[stylist] Bipolar astronaut: Parts 3 and 4

[Vejas Vasiliauskas]

Hi Chelsea,
Thanks for posting these. I can really see this story coming together. I have a few comments though:
First, I  don't really see much distinction between the planets. The activities and scenarios that occur on both Jupiter and Mars could easily take place on Earth. Therefore, I'd try to make something distinct about them... for example, the doctors on Mars could be martians, so in order to communicate with them they would require special translators. The idea of missing Earth could be a very profound one which could be a cause of his  bipolar symptoms.
The other thing, and I know that this is your story and I don't know how you planned to finish it, but I keep seeing  the bipolar astronaut pretty much always at an all-time low. I actually think that Byte's death could be a good way for the astronaut to shine, and be the one to interact with the doctors, not rely on April and the other friends to do so. I don't really see an "equal" friendship between the astronaut and Byte. Byte offers so much but the astronaut hasn't really seemed to do much to contribute to the friendship. So maybe, helping out Byte, being there for her and interacting with the doctors could be like "giving back" for the help she offered.
About the tenses: yes, I think it would make sense to make all the tenses the same, but you can choose which one. I use to mostly just write in past tense, but I've recently starting becoming more comfortable writing in present tense so I totally understand it's easy to mix up and foreret which one you're using because I have done it, too.
Just some thoughts,
Vejas    

> On Jul 27, 2017, at 10:06, Chelsea Cook via stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Thanks for your feedback. sean, to answer your last question, cyclers are used a lot in this universe. I'll make that more clear as I fill in the gaps.
> 
> Here are the next two installments. Same warnings as before.
> 
> Chelsea
> 
> Jupiter Station Psychiatric Facility, November 2036
> 
> 
>  Middle of the night.  I wake up shaking.  Freezing.
> 
> "What's wrong?" my shadow, or the staff member on suicide watch tonight, asks.
> 
> "I don't know," I barely whisper.  Heart's racing, breathing coming in quick gasps.  I start to sit up.  "I need to see a nurse."
> 
> "OK.  Let's go."
> 
> The cuff can't be tightened quick enough.  150 is the pulse reading.  They all shake their heads.  That can't be right.  It just can't! My fear increases, as does my heart rate, if that were even possible.  They all stand around.
> 
> "Please? I know you don't usually allow these requests, but can we go to a cupola? I need to see something other than these walls!"
> 
> "Can't do that.  The noise and the light would awaken everybody on this whole ward." Crisp, final, decisive.
> 
> Fuck!
> 
> "What else can we do?" Kinder, different voice this time.
> 
> "Talk to me."
> 
> "What about?"
> 
> "Any fucking thing!" More irritable than I mean to be.
> 
> A musical voice.  Not English.  Spanish.  The lulling, calming, rolling R's.
> 
> It's the only thing that helps.  After a few minutes, the shaking finally subsides.
> 
> A hug.  From a patient.  A tight squeeze.
> 
> Probably not allowed.  I don't care.
> 
> It is humanity in this definitely inhumane place I am realizing is not a hospital, but a fucking jail! Meds are the handcuffs for some patients, but they don't even proffer those.  Now that whatever this is has subsided, I am not so gently told to return to bed, and thusly escorted.
> 
> 
> I am standing in the doctor's office.  No fooling around today; I want answers!
> 
> "What the fuck happened to me last night! And why couldn't they fix it?!"
> 
> He is calm and reassuring as usual.  "They can't fix what they can't control.  In this case, your body was having a panic attack."
> 
> "Panic attack? But those are for people who freak out all the time about every. little. thing!" Or so I'd heard.
> 
> "I take it last night's was your first one?"
> 
> i nod curtly.
> 
> "Well, they do have a nocturnal variety.  Since you haven't had one before, I'll demystify them for you.  They are not always had by anxious people, though I'll figure out if you have that diagnosis in a moment.  Panic attacks can be recurrent, triggered by stress or another known environmental factor, or they can happen at night, as yours did.  Have you heard of the body's fight-or-flight response?"
> 
> "Of course I have! I've gone EVA before."
> 
> "Right, sorry.  You would.  Anyway, this response is your body's fight-or-flight mode overreacting just a touch."
> 
> "A touch? Didn't seem like a touch to me last night when the cuff went on and all the nurses did was stand there!"
> 
> "Of course not, it never does.  There are ways to control it when you are having one, though.  Meds are one, but another is an ice cube, or looking at Jupiter, as you wanted to do last night."
> 
> "They wouldn't let me!"
> 
> "I'll speak to the nursing staff about it.  They need to add dampeners to that damned window anyway, just for this sort of scenario.  You can also try ice tied in a cloth; it will keep your limbic system (the unconscious, body-controlling part of your brain) busy while your conscious mind calms down.  I will also prescribe you a fast-acting benzodiazepine--Xanax is the one I'm thinking of.  It will quell your mounting panic, and is sedating, so you'll fall back asleep quickly.  But be careful: This one has a tendency to become addictive, so if you find yourself checking your watch for the next dose, come see me.  We can't have that and will need to switch.  Take one every eight hours as needed, but generally you won't need them that frequently--say, once every twenty-four hours.  If more frequent use is required, come see me again.  Are we clear?"
> 
> "Yes.  Thanks for answering my questions.  This place is really stressing me out."
> 
> "I understand.  On that note: Do you find you worry frequently? In general, not just in here."
> 
> "Yes.  Why?"
> 
> "When you find yourself in this worried state, do your thoughts start to race? Can't control their speed, one after the other like lightning?"
> 
> "Yes! And I get paranoid, like if I'm out of a ship and my air will run out or something."
> 
> "I see.  Do you get a dreaded feeling come over you? Perhaps in your stomach?"
> 
> "Yes.  Is SOMETHING ELSE wrong with me?"
> 
> "I wouldn't say with you, that's being a bit harsh on yourself.  I'd say it's just your brain chemistry overreacting to stimuli.  Normal for an evolving species.  You'd be the first hunter out if we were still running from the tigers." He gives me a small smile, which I return gratefully.  "Well, I think it's your next group time.  Today was productive, I'd say."
> 
> I agree, then get up to deal with my new diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.  For the entire time I'm in the hospital, the panic attacks visit me frequently at night, disrupting my sleep and adding another load to my already stressed out and miserable brain.
> 
> ***
> Mars Training Facility, December 2036
> 
> 
>  Two weeks.
> 
> Two weeks, glorious and free from the medical community.  And what was my treatment, because I always had to be in "treatment" now? Lifelong habit I so wished I could shake.  Or so they told me.
> 
> A rewarding ski trip on Olympus Mons.  Yay me!
> 
> Someone secretive had arranged this for me and then had to convince the doctors that it was a good idea.  I guess whoever did it was a more skilled manipulator than I.  Imagine one of those! ...
> 
> I discovered the identity of my mysterious benefactor the nanosecond I stepped onto Marsport Concourse A.
> 
> "Byte!"
> 
> My absolute best friend.  With no name except what eight computer bits made.  That was how into computers she was.  The one who completely understood my depression, having tread on that slippery slope.  The one who had convinced me that it was an acceptable idea to go to the scary psych ward.  We hadn't seen each other since that fateful day.  Talked on the phone a few times, but this was absolutely an "epic win!" as she would say.
> 
> Byte ran to me with one of her famous bear hugs.  "Glad you could make it! This is going to be so much fun!"
> 
> "Indeed! You know it!"
> 
> We took off for the hotel/casino.  Not that I had much money to spend, but I'd make the most of it.  Maybe Byte would even be nice and lend me some, lucrative white-hat hacker for the government that she was.
> 
> It was the first day  on the big mountain.  I was super pumped, depressive symptoms and low energy be damned to mental health hell! Little did I know that I'd soon be in an unimaginably painful, real-life version of it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
> 
> Ah, the weather on Mars that day was absolutely gorgeous: no dust storms, a few light winds to whip our radio antennae, and a balmy negative sixty degrees below zero.  What could possibly go wrong?
> That was supposed to be a rhetorical question.  Unfortunately, in my case, it was anything but.
> 
> Skiing on Mars was as close to sky diving on Earth as one could get, minus the parachutes, and peaceful feeling accompanied by them opening.  Adrenaline and endorphins flowed freely.  I was just about to go get more when my buddy, Dave, put his hand on my arm and pushed the lift up past me.
> 
> "What the hell did you do that for!" I demanded incredulously. Irritability was still a thing of mine.
> 
> Dave pointed.  Up ahead, boulders were rolling.  And right in the middle of all those rolling rocks was...  Byte and her ski buddy!
> 
> I tried calling out over the radio.  No use.  Byte's helmet had been caught by one of the rolling rocks.  Her buddy immediately inflated the external emergency pressure bag around the suit, and a good thing, too.  I tried holding my arms out as if to catch Byte, who by this time was tumbling through the lower Martian gravity.  She landed far too heavily some distance away.  I was certain the pressure seals were broken as I stood in horrified silence.
> 
> Emergency techs came shooting out of the main airlock, no doubt heeding the distress calls of Byte's partner, who had managed by some miracle to get ahead of the rock slide and down to where I was standing.
> 
> "Come on," she urged, as if this were a normal occurrence.  "You must look away.  Now!"
> 
> But it was impossible to look away.  I couldn't tear my eyes from the sight of all those flashing lights and medics around Byte...
> 
> 
> The doctors later told me it would have been much better if the pressurization bag had NOT inflated.  The amount of medical trouble Byte was in was no laughing matter.  Most of her lower body lay in shambles.
> 
> But all that could be fixable, or so they claimed.  The biggest question was her head, or more precisely, her brain.  Arteries had swelled around it, causing an aneurysm they feared would rupture any moment.  They had her in a medically induced coma.  She would be a vegetable for awhile if and until her brain healed.  And they emphasized it was a huge if! The whole crew of Marsport all prayed it would.
> 
> I returned to my room with an empty feeling.  Just empty, completely ambivalent  to the world and its surroundings.  It was as though the worst demons of depression had come roaring back, with the unhealthiest dollop of anxiety as the whipped cream on top of this chemically imbalanced, disordered sundae known as my brain.  I now had the solemn and grim task of packing up Byte's effects for whatever came next.
> 
> I felt like a damn Space Corps soldier! With and without emotion and alternating between the waterworks and just as not as I placed each item carefully in the suitcase.  Various ski equipment and personal belongings were put in  with care, how Byte would do it.  My mind oscillated between visions of Byte running into the room, joyful and awake as ever, and knowing in the depths of my very soul that there was no hope and she was already gone.
> 
> This belief was further corroborated by me reading up on brain aneurysms before bed.  Very, very bad idea; don't do that at home.  Bottom line: Only in rare cases were they not fatal.
> 
> It was all I could do to stay away from that temptress of forgetfulness and drowning escape, alcohol.
> 
> 
> 
> "You want to do what!? This soon?"
> 
> I was furious at the doctor for even suggesting, even thinking, Byte wouldn't come back after only forty-eight hours comatose.
> 
> "I know this is very emotional for you..." How he could say this in a completely calm and professional voice was beyond my comprehension at the moment.  He had no business! He didn't even know her as a person, just a bad medical case that was, in his opinion, not worth saving.
> 
> "Listen to me very carefully!" I said, my voice going from afterburner to deathly quiet.  "You will keep her alive until I can figure something out! She needs more time! She has to prove herself, and she's a damn good fighter! Besides all that, she's my best friend!"
> 
> He didn't say a word.
> 
> "Stay with the others," April, Byte's ski buddy, told me later.  "Remove yourself from the drama as much as possible.  I'll deal with the doctors."
> 
> I had to force myself to eat the wonderful steak dinner prepared that evening.  Who knew, by the end of the week, forcibly enjoying good food would be the least of my worries.
> 
> 
> 
> At week's end, April softly knocked on my door.  Immediately upon opening up, she hugged me tighter than Byte ever had.  I could tell she'd been crying.  Hadn't we all lately?
> 
> "It's time," she said softly.  "No questions asked.  Do you want to be there?"
> 
> I could only dumbly and blindly follow her from the room.  Space crash mentality.
> 
> The first thing I noticed was that someone had washed Byte's hair and put it in a bun.  Oh, it was pure comic relief: she would have never worn her hair like that! I immediately undid it, and Byte's long locks flooded down to her face.  I tamed them a bit, then put my head down on her chest.  I didn't notice the activity around me, nor the people's occupations.  I just concentrated all my willpower.
> 
> Beat, beat, beat, beat ...  beat...  beat...  gasp.
> 
> Beeeeeep! went the machine next to her now oh so still body. Flat line.  Just like that, she was gone.
> 
> They had to carry me from the room.  I don't remember much after that, except the crying.  Everything was a still snapshot scene. April guided me to a seat on a shuttle bound I vaguely remember for Jupiter Station, but I didn't care.  I was completely absorbed in my thoughts and my tremendous pain. Oh, byte, why did it have to be you!
> 
> Why couldn't it have been me? That question and many others of the "She was so good, everything bad happens to me!" variety Ping-Ponged their way around my brain for the entire two days it took to return to the torture chamber.  I stared out at the  stars, remembering how much Byte loved to be among them, and the mountains, and the ski slopes on top of them...
> 
> My grief was palpable and completely different than Jim's had been.  But I just couldn't get that shrieking siren thought out of my brain as we swung among the stars:
> 
> Why couldn't it have been me?
> 
> 
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