"How serious was the accident?" Gordon asked.

"Mrs. Haning's car was in a giant pileup on I-45," said Hank.

"The ambulance brought her over to Miles Memorial. Jack McCallum saw her in the ER." Gordon nodded. They all knew Jack well. Although he was no longer in the astronaut corps, Jack was still on NASA's active surgeon roster. A year ago, he had pulled back from most of his NASA duties, to work as an ER physician in the private sector.

"Jack's the one who called our office about Debbie," said Hank.

"Did he say anything about her condition?"

"Severe head injury. She's in ICU, in a coma."

"Prognosis?"

"He couldn't answer that question." There was a silence as they all considered what this tragedy meant to NASA. Hank sighed.

"We're going to have to tell Bill. We can't keep this news from him. The problem is ... " He didn't finish. He didn't need to, they understood the problem.

Bill Haning was now in orbit aboard ISS, only a month into his scheduled four-month stay. This news would devastate him. Of all the factors that made prolonged habitation in space difficult, it was the emotional toll that NASA worried about most. A depressed astronaut could wreak havoc on a mission. Years before, on Mir, a similar situation had occurred when Cosmonaut Volodya Dezhurov was informed of his mother's death. For days, he'd shut himself in one of Mir's modules and refused to speak to Mission Control in Moscow. His grief had disrupted the work of everyone aboard Mir.

"They have a very close marriage," said Hank. "I can tell you now, Bill's not going to handle this well."

"You're recommending we replace him?" asked Gordon.

"At the next scheduled shuttle flight. He'll have a tough enough time being stuck up there for the next two weeks. We can't ask him to serve out his full four months." Hank added quietly, "They have two young kids, you know."