Hashtag - It's a date

Chapter 6

After discussing it with her workplace, she took some time off - remaining in Houston at the Johnson Space Center, in case she was needed. At least that is how they put it, she had been ready to tell them no, until she started wondering if she would get any more video-messages. And then she stayed.

* * *

"Hey, wake up."

"Whaaaaa-" Nova groaned, rolling over in her sleep to face the wall.

"We need to go to JSC right now, so get up and get going!"

At once she sat up, eyes open. Mindy scrambled to get out of the way, tripping over her own feet and ended up on the floor. Nova laughed heartily at her, yawning as she stretched her arms.

"Do you know what they want us to come in for?" She asked, once the laughter had died down.

"Well," Mindy started, "it is my workplace. And from what I gathered some messages have come in."

"I'll just put on some clothes." Nova rolled out of bed, and picked up her pants from the floor before she pulled out a large blue sweater from her bag.

"Pull a brush through that nest on your head too!"

* * *

"Conference room," her father said the moment he saw her.

She followed him like a lost puppy. Mindy straight behind her.

"Any news?" Mindy asked.

"You obviously haven't seen the broadcasted message from the astronauts." Mitch replied drily.

Nova furrowed her eyebrows at her father and then looked over at Mindy who shrugged her shoulders. "Let's just play it, shall we?" Teddy said as he walked into the room, a suspiciously cheerful Annie trailing after him as she tapped furiously at her phone.

Still at a loss, Nova turned towards the screen as the 5 remaining astronauts came into focus, their solemn faces looking straight into the cameras.

Commander Lewis was the one that spoke, telling the world what had happened, and what a tragic loss it had been. Nova's eyes moved along the line of crew-members, her eyes stopping a moment too long on Dr. Beck's face if her father's not so subtle cough was anything to go by.

"NASA has sent us some questions they have received, which we will now answer."

They answered questions about their procedures during such traumatic events, if they had had enough time to do the work they came there to do (which commander Lewis promptly shut down by saying that such things became irrelevant the moment disaster struck - and that what they had been unable to uncover would be done by the next Ares mission.

* * *

Hours earlier - Hermes Crew

"Alright, so last question," Lewis said - making the tension in Beck's neck lessen somewhat. He couldn't wait for this to be over.

"What does NASA do to help you during such trying times, are your psychological needs met, and do you feel well taken care of?"

Lewis let the question hang in the air for a moment before going into an explanation that they were all trained to handle extreme situations, and that they of course had all the help NASA could offer them, and that even if that helped, they were so far away that they still felt isolated from the rest of the world.

"And we have Nova," Beck said with a small smile, not even quite realizing he had said something before he realized the others were looking over at him as if waiting for him to elaborate.