A/N: Wow, thank you all so much for all the great feedback, Strife21
Phoenix Lioncourt, Nautica7mk, lanthene, and Nikki, it got me really
inspired! It's so nice to have new friends. But doesn't it SUCK that
Firefly is getting canceled!? I can't believe it! I'm just hoping and
praying some other network sees it for the genius it is and picks it up. I
hope all u r as well. This is probably exactly the way it was with Buffy,
it took a while to find a good spot, then went major. At least, I hope so.
Anyway, yeah, a mess o thanks for all the reviews, you guys are awesome.
Here we go.
"Simon!" shouted Mal as he strode up the ramp and into Serenity, the girl swinging limply in his arms. Kaylee, Zoe, and a very pale Wash followed at almost a run to keep up.
The young doctor's head shot up at the tone of urgency in the captain's voice from the game he was playing on the floor of the med lab with River. She hadn't seemed to notice the dramatic entrance of their fellow crewmates. Her dark brown eyes stayed transfixed on the small game pieces scattered around. Simon stood up and went to the captain after giving River a reassuring touch on the shoulder, which she also ignored.
"What's wrong, captain?" Simon asked. He could have guessed, but something made him not reluctant to look at the girl in Mal's arms' deathly pale face and motionless limbs.
"Girl got smacked in the head with a wrench," Mal reported quickly, not bothering to give any more details out of the urgency of the situation, or just maybe to spare Wash any extra guilt from Simon's dissecting eyes.
Simon became all business, the exact characteristic that made him such a brilliant doctor, "Get her in the lab, there's not a lot of time." He turned on his heel and walked into the med lab with Mal behind.
The captain laid the girl out on the one cushioned examination table the med lab contained, but still held onto her shoulders so Simon could have a good view of the head wound. When the doctor did get a look at it he winced uncharacteristically.
Kaylee, who had also followed the two men, caught the look, "That bad, huh, Simon?" Her voice was riddled with concern. Simon tried not to wonder at the young woman's compassion for someone she hadn't even met. Focus, Simon chided himself, or she'll only suffer more. He recalled his med school days, thinking, Head wounds, head wounds, when did I hear about head wounds? Thanks to Mal's quick work with the blanket the cut didn't need much cleaning, and the flow itself wasn't critical. The girl's a quick healer, Simon mused, examining the already clotted blood around the shallowest parts of the cut.
He smoothed back the dark brown hair that fell to the girls chin and halfway down her neck in somewhat frizzy waves to get a better bead on wound's terrain.
"Anytime you wanna get started, doc, would be just shiny," Mal said. He was getting nervous, which made him impatient, which made him snap at everything and anything, even if it didn't particularly bother him.
"Just getting situated, captain," Simon said quietly, obviously in deep concentration, "Keep her chin lowered, please, I'm going to stitch the wound up and I need light." Kaylee, ever helpful, switched on an observation light and lowered it near Simon's head, which was hovering not a foot away from the girl's wound. Simon glanced up with an appreciative smile, which she returned, and he once again had to blink and shout at himself to focus, FOCUS!
He threaded a needle and started his work in one fluid, practiced motion. A quick, restorative breath and he quickly went about stitching the wound. He held a bit of gauze to the worst areas of the cut where the bleeding hadn't yet trickled to a stop. In seconds the wound was nothing more than a jagged red line along the girl's scalp. Following a nod from Simon, Mal gently let go of the girl's shoulders and tilted her head sideways, so she wouldn't lie on the wound.
"She's still not a hundred percent, though," Simon said as he wrapped a clean, white gauze bandage around the girl's head, "Head wounds are dangerous, she needs to be under twenty four hours of observation, at the least." Mal nodded, but didn't look at all happy about it. Kaylee's face showed neither the inclination nor disinclination to having a new guest, only that heart-warming compassion for the girl's welfare. The four people, including a still silent River, left the med lab, all, except River, with grim looks on their faces. Zoe and Wash stood just outside it.
"She gonna be okay, doc?" Wash asked shakily.
"I'm not sure yet, Wash," Simon replied, surprised to find even stronger emotion on the pilot's face than anyone else's, "But, I think she's a quick healer. Besides that, she's young, and appears to be healthy. Those are all good things. All we can do is wait and see." Wash's face looked like it was about to crumble, but was hidden from view as Zoe brought him into a hug in which he buried his face into her neck. Simon sent a questioning look in Mal's direction, but he was already headed up the metal stairs of Serenity.
"Guilt is the fear of the unknown caused," said River quietly. She stood near the med lab door, gazing in at the unconscious girl inside. She looked slightly confused as she eyed the inert form, an emotion her brother was not used to seeing on his sister's usually enigmatic but intelligent face. Simon didn't even bother trying to figure out the meaning of River's words, just simply smiled and led her back to the game abandoned on the floor, where they continued to play without any more obscure statements from River.
Her eyes felt like they'd been glued shut, or maybe made into a heavy, lead-like substance that weighed them down over her eyes. She felt the pressing urge to open them, and her breath quickened with the strain of the act. But eventually they did pull apart and she found she couldn't see at all. This did nothing to calm her breathing, and she felt she might hyperventilate soon if she didn't calm down and figure out what was going on. She closed her eyes again, forcing herself to take deep breaths. Opening her eyes wasn't nearly as difficult as they'd been the first time, and this time she could make out a few vague shapes in the darkness. She sat up from her horizontal position slowly, battling a wave of dizziness that attacked the moment she got upright. Her head felt like it had been filled with the same lead-like substance her eyelids had, and it drooped down as if her neck was made of jelly. As she forced her neck to solidify she finally registered a razor-sharp pain in the back of her head. It took all her will power not to yelp in pain.
The lead-like substance drained from her upper torso and eventually from her whole body as she swung her legs over the side of whatever she was sitting on. The only light came from a row of them level with her head that made about one-third of a circle before disappearing. They were unnatural, too white electric lights, and they illuminated a white counter, upon which sat bottles and syringes and assortments of books and bags. She slowly lowered herself from the "bed", at least, what she assumed to be a bed. Her feet almost stung with the floor's cold as she walked toward the counter. She shuffled toward its white surface and picked up a small, blue, glass bottle of pills.
"Deoxycotin," she read aloud. Her voice sounded alien to her, weak and soft. She couldn't have been more than sixteen. She blinked, wondering why she needed to hear her own voice to estimate her own age. Isn't that one of those things you're supposed to just- know? She wandered a few more feet down the counter, trailing her hand over its smooth white surface. Her ears rang at the sudden clatter of something falling roughly to the floor, her knees and feet suddenly stung.
"Ti mao!" shouted a voice in the dark. The girl nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Wh-who's there?" said both voices simultaneously. The counter's lights illuminated the shape of a young woman. Her eyes were wide and her hair framed her round face. They went wider at the sight of the girl trying to tidy up the mess she'd made while at the same time keeping a wary eye on her.
"Hi," Kaylee said with a warm smile, "My name's Kaylee, who're you?" She talked the way one would talk to a frightened animal in need of care. She even held her hands up in front of her in a slightly defensive, hopefully not offensive, pose. The girl didn't answer, but she did straiten up, keeping her eyes trained on Kaylee.
Kaylee tried again, speaking a little slower, "Who are you? What's your name?" Her eyes took on a pleading look, sincerely wanting an answer. Unfortunately, the girl had none to give her. All she could do was stare at this half-shadowed young woman and chew on her lower lip until it dulled the pain in the back of her head.
Kaylee tried another approach, trying to imagine what a nurse in a hospital would say, since that was really what the girl needed, "You hit your head- well, your head got hit- um, well, you hurt your head. We, by we I mean me 'n Mal 'n Wash 'n Zoe. . ." She trailed off at the realization that, while these names meant so much to her, they meant nothing to this girl, "We took you on board our ship. You're on Serenity," she smiled. Kaylee truly believed Serenity was the best place in the 'verse, and anybody was lucky to have it as a home, "You should pro'bly sit back down, you got hurt pretty bad." She touched the a button that turned on the med lab's lights. The girl winced at the sudden brightness, and her head ached even more.
Kaylee noticed her discomfort, "Oh, sorry 'bout that," she said earnestly. She helped the girl back onto the examination table, willing herself not to notice the unnatural clamminess of the girl's hand and the spot of red that showed on the bandage. She did the only thing she could think to do, she kept talking, "Sooo, I didn't catch yer name-?"
The girl froze in her attempts to get back onto the table, and her eyes clouded over. That was precisely what was going on in the girl's head too. At every attempt to recall anything a thick fog descended, hiding everything from view. She suddenly felt very scared and very alone.
"I- I," her voice trembled, and Kaylee kept a hand on her narrow shoulder, immediately sensing the need for comfort, "I don't know."
Kaylee blinked a few times, "Whaddya' mean, you don't know?" She couldn't understand a person not even knowing her own name. She tried to imagine herself not knowing her own name. She could just barely, but she was fairly imaginative.
"I just don't KNOW," cried the girl, her thin frame shaking and her breathing gone ragged. Fearful tears dripped down her face, and Kaylee instantly put aside her confusion in favor of wrapping an arm around the girl and giving her arm a warm rub. The girl's head dropped down and Kaylee watched the tears fall from her eyes and make damp circles on the sterile, hospital clothes covering her lap.
"It'll be okay, um- girl," Kaylee cooed to the best of her ability. Calling her "girl" would simply not do, but it could wait, "Soon as th' cap'n 'n ever 'body wakes up, we'll see what we can do 'bout your lil' problem. We got a good doctor that'll figger out what's wrong with you 'n fix it, jus' like I do an engine." The girl raised a curious eyebrow, "Oh," Kaylee said with a laugh, realizing that the girl had no idea who she was beyond the girl that had been there when she'd woken up, "I'm Serenity's mechanic," she said proudly, "and you've picked the best gorram ship to be outta commission in, if I do say so myself." The girl smiled a little at Kaylee's obvious devotion to the ship, Serenity. Her smile widened at the name. She had no clue as to what she'd been through since meeting Kaylee, but she had a feeling she could use a little serenity.
A/N: Okay, gotta go to bed, almost 10:30! Don't laugh, I don't like staying up late. Ah, glad to have another chapter out, I think this one turned out okay too. I'll try to work all the rest of Serenity's crew in next chapter, it's just that these first ones are kind of tight. Lotsa' movement, little introductions. Also, I'm completely b.s-ing my way through River's little sparks of genius, same as the Chinese, I unfortunately am not quite on her level w/ the random quotes from obscure tomes. Review if you get the urge, you know it's like gasoline to get me into my computer chair and writing. C ya next chapter!
"Simon!" shouted Mal as he strode up the ramp and into Serenity, the girl swinging limply in his arms. Kaylee, Zoe, and a very pale Wash followed at almost a run to keep up.
The young doctor's head shot up at the tone of urgency in the captain's voice from the game he was playing on the floor of the med lab with River. She hadn't seemed to notice the dramatic entrance of their fellow crewmates. Her dark brown eyes stayed transfixed on the small game pieces scattered around. Simon stood up and went to the captain after giving River a reassuring touch on the shoulder, which she also ignored.
"What's wrong, captain?" Simon asked. He could have guessed, but something made him not reluctant to look at the girl in Mal's arms' deathly pale face and motionless limbs.
"Girl got smacked in the head with a wrench," Mal reported quickly, not bothering to give any more details out of the urgency of the situation, or just maybe to spare Wash any extra guilt from Simon's dissecting eyes.
Simon became all business, the exact characteristic that made him such a brilliant doctor, "Get her in the lab, there's not a lot of time." He turned on his heel and walked into the med lab with Mal behind.
The captain laid the girl out on the one cushioned examination table the med lab contained, but still held onto her shoulders so Simon could have a good view of the head wound. When the doctor did get a look at it he winced uncharacteristically.
Kaylee, who had also followed the two men, caught the look, "That bad, huh, Simon?" Her voice was riddled with concern. Simon tried not to wonder at the young woman's compassion for someone she hadn't even met. Focus, Simon chided himself, or she'll only suffer more. He recalled his med school days, thinking, Head wounds, head wounds, when did I hear about head wounds? Thanks to Mal's quick work with the blanket the cut didn't need much cleaning, and the flow itself wasn't critical. The girl's a quick healer, Simon mused, examining the already clotted blood around the shallowest parts of the cut.
He smoothed back the dark brown hair that fell to the girls chin and halfway down her neck in somewhat frizzy waves to get a better bead on wound's terrain.
"Anytime you wanna get started, doc, would be just shiny," Mal said. He was getting nervous, which made him impatient, which made him snap at everything and anything, even if it didn't particularly bother him.
"Just getting situated, captain," Simon said quietly, obviously in deep concentration, "Keep her chin lowered, please, I'm going to stitch the wound up and I need light." Kaylee, ever helpful, switched on an observation light and lowered it near Simon's head, which was hovering not a foot away from the girl's wound. Simon glanced up with an appreciative smile, which she returned, and he once again had to blink and shout at himself to focus, FOCUS!
He threaded a needle and started his work in one fluid, practiced motion. A quick, restorative breath and he quickly went about stitching the wound. He held a bit of gauze to the worst areas of the cut where the bleeding hadn't yet trickled to a stop. In seconds the wound was nothing more than a jagged red line along the girl's scalp. Following a nod from Simon, Mal gently let go of the girl's shoulders and tilted her head sideways, so she wouldn't lie on the wound.
"She's still not a hundred percent, though," Simon said as he wrapped a clean, white gauze bandage around the girl's head, "Head wounds are dangerous, she needs to be under twenty four hours of observation, at the least." Mal nodded, but didn't look at all happy about it. Kaylee's face showed neither the inclination nor disinclination to having a new guest, only that heart-warming compassion for the girl's welfare. The four people, including a still silent River, left the med lab, all, except River, with grim looks on their faces. Zoe and Wash stood just outside it.
"She gonna be okay, doc?" Wash asked shakily.
"I'm not sure yet, Wash," Simon replied, surprised to find even stronger emotion on the pilot's face than anyone else's, "But, I think she's a quick healer. Besides that, she's young, and appears to be healthy. Those are all good things. All we can do is wait and see." Wash's face looked like it was about to crumble, but was hidden from view as Zoe brought him into a hug in which he buried his face into her neck. Simon sent a questioning look in Mal's direction, but he was already headed up the metal stairs of Serenity.
"Guilt is the fear of the unknown caused," said River quietly. She stood near the med lab door, gazing in at the unconscious girl inside. She looked slightly confused as she eyed the inert form, an emotion her brother was not used to seeing on his sister's usually enigmatic but intelligent face. Simon didn't even bother trying to figure out the meaning of River's words, just simply smiled and led her back to the game abandoned on the floor, where they continued to play without any more obscure statements from River.
Her eyes felt like they'd been glued shut, or maybe made into a heavy, lead-like substance that weighed them down over her eyes. She felt the pressing urge to open them, and her breath quickened with the strain of the act. But eventually they did pull apart and she found she couldn't see at all. This did nothing to calm her breathing, and she felt she might hyperventilate soon if she didn't calm down and figure out what was going on. She closed her eyes again, forcing herself to take deep breaths. Opening her eyes wasn't nearly as difficult as they'd been the first time, and this time she could make out a few vague shapes in the darkness. She sat up from her horizontal position slowly, battling a wave of dizziness that attacked the moment she got upright. Her head felt like it had been filled with the same lead-like substance her eyelids had, and it drooped down as if her neck was made of jelly. As she forced her neck to solidify she finally registered a razor-sharp pain in the back of her head. It took all her will power not to yelp in pain.
The lead-like substance drained from her upper torso and eventually from her whole body as she swung her legs over the side of whatever she was sitting on. The only light came from a row of them level with her head that made about one-third of a circle before disappearing. They were unnatural, too white electric lights, and they illuminated a white counter, upon which sat bottles and syringes and assortments of books and bags. She slowly lowered herself from the "bed", at least, what she assumed to be a bed. Her feet almost stung with the floor's cold as she walked toward the counter. She shuffled toward its white surface and picked up a small, blue, glass bottle of pills.
"Deoxycotin," she read aloud. Her voice sounded alien to her, weak and soft. She couldn't have been more than sixteen. She blinked, wondering why she needed to hear her own voice to estimate her own age. Isn't that one of those things you're supposed to just- know? She wandered a few more feet down the counter, trailing her hand over its smooth white surface. Her ears rang at the sudden clatter of something falling roughly to the floor, her knees and feet suddenly stung.
"Ti mao!" shouted a voice in the dark. The girl nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Wh-who's there?" said both voices simultaneously. The counter's lights illuminated the shape of a young woman. Her eyes were wide and her hair framed her round face. They went wider at the sight of the girl trying to tidy up the mess she'd made while at the same time keeping a wary eye on her.
"Hi," Kaylee said with a warm smile, "My name's Kaylee, who're you?" She talked the way one would talk to a frightened animal in need of care. She even held her hands up in front of her in a slightly defensive, hopefully not offensive, pose. The girl didn't answer, but she did straiten up, keeping her eyes trained on Kaylee.
Kaylee tried again, speaking a little slower, "Who are you? What's your name?" Her eyes took on a pleading look, sincerely wanting an answer. Unfortunately, the girl had none to give her. All she could do was stare at this half-shadowed young woman and chew on her lower lip until it dulled the pain in the back of her head.
Kaylee tried another approach, trying to imagine what a nurse in a hospital would say, since that was really what the girl needed, "You hit your head- well, your head got hit- um, well, you hurt your head. We, by we I mean me 'n Mal 'n Wash 'n Zoe. . ." She trailed off at the realization that, while these names meant so much to her, they meant nothing to this girl, "We took you on board our ship. You're on Serenity," she smiled. Kaylee truly believed Serenity was the best place in the 'verse, and anybody was lucky to have it as a home, "You should pro'bly sit back down, you got hurt pretty bad." She touched the a button that turned on the med lab's lights. The girl winced at the sudden brightness, and her head ached even more.
Kaylee noticed her discomfort, "Oh, sorry 'bout that," she said earnestly. She helped the girl back onto the examination table, willing herself not to notice the unnatural clamminess of the girl's hand and the spot of red that showed on the bandage. She did the only thing she could think to do, she kept talking, "Sooo, I didn't catch yer name-?"
The girl froze in her attempts to get back onto the table, and her eyes clouded over. That was precisely what was going on in the girl's head too. At every attempt to recall anything a thick fog descended, hiding everything from view. She suddenly felt very scared and very alone.
"I- I," her voice trembled, and Kaylee kept a hand on her narrow shoulder, immediately sensing the need for comfort, "I don't know."
Kaylee blinked a few times, "Whaddya' mean, you don't know?" She couldn't understand a person not even knowing her own name. She tried to imagine herself not knowing her own name. She could just barely, but she was fairly imaginative.
"I just don't KNOW," cried the girl, her thin frame shaking and her breathing gone ragged. Fearful tears dripped down her face, and Kaylee instantly put aside her confusion in favor of wrapping an arm around the girl and giving her arm a warm rub. The girl's head dropped down and Kaylee watched the tears fall from her eyes and make damp circles on the sterile, hospital clothes covering her lap.
"It'll be okay, um- girl," Kaylee cooed to the best of her ability. Calling her "girl" would simply not do, but it could wait, "Soon as th' cap'n 'n ever 'body wakes up, we'll see what we can do 'bout your lil' problem. We got a good doctor that'll figger out what's wrong with you 'n fix it, jus' like I do an engine." The girl raised a curious eyebrow, "Oh," Kaylee said with a laugh, realizing that the girl had no idea who she was beyond the girl that had been there when she'd woken up, "I'm Serenity's mechanic," she said proudly, "and you've picked the best gorram ship to be outta commission in, if I do say so myself." The girl smiled a little at Kaylee's obvious devotion to the ship, Serenity. Her smile widened at the name. She had no clue as to what she'd been through since meeting Kaylee, but she had a feeling she could use a little serenity.
A/N: Okay, gotta go to bed, almost 10:30! Don't laugh, I don't like staying up late. Ah, glad to have another chapter out, I think this one turned out okay too. I'll try to work all the rest of Serenity's crew in next chapter, it's just that these first ones are kind of tight. Lotsa' movement, little introductions. Also, I'm completely b.s-ing my way through River's little sparks of genius, same as the Chinese, I unfortunately am not quite on her level w/ the random quotes from obscure tomes. Review if you get the urge, you know it's like gasoline to get me into my computer chair and writing. C ya next chapter!