a spray of blood, an arc of it, his head hitting the wood with a thud.

  it’s the same moment.

  i’m there, bone a tuning fork of pain in my arm, in my wrist, singing from within its song of agony.

  blood splatters the wall, the spray of it, mathematically curved.

  i think:

  space boy.

  we can help u.

  i think:

  we’re trying to fucking help u. get u out of here.

  i think of Grandpa saying:

  Area 51 crazies. alien conspiracists.

  i think these things, & i don’t like where they might lead.

  Grandpa sucks in breath & rushes over to me, keeping the shotgun trained on the man on the floor by the window.

  “i’m ok,” i say. my own voice comes out cotton-wooled. “think i hurt my wrist tho.”

  Grandpa glances at my arm. “dammit.”

  then he looks at the man, walks over, nudges his body with his foot, & kicks away the gun. just in case. which seems crazy because that man is very clearly dead.

  “should have taken out the drone,” Grandpa says to the dead man. then he turns to me. “where’s ur mother?”

  i point to the window. “she fell out,” i say.

  “oh,” says Grandpa. “shit.”

  “stay here,” says Grandpa. “i’m going down to check on ur mother.”

  “ok,” i say. he obviously isn’t going to tell me anything. not right now anyway. & i do care about my mother too—i want her to be ok. even if she only cares about me in the abstract.

  “keep the gun on him,” he says, pointing to the intruder.

  “he’s dead,” i say.

  “better safe than sorry.”

  Grandpa shifts me into a slightly more comfortable sitting position. i lift the gun in my left hand & point it at the man who broke in. he is sitting in a little pool of moonlight & blood, & his eyes are pure blankness, like empty space.

  Grandpa takes a deep breath. he puts a hand on my shoulder. “Leo,” he says. “cops are going to come. we tell them these men were looking for my safe, ok? i keep a lot of cash in it.”

  i stare at him.

  “please, Leo,” he says, “trust me. i’ll explain later.”

  a moment passes. our eyes are on orbital lock.

  “ok,” i say eventually.

  he nods. seems only then to let out his breath. & heads downstairs.

  my leg & wrist are killing me but i try to drown out the signal from my nerve endings.

  i fill my head with a mantra instead: be ok; be ok; be ok.

  “stay with me, Comet,” i say. Comet licks my hand & settles himself next to me.

  Grandpa moves to the stairs & goes down. i don’t hear anyone else. maybe they’re dead, i realize. the ones downstairs. Grandpa was in the air force before he was an astronaut. he wasn’t just testing planes; he saw actual combat. in the Iraqi state. & other stuff. i forget that sometimes. but i saw the way he took out this man, moving as smooth & no-thought as water.

  the clock on the wall taps out the time, measuring it into ticking increments.

  then Grandpa calls up from outside.

  “she’s all right,” he says. “might have dislocated her shoulder in the fall, but she’ll be just fine. i’ve called 911.”

  she’s ok, she’s ok, i think. i’m surprised by how much i wanted her to be ok.

  “thanks,” i call down. “tell her…”

  “what?”

  “tell her i’m all right too.”

  there’s a pause.

  “she says good,” says Grandpa.

  oh well. that’s probably the best i can hope for.

  i stay sitting.

  the clock keeps dividing out the time, tick tick tick. the minute hand moves around, in little jumps. like something imbued with some kind of life.

  after it has turned a few times around the clockface, i hear sirens approaching. i can tell they’re approaching because of the Doppler effect: the frequency of the pulses of sound seems elevated, to my ears.

  that, & they are getting louder.

  there are at least 2 kinds of sirens outside, weaving into 1 another: police & ambulance, i guess. soon there is red & blue light washing rhythmically thru the window, illuminating the room, waves of it, making the window a bright rectangle, framing the man sitting on the ground, a little slumped now. the sirens wail, loudly.

  cops in uniform enter the room, their guns out. paramedics follow. i put my hands in the air; surrender my pistol. the paramedics realize they’re going to need a stretcher for me & call down to someone to bring 1 up.

  “that man was breaking in,” i say, pointing to the burglar.

  “yep,” says an older cop with a mustache. “i know ur Grandpa.”

  “i think…he wanted to kidnap me. he said he was here to take me.” i catch myself: i wasn’t supposed to say anythi
ng. “i mean, i don’t know,” i say. “it was hard to make out; he was kind of babbling.”

  “uh-huh,” says the cop. he doesn’t seem too interested, which is strange.

  he walks over to the man & crouches down & puts a hand to his neck. he shakes his head at the paramedics.

  a woman in her greens sits on her heels next to me. “ur grandfather said ur wrist was hurt?”

  i lift my right arm. she takes 1 look at it & nods. “ok. we’re going to get u into the ambulance & across to the ER. we’ll need to do x-rays. but i guess u know all that.” she is looking at the cast on my leg.

  “yep,” i say. “bit accident prone lately.”

  she smiles. she has a pretty smile. green eyes.

  the stretcher has arrived. she helps 2 men to lift me onto it. when Comet sees what’s happening he starts leaping up & down, yipping.

  “can he ride with me?” i ask.

  “don’t c why not,” says the woman.

  “thanks.” i lean down to him. “Comet,” i say. “jump up.”

  Comet jumps up onto the stretcher & sits on me, like he owns me. maybe he does. he has a narrow look in his eye. like i saved his life, & u’d better know it. he’s my human.

  “hi, Comet,” says the woman, doing a little bow to him. he likes that. he yaps back. “i’m Shirley,” she says.

  “Leo,” i say.

  “Leo,” she agrees. “well, let’s check u out & then get u to the hospital, Leo.”

  & that’s what they do.

  first they check me out.

  they examine my wrist, palpate it slightly—i scream & Comet bristles, nearly bites 1 of the paramedics—& make notes on their screens. they conclude that it’s a sprain, & i don’t seem to have cut off the blood supply to my hand or ruptured an artery or any of the really bad things that could happen.

  then they take me downstairs. it’s not a comfortable journey, bumping down the steps on the stretcher.

  we ride in the ambulance. i’m on a gurney secured to 1 side of the vehicle; my mother is on 1 on the opposite side. they attach various machines to both of us. keeping track of our oxygen levels, our heart rates, all that stuff.

  they frown when they c my readouts, & whisper to each other.

  shock, i guess. i’m in shock & it’s screwing up my heart rate & stuff.

  anyway, it doesn’t matter because they also put me on some IV pain medication, which makes everything all floaty & less important.

  i don’t know where Grandpa is. talking to the police back at the ranch maybe.

  it’s cold in the ambulance. there’s a smell of blood & antiseptic.

  my mother is only barely conscious. she turns to me at 1 point, nods slightly when she sees me.

  “Leo,” she says.

  “Mother,” i say.

  that’s it. our greeting. the only greeting we’ve ever had for each other.

  drugs in my veins, the ambulance spins, rotates like a space station, its siren an alarm, sounding a breach, sounding a disaster.

  “Mother,” i say. “am i an alien?”

  Mother looks at me for a long time.

  “Mother, did u hear me?”

  she sighs. thinks for a moment. “Leo, if there’s 1 thing i can promise u, it’s that u’re not an alien.”

  it’s weird the way she phrases it. the way she considers it before speaking.

  i narrow my eyes.

  “so what can’t u promise me then?” i say.

  she turns away. she doesn’t answer.

  the ambulance spins off into space.

  i come in & out of consciousness, sunrise & darkness flipping & flipping thru the cupola of the station, which is also an ambulance on a road, in California.

  we ride, sirens going. no Doppler effect this time. true frequency. we are the source, moving. the epicenter of the sound waves. we travel, making ripples of noise across the valley; i imagine them spreading out, like from pebbles dropped into a pond, rolling over the dark fields, thru the odd trees, thru gates, like they’re not even there; like water coasting away from us in circles, fading, breaking eventually onto the grass & dying away to dew, just the after-echo of a siren, sounding.

  i hear Grandpa on the phone with someone, arranging for the hole in the fence to be patched, & then—talking to someone else i think—paying with a payment code for a guard to patrol the perimeter.

  we blur thru the night, blaring.

  i imagine a rabbit sitting up: what was that?

  it was an ambulance passing.

  how would u explain such a thing to a rabbit?

  i think thoughts like that.

  not-quite-coherent thoughts.

  when we reach the hospital, we back into a bay with wide doors like an aircraft hangar & the doors are opening as we back up. they roll us straight out & into a wide hallway that funnels down into the busy ER department.

  then we split up: the guys—& Shirley—pushing me into a windowless examination room & my mother into another.

  a Dr. comes to c me. she has gray hair & a slightly tired air. she doesn’t introduce herself & i can’t quite make our her name tag. Dr. Reynolds? something like that.

  “that dog can’t be in here” is the first thing she says. not angry. just sort of weary.

  “he’s staying,” i say. Comet presses down against me, flattening himself on top of me, as if to underline my words.

  she lifts a hand & lets it flop down again. “fine. fine.”

  she asks me some questions about my leg:

  “u broke it very recently?

  “does it hurt?

  “are you on any blood-thinning medication?”

  (yes. yes. no.)

  she glances down at some notes on her screen. “& i c Dr. Kohli wanted to do some additional tests,” she says.

  “yes,” i say.

  then she frowns. she taps the screen.

  “what?” i say.

  she purses her lips. “odd. ur notes end there. he doesn’t say why he wanted more scans.”

  “he said something about my bone density,” i say. the drugs are wearing off now. reality is bleeding back in, gray in color. gray with pain.

  “hmm.” she taps her fingernail on the screen thoughtfully. “i don’t have any x-ray images here either. i can c that he set ur leg. but i can’t c any visuals.” she sighs. “this hospital needs a new IT department. mind u, this hospital needs more doctors too. then i wouldn’t be working 60-hour shifts & inheriting patients with incomplete records.”

  “u could ask him,” i say. “Dr. Kohli, i mean.”

  “nope,” she says. “he quit yesterday. walked out at the end of the shift. that’s what the hospital manager says anyway.”

  oh.

  weird.

  “well, let’s look at this new injury,” she says. she says it almost like a reproach, like i’ve been careless. “u sustained this in an altercation, i understand.” she tucks her gray hair behind her ear, in a move that looks to me like a habitual tic. she is younger than i first thought, i realize.

  “no,” i say. “i fell.”

  “down some stairs?”

  “no. just…forward. on the floor.”

  her eyebrows come together again. “running?”

  “no.”

  she lifts the screen & taps something. pulling up the paramedics’ notes, i assume. “u got a bad sprain like this from just falling over?”

  i do my best at shrugging—lying down, it’s difficult. from outside, there’s a sound like rotors spinning, the hush of downdraft. it’s a sound i know from movies. an emergency helicopter, i presume, landing on the roof.

  “huh.”

  pause.

  “ok, well, let’s x-ray u & take it from there. best to be sure.”

  she calls a nurse on her screen & soon a guy in a white hospital uniform rolls in an x-ray machine & they set it up & scan my arm.

  “as i thought,” she said. “simple sprain, no need for—”

  then she stops.

&
nbsp; “what?” i say.

  “but these bones…”

  “what?” i say. “what about my bones?”

  “this is not…i mean…” another tuck of the hair behind the ear. she is wearing small diamond studs in her earlobes. the kind u wear if u’re a modest person & u don’t want to wear anything that could catch on stuff, or be a health risk in a hospital—but u’re still someone who cares. who takes care, of ur appearance. & now i c that she’s probably beautiful, when she’s not tired. which is probably never.

  pause.

  “i just…” she halts again. “do u have any preexisting conditions? osteoporosis? leukemia? any kind of immune deficiency?”

  “what?” i say. “no.”

  can’t take the alien, kill the alien.

  she taps her fingernails on the screen again. the ends have sparkling nail polish on them. but it’s flaking off. being pushed to the edge. i feel like i need more painkillers, i feel like my leg & wrist are filled with nails, poking into me.

  “um, Dr.?” i say.

  she looks at me. it is the first time our eyes have really met.

  yes, beautiful, i think, looking into her rain-cloud eyes.

  “sorry, Leo, yes,” she says. “i think…i think Dr. Kohli was right to suggest more tests. ur mother is in room C3, i understand?”

  “um, i don’t know. but she’s here. at the hospital, i mean.”

  she nods. “i would like to talk to her. when she’s ready….then i will arrange some scans.” she does a little shake of her head, like she’s telling herself off. “i mean, we’ll splint ur wrist first of course. make sure u’re comfortable.” but she says it almost distantly, like her mind isn’t really on it.

  Comet wants to get down. he doesn’t understand why he’s just sitting on me, why we’re in this place again. he is restless, & i put a hand on him, & feel him go still, feel his heart beating, the pulse against my fingers. his quickness.

  he gives a little bark.

  “it’s ok, Comet,” i say.

  but it’s not ok.

  it’s not ok because then the door opens & Boutros walks in. he’s wearing a pin-striped suit & flanking him are 2 men in black, with earpieces in their ears, coiling, white. it’s a look i know from movies.

  it’s a look that says: feds.