Dishonourable Discharge: Grace Augustine

37

Grace folded her arms, sighing impatiently. "Ivy are you almost ready?"

"So you actually want me to have my clothes on for once?" Ivory grinned mischievously, picking a T-shirt up from the pile of ironing on Grace's chair.

"Don't tempt me." Grace reached out, rubbing a hand over the hickeys that she had left on Ivory's stomach. "Just put your top on, we need to be out by nine."

Ivory pulled her T-shirt over her head. "What are you actually going to be doing?" She asked, taking her bandana from the top of Grace's desk and knotting it around her head.

"Norm and I are testing the air near the plants to see if they have any effect on the gases it's made up of."

"Ah." Ivory murmured, trying to look as though she understood exactly what Grace was talking about.

"You've haven't got any idea what we're doing, do you?" The redhead pushed her bedroom door open and strode down the corridor.

"Nope."

Ivory stood off to the side as Norm and Grace circled a clump of Pandoran plants and trees, occasionally referring to the readings on their data pads.

"Are you getting those three CMS readings?"
Grace asked, untangling a curl from the strap of her exopack.

"Yeah I'm getting my control reading right now. I got oxygen, carbon dioxide, ammonia, your usual suspects." Norm replied, crouching down to inspect the underside of a leaf.

"Huh. Any methane?"

"Yeah I've got a spike in methane."

"Really? I've got a little spike too." Grace's brown eyes lit up the way that they always did when she was looking at plants.

"I've also got an MFE counter factor of about two PPM." Norm commented, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

"Same as me." The redhead turned her attention back to her data pad. "I got an unidentified BOC, forty one parts per million."

"We should go out at the same time tomorrow to see if there's any change."

Grace checked her watch. "We need to come back tomorrow at oh nine hundred." She bent down, retrieving the soil probe from beneath a razor palm. "Fuck." She yanked her hand back.

"What?" Ivory jerked back to attention, the listless expression fading from her eyes.

"It's nothing." Grace clenched her left hand into a fist. "Norm we're done with the readings for today."

Ivory walked over to Grace and caught hold of her hand, opening her fist. "Jesus, Grace." She spread the woman's fingers so that she could look at her palm properly, cringing at the deep cut that was already oozing a small puddle of bright red blood. "If that's what you call nothing I hate to think what you'd call somethin'."

Norm looked queasy.

"Norm can you pack this stuff up if I go sort Grace out?"

"Sure. See you inside." The man turned away, his face pale.

"Thanks Norm." Ivory tugged her bandana off and wrapped it tightly around Grace's palm, knotting it.

Ivory steered Grace onto one of the chairs in the medical bay. "Sit down and keep it elevated." She ordered, opening the cupboard and yanking out what she needed.

"Ivy is there actually any point to all this fuss?" The redhead asked impatiently.

"Yeah, stopping you from losing any more blood or getting an infection and needing your hand chopping off or something." The dark haired woman wiped Grace's hand carefully, swearing under her breath. "This is even worse than I thought." She bit her lip. "Can you take stitches?"

"What am I, a baby?" The woman snorted incredulously.

"Considering you're in your forties no." Ivory swallowed hard, picking up one of the small suture kits. She tugged the gloves on, doing her best to ignore how badly her hands were shaking. She was suddenly horribly aware of how breakable Grace was. The woman was so tough and forthright that Ivory had always thought that she was untouchable.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah." Ivory pushed the needle through Grace's skin, biting her lip when she heard the older woman let out a soft hiss of pain.

"You look like you're going to puke."

"Shh, I'm trying to focus." Ivory muttered, pausing to wipe a drip of blood from Grace's skin.

Suddenly things seemed fragile.