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People-Shaped Holes
If you haven't seen it yet, an author called Gamera Obscura has spent the last two and a half months diligently posting a Firefly short every day in a 75-chapter fic called Firefly: Deleted Scenes. Bits of it have started to creep in to my head as canon, so I'm no longer sure if this is Firefly fanfic or Firefly fanfic-fanfic.
The premise is that set up by Gamera at the end of chapter 62 of his fic, which, like this fic, is called "People-Shaped Holes". If you haven't read this, I advise you to take a look at it first. I want to note for the record – and this is absolutely crucial – that I am writing this, and titling it the same as his chapter, with Gamera's blessing. In fact, Gamera is my longsuffering and faithful Beta for this and my other Firefly fic (Strange Bedfellows), and has edited this work for publication.
If you're not going read the original that inspired this fic, and you haven't… in short, Inara has left Serenity fairly recently on New Melbourne, and it's hitting Mal and Kaylee very hard. Both have been drinking. One of them decides…
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"Simon." What – Who – What? Someone was tapping on his door. Surgeon. Only one. Always on call. Up. Now. "Simon." Was that Kaylee? He rolled over and half fell out of bed.
"Yeah, I'm up." He stumbled across the room for a shirt, shaking his head, rubbing at his face. Anyone who's done a lot of nights on call develops odd ticks for waking themselves up in a hurry. He pulled the shirt over his head and made for the door. "What happened?" He asked as he opened it.
It was Kaylee, on her own, he couldn't smell blood and she looked remarkably relaxed for someone waking the Doctor up at whatever time this was.
"What?" She frowned up at him.
"I thought…" It wasn't because someone needed medical attention, that wasn't why she'd woken him. She obviously had some other reason. "Never mind. What do you need?" She shrugged. She was leaning against the door frame.
"Nothing, I guess, I just wanted to see if you were up." Her voice didn't sound completely normal.
"Well I guess I'm up now." And there was a smell like strawberries. No, more like ethyl-methyl-whatever it was. The thing they used to make things smell like strawberries. And a sharper smell underneath that. "Kaylee, are you drunk?" She sort of laughed.
"No. Well, maybe a little." She was slurring slightly, which suggested she was more than just a little drunk.
"Okay, let's go sit down." He nodded to the couch outside the infirmary. He was a little less than comfortable letting her into his room at whatever time this was while she was drunk and he was less than fully dressed. Fortunately, she went without protest, though she was holding her hands high, as though she thought she might fall over and her foot placement wasn't quite right. Ataxia. Vestibular ataxia. He followed close behind her, hopefully he could catch her if she actually fell. She flopped down on one end of the couch, he seated himself at the other. "So what kept you up this late?" She shrugged and gestured at her head.
"Stuff." He smiled briefly.
"I know the feeling." He paused. "How much have you had to drink?"
"About that much?" She held her fingers about an inch and a half apart.
"Of what?"
"Schnapps. It's nice. I'd offer you some, but it's all gone." So spirits, about 25ml to a mark, she'd probably had between four and eight marks. That was quite a lot to have in one go, given that she was female and fairly small. "And then I still couldn't sleep, so…" Simon looked up. He'd given her a few hydrozepam tablets after the incident with the bounty hunter, she'd told him she'd been having trouble sleeping – which wasn't surprising, really, given what the lunatic had threatened to do to her to make Simon cooperate, it wasn't hard to imagine that he'd also scared Kaylee quite badly. But combining almost any sedative with alcohol was very, very dangerous. You usually saw one or two per month in ER. Often they came in crashed; cyanotic, pupils fixed and dilated, and refusing to breathe. No matter how hard you tried, they almost always died.
"Kaylee, have you taken any of the sleeping pills tonight?"
"No, I'm out. Why?"
"Hydrozepam plus alcohol is dangerous." She shook her head
"Ran out a couple of days back." Simon bit the inside of his lip. If she was telling the truth, she'd be fine. But part of him was reluctant to trust her. If they'd been in the ER on Osiris, he'd have told whoever had brought her to him that she was drunk and probably only drunk, so to stick her in Observation overnight if you thought there was a real risk of drug interaction, otherwise to stop wasting his time. But this wasn't Osiris. He was Observation personified. She was probably fine, she might have a sore head in the morning from a nice little hangover, but she probably didn't need medical attention. But if she did, all it cost was a few hours sleep and possibly a few mils of Flumazenil. If he went back to bed and something happened…
"I want water," he said, getting up. "Can I get you one?" She nodded.
"Sure."
When he came back, she'd moved to the middle of the couch. He set one glass in front of her – the biggest he'd been able to find – and sat back down.
"Get that down," he advised. "You'll be in a better state in the morning if you do." She took a mouthful and smiled.
"Less hung over?"
"Less dehydrated, which is part of being hung over. It doesn't do anything for the ketone toxicity."
"Wouldn't have thought you'd know much about hangovers, respectable person like you." She pushed him gently in the shoulder with her foot.
"Hey, I've been a medical student. I told you about the statue incident, and you've seen me drunk." She smiled.
"You're funny when you're drunk."
"Give me an hour, I'll be able to tell you if you're funny when you're drunk." She giggled. "What made you start drinking?" She sighed.
"Missing 'Nara. And there's things… She told me things I can't tell nobody else because I promised. Sad things."
"And even though she's not here you still feel bound by it? I know how that feels." She frowned at him. "Patient confidentiality. What somebody tells me as their medic, I can't tell anyone else."
"Not ever?"
"There are exceptions. Like if I need another Doctor's help, or if I don't give a name and there's no way the person I'm telling will ever be able to identify the patient. So I could tell you about that man old enough to be my father in the double-breasted suit who came walking in to the ER one night when I was about six months qualified." He could already feel himself smiling. Kaylee tilted her head at him, smiling back. Her breathing still looked fairly normal.
"What?"
"Well, he came in complaining of sudden onset lower abdominal pain." Even years later, telling this story tended to make him laugh. He had no idea how he'd managed not to laugh in front of the patient. "His appendix was already out, so it wasn't that, no other symptoms, so I got him to lie down to localise and grade the pain since he was stable. I couldn't find a focus, he wasn't sore anywhere, which given how he'd described the pain was odd. I told him so, he said the pain was lower than I'd been poking him, so I tried again, got a dubious response, but he didn't seem feverish. I basically ran round in small circles for five minutes because I was too stubborn to call my resident. I literally picked up the chart and was about to walk off to get help, then I realised I'd forgotten the most obvious question."
"What?"
"Why do you think…. Whatever the presenting complaint is. So I asked him and there was this long, long silence, he started looking at the floor like a kid who's been caught with his hand in a jar of candy. So I waited him out, because that's what you're supposed to do and after… it must have been a minute or more, he said 'there might possibly be a lemon'." Kaylee looked as though she might have guessed where this was going. "Then another really long silence, he's gradually turning redder and I'm standing there trying my utmost not to look like I'm trying not to laugh. Then he adds 'up my', then stops."
"What, up his pi gu?"
"Yeah." Kaylee burst out laughing and fell against his shoulder. Simon felt himself starting to laugh too. "But of course I – I couldn't laugh in front of him, I honestly don't know how I didn't. I managed to ask him how he thought it got there."
"You're making this up."
"No, it actually happens quite a lot. He said he'd slipped in the shower and landed on it." Kaylee's laughter redoubled.
"Was he telling the truth?"
"What do you think?" He could actually feel her brachial pulse like this, and the quality of her breathing, he could see enough of the clock on the infirmary wall to get a rate. A pretty unconventional way to monitor, but it was good enough, and sitting like this wasn't exactly uncomfortable. "Anyway, your turn."
"What?"
"I told you a story, now you tell me one."
She made a decent go of it. It was a bit disjointed, she kept going off on tangents, but she did make him laugh, especially what the guy said to try to get out of paying her the call-out charge to fix his harvester when a cat came bolting out of the exhaust.
"Yeah," He said when she'd finished. "You're funny when you're drunk, but you're also funny when you're sober." She didn't really respond. Her breathing was still good though. She was okay. It was a moment before she said anything, then:
"You're so shuai. Sometimes I just-" She stopped herself. She was drunk. He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. She sat up.
They'd been sitting in silence for a few minutes when she shifted round to face him. He looked at her. Their noses weren't six inches apart, her breath still smelled slightly alcoholic. For a long moment, they just sat there, looking at each other. She was pretty. Even-
She stretched her neck up towards him, closing the gap between them. He looked away. She was drunk. She was not fully responsible for her actions, so even if she initiated something, that wasn't consent. Not really. Even if she had been sober, he really couldn't do this right now. He was a fugitive, he had nothing. And River made things complicated. He was just not in a position to start anything with anyone. He didn't have the right to drag anyone into danger like that.
Neither of them made much of an effort to keep conversation up after that; she slowly leaned against him and fell asleep leaning into his side. He didn't quite dare. Her breathing was still steady, well within normal limits for someone asleep, but there were no alarms. There would be no crash bell if she arrested, but if he could stay awake for another hour, after that, she ought to be okay. If she was going to arrest, and it didn't look likely at this point, he'd have warning. Between feeling her breathing and her brachial pulse, he had a pretty good idea of her condition. And this wasn't exactly an uncomfortable way to sit.
He smiled softly and let himself enjoy the reassuring warmth of her body against his.
Chinese
Pi gu: Bottom or rear end
Shuai: Handsome or cute (term only applies to men, but not to heavily masculate men)
Medic-ese
Ataxia: Uncoordinated movement
Vestibular ataxia: Uncoordinated movement due to having a decreased sense of which way is up.
Hydrozepam: Fictional sedative, I am assuming it to behave like diazepam.
Crashed: In this context, unconscious, non-responsive and heart having stopped or being about to stop.
Cyanotic: Bluish, particularly around the lips and tongue. A bad sign.
Pupils fixed and dilated: Eyes not moving around to see what's happening and pupils not closing down when a light is shone in to them. A very bad sign.
Flumazenil: Real antidote to diazepam, so I am using it to reverse hydrozepam
Brachial Pulse: The pulse you can sometimes feel mid way between shoulder and elbow.