Five Minutes, Give or Take

Story  ·  Rui  ·  Dec 5, 2025

The nap room had two bunks and no window, which was the point.
The hull hummed at a pitch she'd stopped hearing weeks ago.
She lay down meaning to rest her eyes for ten minutes,
and did what she always did, which was go all the way under.

When she woke, the clock on the wall said she was late.
Not very. Five minutes.
Seven, if you counted the walk.

She lay still for one breath longer than she should have.
Then she put her boots on in the dark.
The left lace knotted wrong, and she left it.

The corridor was longer than it had been that morning.
Every closed door she passed
sounded like a room where people were already assembled.

At the briefing room, she stopped with her hand on the frame.
Inside, a dozen voices. Someone laughing.
A tablet being passed from hand to hand.
Nobody turned.

The supervisor glanced up, found her,
and nodded at the empty seat as if she'd been exactly on time.
"Morning," he said. "We were just starting."

She sat.
The briefing covered depths, the rotation, a hatch seal that needed a second look.
She wrote it all down in her small, careful hand.
The pen did not slip once.

Afterward, someone slid a cup of tea along the table without looking up.
It had gone lukewarm.
She drank it anyway.

That night she set the alarm for the usual time,
and after a while, a second one.
She lay in the dark listening to the hull,
and, for once, sleep took its time.