Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 117177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
I frowned at her. “Never. Don’t call yourself that. You’re hilarious, and you went above and beyond at your job. All I care about is that you’re okay. If today made you incredibly uncomfortable and unhappy, then that’s not okay. But if it’s just a funny story you can add to your repertoire, then who cares? You did a good job.”
“It’s just a funny story,” she assured me with a small smile. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She pressed another soft kiss to my mouth. “For being you.” Then she licked her lips. “Mmm, kung pao chicken. Any left?”
Grinning, I handed her the carton and reached for hers on the table.
She settled into my side, and I switched on a sci-fi TV show we’d started watching at her place this past week. However, once the food was eaten and we were curled up together, her head on my chest, I noticed Hallie lifting her phone to check it every fifteen minutes or so.
“Waiting on a call?” I asked.
“What?” She looked up at me with those long-lashed wide eyes.
“You keep checking your phone.”
“Oh.” Her gaze dropped back to the TV. “My aunt Julia has been calling me, but I haven’t picked up. If it was an emergency, she’d leave a voice mail, but she hasn’t, so clearly Mom, for whatever reason, is using her as a go-between.”
“But you’re waiting for her to call again?”
“No.” Hallie sighed heavily. “I’m waiting for my mom or dad to call me. It’s been weeks now and nothing. That’s shitty.” Her voice hitched.
Her fucking parents.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, tightening my arm around her. “They’ll call.”
And if they didn’t, I guessed I’d just have to find a way to help them pull their heads out of their asses.
“I don’t want to talk about them tonight, if that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
“Did you send the chapters to Scott?”
“Uh, not yet. Tomorrow.”
Hallie sat up. “Are you sure? Because you know you don’t have to send him anything.”
I smiled in reassurance. “I’m just being a perfectionist. But I want to send it to him.”
Nodding, she sank back against the couch instead of on me. Between that and the fact that she kept shooting me glances out of the corner of her eye, I knew she wanted to say something.
“What is it?”
Hallie chewed on her lower lip in thought.
My brows drew together. “You can talk to me about anything.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I have to ask, and I really want an honest answer. I don’t want you to think about us or anything else, just what’s in your gut. . . .”
“Okay?”
“Do you . . . Do you want to go on another space mission? I know you didn’t when you got back, but with some time and distance, I thought maybe—”
“No.” I cut her off gently. And I meant it. “I have no doubts in that regard. I know with certainty I don’t want to go back.”
“But in your videos, you seemed to love it, and I can’t get that out of my head. I’m afraid you’re missing something without it.”
“Hallie, I loved my time in space. I loved training for it. I loved my crew, and I miss them, and I miss the buzz and atmosphere at NASA. I miss being a part of something truly important to humanity’s progress. I do miss all of that, and I would never trade that life-altering experience for anything. But I don’t want to go back into space, and here’s why: that first experience can never be replicated. So that’s one reason. And two, and this is me being completely honest, I didn’t love being an astronaut enough to deal with the toll continued space exploration would take on my body.”
Her expression slackened with surprise. “How bad of a toll?”
“It can be bad,” I told her honestly. “Never mind the fact that we’re exposed to radiation, increasing the risk of cancer. There are other health risks. We exercise up there to slow the process, and it helps, but we still come home with a reduction in bone density and in muscle mass and strength. We can build that back up. My bone density is almost back to its normal levels. I check in with my doc every couple of weeks. I should hopefully be back to normal in another few months.”
“What? How did I not know this?”
“It’s not a big deal,” I promised. “And I got my muscle and strength back up to where I was before I went on mission with a lot of therapy and hard work when I returned to Earth. All of that is fixable. What isn’t is the ramifications on our cardiovascular system.”
“What do you mean?”
“Zero gravity changes the way the blood flows around our body. Our blood pressure gets very low. My motor skills were off when I returned home, and I felt faint a lot. I had to get a transfusion of normal saline to get my blood pressure back up to where it needed to be. The big thing I was warned about and advised of, as we all are, is that over time we can develop heart and blood vessel problems that you’d expect in someone much older. That increases our chances of heart disease and strokes. I also didn’t wear glasses before I went up into space. When I got back, I had blurriness that I didn’t have before, and now I need reading glasses, and who knows if that’s permanent or not.” I shrugged.