Page 152 of The Atom Between Us

I’m rolled onto my side, the mat sliding under my shoulder, and all the wounds come alive at once. I grit my teeth, not wanting to scream, but end up making a noise anyway. Kang’s hand slips from mine as they lift him, and the loss is so total I gasp for air, like I’ve just stepped off a ledge.

“He’s right here,” Maven says, voice gentler now, but their hands are brutal—stripping away my ruined shirt, cutting through my sleeve with a safety blade, pinching the skin above my clavicle to start an IV. “You stay focused, Dee. You want him to live, you stay awake. You got it?”

I blink. Blood from my ruined eye mats my lashes together, but I force the other open, lock onto Kang’s face as he’s loaded onto the gurney. For a moment, he looks back—maybe reflex, maybe nothing. But his fingers curl, slow and soft, like he’s trying to fold the world into a fist.

The medics work fast. One tapes sensors to Kang’s chest, the other compresses a bundle of gauze to his side, swapping bloodied pads for fresh at a pace that seems both desperate and deliberate. There’s a rhythm to their movements, a ballet of triage, but my brain can’t hold the choreography. I watch the line of Kang’s throat, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he breathes—too shallow, too fast. I will him to slow down, to wait for me.

Someone presses a mask to my face. “O2,” Maven says, as if I don’t know. The hiss of it is a relief, clearing the taste of blood from the back of my throat. I want to thank them, but the words are stuck.

For a second, time goes elastic. The world shrinks to the size of my eyelid, then expands, then shrinks again.

I hear snatches of dialogue over the din:

“…cardiac output’s dropping⁠—”

“…we need to get him stable or he’s not going to make it⁠—”

“…got a line in, but the pressure’s tanked⁠—”

“…his name is Kang, right? He keeps saying her name⁠—”

It’s all noise, except for that last part. I fixate on it, build a shrine in my head to the idea that, even now, Kang is trying to find me in the dark.

They load us side by side, the medics cursing as the gurney tilts and nearly dumps us into the rubble. Rosie helps Maven steer, her left arm wrapped in a dirty bandage, but her grip is strong. She glances down at me, tries to smile, but her teeth are pink with blood.

“Welcome back, doc,” she says. “Don’t get comfy, it’s a shit show topside.”

I try to grin, but my jaw won’t cooperate. Instead, I reach for Kang’s hand again, find it limp at his side. I tangle my fingers in his, not caring about the sticky, blood-wet mess.

The ride is a blur—up through the collapsed node chamber, out into sunlight so savage I nearly black out again. The cold hits first, then the taste of open air, then the sound: a hundred different alarms, shouts, the metallic rattle of carts and tools. For the first time, I notice the ozone is gone, replaced by the sharp, clean stink of antiseptic and the faint sweetness of dead flowers.

Maven’s people get to work on us immediately. There’s a roof, maybe a tarp, stretched over a makeshift recovery bay. Kang is wheeled away, out of view, but I catch a glimpse of his profile as they mask him with oxygen and start a saline drip. His eyes are closed, but his face is peaceful. I want to believe he knows I’m still here.

The pain creeps in, then floods. I let it, because it’s better than nothing.

Somewhere, a voice says: “We got you. Both of you.”

I don’t know who says it. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that, for now, I’m not alone.

I close my eye and let the light fill me up.

It’s almost enough.

It’s the clatter that wakes me—a sterile, metallic noise that echoes off the inside of my skull. I jerk, expecting the pain, but it still takes my breath. My mouth tastes like pennies and disinfectant.

Everything is bright, unreal. The world has been converted into a sickroom: two cots set in the shadow of a collapsed beam, blankets thrown over bodies, medics working in silent panic. Somewhere close, a solar lamp burns holes in the dark, casting a shadow the color of old bruises across the tented ceiling.

My head is packed in something stiff, the left side numb and buzzing. My arms are lashed to my chest with loops of gauze and improvised mesh. The hands that held me down must have gotten creative, because every time I try to move my ribs threaten to unspool from the rest of me.

The only thing that matters: Kang, less than a meter away, stretched out on a fold-out table. He is naked from the waist up, skin mottled with the kind of cyanosis that usually means cardiac failure. Two medics in shredded Authority green are braced on either side of him, moving with the silent, brutal choreography of battlefield surgeons. One compresses his chest in short, sharp bursts, the other cuts away a strip of stained bandage and slaps a fresh pad onto the wound below his heart. The gauze comes away soaked and red every time.

Maven is there too, perched at Kang’s head, hands clamped to either side of his jaw. Their eyes dart from the medics to the battered portable monitor, which is spitting out a string of zeroes and error codes. A third runner with a satchel of supplies is tearing open a foil pouch, the packet shaking in his hands. The smell of antiseptic cuts through the stench of blood and ozone.

“He’s got major internal,” one medic hisses. “I can’t stop the bleed. Clamp’s not holding.”

“Try again,” Maven snaps, their voice ground glass. “He’s not going under. Not now.”

“He’s already gone,” the other says, softer, but nobody listens.