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“Are they going to be unfrozen early, too?”
“Ah. ” He unwraps his fingers and straightens the objects on his desk, making the notepad parallel to the desk edge, the pens in the cup all lean to one side. He’s wasting time, avoiding eye contact. “You weren’t meant to be unfrozen. What you must understand is that your parents, Numbers 41 and 40, are essential. They both have highly specialized skills that will be needed when we land. We will require their knowledge and aid at Centauri-Earth’s developmental stages. ”
“So, basically, no. ” I want to hear him say it.
“No. ”
I shut my eyes and breathe. I am so angry—so frustrated—just so pissed off that this has happened and that I can’t do anything at all about it. I can feel the hot, itchy tears in my eyes, but I do not want to cry, not now in front of the doctor, not ever again.
The doctor pushes the bottom right corner of his big notepad so that it is perfectly square to the edge of the desk. His long, twitchy fingers pause. There is nothing out of place on his desk. There is nothing out of place in his whole office. Except me.
“It’s not so bad here,” the doctor says. I look up. There’s a blurry film fogging my vision, and I know if I’m not careful, I’ll cry. I let him continue. “In a very real way, it’s better that you are here now, instead of there later. Who knows what Centauri-Earth will be like? It may not even be habitable, despite the probes sent before Godspeed left Sol-Earth. It’s not an option we like to consider, but it’s possible. . . . ” His voice trails off as his eyes meet mine.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What am I supposed
to do now?” I say, my voice rising. “Are you just saying I’ve got to sit around? Waiting until the ship lands before I can see my parents again?” I pause. “God, I’ll be so old by then. I’ll be older than them! That’s not right!” I pound my fist on the desk. His pencils rattle in their neat little cup, and one of them does not settle back in line with the others. He reaches up to place it neatly against its fellows. With a roar of frustration, I grab the cup and hurl it at the doctor, who dodges just in time. The pencils fly like freed birds, then clatter to the floor like dead ones.
“No one cares about your stupid pencils!” I shout as the doctor jumps to pick up the fallen pencils. “No one cares! Why can’t you see that?”
He freezes, gripping his pencils, his back curved away from me. “I know this is difficult for you. . . . ”
“Difficult? Difficult? You don’t know what it’s been like! You have no idea how long I’ve suffered—only for it to amount to nothing! NOTHING!”
The doctor throws the pencils into the cup so violently that two pop back out again. He does not replace them, but lets them sit, disorderly and random, on the desk. “There is no need to react violently,” he says in a calm, even tone. “Life will not be so bad for you on the ship. The key,” he adds, “is to find a way to occupy your time. ”
I clench my fists, willing myself not to kick his desk, not to throw the chair I am sitting in at him, not to pull down the walls that surround me. “In fifty years I’m going to be older than my parents, and you’re telling me to find a way to occupy my freaking time?!”
“A hobby, perhaps?”
“GAH!” I screech. I lunge for his desk, about to sweep everything on it onto the floor. The doctor stands, too, but instead of trying to stop me, he reaches for the cabinet behind him. There is something so calmly disturbing about this action that I pause as he pulls open a drawer and, after rummaging around for a bit, withdraws a small, square, white package, similar to the hand wipes I used to get from the Chinese restaurant Jason took me to on our first date.
“This is a med patch,” the doctor says. “Tiny needles glued to the adhesive will administer calming drugs directly into your system. I do not want to spend the next fifty years medicating you just so you stay calm. ” He sets the white package in the center of his desk, then looks me square in the eyes. “But I will. ”
The med patch lies there, a line in the sand that I do not want to cross. I sit back down.
“Now, do you have any hobbies or skills that you could put to use on the ship?”
Hobbies? Hobbies are something ninety-year-old men have as they piddle around the garage.
“I liked history in school,” I finally say, although I feel like a dork for thinking of school before anything else.
“We don’t have school here. ” Before I can contemplate life without school, the doctor continues. “Not now. And besides, at this point, the life you lived is, well. . . ”
Oh. I see his point. My life, my former life, already is history. What will it be like to see the things I loved and lived in a history book? What if I flip through the pages and recognize someone? What if I recognize myself, staring up at me from the pages of a history tome older than I am?
“I was on the cross-country team,” I say. The doctor looks at me blankly. I realize the phrase “cross-country” means nothing to him, here on a ship where there is no country to cross. “I ran. It’s a sport where you run. ”
The doctor looks skeptical. “You can, of course, ‘run’ whenever you’d like. But. . . ” His gaze roves over me. “It may not be advisable. You will stand out on board this ship. . . I cannot vouch for your safety when you leave the Hospital. ”
My stomach clenches. What kind of people are these? And what does he mean by “safety”? Does he think I’ll be attacked?
The doctor, however, seems oblivious to my uneasiness. “What other activities could you do?”
“I was on the yearbook staff. I like photography,” I say, still a little distracted by thoughts of how I’m going to be treated when I go outside.
