The Martian's Wife • Mark Watney

Prologue

It had been hard for Jenna Watney to see her husband leave for the Ares III  mission to mars, but she knew it was what he wanted and she would never hold him back from his dreams.

She knew it would be hard not seeing him for a very long time, but to hold him back would be selfish. She just neve Imagined that she would never see him again. That he would be killed on Mars. She never expected to be face to face with Teddy Sanders, the director of NASA, being told that her husband had been killed on the red planet.

She knew that she would be in a world without him, but she never knew that she would be without him forever.

---

It hadn't been long after Teddy had broken the news to her that she received permission to talk to Melissa Lewis, the commander of her husbands mission, but also a lifelong friend of Jenna's.

"Jenna, I'm so sorry. There was nothing I could do! we looked for him, but his bio-" Jenna cut her off.

"Mel, I know you did everything you could. Right now I just need you to be my best friend. I don't blame you. I never could." She finished with a sob, covering her face with her hands in an attempt to hide her emotion.

Melissa let a tear slip too, however. "I wish I could be there for you, Jenna. I really do." She said with a sad smile and laid her hand on the screen.

"I do too."

---

She didn't know what to do.

Her whole life had been ripped from her, and she didn't know how to go  back to work in a place that would forever remind her of her husband. Working at NASA had always brought her joy. It was where she met Mark and it was a place that had brought her so much happiness. Naturally, NASA had given her some time off, but she knew that eventually she would have to go back to work. Eventually she would receive looks of pity from her coworkers and looks of guilt from everyone involved in Marks's mission.

"It wasn't your fault." She would say, and it would be the truth. Nobody could have planned for the conditions that lead to her husbands death, but she knew she would get tired of saying it. She just wanted to shut herself from the world so she could heal, but the constant 'Breaking News!' of her husbands death wasn't helping.

So, after the funeral and her week of self pity, she decided to get off her ass and do something, because she would be damned before she let Marks sacrifice go in vain. She may hate mars for taking her husbands life, but she knew it was their future.

Mars would come to fear Jenna Watney.