Page 7 of Spread Me
She’ll have to make do with four years.
“Did you bring any of it with you?”
“Any what?” the new hire asks, wandering down one of the three hallways that split off from the airlock. They rapa knuckle against the wall, listening to the echo of the dead space behind it.
“Cîroc.”
Their scratchy laughter echoes from halfway down the leftmost hallway, the one that leads to the lab. Kinsey follows the sound reluctantly and finds them poking their head into the exam room that will be their domain while they’re at the station.
The exam room is as makeshift as everything else at the station. The drawers and cabinets are freestanding, and the exam table is a sheet of stainless steel on locking casters. It looks more like a restaurant kitchen counter than real medical equipment.
“Well? Is it everything you dreamed of?”
“I mean. It isn’t set up for anything more intense than a few stitches,” they reply, wandering inside. Their frame nearly fills the room. “This equipment can’t save a life, which is what I’m supposed to be here for.”
“We’ve got emergency equipment.” Kinsey points to the AED that hangs on one wall.
The new doctor radiates a kind of calm confidence that leaves Kinsey feeling more stable than she did before they arrived. She frowns, determined not to like them. They turn around and lock eyes with Kinsey. “Look, Doctor Harlowe—let’s you and I be honest with each other.”
“Call me Kinsey.”
They nod and hold out one massive, calloused hand. “Then you’ll call me Mads.” When they shake on it, Mads looks into Kinsey’s eyes with frank candor. “Nobody here expects to be able to keep a dying person alive for the time it would take to drive to civilization and return with a medevac. I’m going to bitch at you about getting real medical supplies anyway, though, because I don’t want to havea dead body on my hands. And then you’ll tell TQI that I’m bitching at you, and maybe they’ll send us what we need and maybe they won’t. Either way, I’ll be able to sleep at night knowing I did my best. Sound good?”
Kinsey looks up at them with a sinking feeling in her stomach, her hand still clasped in theirs. She can tell that, in spite of her determination not to like them, she and Mads are going to become friends. “Sounds good.”
“Good.” They release their grip on her and reach into one deep pocket of their coat. With a clink, they withdraw four miniature bottles of bright green Cîroc. “Now, why don’t you and I get settled in?”
Over the course of the next two days, everyone gets sick except for Kinsey. The illness brings on a brief fever, a few rounds of vomiting, and a full-body rash that’s gone as quickly as it comes. It could be so much worse. All told, they get off lucky.
Kinsey stays as isolated as she can while the rest of the team succumbs to the virus, but she can still hear them. Saskia and Jacques, who share the room to the right of hers, vomit for most of the first day. Domino and Nkrumah, who share the room to the left of hers, groan through the night as the rash spreads rippling pink fingers across their bodies. Mads sleeps in the room across the hall—they occupy a solo berth because they need to be able to push both twin beds together. They emerge a few times to press themself to Kinsey’s door, their mouth close to the frame.
They have updates, they say. It’s a fast-spreading fever, freakishly fast, almost certainly a virus. Everyone’s confined to their bunks until it runs its course. The storm, they report, has taken down the landline and the Wi-Fi—not a surprise, it happens every time the dust kicks up, but the timing is bad. They release Domino from quarantine long enough to check Weatherman each morning, and the readouts seem grim—a system of sandstorms is moving toward the research station, each larger than the last. They tell her that they’re feeling too ill themself to do anything beyond implementing baseline precautions and keeping the base in a state of lockdown.
Kinsey says she’s fine. She says she’s mostly been sleeping. Those are both lies. She hasn’t been ill, but she hasn’t been resting, either. She’s surrounded on all sides by the thing she wants most, the thing that’s always just out of reach. It’s how she imagines other people feel when they see the outline of a hard nipple through a wet linen shirt: the urgency, the yearning, the delicious guilt of secret intrusion, the overwhelming weight of want.
She gets herself off over and over again to the sound of the virus trying to do its work. Her fingers ache. Everything aches. It’s not enough. It doesn’t matter how many times she gives herself over to the fantasy. It’s not the real thing. She can neverhavethe real thing.
Mads declares an end to the quarantine five days after the specimen enters the station. Everyone got sick, everyone got better, the dragon is slain, it’s safe to re-emerge. Everyone, Mads announces, will need to assist with decontamination, and with shoveling sand from the storm out of the airlock—but Nkrumah puts her foot down, insisting that they should all be allowed to wash off the sticky layers of dried fever-sweat first.
The team agrees to follow their usual showering protocols, entering the dormlike double shower at the end of the residential hall in shifts. It’s the same thing they do at the end of every workday, pairing up to rinse off sand and sunscreen before retiring to the canteen for a reconstituted dinner. Saskia and Mads always go first, then Jacques and Nkrumah.
Kinsey showers last, with Domino.
Domino is, above all things, irrepressible. Everyone loves them, except Jacques first thing in the morning, but then again, Jacques doesn’t love anyone first thing in the morning. Domino is slow to snap, quick to joke, easy to share a lab table with. They always whistle while they shower. They’re an amazing whistler so it’s not annoying unless you’re hungover, which is why Jacques never showers with Domino.
Kinsey listens to their trilling rendition of “Superstition” as she gingerly lathers her aching undercarriage with a palmful of Dr. Bronner’s. After a moment, Domino’s hand appears around the edge of the curtain. “Is the Doctor in?”
Kinsey hands the bottle over. “Careful. It’s eucalyptus.”
“I like the eucalyptus one best,” Domino replies, conspiratorial. “Like a slap from the hand of Papa Bronner himself.”
Kinsey laughs louder than she usually would. Her limbs feel loose, her thoughts soft around the edges. Exquisite soreness spirals up from the insides of her thighs to the creases of her hips. She is spent and tired and free.
Just for this moment, Kinsey is happy.
“Whew. Eucalyptus,” Domino says a few minutes later when they emerge from their half of the shower, vigorously toweling their hair. “Want to go poke the specimen with me after you get dressed?”
Kinsey looks up from the puddle of leave-in conditioner in her palm. “Do I want to what?”
