Page 14 of Love Below Zero

14

SLEEP PARALYSIS

BECKY

@opbelowzero

First Day in the dome!

Attached: Crew picture in front of the dome.

@mousethatreads

Dying to know what Rebecca Baxter and James Reid are doing right this second.

I stare at the ceiling.

Here’s the thing about summer in Antarctica—the sun doesn’t set. We were given sleeping masks, but I hate the feeling of it on my face.

For someone who is still afraid of the dark, you’d think the constant sunshine would be nice. It is not.

Sleep eludes me, my brain running a marathon through the day’s events. From the plane ride up until dinner, a never-ending cycle of sensory overload. Getting the dome set up, doing inventory, trying to keep it professional with James. It’s all too overwhelming, and now my brain won’t shut up.

I sit up, pushing the blankets to the floor. Maybe some tea will help. I really do need sleep if I’m going to function like a normal human tomorrow.

The faint sounds of my sleeping crewmates drift around me as I make my way downstairs. The thin walls are definitely going to become a problem at some point.

James Reid sits on the floor in the kitchen, his laptop open in front of him, surrounded by bags of flour. He doesn’t notice me, and the sight of him almost makes me turn around and go back upstairs. I don’t want to be alone with him, especially not in the middle of the night while the rest are sleeping. And yet, I can’t help myself as I walk toward him.

“Are you summoning a flour demon?”

He jumps, clutching at his chest. “Christ Almighty. You scared me.”

I can’t help but snicker at his reaction. He looks adorably dishevelled, blond hair sticking up in all directions, glasses perched on his nose.

“Sorry,” I say, not really meaning it. I step into the kitchen, turning on the small electric kettle. “Can’t sleep?”

He runs a hand through his hair, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes before putting them back on.

“No. Too much adrenaline I guess.”

“Would you like a cup of camomile?”

He wrinkles his nose. “Not really a fan of tea.”

I gasp, clutching my chest. “But you’re British! Isn’t that treason?”

“Yes. Don’t tell anyone. ”

I laugh softly, pulling out a mug and filling it once the kettle boils. I drop a tea bag in before sitting down on the floor next to him. I should go back upstairs, but something about this rare moment of privacy with him keeps me rooted. It’s almost calming. Just the two of us, alone on Mars. The thought should scare me, but it doesn’t. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation.

“What’s with the flour?”

“Inventory,” he sighs, leaning against one of the counters and closing his eyes.

My blood runs cold, the calm shattering.

“I already did the inventory. The entire afternoon.”

He cracks one eye open to look at me. “I’m just double-checking. It’s important we don’t starve out here.”

He says it so logically, like it’s absurd that I haven’t come to the same conclusion. Is this what it feels like to talk to an actual Vulcan?

“You said you wouldn’t loom,” I grit out.

He fully looks at me then, a mildly perplexed expression on his face, like I’m a string of code he needs to debug but isn’t particularly in the mood for.

“I’m not looming, Rebecca. I’ve checked everyone’s work. This isn’t a holiday, this is serious. If we were actually on another planet and your inventory was wrong, we would die.”

“You’re missing the point, again.” How can someone so smart be so incredibly stupid?

“I think you’re missing the point.” He straightens up, opening his laptop again. “In science we check each other’s work. It eliminates errors. It’s standard practice, and it happens for a reason.” He turns the laptop towards me. “See, you miscounted the bags of flour.”

I glance at the screen, my cheeks burning. Maybe he’s right to mistrust me. I’m not a scientist. I’m just someone who tried to be a scientist and failed.

All the old feelings of doubt come rushing back in, regret cutting through me like a knife. I shouldn’t have come on this mission. Who am I trying to fool? I can’t be a scientist, and once we get out of here, I’ll lose my publishing contract and fail at being an author too. I can’t even take care of my own body. I can’t be trusted, and James Reid has known that from the very fucking beginning.

I turn my face away, tears burning in my eyes. He asked Eli and Joanna if he could help them, check their work, but he didn’t extend me the same courtesy. He just knew I would do it wrong and he would have to fix it.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you were looming.”

I make to get up, but he reaches out and grabs my wrist. The contact sends a lightning bolt through me, and I have never hated myself more. He makes me feel so small, yet one touch sets fire to my body. Traitor , I tell myself.

“You’re upset. Tell me why.”

I laugh hoarsely. “Is that an order, sir?”

He is second in command after all. If he wants me to take the whole space-thing seriously, then I will.

He frowns at me, his eyes searching my face. “Please. We’ve got four more months to go. We can’t start off like this.”

I scoff, but sit back down. I take another sip of my tea in an effort to regain some of my composure.

“Why does this bother you so much?” he asks.

I can’t tell him that his lack of trust makes me feel like an even bigger failure than I already am. I can’t tell him about the writer’s block. So I just keep it vague.

“You don’t trust me? Fine. I get it. But you asked Eli and Joanna if you could help them. With me you just do it behind my back in the middle of the night.”

“I didn’t set out to do it behind your back. I was going to do it in the morning, but I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get a head start.”

I eye him warily. His words say one thing but his actions say another. He is surely the most confusing man on the continent at this point.

“Do you understand why I’m upset, then?”

He nods, his eyes dipping back down to the laptop.

“You’re just going to continue to do it though?”

“I’m going to do what it takes to ensure this mission goes well.”

“Regardless of feelings, right?”

He’s more like Spock than I thought. Logical to a fault. The parts of him I glimpsed over the last year, the caring side and the funny side, those are anomalies. This is the real James Reid. Focused and driven, nothing is going to get in his way. It feels like I finally completed the puzzle of him, and the full picture doesn’t impress me.

He doesn’t answer me, just types away on his laptop.

“Why did you apologise to me?”

His head snaps up, surprised by the question. “I don’t follow.”

“You apologised for being an asshole, and yet here you are, being an asshole again. You agreed to treat me like a real member of this team.”

“You are a real member of the team.” He says it so matter-of-factly. In the literal sense, yes, I am part of the team. But I don’t mean it literally and he isn’t getting that.

We are going around in circles and it is maddening. He’s clearly determined to do this his way and I am not going to change his mind or make him see reason. Exhaustion finally washes over me, a combination of the tea and exasperation at this conversation. I stand, and this time he doesn’t stop me.

“Good night, Doctor Reid. Enjoy your inventory.”

Joanna is at my door bright and early the next morning, holding a long Q-tip and wearing a creepy grin. I was hoping to get a workout in before breakfast, so I dragged myself out of bed and was about to head downstairs when she knocked.

“I’ve come to swab you.”

I rub my eyes. “Does it go in my nose?”

“No, it goes in your ass.”

That wakes me up fully. Jojo snickers, stepping past me into the room. She runs the Q-tip over my desk before bagging it and writing BECKY DESK in large block letters on the bag. “I’m gathering some microbial data for the ground staff. They want to see what our germs do in here.”

“It’s too early to be thinking about germs.”

Obviously I didn’t sleep well last night. My dreams were weird and I kept waking up every few hours. Stupid James Reid and his stupid science. I should be sitting down at my computer, ready to get in a day’s worth of writing, but my brain is sludge, caught in a never-ending anxiety spiral.

Joanna must sense this, her warm brown eyes scanning me like she is reading an abstract.

“We’ve still got some time before breakfast—do you want to work out together?”

Exercise has been a solitary activity for me since I started my recovery. I’ve always hated going to the gym or taking fitness classes. I felt like a beached whale most of the time, unable to mirror the moves of the instructor half my size. Everyone wants fat people to go to the gym, but no one ever talks about how difficult and discouraging it actually is. You can’t just start out with push-ups and burpees. Your body is physically incapable of doing that. You have to build up to it with more functional movements, and nobody gave me the heads-up.

So I would beat myself up for not being able to do the workouts, and then I would just stop going to the gym.

And thus the cycle continued.

My fitness is much better now though. I started small, just walking in the mornings for fifteen minutes until I was able to work my way up to a full hour of walking. Now I lift weights and my body is a lot stronger.

Still, I’m hesitant to accept Jojo’s offer. She’s much leaner than I am, and has insane upper body strength. I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up with her, and I really don’t want to feel even worse about myself than I already do.

She doesn’t give me a choice though. She loops her arm through mine, pulling me downstairs. “It’ll be fun. My physical therapist gave me this amazing program. You can try it out and see if you like it.”

She deposits all of her swabs in the workshop before we make our way to the designated workout area. It’s just off the main living room where we set up the projector last night. A treadmill, rowing machine, and free weight station are all neatly arranged in the corner. Eli is already on the rowing machine, sweat glistening on his bare forearms.

If I were anyone else, I would be absolutely drooling over him. Unfortunately, my taste in men only extends to lanky scientists who can’t stop degrading me. That’s another square for trauma bingo, for those of you who’ve been playing along.

Eli gives us a quick wave as we make for the weight rack. Joanna takes us through a few warm-up exercises before we start with the program, and I don’t hate it. It’s surprisingly doable, the focus more on building strength and maintaining the correct form than speeding through the sets. Joanna talks me through the harder movements, offering encouragement when I need it, and before I can blink, we’re already on the last set.

“This isn’t too horrible,” I say as I wait for her to finish.

“It’s not supposed to be,” she huffs, dropping the weights. We switch places and I start with the shoulder press. “Most people have an all-or-nothing mentality to exercise, when really every little bit helps.”

She steps up behind me, correcting my form with a light hand. I finish the reps and we trade places again.

“Sometimes I just get so overwhelmed with it all.”

“Tell me about it,” she grunts on the last rep before setting the weights down. “When I lost my leg, I was so angry that I couldn’t do all the exercises I used to be able to do in my sleep. I would try over and over again, but just end up hurting myself.”

We settle on the ground for cool-down stretches, and I hand her a bottle of water. She readjusts her prosthetic leg before taking a sip and leaning back against the weight rack.

“I hated exercise when I was heavier,” I said. “It was so hard to do and just made me feel even worse about myself.”

“How’d you get past that?”

“I’m not entirely sure I have. I almost said no to you this morning. ”

Jojo laughs, rubbing her thigh where her prosthetic leg attaches. “You love me too much to say no to me.”

If there’s one good thing about this mission, it’s that I somehow found a friend in one of the coolest people on the planet. I feel guilty about my earlier jealousy of her and her body, especially considering she’s been nothing but supportive of me. So I do something entirely out of character—I tell her about it.

“I do love you, even though I’m a little jealous.”

“Jealous?” She laughs. “Why on Mars would you be jealous of me?”

I shrug, pulling at a piece of non-existent string on my pants to avoid her gaze. Friendships aren’t my strong suit. I have a lot of acquaintances, but true friendships are hard for me to keep up with. I’m always so stuck in my own head, in my own imagination, that the real world doesn’t mean much to me. But Joanna means a lot to me, and that’s what friends do right? They tell each other how they feel, they talk things through, even if it’s hard.

“You’re smart as fuck. Beautiful. Courageous. Sometimes I feel like a cave troll in comparison. You just seemed like you had everything together when we first met, and I was jealous of that.”

She leans over, grabbing my hand and giving it a small squeeze. “You are an entire galaxy, Rebecca Baxter. You don’t need to compare yourself to the stars.”

Now it’s my turn to snort. “If I’m a galaxy, then so are you. We’re both galaxies, filled with stars and black holes and terrible things unknown to mankind.”

“I think the metaphor is getting away from us,” she laughs. “My point is, you are you and I am me, and there’s no need to be anyone else. We all have baggage, and just because mine looks lighter doesn’t mean it is.” She gestures to her leg. Joanna struggled, maybe even still struggles, with that loss. She makes it look easy because that’s what is expected of women. We’re supposed to be strong, never complain, always look great even if we’re not feeling great. Her blond hair and sunny disposition are just another type of armour. “Besides,” Jojo continues, “I’m jealous as hell of your ability to create entire worlds out of nothing. I wish I was half as creative as you.”

Now it’s my turn to be shocked. I didn’t think there was anything about me that other people would envy, besides maybe my height. Being able to reach the tallest shelf in the grocery store truly is one of my biggest accomplishments.

“You built a whole limb for yourself,” I point out.

She waves me off. “Yeah, but that was mostly just following instructions and trying out things I saw on YouTube. We both have stuff we’re great at, and stuff we’re not great at. That’s why we’re friends. We can fill in the gaps.”

Maybe I had been approaching friendship wrong this whole time. Like exercise, I sort of had an all-or-nothing kind of mindset. If I couldn’t be everything for a person, why even try? But Joanna is right: we don’t need to be everything for each other. We can fill in the gaps, and if there are some gaps we can’t fill, we’ll find friends who can. It doesn’t make our friendship mean any less.

I push myself to my feet before holding out a hand to help her up.

“Well then, to filling in the gaps where we can.”

She grins and takes my hand, pulling herself to her feet. “Speaking of gaps, I’m freaking starving. Let’s get breakfast sorted.”

I don’t look at James as we take our seats. It’s oatmeal with some honey and freeze-dried blueberries. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but certainly not my favourite. Even with the honey and berries, it still tastes bland, and I wonder if the sensory deprivation is already starting to kick in.

I jot all of this down in the survey we have to answer after every meal. I don’t check my emails, knowing that Anne will want a progress report on my draft. The one that currently does not exist.

Instead of writing, I spend the day helping Eli set up the garden. He talks about rocks a lot, and I only half listen to him as we plant and water some radishes and lettuce. Joanna and James are in the workshop for most of the day, working on their own projects. I put as much distance between James and myself as I can, going out of my way to avoid him. It’s not my best plan, given that we’re living together in a three hundred square metre dome and we can’t go outside, but it’s what I got.

Frances comes by after lunch (astronaut sludge, in case you were wondering) to give us new shirts.

“My company is designing sweat and stain resistant fabric for astronauts on the ISS. I want to really push the limits, so work out in this, sleep in this, do everything in this for as long as you can.”

I take the shirt, running the grey material through my fingers. “It’s surprisingly soft.”

“I wanted it to be comfortable as well. No one wants to go to space with itchy clothes.”

“Can I look at this under the microscope?” Eli asks, rubbing the shirt against his face. “I would love to know what it’s made of.”

“Sure.” Frances inclines her head toward the workshop. “Let’s take a look.”

They wander off, leaving me alone with the plants. It’s only our second day and I already feel listless. The excitement has worn off, and no matter how much we pretend, we’re not actually on another planet.

I make my way upstairs, changing into the new shirt in my room before grabbing my laptop and making a beeline for the only window we have. There’s not much to see, but staring at the ice sheets and jagged rocks outside is better than staring at a piece of tarp.

“Just write something, anything,” I mumble to myself as I navigate to the Word document. Even just one word would be enough. Yet nothing comes.

I stare at the blank page for what feels like hours until I give up, slamming the laptop shut and rubbing at my tired eyes. This is turning into a nightmare and James fucking Reid is my sleep paralysis demon. Whispering into my ear how I’m not good enough, how bad my books really are, how worthless I am to this mission. And I’m powerless to stop it, limbs completely locked up, unable to wake myself.

Don’t let him win , I beg my brain, but I know deep down he’s already won.