There's no day or night in the Phobos Infirmary, a privatized hospital servicing wounded warriors returning home from overseas. They’re deep underground, off the grid.
“These pre-fab structures are cheap. One day we’ll all die when the ceilings collapse,” a heavily medicated patient says. She was a wounded soldier the others called D, named for her bunk designation.
A group of soldiers at a rusty old table play cards. A fidgety one asks, “We’re on a spaceship in the vacuum of space. How would a vacuum implode?” He dresses himself in layers of dirty rags and everyone knows he’s not quite right in the head. Most ignored him, but D always tries to be nice to everyone. “We’re underground, N, not in space,” D says gently.
“The ceilings collapsed on me in Camp Enterprise, but that was from an earthquake tremor,” says Y, holding his broken arm gingerly.
“Make your bets,” J says. She’s the dealer. Big and sweaty, she never takes guff from anyone.
Y tosses two credits on the empty bunk serving as a card table. The other players ante up and play their hand. In the end, Y loses his hand and says “I’m out.” Y leaves to lie on his bunk. N also gives up. “I’m tired now.” He puts his cards down and leaves to lie on his bunk. J gathers N’s and Y’s cards, and shuffles them with the others.
“A yeoman from the Winnefeld told me they had hit a huge asteroid and knocked a hole in her side.” N says. Everyone but D ignores him. D just looks over at him, more out of concern than to acknowledge the statement. An older soldier the other patients knew as S watched them silently. N raised himself a little in his bunk and said in a whisper, “Can you hear me, Mom? A soldier told me that their ship ran into an enormous asteroid and knocked a hole in her side.” S is motionless, as if she had not heard. And once more there is silence on the ward.
The ward’s fans pulsed a heartbeat hum that their ears were long accustomed. Except for that, everything’s wrapped in sleep and silence. The three patients who had played cards for hours had quit and are now lying in their bunks falling sleep.
“The AC has broken . . . ” says N, wiping his brow. This time S coughs and answers irritably: “You talk of a ship colliding with an asteroid,” she paused for a breath, “and now you say the AC is broken? Do you believe everything people say?”
“That’s what people say.” N can’t see anything to be angry about. What's wrong with his story about the rock or in his saying that the AC had broken? He presses the plunger on his packet of pain meds. He knows it's empty but does it in the hope it will make him feel better anyway. N thinks for a long time of a rock growing as big as a planet, crashing into another planet, then that planet crashing into an even bigger planet, ad infinitum. Then he daydreams of his birthplace, where he returned after five years of service. He remembers the great ocean whose shore was covered with fresh snow. On the coast of the ocean was his small town. From the fifth house down the street facing the sea came his brother Blue in a snow- runner; behind him sat N’s little nieces Violet, in large felt boots, and Aqua, in bright plastic boots. Blue is smiling happily while driving through the newly fallen snow. Violet laughs, and Aqua’s face is hidden - she is well wrapped up. “The children will catch cold ...” N says under his breath, smiling.
S coughs loudly. breaking the thread of N’s thoughts. Instead of the sea, suddenly he saw his young mother seated, reading to him as a little boy while he played with his childhood toy trains and the train went round and round by themselves. He's glad he saw his nieces. “I saw them, Mother!” he mutters, and opens his eyes. Seeing his sick mother asleep in her bunk, feels around in the darkness for water. His stomach hurts. He drinks and then lays down again. Once more he sees the trains, its billowing black smoke, clouds of it, going around in circles.
Suddenly S speaks up. “I’ll tell you a story that will make you laugh.” She took a few breaths and then said to anyone who would listen: “Do you know how naive I am?” N looks at his mom. “Complain - you are a bitch, squashed like a bug. I am afraid of nothing and fear nobody, but I’m so naive, it’s funny. For me to think my complaints will make a difference is quite a laugh.”
“No, it’s not funny,” N said softly, almost to himself.
“What happened to you?” T asks S. But S tires easily and needs to take a few breaths. “Yes, S, tell us what happened” says V. Then S coughs and simply says, “When I die, there will be no one to stand up to the injustice.” She collapses back on her bunk, exhausted. N stopped listening to her. He knows she'll never tell them what happened.
Through the darkness T slowly to distinguishes the patient in the bunk S. He sees her sleeping in a sitting position, for if she lay down she couldn't breathe. Her skin was grey and clammy, but her features were striking, once beautiful. She's losing strength through her illness and the suffocating heat. She breathes heavily and sometimes mutters to herself. When she notices her son looking at her, she turns toward him and says in a hoarse whisper: “Are you now beginning to understand? . . . Forget the past . . . Try to understand the here and now.”
“Understand what?” N asks, too weak to try to argue.
“Why we, instead of being kept in a proper hospital, should be here, where the heat is stifling, and stinking. Now it is all clear to me. Do you see it? There's nothing broken. They turned up this heat intentionally. The doctors ordered us here to get rid of us. They got tired of all the trouble we gave them. You are no good to them; no longer being of the warrior class. You only give a lot of trouble, but you are just cattle, and there is no difficulty in getting rid of cattle,” she says with conviction. She paused to take a few breaths and said, “They have no conscience and no humanity.”
“They won’t. A few sick enlisteds won’t be noticed.”
N can’t make out what his mother's talking about. “I’m not that sick - it’s just that I caught a chill.”
“They are banking on the fact that you can’t last. . . . And that’s all the return you get for faithful service?” S looks very angry, and summons the energy to say “How they treat you – why isn’t there a public outcry?”
Silence falls on everyone. It's so hot, N can hardly breathe. He wants a drink, but the water is too warm and oily. Once more N dreams of the icy sea, the snowy village. Violet laughs, and that fool of a little girl Aqua opens her fur coat, and stretches out her feet. “Look,” she says, “my felt boots are new.” “You’re almost six years old and still you has no sense!” says N. “Instead of showing your boots off, why don’t you bring some water to your uncle? If you do, I’ll give you a present.” Then comes Blue, with his hunting rifle on his shoulder, and there's the train and the black smoke . . . .
Suddenly, something strange happens to the soldier playing cards they call P. P calls “ace of diamonds,” drops his cards, then lurches and looks round with empty eyes. “In a moment,” P says and collapses onto the floor. They're at a loss. T shouts at P but he makes no reply. “Are you okay?” asks T. “Perhaps we’d better call the doctor, eh? Drink some water, P. Here, have a sip.”
“What’s the use?” shouts N angrily. “Don’t you see?”
“What?” says T.
“What?!” cries N. “He’s dead, that’s what! Don’t you see?”
J and some other soldiers drag P to a distant corner where the med techs will collect him. Then they begin to play cards again. S is propped up in her bunk watching, and some others squat uncomfortably on the floor. Y has his right arm in a sling and his wrist tightly bandaged so that he had to hold the cards in his left hand or in the crook of his elbow.
“Tell me about being a cook,” S says to N.
“You get up in the morning, plan the meals for the day, make sure there’s plenty of coffee and eggs for breakfast, and then there is nothing to do until lunch. I could pray or read books. It was a good life,” N says.
“Plan meals? Plans don’t matter,” S snaps.
“If you follow orders then no one harms you. For five years now I’ve never been in the brig and I’ve only been to court once.”
“What was that for?” Seven asks, not looking up from his cards.
“Fighting. The contractors started it. I defended myself and the court ruled self-defense.”
She wanted to say something but S is completely exhausted and has to shut her eyes. Her head falls back and then flops forward onto her chest. She tries to lie down, but in vain, because she can't breathe. “And why did you go for them?” S asks finally.
“I told you they started it,” N snaps. First, T looks at N. He never takes that tone with his mom. Maybe, they wonder, there's something wrong with him. Then T looks at S and sees a tear run down her cheek before she turns way.
N sips some warm water and thought of his fight in the kitchen that day with the contractors. He was good with knives so when he was appointed as cook, he remembers thinking that it was somehow appropriate. He remembers he hadn't panicked when he was first cut but to focus on the fight. He gave worst than he got, and he dozed off remembering how his knife blade stayed sharp and never broke and how the handle never slipped in his hand despite all the blood. Finally, S falls asleep and so does N, and it seems that all the world was asleep.
Two days pass. Now, S no longer sat up, but lay full length; her eyes are closed and her face seems thinner than ever.
“Mother!” calls N. With all her strength, S opens her eyes and moves her lips. “Are you okay?” he asks. “It’s nothing,” answers S, breathing heavily and looking away. “It’s better now. I’m much better. You see I can lie down now. If you see Blue and his girls, tell them I’m okay and not to worry.”
The patient’s ward was still stifling and hot. It was not only hard to speak but even hard to concentrate enough to listen. So N clasps his knees, leans his head on them and dreams of Blue and himself as children playing in the snow. He's driving a snow-runner, with Blue behind him, riding fast and Blue's yelling to slow down but N knows he he didn’t really mean it. The cold wind slaps you in the face, freezes your nose and cuts your hands. The clumps of snow fall down your neck. Smiling, N laughs out loud thinking of the time when Blue ran hard into a snow-drift, getting snow on his face! A long time passes on the ward in silence, but N notices nothing as he sits dreaming of the snow.
He hears someone coming into the ward, and some voices, but five minutes pass and all was still.
“May she rest in peace!” says T. “She was a tough woman.”
“What?” asks N.
“She’s dead. She has just been taken upstairs. She suffered much. She deserved to die in a better place, but at least her suffering is over now.”
N tries to sit up in his bunk but fell back, exhausted. T sits down on N’s bunk and says in a soft tone: “You won’t live much longer either.”
“Did the doctor tell you that?” asks N.
“No one told me, but I can see it. You can always tell when a man is going to die soon. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, but if you have any possessions, you had better give it to the senior med tech.”
“I have not written my brother back home,” says N. “I shall die and he will never know about mother.”
“Your family will know,” says T. “When you die they will report your cause of death to your nearest family member and they will give your effects, and those of your mother’s, to Army headquarters, and then they will send them to your family.”
This conversation only serves to make N unhappy. He alreadt knew what the procedures were. He drinks oily, warm water and sucked in a breath of the hot air. He tries to think of his home and the snow, but can't summon the memories. He's too sad and tired.
“They are going to bury your mom on the surface,” says T.
“Yes. That’s the way they do it.”
“There is no love here, underground,” says T.
“On the surface the family can go to the grave and weep over it, I guess,” says N.
“Aren’t you afraid to die too?” asks T.
“Yes. I have a brother at home, and his family, and I will miss them. But I am very tired now, just let me sleep a little bit,” N says. N lays down in his bunk and he he falls into a deep sleep.
After some time passes, two med tech come down and carry his body out of the ward. N is placed in a capsule, which looks like a casket, rectangular and black. Round him stands T and D, both at attention, saluting the casket. “May he rest in peace, always, now and forever,” says D.
The two med techs wheel his capsule into an elevator, press a button and the elevator doors close and N travels up many floors, far away from the Phobos. Soon his capsule joins his mother’s and together they are buried in the snow, not far from a small town on the coast of a beautiful, cold ocean. Back to where he was born.
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