Twenty-Three Days Until I Disappear From This Family Chapter 07

Twenty-Three Days Until I Disappear From This Family Chapter 07

The day Mila arrived at the Far Northwest base, the wind and sand were so fierce she could barely open her

eyes.

A senior researcher from her team met her-Marcus Sullivan, black-framed glasses knocked askew by the

wind.

“Mila? Your advisor talks about you constantly. He says your modeling skills are the best he’s ever seen.”

“He exaggerates.” She jumped out of the car, backpack slung over her shoulder, sand stinging her face.

“Conditions here aren’t great-you should brace yourself-

“It’s fine.”

She looked at the low gray buildings and the endless wind on the horizon.

Much bigger than a storage room. Windows. Sky.

Enough.

At registration, all phones were surrendered. Before shutting it off, she glanced one last time at the screen.

No missed calls. No unread messages.

She couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved.

Maybe both.

Base life was monotonous as a ruler.

Seven a.m. wake-up. Seven-thirty breakfast. Eight a.m. in the lab, running data models, sitting for over ten hours straight. Sometimes she skipped dinner and just ate a few bites of dry crackers.

Her specialty: high-precision meteorological data modeling-providing environmental predictions for the base’s core experiments.

Boring on the surface, but every dataset affected the safety of hundreds of people and millions of dollars in funding.

Her advisor hadn’t exaggerated. Out of twenty-three people in the group, she was the only one who could truly handle the core algorithm independently.

Her first year, she rebuilt the old model. Prediction accuracy jumped from seventy-two to ninety-four

percent.

At the year-end review, the chief engineer told everyone, “This model has saved us at least a year of

testing.”

When the applause came, Mila sat in the corner, her eyes suddenly burning.

Not from pride.

Because someone had clapped her on the shoulder and said, “You matter.”

She’d waited twenty-three years to hear that.

Sullivan became her closest friend at the base.

He was talkative, a worrier-always grabbing an extra chicken leg for her at the cafeteria. “You’re too

skinny. A gust of wind would blow you away.’

When she worked till two in the morning, he stayed at his desk, claiming he hadn’t finished his report. But

she knew he’d turned it in that afternoon.

Once, when she had a high fever, delirious, he carried her a quarter mile from the lab to the infirmary. By the

time they arrived, he could barely breathe.

“Mila, are you made of iron? It’s a hundred and two and you’re still running data?”

“I was almost done.”

“The data runs out, and you run out with it-who’s going to take responsibility?”

She curled up on the infirmary cot, wrapped in her coat, watching Sullivan clumsily make cold medicine,

spilling water all over the table.

Something struck her.

In three years, she’d been sick four times. Pierce had never come once.

Twice she’d texted him she felt unwell. He replied, “Drink more water.” The other two times, he didn’t reply

at all.

Her second year, Mila published two first-author papers in top journals.

The team nominated her for a young talent program. The reviewers called her work “exceptionally rare tor her age.”

Her third year, she led the algorithmic framework for a subproject. Her name topped the base’s commendation.

No one told her to step aside. No one gave away what was hers. No one thought her work wasn’t worth inentioning.

She started sleeping well.

No yoga mat. No musty smell. A real bed. A window facing east.

Every morning, sunlight would hit her face, and she’d pause-so this was what it felt like to be in the light.