Outside, a capricious gust flung a spray of ice against one of the windows. Even through the thick glass, it made a sound like gravel being thrown at a wall. Jun didn’t flinch. Moments passed.
“I came here to punish my wife,” he finally continued. “I wanted to make her miss me.”
Cass said nothing.
“At home,” he said, “we had very different schedules. She always left work before me. Long hours, early in the morning. I study space, so my work is late at night, like here. But, no matter how late I came home, I would still get up every morning before she went to work.”
A knot of pain formed at the base of Cass’s throat. She found herself unable to speak.
“Every day, I would stand on our little porch and wave as she drove away. I waved. I waved as long as I could see her car,” he said, almost in a wondering tone. “But, after all the times I waved, she never looked back.”
Jun’s face pulled inward then, and tears welled in his eyes. It was made worse by the fact that he made no sound. He simply cried.
Cass’s mouth opened to say something, but nothing came out. She shared some amount of his loss and pain, but it was as if she had no ability to empathize, as if her emotions had been walled away and made unavailable for her to use on behalf of others or for herself. She could only watch as the man wept silently, his tears spilling down his cheeks and falling into his salad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aside from the smell of sweat and institutional cleaner, the gym was empty. Cass flicked the lights on and wandered the small but well-equipped room, spinning the wheels on the bikes and stabbing the buttons on the machines.
In addition to the treadmills and rowing deck, there were two stationary bikes, a punching bag, four weight machines, and some kind of stretching device with pegs and straps that looked like it had been invented during the Inquisition. Poking her nose into a utility closet revealed mats, some weird-looking rubber bands, and other odds and ends left over from various workout crazes. She sighed and shut the closet.
Since spraining her ankle, Cass had reluctantly turned to her non-running options for exercise, trying to rest an injury that, thanks to the fiasco in the tunnels underneath Shackleton, was still tender and occasionally buckled when she walked down a set of stairs. Ayres’s suggestion when she’d asked what she should do—not exercise—wasn’t an option. In recent years, she’d grown accustomed to throwing herself into each run, exhausting her mind as well as her body, punishing and pushing herself to accomplish a kind of therapy through fatigue. Rowing, biking, and lifting weights all helped satisfy in part the physical and emotional craving running had created, but it was no substitute for actually picking ’em up and putting ’em down. Unlike Sheryl and some of the more adventurous in Shackleton’s crew, she couldn’t bring herself to run outside, but the miles stacked up the same on a treadmill.
But she hadn’t been able to put those miles in since the end of the summer season. Desperate, she’d tried a light jog a few weeks ago, hoping enough time had passed that the ankle had healed. She’d put in three miles, encouraged by the lack of pain during the run . . . only to find the next morning that her ankle had blown up to three times its normal size.
Enough time had passed since for the ankle to heal, but she was skittish, remembering the tweak she’d felt deep in the tendons and muscles when she’d initially sprained it. She could probably run again . . . but what if she couldn’t? Give it one more week , she thought. You have the entire second half of the winter to get back in shape .
Whatever she did, whenever she did it, Cass knew she had to do something to stretch her body and mind. Between the darkness outside the station and the lassitude she felt inside herself, exercise seemed the only weapon against the creeping sense of depression gripping everyone on base. She’d been ashamed that she hadn’t been able to summon any empathy for Jun when he’d broken down in the galley; maybe with enough time in the gym she could beat some humanity back into her soul.
Grumbling, she mounted one of the stationary bikes and started pedaling. Thirty minutes later, having built up a decent sweat at the expense of a throbbing in her ankle, she strapped on a pair of boxing gloves and began slugging the punching bag, careful to put most of her weight on her good ankle. Imagining Keene’s or Hanratty’s face in place of the bag helped the throbbing go away.