Luke Dittrich: He was alone when he discovered she was gone.
His son and the other children, along with the other husbands and the other wives, were down the hall, in the large briefing room where their NASA escorts had told them to wait. The escorts had hustled them from the landing strip to the briefing room shortly after it became clear that the shuttle had missed its scheduled arrival time. They wouldn't answer any questions, just stood there grim and silent. And so he slipped out the first chance he got and walked down the hall and unlocked the door to the small office that typically is used by whichever ground-based flight surgeon is assigned to the current shuttle mission. The job of the flight surgeon is to monitor the health of the astronauts from afar. Dr. Jonathan Clark had the key to the flight surgeon's office because he himself was a flight surgeon, had worked six shuttle missions in the past, though for the current shuttle mission, STS-107, his only role was that of an anxious spouse waiting for his wife to return from space. He ducked into the office and closed the door. The office had a television. He turned it on.
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