Chapter 15: Growing Pains

"Oof… gah… ack!" Amy slumped over, shoulders sagging, as she failed for the fifth time in a row to lift the two 15 lb. dumbbells she held in either hand. She looked over at Sonja, who was easily lifting a pair of 50-pounders. "Are… you sure…" Amy started as she tried to lift them up by bending her arms again, "that these aren't too heavy?"

"Hm?" Sonja glanced at Amy, who was shaking from the effort of lifting the weights. "What makes you say something like that? They're the weight I used when I started my training..."

"I don't… I don't think humans are generally as… strong as your species is…" Amy grunted, somehow getting the dumbbells halfway up before the weight became too much. She slumped back over, clenching her hands tighter to keep from dropping the weights. "Ouch." The muscles in her arms were screaming in pain from the workout, and she reluctantly admitted defeat by returning the weights back to the rack she'd gotten them from. Around her, other crew members were punching weighted bags, running on treadmills, and other workouts one could find on an Earth gym. Even so, there were still many devices that were far too complicated and bizarre to be meant for human use.

Sonja returned to lifting her own weights, while Amy took a seat on one of the nearby benches. She glanced up at the clock. Almost 5 P.M. already… it had been close to 24 hours since she'd first woken up on this ship.

And in those 24 hours, Amy thought to herself, I've gotten two headaches, one roommate-induced panic attack, a sudden insatiable hunger over breakfast, a nightmare, and a near-mental breakdown… and ever since my headache this morning, I've had to beeline for the bathroom twice from having to vomit I shouldn't have eaten so much breakfast. She sighed. I really hope Reuben is right about rock bottom…

Amy's headache immediately returned with a vengeance. She gripped the sides of her head in a futile attempt to dull the sensation of a thousand fists inside her head, attempting to pound their way out of her skull. I forgot to take my multivitamin again… Amy thought to herself, and stood up, shaking.

"I'll be right back," she somehow managed to say, and Sonja turned to her slowly, but offered no response. Amy didn't wait for her to figure out what to say – her head hurt now. She made a beeline for the exit, and dashed towards the room.

Everybody around her seemed to be moving slowly as Amy ran down the halls, thinking Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop… she barely even noticed how quickly she got there. She punched in the number code, and when the door slid open she ran in so quickly that she left behind a teenage-girl-shaped residue in the air for a fleeting moment.

There was no shaking or trembling this time as she opened the bottle, but her speed caused two more to skid off in the same direction as the one she'd spilled that morning. She disregarded them, and swallowed one of the pills, shutting the bottle as the headache gradually subsided. She remembered the two she had spilled a moment before, and glanced in their direction.

"What in the…?"

The two pills were fine, but the one from that morning wasn't. It was a mess, a dissolved lump of mud-like substance that was a disgusting greenish color, laced with orange and sitting in what remained of the orange juice. Part of the pill was still intact – their simply hadn't been enough orange juice to dissolve the whole thing. Amy blinked, before opening her drawer and pulling out a plastic bag she'd packed to store shells in. Turning it inside-out, she put the bag on like a glove and picked the soggy lump off of the drawer. She pulled the bag off of her hand so that the lump was on the inside of the bag, and zipped it shut, storing the bag in a pocket on the side of her blouse.

Amy walked back into the gym to find Sonja still standing in the same spot. Sonja looked at her in confusion.

"What? Did you forget something?"

"Huh?" Amy looked at her, brow furrowing slightly. "No… I took my multivitamin…"

"But…" Sonja put down her weights and walked over. "That doesn't make sense… it's twenty minutes to the room and back. You've only been gone for a little more than ten minutes."

"I… I have?" Before the implications of what Sonja had just said sunk in, Amy's head was seized with another headache. "Ah!" This one wasn't as bad, but it was sharper and more sudden. Amy clamped her hands to her temples as the throbbing took hold, only now it was much, much more like pounding. It was strange, though – this headache was irregular. The pounding felt like the dying throws of something that didn't want to give up, something that was powerful but slowly weakening. Even so, it was enough for Amy to start feeling dizzy. "Sonja…" she whimpered, "help… I can't…" THUD.

"Uh-oh," Sonja said as she looked down at Amy, who had fallen on the floor and wasn't moving. "Doctor Jumba!"