Pascal Stews | Rejection on Valentine’s Day

It’s midday, Valentine’s Day. Dr. Stews is sitting in his office in the Engineering section which looks more like a big laboratory shared with a lot of other scientists and doctors, with rows and rows of equipment, samples, folders of documents, as well as the staff’s computers. Pascal is currently looking at the screen of his own PC — there a patient’s file is opened, documenting some mundane information such as name, age, gender, as well as medical history. However, the doctor looks at it absent-mindedly, as if not registering what’s shown on the screen — for his thoughts are stuck in the past, in the moment when he confessed Ivy Carter, and she rejected him. Dr. Stews has been having feelings for the Chief Surveyor for almost a year now, fantasizing of them being together but never daring to voice those feelings out loud. In the end, however, the man had finally decided to do it on this Valentine’s Day, telling himself that everything would be fine, and that the spirit of such ancient festival would surely work its magic. Uh-huh, sure, magic. Pascal found Ivy in her office, on surveyors’ outpost near the colony's entrance, timidly asked the woman to go talk to him in a secluded corner of the Shimmering Glades, explaining that it was an urgent matter, and there he confessed her… Only to see a stiff smile of hers and hear the excuse that she doesn’t want to date anyone for now. Pascal even wanted to gift Ivy a bar of white chocolate he purchased a day earlier for the occasion, but the rejection was so painful that the doctor kept hiding the bar in the pocket of his white lab coat. Now the man is sitting before the computer’s screen, surrounded by various folders and stacks of printed paper with all sorts of information related to patients and various medical research projects the team has been conducting… and slowly eating that white chocolate bar Pascal didn’t gift to Ivy. His mood is shit. Pascal doesn’t even know what he wants to do more: cry, scream, or tell everybody to go fuck themselves. "Well, fuck this…" he mumbles and closes the patient’s file on his computer. Pascal is not in the mood to read all of this crap. It’s not like this patient needs some immediate help — Dr. Stews has just been recategorizing some files in the system. Ophelia’s order. They recategorize shit back and forth every several months, and it’s such a pain in the ass. "It’ll wait," mumbles Pascal again, not addressing anyone in particular, then takes out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lights a cigarette while pulling an ashtray out of the top drawer of the desk. Everyone in the office have gone on lunch in the cafeteria, yet Pascal has no desire to be there — he’ll better sit at his work desk and pity himself. While smoking, Dr. Stews takes his comm device laying nearby with another hand and opens a message from his mother, Coraline: it arrived today, at early morning — mom wrote him how she loves him, and what a great son he is. His mother has always been like this — telling Pascal how proud she is of him, and how deeply she loves him as her son… on each and every Valentine’s Day. As if reminding that there’s at least one person in the world who always loves him — unconditionally and with full heart. At first Pascal smiles when he sees this message again, then frowns — Coraline is 72 years old; only God knows how long she’ll live. There’s a high chance that soon there will be no one to write these messages to him. Pascal feels the Parasite’s gentle stirring in the abdominal section of the man’s body and instinctively puts his hand on it. Initially the doctor despised the alien creature, but with time that emotion has transformed into something akin to a strange friendship. At least he’s not alone anymore — as twisted as it might’ve sounded. Pascal even came up with a sarcastic nickname (or even a name…?) for the alien squatter, calling the creature a Sunshine. "Not now, little roomie. I’m having a drama moment, Sunshine," this is supposed to be a joke, but Pascal’s voice sounds dry and heavy. The doctor puts one more piece of white chocolate in his mouth and chews it slowly while looking at the floor absent-mindedly. On the one hand, it’s completely insane that the administration turned off smoke detectors here ages ago because they were malfunctioning. The local maintenance team told everyone that they would fix it… and they never did. Even Ophelia gave up on this situation. Typical Shimmering Glade’s way of doing things: if something isn’t critical, don’t touch it, don’t fix it, just say that you’ll do it another day. On the other hand, however, it allows some of the doctors and scientists to smoke here without much worry.