We sat for hours. His head in Alex´s lap. She stroked his silver hair. We spent a day at his side, watching him.  We saw the sparkle fade from his eyes, the color drain from his face; his voice became softer and softer till it was hardly there..
The ship´s clock blinked midnight, and the automatic lights turned off, leaving us in the dark. Alex and James  had been close far closer than I've been with anyone, the man was never not by her side. At first I'd mistaken their relationship to be romantic, but now I knew It had been nothing short of paternal affection. I watched her run her hands through his long hair in the sliver of light left by the computers; he’d stopped cutting it along with the hair on his chin and he'd begun to grow a beard I couldn't take watching  her like this, in so much pain. I stood without her noticing and put a hand on her shoulder, she looked at me eyes wide and practically tearful. I think she was half expecting to find James in my place. She wiped her tears off her face and gave a huge sigh, it sounded like she had a heavy weight on her chest. I could tell the tears would be back soon.
“come on you need to rest and eat something.”
She gave me no reply but, let me pull her up to her feet, she felt lighter as if all that crying had made her nothing but a bag of bones. she looked down at James and I saw on her face that she didn't want to leave him.
“ don't worry he's in good hands, please go get some rest.”
She walk to the door it slid open but before she walked through she stopped in the entryway and looked back at me.
“ You know, James was really glad you were here. Even with our constant bickering.”, and with that she walked away, leaving me staring  at the spot in front of door doorway where she once stood, just  thinking of how it all could’ve  gone differently. If I had been the one to get sick and not James, then she wouldn’t have cried.
James left Specific Instructions to me before he died, he’d said Alex wouldn’t be able to do them alone. I think he knew somehow, that he was going to die.
The instructions he gave me said he wanted to be cremated down in the engine room where the furnace was, and then floated out to space. His note ended with some rambling about becoming a planet  or something but I felt it had been left for someone else. I continued to  handle my task gently, oddly I felt hurting James in this state might hurt him wherever he was now.