Seven Minutes in Heaven

There was something so beautiful about weightlessness. Too high up to feel himself free falling, but too low to the ground to feel the pull of anything but Earth, Brody was suspended in perfect balance between the Earth and the Moon. Through his helmet visor, he could still see the corner of the moon’s surface, painted against a backdrop of endless stars.

And god, the Moon. It had been incredible. From a distance, it looked grey, but up close it had been a myriad of shades in grey, silver, and white. Rover cameras really didn’t do it justice. The surface was smoothed over with dust like snow over grassy hills, undisturbed for thousands of years. How many people could say that they’d seen such beauty up close? That they’d seen the Moon in person?

How many less could say it might be the last thing they ever see?

“-dy? Can y- -r- -me?”

Brody blinked in surprise. There was a man’s voice on his headset, tinny and barely breaking through the static as it connected. It was the first thing he’d heard other than his own heartbeat in what felt like hours.

“Co-“ He cut himself off with a cough, instinctively raising his arm to cover his mouth even though it would do nothing through the helmet. “Copy, Kennedy,” he tried again. “I can just barely hear you. Can you hear me?”

“-e can hear y- -Brody,” the man’s voice came again. It had to be one of the CAPCOMs down at Mission Control, but Brody couldn’t quite recognize which one. “We’re tr- -ing to clear up- -ignal now. What’s y- -atus?”

Status? Really?

The different layers of his sleeve rubbing asynchronously against his arm as he he lifted it to look at his vital readout. “O2 is getting pretty low,” he reported, “But power’s fine. What kind of batteries you got me hooked up to, huh? Energizer? Duracell?”

The man on the radio— whom Brody decided he was just going to call Radio Man —didn’t laugh. He was quiet for a moment, then replied, “Can you- -estimate- -how long you have un- -oxygen ru-?”

Right. How long until the oxygen ran out? How long until he fell asleep, and turned from an unrecoverable astronaut to an unrecoverable corpse?

Brody could probably do the math. He had been trained, of course, on how to read the numbers and figure out how much time he had in the case of an emergency. But did he really want to know? Nobody wanted to know when they were going to die, he thought, even when they were close to the end.

“However long it takes for me to go to sleep,” Brody settled on instead of working out an exact answer, “since I’ve got enough power to keep me from freezing to death. Appreciate that, by the way. I hear it’s a lot less painful to die of asphyxiation than it is to die of hypothermia. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

The radio was quiet.

Brody’s heart beat faster. Was he disconnected again? He hadn’t realized it until it was gone, but he was so relieved to hear another person. He was so relieved that he wouldn’t die completely alone, but maybe he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. And it was so quiet, dangling in space. It was so, so quiet.

Just when Brody’s eyes began to sting, the radio crackled to life again. “Who would you- -to call?”

“What?” Brody rasped.

“We’ll have -adio contact for about seven more minutes,” Radio Man explained. “I’ve gotten p- -mission to patch you into the phone system, until then. Who would you like me to call?”

Brody’s breath hitched. He was getting a phone call? Did he even want a phone call? What the hell was he even supposed to say? Hi, I fell off my spaceship and now I’m floating around waiting to suffocate, how is your day going?

“Brody?”

“My wife,” he blurted out. He licked the salt off his lips, then repeated, “Call my wife. Please.”

He didn’t have to give Radio Man her number. A second later, he could hear a phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

The person you are trying to reach, “Kathy Evans,” is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished-

The line went dead, and Radio Man was back. “We’ll try her again,” he reassured. And so, the ringing resumed. And just kept ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

The person you are trying to reach, “Kathy Evans,” is not available. At the tone-

“She’s not picking up,” Radio Man said, frustrated. “Is there someone else you want to call, maybe? A relative?”

“No, no,” Brody answered. “Kathy’s probably- she mutes her phone sometimes, when she needs downtime, that’s all. Just let me leave a voicemail. It’s okay.”

Kathy was probably taking a bath. Brody could see her in his mind’s eye, hair damp and curling, stretched out in the water. She’d have a podcast playing over her cheap little Bluetooth speaker, probably one of the creepy true crime shows she loved. Somehow she was able to relax while listening to a steady voice dissect the methods and motives behind horrendous crimes. Brody didn’t get it, and always joked that Kathy must’ve been a serial killer in another life. She didn’t think that joke was funny, but Brody loved the cute little crease she got between her eyebrows when she scowled at him. She knew that he loved it, so she always forgave him.

Would she forgive him for this?

The phone began to ring again before he could reconsider. And kept ringing. And ringing. And—

The person you are trying to reach, “Kathy Evans,” is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options.

A beep echoed in Brody’s helmet. He took a deep breath in. Seven minutes; closer to six, now. Where did he begin?

“Hi, Kathy,” he started. “It’s Brody. I’m sorry I missed you, I… well, I’m calling from space.” He chuckled, shaking his head inside the helmet. A tear slipped free from his cheek as he did, floating inside the small space like a tiny jewel. “Can you believe that? This must be the longest distance phone call anybody’s ever made. I wonder how much it’s costing. It’s NASA, so probably thousands more than it needs to, ha.”

He paused for a moment, then sighed, briefly fogging the bottom of his visor. “That was probably a bad joke, wasn’t it? Sorry, I’m just… I’m not sure what to say, to be honest. I just didn’t want to leave you hanging, you know? I haven’t done that in a long time. Not since our first date, I think.”

The memory made him smile, as it always did. Maybe that was something he could talk about, one last time.

“I still can’t believe you gave me another chance after I stood you up on the first date,” he said. “What was the excuse I came up with at the time? It was that I was sick, wasn’t it? Some obvious lie like that. And then I didn’t tell you the real reason until I proposed, and admitted that I’d been scared to meet you.”

The Moon started to slip down below the edge of his helmet. Ah, so he was spinning, slowly. He wondered if it was the pull of the Earth or the Moon that was rotating him. Maybe both.

“Can you blame me, though?” Brody continued. “You were a scary woman, all fire and grit. You still are, honestly. And I’m still scared. I’m scared every day that you’ll wake up and realize you could do a whole lot better than me. Really, honey, you could have your pick.”

Was the top of his visor getting foggy? No, no. There was something white entering the top of his fish-bowl view, just at the edge.

“I think I’m not gonna be scared of that, anymore,” he decided out loud. “Not because I don’t think you could have your pick anymore or something, because… because I don’t- I…”

Another deep breath in. Another slow breath out.

“I’m not coming home, sweetheart.”

Brody’s hands began to shake inside their gloves. Saying it out loud made it so much more real. He wasn’t coming home. He wasn’t going to see Kathy ever again. These words, whatever he said now, would be the last she’d ever hear from him. The last anyone would ever hear from him. What did he say to her, now, in his very last call?

Something popped into his head, and he wasn’t sure if the thought was making him dizzy, or if he was starting to lose air. There was something he’d been dying to say, something he was dying to admit. This was his last chance. He needed to take it.

“I know about Sam, Kathy,” he said. “I know what the two of you have been up to, while I’ve been at work. I didn’t say anything because- I don’t know. Because I’m a coward? Because my wife is sleeping with my best friend, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to handle being betrayed by the two people I love most? I’m not even mad about the two of you sleeping together, which is the weirdest part of the whole thing. I’m just- I’m just mad about the lies. I’m tired of them, Kathy. But I guess that’s all over now.”

He lapsed into silence again, looking up at the top of his visor. Wispy white swirls curled over a shimmering expanse of blue, and a few stray patches of green. Brody could just make out the edges of what looked like Ireland and the UK through the clouds. Was he upside down? Was that even a thing, in space?

“I want you to tell Sam I knew,” Brody said, “and I forgive you. I love you both too much to carry this to my grave, okay? So just… Sam, if you’re hearing this, too… take good care of my Kathy. Love her, spoil her, and treat her right, or I swear to God I’ll come down there and give you hell.”

More tears drifted through his helmet as the Earth came further into view. It looked so delicate, suspended among the stars, a splash of vibrant color turning slowly in the darkness. I’ll never go back there, Brody thought, choking back a sob. I’ll never go home.

“God, Kathy,” he whispered, “I wish- I wish you could see this. It’s so beautiful up here. There’s stars all around, as far as you can see, and then- then Earth. She’s sitting right there, and she’s so alive. She reminds me of you, you know. Complicated, messy sometimes, but so, so alive.”

He could see all of Europe, then, as well as parts of Russia, the Middle East, and the top of Africa. He was sure in a moment, he would be able to see the top of South America, too, jutting into view. All of those continents held billions of people, all going about their lives, with no idea that another life was ending far, far above them. It should have made Brody feel lonely, stuck in his growing-humid fishbowl, but it didn’t. He was just… grateful. He was so, so grateful.

“I’m glad I got to be part of it all,” he said. “Part of your life, and part of life in general. I had some fantastic experiences down there, you know? Plenty of bad ones, too, but it made the good ones better. I think- I think if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Castine, with you and Sam. You remember when we were walking up to the top of that lighthouse, and Sam twisted his ankle at the very top? So we had to carry his ass all the way back down, hahaha… I couldn’t believe he’d actually sprained it on a stair. What a dork.”

He sniffled, smiling to himself, and reached out toward Earth. He imagined he could touch that beautiful blue sphere, and hold it gently in his hands. Everything he’d ever loved was down there. He hoped his body would fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere, so at least a part of him could be down there again, too.

“Tell Sam I love him, Kathy” he asked. “Tell him… Tell him I told you that we would buy that little cottage in Castine. Make him move up there with you, and buy a boat. Go out on the water every now and then to stargaze. And when you see one of those stars fall, wave to me, will you?”

He shuddered, his face crumpling and vision blurring as another sob worked its way up into his throat and got stuck there. “I love you so much, Kathy,” he cried. “I’m so sorry. I love you.”

Click.