NEW HORIZON

By Kidders

Thanks to everyone who reviewed. LaMadone, see chapter three (not finished yet) for your request.

Disclaimer: Forgot to put it in chapter one. I do no own Interstellar, am only borrowing the characters and part of the storyline for the enjoyment of myself and other readers. No infringement intended.

Chapter Two: Lost

She watched him from her workstation-tucked into a corner of the room-keeping a close eye on the numbers streaming to her tablet: BP 110/70, HR 80, O2 sat 92%. VS's holding for now. But he wasn't yet resting comfortably. Cooper had remained edgy, dozing in fitful spurts, mumbling and arching his neck off the pillow, the BiPAP mask making his breaths sound harsh and shallower than they actually were. It was the dyspnea, always worse at night—or what passed for night on the station as they still kept it to a twenty-four hour cycle—the feeling of drowning so urgent and primal it often yanked patients from their medicinal escape and pulled them unwillingly back to consciousness. Usually dependent on the disease state, age, and level of fitness, factors not really a consideration here. For Cooper, it was the level of exposure, plus the massive emotional baggage he seemed to be shouldering. Survivor's guilt, and then some. She'd done a little digging—Cooper had outlived both his son and daughter, or soon would in Murphy's case. He had a grandson old enough to be his own father whom he'd never met, and several great-grandchildren, but they were all strangers to him. He was out of sync with his own timeline. And what of the others who'd gone on the mission with him? Later, Ad vowed, once he had recovered, she intended to discover the entire story on the Endurance and her crew, the Lazarus missions, and anything else relevant to her patient's self-reproachful state of mind.

As if in response to her musings, Cooper moaned and tossed his head, the mask muffling the strings of grief-hoarsened words, but it sounded to her like, "Make him stay, Murph. Don't let me leave, Murph. No, don't go!" Voice choking into inarticulate pleading, his vitals spiked in concert with the growing agitation. Adelaide was instantly on her feet, crossing the distance to the bed in a couple of strides. Cooper's eyes were open, flickering from side to side, their blueness dulled by pain and fatigue. Questing fingers intercepted hers, and Ad clasped them firmly, giving him the human contact he seemed to be craving.

"I'm sorry," he gasped, free hand grabbing the mask on his face and pulling it down. "Mann was lyin'."

Concerned, Ad quickly replaced the mask, giving his fingers a firm squeeze. "No, Cooper, it wasn't your fault. Nothing was your fault. Now look around—tell me where you are."

His eyes fixed on her, then blinked slowly. "Hos-hospital." She nodded, and he paused a beat before whispering, "On the…station. Orbit 'round Jupiter." Brow wrinkling, it took a few more breaths until he could get more words out. "Why's it…so hard…to keep air

movin'? Feels like I'm bein' pulled under…water."

"Well, in a way, you are." She felt for the med-pump trigger on the sheet, depressed the button to allow another minute dose of morphine to be injected into the IV line. Normally, it was a DIY for the patient, but she suspected Cooper kept forgetting it was there. "Your lungs have fluid in them, what we call pulmonary edema. It can be a result of breathing in too much noxious atmosphere, like ammonia."

"Ammonia?" His eyelids drooped, head melting into the pillow as the morphine did its job. "But I was okay…after I got O2."

Pushing the hand she held down to his chest, Ad tried to picture what he must have gone through, but fell woefully short. "Sometimes symptoms can appear several hours, even a day, after exposure. The timetable varies with each individual, but it can definitely be worsened by physical exertion. Does that make sense?"

The moment he took to consider her question lessened a few of the lingering frown lines denting his brow, yet his eyes seemed to darken, a naked hard emotion simmering in their depths. "Yeah…exertion… does kinda fit the bill." He was quiet for a time, and she'd thought he'd fallen asleep, but then he grunted, frantically blinking until he could focus again, fighting the drug and the release it would bring.

"Cooper, just let go, you need to rest," Ad tried to persuade him. "Your body needs time to heal."

"No!" he ground out stubbornly. "Don't wanna sleep. N-not dream."

Adelaide placed her palm over his forehead, fingers detecting the heat radiating there. A glance at the monitor on the other side of the bed confirmed her suspicions—37.8C—he was running a fever. With all the other problems he was dealing with, she hoped it would resolve without further treatment. "You need to sleep," she reiterated, pushing curls of sweat-clumped hair off his face. "I'll keep watch. If things get too bad, I'll wake you up. Deal?"

A whispery sigh of relief escaped through clenched teeth, and his eyes finally drifted closed. "Gonna…hold ya…to…to your word, Adel."

Since he was thankfully her only patient, Ad pulled a chair closer to the bed, settling in for what was likely to be a long night for both of them. Noting his breathing had eased, she listened as the wheeze from his healing lungs became only faintly audible. His face relaxed in sleep, and he finally achieved some measure of peace, a calmness his body desperately needed in order to recover. Something, Ad thought, Cooper probably hadn't had the luxury of—or felt—in quite some time. A solace she was determined to give him for the remainder of the night. By doing her job, and keeping her word.

Two days later, she came on shift just before 1900. Cooper was again her only patient, and from the day nurse she'd learned he was now on room air, his lungs were almost clear, and he was no longer febrile, but still weak. Rest, a bit of rehab, and good nutrition would all help him regain the strength he needed. When she entered his room, he was lying on his right side, turned toward the partly-opened window, beyond which she could hear the muted sounds of a baseball game being played. The light was fading into a simulated sunset, and she'd only taken a few steps closer to the bed when Cooper announced hoarsely, "Go away."

"Excuse me?" Ad parried, gauging his mood as somewhere between anger and morose depression.

He yanked his arm—the one carrying the intravenous catheter—farther across his chest, drawing the remaining tubing taut, but not pulling it out. The sudden movement flapped the back of his gown open, leaving her an unobstructed view of his bare butt. "Don't wanna talk anymore. Feel like wallowin'."

For a moment, Ad noticed the varied tan lines on his skin, most fading into paler complexion, but showing a hint of previous time spent in the sun back on Earth. Then the fact his shoulders were shaking focused her attention. "Cooper, while I admit you have a nice ass, flashing it at me in this manner is rather rude."

"Shit!" He immediately flopped over on his back, but was steadfast in refusing to make eye contact. His face was damp, but not from fever. His body temp was down to a normal 37C, so this was clearly something else.

Ad tried another tactic. "Murphy will be here in a little over a week. She's going to want to see you."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Cooper's throat convulsed in a hard swallow. "She's comin' here to die," he lamented, voice husky with barely suppressed tears. "Topic ain't open for discussion."

Approaching the bed, Adelaide placed both hands on the rail, and sighed. "Cooper, Murphy is coming to see you. And you need to process all the facts before she arrives."

His eyes flashed darkly, the shimmering rim of tears doing nothing to quell the emotions radiating from their depths. "Don't tell me what I need to do!" he snapped harshly. "You don't know how I feel, no one here does!"

"No," she agreed sadly, "I guess we don't." The night before, he'd told her what had happened to him, everything he could remember after the Endurance went through the wormhole. The struggle to survive on Miller's planet, fighting against the odds after Mann's betrayal, nearly dying on the ice. How he'd gotten Dr. Brand on course to Edmunds' planet, then piloted his dead ship toward the black hole. She still couldn't quite wrap her head around the tragic details. For him, it had to be twice as hard.

Rolling his head to stare at the ceiling, Cooper noticeably shuddered. "Damn it, Adel, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to take this out on you. It's just…lyin' around like this…all I have time to do is think. Dwell on what's happened."

"What happened wasn't your fault," she persisted, attempting to ease his guilt.

A small smile played across his lips, and he finally met her gaze. "I know that." He tapped his forehead. "Up here, I know, but in my heart, all I can dwell on is the fact my daughter, who I left when she was ten years old, is coming to visit, and she's old enough to be my grandmother. She stayed behind on Earth with the terrible burden I placed on her shoulders. The terrible lies—"

"The lies weren't yours, Cooper," Ad interrupted firmly. "Professor Brand—"

"-And Dr. Mann, I know. I guided you through the whole shit storm myself." He made a miserable hiccupping sound, and his eyes bored into her. "I flew my Ranger into a black hole, past the event horizon, then ejected while inside. And I got to live. It ain't fair, Adel. I promised her I'd come back…"

Tears welled in her own eyes, and Ad blinked furiously so he wouldn't see them. "And you kept your promise, Cooper. It's not fair, but what if…what if you hadn't gone?"

His lips parted slightly, expression gaining a sliver of hope. "I would've seen her grow up…have kids of her own. Got to witness her life, as a father should for his daughter."

"And watched them and millions of other families die a slow and agonizing death?" Ad shook her head, resolute in her determination. "Tell me, if you had stayed on Earth, would this station be here? Would any of us?"

A single tear tracked slowly down his cheek, and he uttered a disconsolate laugh. "Mankind was born on Earth, it was never meant to die here." He paused, long enough for a broken sigh. "Maybe NASA could've snagged them another pilot, someone else crazy enough to take the bait…"

Ad pressed her advantage, knowing she was right, and he needed to get past all the haunting self-recrimination. "Would someone else have had your connection with Murph? 'What can happen, will happen, right?' Murphy solved gravity because you were 'there' to help. You got pulled into that tesseract—" She nearly stumbled over the unfamiliar word, but pushed it past her teeth, going for the hard sell. "—because you were meant to. Everything happened as it was meant to, Cooper. Think about it. If you hadn't fallen into the black hole, none of this would be here." She waved her hand, encompassing the station in general. "None of us would be here period!"

He finally relented, rewarding her with a tiny quirk of a smile, this one reaching to lighten the burden in his red-rimmed eyes. "You're a know-it-all, Adel."

She allowed herself a small snicker, glad she'd gotten though to him. "So my husband tells me."

Interest formed in his face, along with a thin look of amusement. Swiping the back of his hand across his cheeks, he wondered, "What's he like? Is he here on the station?"

Adelaide felt her face redden, and she nodded. "He's, um…a bit like you, actually."

"Like me?" Cooper seemed surprised. "Surely not a pilot?"

"No," she corrected quickly. "An engineer—structural and mechanical. I hesitate to bring this up, but he'd really like to meet you."

"Meet me?" Surprise segued to blank incomprehension. "Why?"

"Because you're something of a hero."

While he keyed the button to raise the head of the bed, a new frown settled across the bridge of his nose. "No, I'm not."

"The entire station wants to meet you, Cooper."

It was his turn to blush, though everything about his posture radiated tension. "Um, I'm not sure…"

Ad hurried to offer reassurance, a validation to his privacy. "Medical didn't announce you, Cooper. But word somehow got out—exactly who you are, and that you'd been found alive." She finger quoted, "'Astronaut returns after being lost in another galaxy for over eighty years.' You are big news, Mister."

"You make me sound like some kind of freak," he accused, still clearly disconcerted.

Good grief, Ad thought, can't the guy take a compliment? "No, it's not like that at all. You coming back, the fact someone from the mission survived, it's given people a renewed sense of purpose. Hope of some day moving these stations out of our solar system to a new home." She faltered, suddenly realizing for Cooper, this was so not consolation under any circumstance. "Crap, why are you just sitting there letting me run my mouth off? You should just tell me to shut it. My husband and my brothers frequently employ the tactic."

He smiled, started to chuckle, then let out a full-on belly laugh, though it was tempered by a cringe and a wince. "Ow. God, I needed that. Haven't laughed since…since me and Murph went in search of the mystery coordinates, I guess." He fell silent, but at her worried look, amended quickly, "No, I'm okay, Adel. At least I will be 'til she gets here. Maybe even then."

"Would this be a good time to mention the NASA reps want to interview you?"

That effectively killed the tone of the conversation. "What if I don't wanna talk to them?" glowered Cooper.

She'd been prepared, but it still took her off guard. The man was hardly keen on the space agency. And given what he'd suffered, Ad could hardly blame him. "I know what you're thinking—you told me the whole story, so why can't I do it?" She shook her head. "Cooper, you have firsthand knowledge, I don't. They are going to want to know about their ship, plan B, Dr. Brand, those you lost, and everything in between. I can't give them what they need."

He sighed, seemingly resigned to the task, unpleasant though it might be. "You're right," he agreed quietly. "I owe it to Doyle and Rom to make sure history remembers them. And Miller and the others. Amelia…" His voice softened into a note she hadn't heard before, only for a moment, then his eyes blazed fury. "But I ain't gonna excuse the shit Mann pulled, Adel. In my book, he was a lunatic and a murderer. He killed Rom, tried to kill me. No way I'm gonna sugarcoat the truth. Dr. Mann was not the best of us!" He started to cough, hugging his chest until the spasm ran its course.

After a glance at the monitors to satisfy her concern, Adelaide motioned for him to relax. "No one is asking for anything but the truth, Cooper. They'll understand, just like I did."

"They damn well better," he croaked, taking a sip of water from the nearby cup she'd unobtrusively filled while they'd been talking.

"They will," Ad said assuredly.

He cocked his head, studying her face as if memorizing the details for a later time. "I'm glad I got to know you, Adel. Even if it's just for a little while."

She nodded to indicate the sentiment was mutual, though was distracted by the last sentence. A little while? What the heck is that supposed to mean? Wanting to ask, she instead held her tongue when she noticed his eyelids were heavy, growing heavier by the second. She plucked the cup from his hand and replaced it on the table, rearranged the blankets so they covered him to the waist, waiting until his body completely relaxed before retreating to her work station. He sure still tired easily, she mused, and was wound pretty tight, emotional reactions all over the map. But he was getting stronger. Perhaps by the time Murphy Cooper arrived, he'd be able to navigate on his own two feet. She hoped so. The man would need all the resilience he could muster for the upcoming family reunion.

To be continued…