"Try to lay her down on her stomach," Simon said as he gestured towards the small exam table in the middle of the brightly lit room.
Mal nodded and made his was to the table. Doing what Simon said proved more difficult than he thought, however. He had picked her up in the cargo bay with one arm under her upper back, just below the shoulders. The other was at the bend of her knees and the Captain couldn't, for the life of him, figure out how to get from that position to laying on her stomach.
He was just having the idea to crouch level with the table and attempt to flip the injured woman onto her stomach when a small groan caused him to look down.
"I can do it." Jo had woken up and after looking from the table to Mal, understood the trouble he was having. "Just help me stand for a second."
Mal nodded again, and sat her down on the floor, an arm still hovering near her shoulders should she stumble again. Pressing her lips together to stop another groan escaping them, she put both her hands and then one knee on the table to hoist herself up. Whimpering only slightly from the discomfort in her lower back, she managed to lay down on her belly. Her hands she placed at the top, gripping the plush white table on either side of her head.
Simon hurried back over from his previous position rummaging through the cabinets with a scowl on his face and a pair of scissors in his gloved hands, which he used to cut swiftly through the fabric of her shirt. He tried to pull the material off of the wound quickly, but it had adhered somewhat to her skin thanks to the blood and sweat of her body. Instead it came in small portions and squelching sounds.
"Gan ni niang," Simon whispered as he removed the last bit of fabric from the damaged tissue. The Doctor, in general, wasn't fond of cursing, or so Mal had overheard Kaylee telling Inara one day. The Captain assumed this meant the injury was bad, and he got his answer when he leaned over to see for himself. It looked as though something, small and circular, about an inch in diameter had been jabbed into Jo's flesh and then twisted around to slice up the tender meat inside.
"Ahh!" The patient jerked suddenly and cried out as Simon prodded the opening with a finger, causing Simon to pull his hand back quickly.
"Try to hold still," Simon said as he lowered his hand towards her back again. Quietly, Mal's hand shot out and encircled the Doctor's wrist before it could make contact with skin.
"Are you going to dope her?" He asked quietly.
Simon pulled his arm out of Mal's grip and looked down. "I can't."
"What do you mean you can't? You're not going to work on her like this," Mal spoke with a hint of anger in his voice.
"I have to," Simon couldn't meet the Captain's eyes, "We're out."
"Out? I'm sorry but weren't we just on planet back there?"
Simon nodded. "Then how can we be out, when you're supposed to keep us stocked up, and we just had supplies readily available?" Mal spat.
The Doctor looked up. "You told River and I to stay out of Persephone, and," Simon looked through the glass window at Kaylee's concerned form, "I may have been a little distracted."
"A little distracted!" Mal grabbed Simon's arm and pulled him a few feet away from the patient. "What were you gonna do when that was one of us laying there, and you know it will happen some time on this trip cause it always does?" Mal tried to keep his voice down and still get his point across. "Gorramit Simon, what would you have done if that were Kaylee and there weren't nothing you could give her?"
Simon looked back out at the mechanic, who now had her nose pressed against the glass, an angry frown where her smile usually lay because of the way Mal had grabbed Simon. He turned back to his Captain, humbled. "I'm sorry Mal, it won't happen again."
"Touching as this is," Jo's voice was muffled from her weak state and because she was pressing her face firmly against the table top to keep from crying out, "now that we've established that you don't have any pain reliever to offer me, don't you think we best hurry and get it over with?"
Simon walked quickly back to his patient. "I'm sorry, you're right. There's no use in prolonging it." Gently he began to poke and prod at the small hole in her back despite her whimpering. "I'm going to have to clean the area and stitch it up." He bent down closer. "It's deep, but it doesn't look like it hit any of the major organs. Mostly just muscle damage, and oh..." He moved even closer. "It's a bit infected here... are you sure you want me to do this without pain medication?"
"I didn't think I had much of a choice," she answered.
Simon almost smiled. "You're right, you don't. I just wanted you to prepare yourself... Ready?"
"Do it."
Mal walked towards the top of the table where Jo's head was lain as the Doctor began his work. He observed her silently. Her eyes were screwed shut, beads of sweat dotted her forehead and she couldn't stop the low mewling from leaving her throat no matter how hard she tried. Feeling the Captain's eyes on her, she quickly opened her own to stare back.
As Simon began to rinse the infected area, a ragged sob was torn from her lips and both her arms flailed uncontrollably, looking for something, anything hard to grab on to.
Mal caught both her arms in his own, and knelt down so that they were eye level. Quickly he moved his large hands up her arms to cradle her much smaller ones.
Her breathe hitched in her throat, and the Captain thought he heard a subdued "thank you" beneath the labored breathing.
"Alright. I'm going to begin stitching now."
As the Doctor brought his needle to her back in quick precise movements, the infirmary was filled with the young woman's piercing screams. Mal inhaled sharply as she squeezed each of his hands with a strength she didn't look capable of possessing. It felt as though the bones in his hands would shatter at any moment.
But not long after the screaming had begun, it stopped abruptly, as did the searing pain to Mal's hands. He looked down to see that the young patient had passed out again, and he let her arms fall, limp, to the sides of the table.