“Oh, look at you! You’re all sunburnt.”

Dr. Tofu was covered in hideous red-black gashes. His entire face and chest was a solid plate of ash. His sides were spattered with red marks, each one carving a dendritic cut into the side of his body. His pale white back was melted to the lounge chair. He looked kind of like crème brûlée.

“Dude, what did I tell you about falling asleep in the sun?”

It wasn’t clear if Dr. Tofu was still asleep or not. His face had melted all over his head. In any case, he’d been asleep for fifty-three days.

“You’re a bit goofy sometimes, you know. C’mere, lemme fix you up.”

She pulled out a dull pocket knife, sharpened it haphazardly on the diamond of her wedding ring, and began to cut his back from the chair. While she did that, she checked in with him.

“Look. I get that you’re jealous that DJ Pineapple talks to Miss Broken Engine. I’ve seen you going to the gym. I’ve heard you talking about your ‘beach bod’. And I know you’ve thought about dying your hair green, which, by the way—don’t.”

Her hand slipped, and she accidentally sliced through a soft patch in Dr. Tofu’s side and through his chest.

“Damn. Sorry. But that’s not why she likes you, dude! She likes you because you’re fun, and interesting, and willing to try new things. She goes to his shows because she wants to experience new music the way you always are.”

She finished sawing his back and moved on to his giant singular leg.

“I bet if you got into his music, or at least gave it a shot, it’d be another thing you two can chat about, another thing you can see together, and you’ll both laugh about the time you thought he was gonna steal her away. Just the same way you’ll laugh at the time you went off to some beach in the middle of nowhere to tan, and nobody remembered to pick you up for… never mind.”

She finished sawing him off and flipped him over before taking out a sharpie and drawing a face on his non-burnt side. She couldn’t remember exactly what his face used to look like, but she remembered bushy eyebrows and a strong nose, and she improvised the rest.

“Actually, they don’t have to know about the burns. Hold still.”

Dr. Tofu held perfectly still.

“You sure are lucky we’re not on Earth. If the Sun were any closer you’d be toast.”

Dr. Tofu slid in his chair a bit and his face turned slightly towards her.

“Oh, don’t give me that.”

Dr. Tofu gave her the silent treatment.

“I didn’t mean, like actual toast. You food people are always so sensitive.” She began to cut the char off his back.

“Whatever. None of them have to know. I’ll just tell them you were doing repair work. We aren’t too far from the crash, anyway. With Dr. Tofu on the case, we’ll be back home in no time, huh?”

The cutting was taking a long time. The knife moved in an erratic cycle of getting caught and released. A couple minutes went by.

“While we’re here I’ll let you in on a little secret. Back on Earth I knew someone kinda like you. He was a med student, a real nice guy, a lot like you when you got here. Total sweetheart. But he was always so nervous to talk to people. He’d always be on the parts of the beach nobody went to, and if anyone showed up near him, he’d quietly move his stuff to another beach. After waiting about fifteen minutes, as not to make them feel like they did something wrong.”

She squinted her eyes to see if Dr. Tofu’s new eyes would follow the blade as it cut through him. It kinda looked like they did. Whenever she drew a new face, she always squinted to see if their eyes looked like they moved, and when it actually worked it made her day.

“But look at you now, Dr. Tofu. I know it’s a bit early to say, but I think—”

The knife slipped out of a rough patch and launched itself straight into her thigh.

She didn’t say anything at first. After a brief, cut-off gasp, she started to breathe heavily as she slowly buckled to the ground. Guiding herself down with her hands, she sat herself down on the sand as slowly as she could. The knife was way in there. Blood flowed from the corners of the gash.

“Well then.”

As she motioned to get up, she suddenly felt a bout of weakness before she collapsed backwards onto the sand, prostrate.

“Well then!”

She breathed heavily for a few seconds, then a minute, then she lost track of time.

“Is anyone here a doctor?”

She forced a smile and looked up at him. The knife thrust had turned his face away from her.

“It was a little funny.”

Dr. Tofu didn’t think so.

After an unknowable amount of time bleeding on the ground, the glare from her wedding ring caught her in the eye.

“It’s the same Sun, huh?” she said.

She noticed Dr. Tofu was looking straight at the Sun.

“Hey. Don’t, uh… don’t look at the Sun. Didn’t you go to medical school? Haven’t you… didn’t you just make this mistake?” She was trying really hard to think of something funny.

“Wow, that’s bad. That’s looking really bad. Wow.”

Moving her leg was excruciating, even without putting any weight on it. With incredible effort she pushed herself up to get a look at her base. It was a speck on the horizon.

“I’ll just stay here for a bit. Heal up. And then I’m right back at it.”

Dr. Tofu’s face began to run again. A glob of wet Sharpie started to roll down his eye.

“Hey, now, what’s the matter?” She pushed herself upwards and wiped away the black splotch with her finger. “It’ll be alright. We just gotta stay positive.”

Her vision began to grow dark at the edges, slowly but unceasingly.

“I wasn’t gonna say this, for like, at least another couple months. Wanted to resolve the whole DJ Pineapple thing before I did this. But I, uh, want you to take this.”

She took off her wedding ring and put it in his hand.

“No, not like that, silly!”

Dr. Tofu had not said anything.

“Wish I had the matching one. But. Dude. I think Miss Broken Engine wants you to marry her.”

Dr. Tofu was silent.

“Don’t look at me like that. I know you’ve noticed, dude. I know…”

Her vision suddenly lurched further into darkness.

“I, uh, guess I don’t have time for the whole speech I was writing for this. But when you get back to base, I want you to do it. Like, immediately. I want you to promise you’ll do it, as soon as I close my eyes.”

Dr. Tofu was silent.

“Blink twice if you’re not gonna do it.”

Dr. Tofu blinked zero times.

“Hell yeah, dude.”

A few years later, a rescue team arrived to find numerous cargo objects scattered around a temporary base, among them a shriveled-up pineapple wearing cheap sunglasses and a 20-foot tall ruined ship engine with a bonnet taped on. A few hundred meters away they found the body of the sole surviving pilot next to a burned, melted mass of tofu.