Some time later, Irene opened her eyes to sunshine and a desert landscape, a curious rock formation, pain such as she had never known. Something cool touched her forehead. Sam? she whispered.

I’m here, he said. The pressure of his hand on hers.

What’s happened?

We’ve crashed. We ran out of fuel. Waiting for help.

Sam?

What is it, Irene?

How bad am I?

He didn’t answer right away, and Irene thought that he wasn’t going to tell her, and she was angry. She had a right to know what was wrong with her body! She had a right to know what was causing this pain. She had a right to know if she was going to live or die. She had a right to know if her baby was dead.

Then he started to speak. He said that she was burned, on the side of her face and on her back, and that her left arm had been broken by some falling debris. The rest was cuts and bruises. He said she might lose the arm, but not to worry, because he always liked the right arm better anyway. As for her face, why, it just made her more interesting.

Sam? she said.

What is it, Irene?

I can’t feel the baby move. Is the baby still there?

There was a fragile silence.

Then: Don’t worry about the baby, said Sam.

Why not? said Irene. Why not worry? Is he gone? Is he gone, Sam? Tell me the truth. Is he gone?

Irene, said Sam. Irene.

Irene wasn’t crying, but a few tears slid from the corners of her eyes and down her temples into her ears. More followed, until they bled into each other, but she wasn’t crying. Her chest didn’t move, except in shallow, delicate breaths. A line of water ran from each eye. That was all.

When they had crashed in the middle of the night, Sam had carried her out of the wrecked fuselage because he was afraid of fumes. Now it was morning, and the desert heat began to take hold. They lay quietly in the shade while Irene dangled between sleep and hazy half-consciousness, and Sam gave her water and stroked her hair. In a moment of lucidity, she asked if he was hurt.

“Oh, just my bum ankle,” he said.

“Can you walk?”

“A little.”

“You should walk. You should try to find help.”

He was smoking a cigarette. She could smell the tobacco, a more pungent variety than the ones he used to smoke back in California. She wanted to turn her head and look at him, and possibly she could have done if she tried hard enough, but her skull felt so heavy and her neck so stiff. So she just imagined him instead, hair askew, smoking thoughtfully against a boulder or something while a blue sky surrounded him.