Page 123 of Artemis


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“Is the city okay?”

She wiggled her hand. “One thing at a time. How many fingers.”

“Three?”

“Okay. What do you remember?”

I looked down at my body. Everything seemed to be there. I wore a hospital smock and I’d been tucked into the bed. My hands were still bandaged. “I remember popping a hamster ball. I expected to die.”

“By all rights, you should have,” she said. “But Dale Shapiro and Loretta Sanchez saved you. From what I hear, he threw your body over the Armstrong–Shepard Connector. Sanchez was on the ot

her side. She dragged you into a rover and pressurized it. You were in vacuum for a total of three minutes.”

I looked at my gauze mittens. “And that didn’t kill me?”

“The human body can survive a few minutes of vacuum. Artemis’s air pressure is low enough that you didn’t get decompression sickness. The main threat is oxygen starvation—same as drowning. They saved you just in time. Another minute and you’d be dead.”

She put her fingers on my throat and watched a clock on the wall. “You have second-degree burns on your hands and the back of your neck. I’m assuming they directly contacted the lunar surface. And you have a pretty bad sunburn on your face. We’ll have to check you for skin cancer once a month for a while, but you’ll be all right.”

“What about the city?” I asked.

“You should talk to Rudy about that. He’s right outside—I’ll get him.”

I grabbed her sleeve. “But—”

“Jazz, I’m your doctor, so I’ll take good care of you. But we’re not friends. Let go of me.”

I released her. She opened the door and stepped out.

I caught a glimpse of Svoboda in the room beyond. He craned his neck to look in. Then Rudy’s impressive build blocked the view.

“Hello, Jazz,” Rudy said. “How do you feel?”

“Did anyone die?”

He closed the door behind him. “No. No one died.”

I gasped in relief and my head fell to the pillow. Only then did I realize how clenched up I’d been. “Thank fucking God.”

“You’re still in enormous trouble.”

“I figured.”

“If this had happened anywhere else, there would have been deaths.” He clasped his arms behind him. “As it is, everything worked in our favor. We don’t have cars, so no one was operating vehicles at the time. Thanks to our low gravity, no one got hurt falling to the ground. A few scrapes and bruises is all.”

“No harm, no foul.”

He shot me a glare. “Three people went into cardiac arrest from chloroform poisoning. All three were elderly with preexisting lung conditions.”

“But they’re okay now, right?”

“Yes, but only through luck. Once people woke up they checked on their neighbors. If it weren’t for our tight-knit community, that wouldn’t have happened. Plus, it’s easy to carry an unconscious person in our gravity. And no part of town is far away from Dr. Roussel.” He cocked his head toward the doorway. “She’s not thrilled with you, by the way.”

“I noticed.”

“She takes public health seriously.”

“Yeah.”

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