Although Lou Corlin understood why Brenda Redmond had insisted on being the only one to take her friend’s situation to Medlab, he really wished she’d let him join her. It wasn’t like he was a little kid who needed to be protected from potential fallout. He was a legal adult, and he was accustomed to shouldering adult responsibilities.
Still, once Brenda had made that decision, he pretty much had to respect it. She hadn’t completely shut him out of the loop — she’d let him know that higher-ups on Medstaff were looking at the situation, which indicated that she hadn’t gotten into immediate trouble. But she’d made it clear to him that she wanted him to stay out of it from here on out, if only to protect him from any possible fallout.
So here he was at the station offices, having finished his air shift, listening to the Timeline Brothers cracking jokes and generally cutting up. The Alternative Lunch was both alternative music and alternate history, and today’s book was about a world in which space exploration stopped after the early lunar landings instead of consolidating those gains for a push to Mars. Needless to say, the Timeline Brothers pretty clearly considered the whole idea ridiculous. Why would either the US or the old USSR put all that much money and effort into building a space infrastructure to go to the Moon, and then abandon it all?
Except he recalled something Cather Hargreaves had said when talking about their ur-brother’s narrow escape and its historical significance, which only made sense if one presupposed that such a world did indeed exist. Lou knew that Cather and his family listened to Shepardsport Pirate Radio pretty often, even if it wasn’t exactly a station in good odor with command over at Grissom City. What would Cather think to hear those remarks?
As Lou came out to the front office, he noticed Cindy Margrave gathering up her belongings. She was usually out by the time he’d finished the handoff and logged his final set of songs, but today she must’ve had to deal with something at the last minute and was running late.
“How are things going?”
“As well as they can, given the situation.” Cindy was trying to sound positive, probably from the habits of working here, even if she was now off duty.
“Want to walk to the dining commons together and talk?”
Cindy hesitated, then agreed that, given they both worked here, it would probably pass muster as professional rather than personal.
After a little shop talk, Lou finally broached the subject more directly. “How’s things going with Amy?”
Cindy glanced away, a momentary visual flinch. “We’re in contact, but they still won’t let her have her phone back. Everything’s coming through someone at that makeshift orphanage of theirs, like they don’t trust her to communicate directly.”
“And they’re probably acting like you should be grateful they allow her to communicate at all with someone who’s under a Writ of Expulsion.” Lou might not work in the newsroom, but he was all too aware of the political situation.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Cindy was definitely shedding her professional receptionist persona and letting her teenage self back out. “I don’t think the people running that place appreciate the idea that one of their charges has connections. They don’t dare completely cut her off from the outside universe, but they sure want to make sure only things that make them look good get out.”
“Color me shocked.” Although Lou wasn’t usually much for sarcasm, right now it seemed appropriate.
Then he switched back to a more serious tone. “So how are her folks doing?”
“Not well. Apparently her dad didn’t make it, and even if her mom pulls through, she’s going to need a lot of regeneration. And that’s assuming she can even get it, and they don’t just go here’s your wheelchair, here’s your prosthetics.”
“Which means that in either case, she’s not going to be in any shape to take custody of her children for a long time, and with things in such complete chaos, there’s no way to get in contact with extended family unless they’re right there in Houston.”
“Which they aren’t, as I understand. She’s got grandparents somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska, but that’s assuming they haven’t succumbed to that virus. Even if travel weren’t pretty much shut down right now, there’s no way they’d be sending children off to stay with elderly and vulnerable family members. So it looks like she’s going to be stuck indefinitely, with the staff being as crazy controlling as Brenda’s afraid her friend’s parents are.”
“Not a good situation. But at least it sounds like she’s alive and healthy, and this thing isn’t sweeping through that place like a prairie fire through dry grass.”
Cindy admitted that it did appear that way, as long as the staff wasn’t fabricating responses in an effort to conceal a far worse situation. In any case, they were approaching the entrance to the dining commons. It was probably best for them to enter separately, since they’d probably sit with their own friends and family.
One reply on “Under a Shadow”
That final paragraph’s a little tricky. The first sentence is in Cindy’s (implied) voice, summarizing what she says to Lou. That invites a reading of the following sentences as a parallel construction that’s also in Cindy’s voice. But I’m not sure if that is so, and it seems awkward for Cindy to be telling Lou that he and she ought to enter separately; it would make better sense if this were clearly Lou’s thoughts. I’m not sure how that could be marked, though it might be as simple as changing the first sentence from indirect discourse to direct discourse by putting it in quotation marks.
I was caught off balance, too, by their splitting up, because earlier when Lou asked, “Want to walk to the dining room together and talk?” I took it as an invitation to sit with him in the dining room. So I had to recalibrate.