They Promised This Would Be Beautiful by Elena Sichrovsky

Sarah Jackson -

Content warnings

Body horror. Medical setting. Bodily fluids. Implied sexual assault. Manipulation. Grooming.

Your mentor once described a Bridge as being close to sacred. Inhale against the pull of time, they said. Let past, present, and future flood your molecules. Existence becomes gelatinous. You are hope in every form of matter. The next exhale is for the universe.

You’d prepared for today with the carefulness of a prayer. Just this morning your scrubs were starched and your name badge felt firm and crisp under tracing fingertips. Earlier you’d walked twice around the exterior of Oracle Base XE to absorb the dawning scent of your first day.

Now you can’t tell where the dried blood ends and your skin begins.

< 1800 IMPACT INJURY CENTRAL >
< 1800 NON RESPONSIVE REPEAT >
< 1800ZZ OVERDRIVE UNREACHABLE >

They rush you to a makeshift triage zone behind the bathroom. You’re wearing an open-backed hospital gown as you climb into a plastic blow-up pool and then a language nurse secures your wrists with worn-out gravity ties. The language nurse doesn’t look strong enough to restrain you if the spillage gets severe. Have they ever assisted a Bridge before? Do they know what might happen?

No one has time for answers. The patient is critical and there’s no one else available.

< 1800 CODE AMARANTH >
< 1800 IMPLOSION IMMINENT >
< 1800XX BRIDGE REQUIRED >

A station this size would usually have at least four Bridges on call. They’re flying in more emergency volunteers from the next nebula. It’s still not enough to stem the flow of wounded.

Two hours into your first shift as a student medic, a record-breaking quake reverberated across all northwestern galaxy filaments. Military medics were still arriving when part of Oracle Base XE collapsed: a dwarf star had a heart attack mid-amputation and injured two surgeons.

You’re not even licensed as a Bridge. You only took a few courses last summer because your crush was there. In school you practiced via secure simulation set-ups that had aluminum-reinforced tubs padded with non-stick gel and hydroponic restraints. You and the girl you liked, Andrea, often took photos together in the spillage-resistant gowns. She liked the toothpaste green one; she said it matched her brow color. You wonder where she is now and if it’s okay to massage the vowels of her name around your chattering teeth.

Don’t get carried away by the debris, your mentor would say. You’re the only one in control. Focus. You are not there; you are bringing them here. Breathe. Just like this.

[ thereis something ]

The patient is screaming before you even make contact. You don’t need the language nurse to translate terror at this level of resonance.

You’ve been assigned a galaxy that’s at least twenty-two million years old. It’s not only the largest celestial you’ve ever attended to, it’s also the oldest. Its consciousness is bound to be more tenuous; its odds of survival aren’t a number you want to vocalize.

You close your eyes, silently mouthing your favorite moons backwards as you unlock your mind to connect with the interstellar swarm.

[ thereisthereisthereissomethinginmy ]

The galaxy’s pulse swells, frantic, panoptic.

To perform resuscitation, a Bridge has to let the patient’s consciousness mingle with theirs, forming a cerebral connection that is used to access the overdrive and restart the patient’s pulse. The patient might not be lucid enough to understand what’s happening, your mentor explained. They admitted that the first time they were a Bridge, they lost control after accessing the overdrive. The star they were trying to resuscitate flailed abruptly and nearly burned their corneas out. Later they learned that the incident was from a past nightmare of the star that had resurfaced, somersaulting through their consciousnesses in breathless confusion.

You are facilitating a forced rebirth via collision of everything that ever happened to them, all at once. They patted your shoulder gently. This is going to hurt.

Your toes curl to brace yourself against the wet plastic pool skin.

The further you go, the more spillage starts seeping from your physical body. Your neck jerks and then twists to the side, spine arched like a crooked alphabet. You taste the vinegar of a corrupted aurora borealis before it bursts out in vomit spray.

You think of your mentor during practice sessions, how they would skim their palms across the alpine of your shoulders, gliding down to your fingertips. Imagine a school letting out for the day. The children need to cross the street to go home. Become the road. Lead them to the other side.

[ ||something||not |m|y|body ]

The language nurse is scribbling on the translation board at what seems like an unusual speed. You don’t understand what the galaxy has been saying but the acidity of its tone burns like a needle dragged through your veins.

You’re getting close to the overdrive. You think. Your fingers are numb below the first joint and your eyelashes are too clotted with pus to open fully. Thick, icy sea-blue fluid is spurting from all your orifices. You assume you’re still in the blow-up pool only because your cheekbone isn’t kissing the floor.

Spillage isn’t uncommon during a Bridge, especially with your inexperience. Any injury or damage can easily be fixed in the regeneration cell. It’s nothing to hyperventilate about. You’re not really there, remember? Sit for awhile. It must be lonely, studying so far from your family. I know some people who would love to meet you. I’ve told them about your situation.

[ there^is6some>thin)g&in(side^my8body ]

Finally, you reach the overdrive and brace for escalation, though you can’t really conceive how circumstances could further intensify. Your areaolae skin is splitting. You vomit methane and ammonia and bits of satellite into the piss-water at your ankles. The hospital gown slips and sticks like plaster to the back of your knees.

I don’t let just anyone join my class mid-year. I need to see you really commit. Your mentor was tutoring you after class again and you watched Andrea grinning at someone else, cracks forming in her chicory green lipstick. Pink flesh beneath the breakage. I’m doing this as a favor, I’m sticking my neck out for you. I knew you had potential from the moment you walked in here.

The language nurse utters a distressed, high-pitched sound in your direction. Either this galaxy speaks a dialect that’s difficult to interpret or your teeth are not supposed to be bouncing around your jaw like popping corn.

[ THERE IS SOMETHING NOT MY BODY INSIDE MY BODY ]

You think you get what the galaxy has been saying all this time. Not precisely, but this tenor of fear is a language unto itself. The galaxy hasn’t stopped being scared since you started.

Then it sobs.

Your knees collapse beneath you. The ties around your wrists snap. Cosmic webs split lesions down the seams of your face. The walls, the language nurse, the plastic pool, everything liquefies to dribbles slipping off your chin.

That’s it. You’re doing so well. Your mentor circling you, electric fingerprints stinging your hips and the small of your back. Feel my voice. Focus on that.

[ there is somethi
ng not my bo
dy INSIDE my bod
y there is so
METHING NOT my b
ody inSIDE MY
BODY THERE I
S StopOMETHING NO
T MY BODY INSID
E MY BODY THERE IS SOM
ETHing not my body IN
Side MY BODY THER
E IS SOMETHI
NG NOT MY BODY
iNSIDE STOP SOMETHING NOT ]

Your bones recede into black plasma and then your vision slips entirely. Someone grabs the ruff of your neck to avert you from splitting your forehead on the floor. You don’t remember crawling out of the plastic pool. You’re shivering from the fluid still snaking down your thighs. You can’t locate anything solid to focus on: all you identify are puddles, blue-piss puddles, and you are a daisy petal with no hope of buoyancy.

You must miss your parents a lot. I’m sure they’re very proud of their kid in the big city. Your mentor cards a thumb through your too-long bangs. Did you think about what I said last time? It’s not what it sounds like. You don’t really know what you want, not at this age. I was like you once. I wish someone would’ve looked out for me like I do for you.

Andrea tried to kiss you the night before graduation and you didn’t mean to flinch; you’d wanted this forever and you couldn’t find the words to tell her that, so you held her gaze and she stared back and you didn’t let your eyes water until she walked away.

< 1100 CENTRAL SYSTEM REBOOTED >
< 1100 STASIS STARTED >
< 1100XX ALL VITALS STABLE >

This is what you wanted, right?

I could’ve picked anyone else.

Show some fucking respect.

< 1100 BRIDGE COMPLETED >
< 1100 CONNECTED CLOSED >
< 1100ZZ OBSERVATION BEGINS >

The connection snaps shut, hurtling your consciousness back inside your crooked body.

You stay curled on your side, panting and watching the pool deflate from a hole in the plastic tubing. You let the language nurse towel you down because you can’t remember how to move. The spillage soaks through two new sets of scrubs, so the nurse uses their point card to help get you another pair. They help you into the regeneration stall before they leave.

When the engine hums to life you think you still hear the galaxy weeping through the static.

You emerge three million microseconds later with every bruise erased, every splintered bone set, every pore restored, and still shivering with a trepidation that does not belong to you.

You should head back to the main triage zone. You should keep moving into the fray, be the source of strength your mentor envisioned as you. Instead you stare at the back of your hands. You attempt forming a fist and your joints tremble instead of bending. Your fingernails feel like magnetized weights.

There’s an exit ramp that runs all the way out to the back and onto the railing where there’s usually a few medics smoking. You end up there and ask one of them for a light. They glance at the damp spot on your left pant leg before handing you the pack.

“Bridge or Boulder?” they ask. “Bridge, right? Student from this morning?”

You angle your breaths towards the shadows. Your eyelids burn in the night cold.

“First time? Code Cadmium or Amaranth?”

You nod and pinch your navel through the shirt fabric to stave off the nausea.

“That’s a lot—just take a minute. Remember, it might’ve felt real, but it wasn’t. Not for you anyways.”

You attempt words that result in a hoarse sputter. On the second try you manage to be audible. “The galaxy—it was really upset, I think something happened before—should I make a report it to—”

“Didn’t they teach you? You can’t get caught up in the debris.” The medic puts out their cigarette on the corner of the breastplate. “You saved the patient, the Bridge is done. Whatever happened or will happen next isn’t your job.” They tilt their head, looking up at the aerial craters unfurling in the auburn sky. “Looks like aftershocks are on the way. Find me later for the lighter.”

You wait until they leave to start smoking. You can’t hold it steady to your lips.

I was trying to be nice to you.

Prismatic green flares in your throat. Ash tears incinerate each other.

You’re nothing to anyone out there.

The night is scratching the white of your eyes. Every inhale feels like excision.

Do you know how easy it would be to unmake you?

END

Author’s note

There’s part of the Annihilation (2018) soundtrack I listened to on repeat while writing this. It’s a 12 minute track that’s both acutely primordial and physically nauseating. I find it so true to the moment when you finally understand that something wrong happened to you that will never be righted.

Editor's note

Sadly Ghost's content management system wouldn't let me do justice to the formatting in this story. It looks best in the PDF version!

Elena Sichrovsky

Elena Sichrovsky (she/they/it) is a queer disabled writer and cult survivor. Their work often uses body horror to explore themes of identity, grief, and recovery. You can read more stories on its website or find them on X/Bluesky @ESichr.