And see Alice's crumpled form under it.
My heart drops.
"Alice." I kneel beside her, running my hands over her small body. She's so keffing fragile. How did I let this happen? Were her straps not secure? Or did she just slide out from under them the moment we crashed? I'm afraid to pick her up, but I also can't leave her on the floor. Gently, I turn her over. Half of her face—the side pressed against the ship—is bruised and bloodied, her yellow hair plastered to her scalp. Her eye is swollen shut and I don't know how much damage has been done. As I pick her up, I notice one of her small fingers—her last one—is sticking out at a bad angle. Oh no.
I quickly run a hand over her torn clothing. It feels ready to fall apart, but so far, nothing else feels broken. Perhaps she just hit her head badly. I lean my cheek close to her mouth, and she's still breathing, albeit slow. I suppose it's a good thing that she's passed out, because I know what I have to do.
I tear a sleeve off my tunic, then rip it into strips. I need a knife of some kind if we're going to be here for a while. For now, I'll have to make do. With my strips ready, I gently brush a hand over Alice's cheek. "Alice, little one, are you awake?"
If she was, she'd smack me in the face for calling her “little one.” There is no response.
I keep her propped up in my lap, my arms around her, and I place her hand carefully in mine. I glance over at her face one last time, and then I straighten her broken finger back into place.
Her breath hitches, and Alice makes a low moaning noise that sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. Her hand jerks in my grasp, but I don't let her go. Instead, I wind the fabric tight around her last two fingers, bracing the bad one against a good one.
"Stop," Alice whimpers. "Stop. Stopstopstop."
"I can't, sunshine." I'm not sure where the name came from, but it feels good on my tongue, and Alice needs comforting. "I'm splinting your finger. We don't know how far we are from civilization and I can't let you walk around with it sticking out. I'm sorry."
She gasps with pain again and burrows her face against my chest until I'm done.
When I release her hand, I reach out to brush her hair back from her face and then remember that it's covered in blood. "Where does your head hurt?"
Alice squints up at me. "A good question. You know what else is a good question? Why are there two of you?"
"That IS a good question," I agree. "Stay put."
"Don't worry," she mumbles, and seems to collapse on herself as I get to my feet. "Staying right here."
I rip off my other sleeve and go to find our water dispenser. Thanks to our rocky landing and the fact that the pod is upside down, the water dispenser is flashing with a “maintenance” error and only a few mouthfuls come out. I'll worry about that later. For now, I take the soaked sleeve and return to Alice's side, dabbing at her face. Her nose is swollen and might be the source of a lot of the blood, but she's also got a nasty-looking cut above one eyebrow. I try to run my fingers through her fine hair, looking for hidden wounds. "Any pain on your scalp?"
"Just where your big sausage fingers are tearing at my hair," she says, wincing. "Do you know where we are?"
"We've landed on a planet," I tell her unhelpfully, and I'm relieved when she glares at me. That's the spirit. I would far rather have Angry Alice than Broken Alice. I don't like seeing her hurt. "I don't know where we are, actually. All I know is that our pod needs maintenance and we're almost out of water, so I guess that should be a priority."
She leans against me, and I realize she's more tired than she's let on, or in more pain. "How long do you think it'll take for someone to find us?"
I rub her shoulder, mindful of her bruises. "Any time now," I lie. I glance up at the smoking control panel of the pod. I don't point out that we had the scrambler still active on our pod…or that now that we've landed, I have no idea where it might be, given that it was an external scrambler attached to the hull of our very-much-crashed pod.
I'll bring that up when she feels better and can handle some bad news. Just not right now.
12
ALICE
Everything hurts.
Well, okay, not EVERYTHING. I think I have a small patch of skin just under my left shoulder blade that feels fine. But other than that, everything hurts. My hand throbs so painfully my entire arm aches, and my head feels as if half of it was smashed in. I doze fitfully while Kaspar moves around the pod, and when I wake up, thankfully there's only one of him.