Tell Tim she wasn't feeling well at all...

"I'm... not feeling well... at all," Halley mumbled into her headset. Well, it wasn't like she could be any more honest with Tim than that. He'd dismiss her out of hand if she even tried, and she already knew what he'd expect. Nor was she prepared to have a discussion about _that _matter over an open frequency. This was quite enough candor from her for now.

To Halley's surprise, Tim actually took her somewhat seriously for once.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Are you nauseous?"

"Um... not exactly. I don't know..." Halley hesitated, realising she was walking a very fine line all of a sudden. Nausea in a spacesuit was to be taken seriously, whatever the cause. There were certain contingency pumps inside their helmets, but they weren't perfect, and any kind of stomach upheaval inside that highly restricted fishbowl could relatively easily prove fatal in zero-g. Compared to the idea of drowning in one's own vomit, even the suggestion a full-blown diarrhoea attack suddenly didn't seem so bad.

"Dizzy?" Tim demanded.

"Not really," Halley impressed. "More... yeah... some kind of stomach problem, I guess..." That was, after all, about as close as she was currently prepared to get to the truth of the matter.

"Okay," sighed Tim, "fair enough. Back to the barn then. We don't take chances with stuff like that."

He sounded like he expected Halley to insist that actually she was fine to carry on, and that it might be a battle to persuade her it was necessary to come back in. Halley offered no such opposition, however. If this was one way out of her present situation, she guessed she was going to have to take it. Better this than the diaper, anyway, however ignoble either possibility might be.

Back in the suiting room, even just getting her helmet off, Halley realised that she still wasn't out of the woods quite yet. Her body was responding to the prospect of a relatively imminent opportunity for relief in the way familiar to anybody who'd been in that situation, once finding themselves within arms reach of a toilet. Except, Halley still had to go through the full process of climbing out of all her gear, with every possibility matters might still now come to a head before she did so. That would be worse even than doing it in her suit originally; a true disgrace. It felt like it was going to be a horribly near thing, so Halley abruptly shifted gear to start stripping off the rest of her gear as fast as possible. Coming out of the suiting area only a few minutes later, she had to hurry past Tim, who was already waiting there for her despite her speed.

"You better come down to the medics, and get checked out," he caught her arm. "I mean, you look okay, but..."

"Just a minute," Halley pulled away. "I'll be right back... I just gotta..."

She ran for it. Fortunately there were bathroom facilities right beside the suiting area, and Halley was very well acquainted with them by now. She got herself into a cubical just in time. Nothing especially remarkable transpired after that, though what occurred was definitely one of the more memorable bathroom visits of Halley's life. Partially because, on exiting the cubical, she found Tim standing right outside waiting for her. In the woman's bathroom, no less.

"You weren't throwing up in there, were you?" he confronted her, sniffing the air. "You look far too rosy-cheeked for that. In fact... I'd say you're feeling much better now, aren't you? Some might even think we just scrubbed an entire shift, meaning someone else is going to have to go out and do our job on overtime, just so that you didn't have to shit in your diaper. Hm?"

Halley hung her head, but there was no point trying to offer any counterpoint. He'd clearly seen right through her by this juncture. Lying would only make matters worse.

"We can... go back out there..." she suggested finally, after a long, uncomfortable silence.

"No," Tim crossed his arms, "no we fucking can't, because the suits have got to be maintained, and you've got to see the medics, and the paperwork has got to be done. Are you going to write 'needed a shit' on yours? Is that what I'm going to write on mine? Are you even remotely fucking cut out for this job, huh?"

Halley liked to imagine herself a serious, capable young pioneer, who could take a thing or two. In this particular situation, however, there didn't seem to be any other response but to burst into a humiliating flood of tears. Not that it was intended to have any effect on moving Tim, but if it had been, she might as well not have bothered.

"You got the medics and the paperwork to do, Rookie," was all he said, thrusting a wad of tissues into Halley's hand.

That wasn't the only thing he had to thrust at Halley either. By the time everything was said and done, and Halley had somehow fudged her way through both medical examinations and paperwork, it was indeed practically the end of the shift. Somehow, she'd managed to avoid outright admitting to the real reasons that had cut today's shift sort, in any official capacity. It sounded like Tim had it in his hands to actually see her fired, though, if that was the way the whims were to guide him. Instead, he appeared again at the very end of the process with something in his hand. It was, of all things, a full pack of the disposable diaper things they were obliged to wear, and he presented it to her forcefully.

"Um, what's this?" Halley murmured, recovered enough to be somewhat more responsive to yet another display of Tim's familiar uncomfortable peculiarity.

"You got three days off, Rookie," Tim grunted. "I switched the roster. And this is your homework. You're going to wear a fucking diaper every single day. All day. As if you were in a suit. You're not going to set one foot near a latrine, the whole fucking time."

"Don't be ri...." Halley rolled her eyes, but Tim quickly cut her off.

"...or don't bother coming back. I'm serious." He held her gaze, clearly not messing around this time. "You're going to give me your solemn word that's what you're going to do, and you're going to come back to work having come to terms with this... or you're not coming back at all. Okay?"

Halley swallowed. She knew she was in trouble, but it was only one misstep so far. She didn't know it could be as serious as this. Then again, she hated to imagine what a full shift of EVA overtime must cost the company, to cover two people. Certainly the most expensive crap she was ever likely to take for the rest of her life. Although, short of coming to terms with the diapered part of her job the hard way, could Halley really guarantee she wouldn't end up in exactly the same situation again next week? Maybe Tim even had a point, this time.