Small Town Swoon: Oak Creek Bundle

I should feel excited today. I know this. I’ll be going back home, where I can piss with ease and eat food that tastes and feels like food. Hell, I can sleep without being tethered to the wall. But all I can focus on is my unfinished work. I’m so close to finding answers. If I had another 6 months I think I could change everything…but I failed to find the answers in the time allotted. 

I only get six months up here. I have to just trust the science and believe whoever they’re sending to replace me will do the work. Trust is not my strong suit. Neither is handing off my work to another scientist.

Digger floats by as I’m packing up my belongings. I don’t have much. Just some plant samples I want to bring back in the capsule. He asks, “What are you gonna eat first, Crawdad?”

“You know I hate being called that,” I tell him, ignoring the question. I definitely will not miss being forced into repeated social interactions with this same group of people. At least everyone up here has a firm grasp of the scientific method and an interest in math. Digger—everyone has a stupid nickname, too—glares at me, though, so I appease him. He’s got three months remaining, after all. 

“Strawberries,” I tell him. “Maybe a pineapple, if they can find one.” Digger’s mouth waters as he helps me and one of the Russian scientists get situated inside the capsule that will take us home. The two of us will be crammed in there for  hours until we touch down on the ground. The actual ground! It’s funny. Our float back to Earth will take less time than my eventual plane ride back to Texas. A little over three hours to drift from the International Space Station back to the life I’m supposed to feel excited to re-embrace.

The truth is, I have no idea where the Space Agency will send me next. My research, at this point, belongs to them, and so I belong to them. The thought makes me uneasy, but who else has the right resources to support tissue research in a zero-gravity environment?

The Russian and I are silent as we plummet downward, anticipating the first impact. I’ve done this before. I don’t think he has, though. My siblings would probably talk to him and offer comfort. I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m waiting for the hit. 

The first parachute opens and it’s like a car crash. I feel my bones shake in their sockets, and I embrace it because it’s the first time I’ve sensed gravity in half a year. Each time, I forget. I forget what it’s like to feel the weight of my frame, to feel my blood moving inside my veins. 

The soft landing jets ignite just before we crash into the steppe of Kazakstan. Only then does it occur to me that I haven’t heard from my wife. My mother emailed repeatedly, wanting up-to-the-minute information. My wife should have reached out, right? Should I have contacted her? We only get to use the satellite phone once a week, but we have unlimited access to our email. All my brothers and my sister sent good luck messages, and all of them made some dumb joke about how I don’t believe in luck. Heather should have at least emailed. The realization that I can’t remember the last time I communicated with my wife washes over me like an uncomfortable haze. I can feel the weight of that, too. 

This is my second mission since we were married. That would take a toll on any marriage. All the separation. She’s likely having a difficult time. I should miss her, probably.  The way I miss fresh fruit and sunshine. Don’t people miss their spouse when they’re separated?

The capsule skids to a halt and someone opens the lid. Smells wash over me. I forgot that, too. I haven’t smelled anything or felt the earth beneath me. Haven’t felt heat like this. Seen daylight bathing the earth. We’re immobile in our landing suits, so we have to be extracted from the capsule like babies being pulled from a car seat. I tolerate this because I know as soon as they set me down, they’re going to hand me a plate of fruit and the satellite phone. 

My mother tried to pull strings to be here at the landing site, but the best she could do was book a room in the village nearby. Very few people say no to Rose Mitchell, and I can envision the argument with the director of the space program. I try to laugh out loud at that image, but my mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. I realize I’m parched. 

The thirst is immense and I can feel my lips cracking in the sun while I wait for someone to unfasten my suit and let me use my hands again. I’m aware of the media, cameras in my face, reporters firing questions at me and the Russian guy. I start to panic, actually, even though I know this isn’t rational. I know all my bodily systems are being monitored. Nobody would let anything happen to me. My mind seems disconnected from my central nervous system, though, and the panicked thoughts begin to rush over me. I think again about Heather, wondering why she wouldn’t reach out when her husband was floating through the universe in a damn tin can.

I’m on the verge of blackness when I’m handed the phone. I see myself reach out to accept it, as if from far away, and I bring the phone to my ear. I hear it ring. Again. Again. Then my wife’s voice comes over the voicemail.  This is strange, I think, as I drift out of consciousness. She should answer. 

* * *

When I open my eyes, I’m surrounded by bright, white light, and then I see the form of my mother. My senses seem to re-engage one at a time. I smell disinfectant and saline fluid, a slight tinge of bleach. I take stock of my body and realize I’m lying down in a bed, hospital sheets scratching my bare skin. The light weight of the sheets against my limbs…I smile as I notice the feeling of it all. Then comes my sense of hearing, and Rose Mitchell is giving someone a lecture. “How you could allow my son to become dehydrated is well beyond me,” she snarls. “You haven’t figured out a better methodology for transporting these heroes back to Earth? They’re up there for months doing research in the name of our nation and you drop them like an egg in a shoe box. Plop! Back to the ground. No water. You should be ashamed.”

“Ma,” I croak. It’s good to see her. I don’t make it home to Oak Creek often, even when I’m on this planet. 

“Oh there you are, Hunter. Sweetheart, shouldn’t you be advising your colleagues about dehydration? You have heat stroke, Hunter Crawford. How on earth does someone contract heat stroke when they’re being so closely monitored? When did you last have a drink of water?”

I gesture toward the IV in my arm. “Ma,” I try again. “Where’s Heather?”

She sighs. “Oh, sweetheart.”

* * *

I really am the only one to blame for this. I know that. I don’t communicate well. This has always been a challenge for me—expressing my feelings. Thinking about Heather’s feelings. When she’s not yelling at me, she’s often explaining that I don’t value her. Which isn’t true, but I understand that what she means is I do not make her feel that she’s a priority for me.

I look around our empty condo. She took everything except my equipment and my clothes. All the furniture. The toothpaste. She left a note taped to my microscope telling me her lawyer would reach out with paperwork. I assess the moments leading up to my arrival back in Houston. The media is camped outside my building, frothing at the mouth to get the scoop on the scorned astronaut. 

I can ignore them with ease. I just walk past them. That first day home, alone, I opened the door and my primary concern was for my frozen plant samples, followed by concern for my microscope. I really didn’t feel very strongly about the absence of my wife.

Heather is right. She is not a priority to me. She was…comfortable. Marrying her made sense. Or it did at the time. 

Had I ever made real space for her? We met when I was in graduate school the first time. Heather dictated all the terms of our relationship, told me when to show up for dinner, how to dress for the occasion. I thrived under that treatment. No fuss. No work for me to do outside my research. Once we moved in together, she did the shopping and planned our free time together. I liked that, too. She made things very simple for me. I see it now. 

I hear my phone ring and stoop to pick it up from the hardwood floor. “This is Hunter Crawford.”

The low, rumbling voice of my supervisor comes through the line, inquiring about my health, making the type of small talk we both detest. I’m seconds away from curtly asking him what he wants, when he sighs and says, “Crawford, they cut your funding.”

“Excuse me?”

“The agency no longer wants to prioritize the study of microgravity on human tissues.”

“Burt, that’s irresponsible. What the hell are you talking about?”

I hear him telling me there’s no further funding for studying the ways human bodies change during space flight. I know he’s talking about administration cuts, and I’m aware of him suggesting I might find a position in academia. Academia! We both know I’m not meant to teach.

But as he’s talking, I don’t think. I climb into my car and drive to the research lab even as I’m hanging up with Burt. As if I’m watching a movie, I see myself kick open the door to the building and stomp past the receptionist. 

I watch myself pound my fist on the director’s door and I note the concerned look in his eyes as I barge in and demand that he reinstate my program. This work I do is vital to the future of the space program. “You have all insisted that space exploration is the key to the survival of our species, Alan!” 

There’s an edge to my voice I’m not familiar with. I can tell I sound unstable. This is unlike me. “How can you send astronauts past the stratosphere without researching what it will do to their bodies??”

“Hunter, I’d hoped you and Burt could discuss this calmly. I know you’re newly back and you’re still a little jet-lagged.”

“Jet lag? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re closing my research program! What about the fucking tissue samples I left in the Space Station? This is decades of my life, Alan! I want my work.”

I don’t register what he says to me next. I think about my empty apartment, my absent wife. I think about the carefully arranged notes I left by the slides, the tissue chips I built to mimic the functions of various organs. All I have ever wanted is to understand the way cells function, to unlock the secrets of life. 

Of all life. 

Like a fiend, I have pursued this research since I was a teenager, begging to assist in the labs at the college where my mother now serves as president. 

Alan places a hand on my shoulder and tries to nudge me toward the door. I look down at his hand on my body, and I watch myself grab his arm, twisting and clenching. I see the fear in his eyes as I squeeze his bones together. My life flashes before me until I’m a kid again, wrestling with my brothers by the creek. 

I was always smaller, even if I was the oldest, so I had to understand physics and leverage. Like a frantic child, I snarl as I wrench Alan’s arm from my shoulder and shove him away from me until he stumbles into the wall. 

Panting, my chest heaving, I look up to see security officers shouting into their radios as they flock in to haul me off the property.

This complete series features four full-length romantic comedies that will have you snorting with laughter as you follow Hunter, Diana, Archer and Fletcher Crawford up the creek with broken paddles.

Can the Crawfords get their act together and figure out how to love? Dive into this steamy series (try to avoid the mating skunks) and escape with feel-good fiction.