Somewhere Else [Damien Haas]

3. Earth Science

-/-/-

Honestly, waking up in a hospital with a couple of nurses hovering over you, almost zero memory of what had happened before and how you got there, and a lot of pain on your back, sides, and body in general... that's already a whole lot to take in. But to see that your ex-girlfriend's the one waiting for the nurses and the doctor to finish examining you, it's just a whole other story.

When the doctor and the nurses leave, Jade yawns and turns her phone off. "How are you feeling?" she asks.

"Um... what?" I mumble in confusion. "This is real, right?"

She shrugs, standing up to get some food from the mini fridge. "Depends on how you differentiate reality from imagination, I guess," she answers. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything?" I say.

"Um, okay," she replies, not meeting my gaze at all. "Here's what I know: you and Mr. Kim got into a car crash because of some fool who was going over the speed limit. Mr. Kim's wife, Mrs. Kim, that is, is with him right now in the other room. It's been a day since the whole thing happened."

"No, no, not that, I know, um, parts of that," I tell her, and she raises her eyebrow. "Why are you in Japan? How were you there at the car crash? You're... Jade, right?"

"That one, yeah, I am," she says, looking out the window. "I'm in Japan right now because of work, but I was about to leave when I saw the crash happen. I couldn't resist being a bystander, so I went. I missed my flight, but yeah."

"I am so sorry we made you miss your flight," I reply, sighing. "It won't happen again, and I want to make it up to you, so Jade, if there's anything I can do..."

That's the first time she meets my gaze. Well, the first time in years. She looks surprised and taken aback by what I said, but I don't really understand why. Right now, everything going through my mind is the fact that, of all people who would find me here, it had to be the last person I thought of before leaving Los Angeles. There are days that I refuse to believe in coincidence, but...

"It's fine...," she mumbles.

"No, really," I insist. "This must have been a huge inconvenience for you. We are really sorry, and I will try to help Mr. Kim and his wife in any way I can."

Jade looks out the window for a while, and when another nurse returns to do another set of check-ups on me, she leaves the room for a while to take a call. Just like the old times when she would be so serious in studying that she'd drift off from reality to whatever planet she was studying.

"Ganymede, Io, Europa, and...?"

"And...?" she mumbled.

"And...," I echoed as we studied in the library.

"Ca..."

"Ca..."

"Calli..."

"...fornia," I said, and I could have sworn she had slightly chuckled. "Oh, I get it now: Callisto!"

"Yep," she replied. "ICE-G is the mnemonic for it. Io, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede. Those are the four biggest moons of Jupiter, which were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, so they were called the Galilean moons."

"Wait, so Jupiter has four moons?" I asked.

"Oh, no," she answered, her eyes widened. "Those are just the four biggest ones. It has more than 70 moons, I think."

"Those are a lot of moons."

"Well, it's a big planet, so it's kind of understandable. In fact, since it is the biggest planet, it has a whole lot of moons. Nighttime there may be indiscernible."