Tag: Kitty Margrave

Categories
Narrative

The Icy Touch of Fear

Cindy knew all too well how far away Brenda Redmond’s apartment was. Last year her boyfriend had lived in that same module, so she got to know just how long it took to get between them, especially at an hour like this, when the airlocks weren’t likely to be busy.

Except it never felt this long when she was walking back from studying with Ray and his friends. Cindy checked her phone yet again, realized that all of three minutes had gone by — yet it felt like forever.

All the time, Kitty was getting more and more updates from Amy down in Houston. From the tenor of those texts, things were getting worse rapidly. Cindy wondered if she should text Brenda again and ask how far she had gotten.

And then the doorbell chimed. Cindy hit the doorbell app on her phone, saw Brenda waving at the camera.

At least here it was all of three steps from chair to door. Brenda was breathing pretty hard, which suggested she’d taken some of the corridors at a run, pausing to rest only while she cycled through the module airlocks.

Cindy summarized everything that had happened since their last text. Brenda’s expression grew steadily more and more concerned.

“This doesn’t sound good. Have either of them been able to hold down any liquids?”

Kitty typed the question into her phone. After a moment, she looked up. “Amy says they just keep throwing everything back up.”

“Not good at all. I think she’d better call 911. Do you know if she has any other family in the area, or a friend’s place where she could stay?”

More typing, and then Kitty looked up. “Her best friend lives on the other side of the subdivision.”

“Thank heaven for best friends.” Brenda took a deep breath. “Kitty, I need you to have Amy text her friend and and let her know her parents may need to come over and pick up Amy and any siblings. Then I need Amy to call 911 and tell the dispatch operator that both her parents are sick and showing signs of severe dehydration. It’s important she does it in that order, because once she calls 911, the dispatch operator will need her to stay on the line, so she won’t want to have to switch between phone and messaging apps.”

“OK, I’ll tell her that.”

Brenda turned back to Cindy, keeping her voice low. “How are you feeling?”

Cindy took stock of her own emotional state. “OK, I guess.”

“You guess? If you’re not sure, I can stay here as long as you two need me.”

“Thanks.”

Categories
Narrative

The Least of These

By the time Cindy Margrave got back from the gym after her daily mandatory exercise session, she just wanted to get to bed. However, tomorrow she had a test in her chemistry course, and while she had done some studying, she really needed to review everything one last time.

At least the module lounge was quiet at this hour. Although her aunt and uncle had been able to secure a larger apartment, it was still crowded enough that it wasn’t exactly conducive to study. And she really didn’t want to go all the way up to Miskatonic Sector to use the study carrels in the library.

She settled into the chair in the furthest corner, glad that the two guys were keeping their voices low. From the looks of it, they were playing Space Race, although she couldn’t get a good enough view of the cards to be certain.

She was almost through with the aldehyde series when she felt a tug on the sleeve of her tracksuit. She looked up from her tablet to the wide eyes of her younger sister. Who’s supposed to be in bed already.

“What’s wrong, Kitty?”

“Amy just PMed me. Both her folks are sick, bad.”

Amy? Cindy tried to place the name. Kitty was such a social butterfly, there was just no keeping track of all her friends, even in a community as small as Shepardsport. Not to mention all Kitty’s online friends, with whom she spent about as much time as anyone up here.

Better just ask. Especially with whatever was going on back on Earth, any sickness in a community in as tight of quarters as everyone lived up here would be disastrous.

“She’s still in Houston. We were classmates, remember?”

Cindy didn’t want to admit that she honestly didn’t remember many of her sister’s classmates. It would sound too much like she didn’t care. Kitty had been just old enough to be distressed by the abrupt break from their old life when Uncle Carl and Aunt Betty took them in after Mom and Dad’s accident, and getting sent up here had been a second uprooting just as she was finally beginning to trust that her life would be stable.

“Sort of, but it’s been a long time, and I was pretty busy.” Hoping that would suffice to comfort her sister, she asked a few clarifying questions.

Kitty was a little shaky on details, but probably because Amy hadn’t been very clear on them. Up here, everybody got trained in remaining calm in a crisis and being able to deliver a coherent, organized report on one’s situation. Cindy knew she wouldn’t have been able to perform much better if she’d been called upon to report their parents’ accident to a 911 operator.

However, Cindy wasn’t sure if telling Amy to call 911 would be the best advice. It didn’t sound like they were in immediate danger, and when you were a kid, illnesses that weren’t actually that dangerous could be scary if both your folks came down with them at once.

Cindy wished there were someone she could talk to right now. However, Uncle Carl was out of town on a mission, taking supplies to some of the outlying scientific outposts, and Aunt Betty was spending more time up at the Safety and Security offices in Arkham Sector than she did here.

Who else could she turn to? Maybe some of her co-workers from the station? While Spruance Del Curtin would probably love to get any tidbits of information he could find, there was no way on Earth, the Moon or Mars that she was going to tell him about this.

On the other hand, what about Brenda Redmond? She was just enough older to be taken seriously, but young enough to still remember what it was like to be a kid, even if she was married and had two kids of her own.

Better text her first and see if she was where she could talk.