Disclaimer: See chapter one.

A/N: And another chapter for your reading pleasure.

Brompton Cocktail

Chapter Six

Zoë nearly missed it when Jayne veered away from the direction of Katy's, even though she'd been half-expecting the maneuver. The dockside area was busier than normal, and even with Jayne's freakishly tall, massive self, there were just too many folks around. Zoë wound up having to close a little more distance between herself and the mercenary. If he's out trolling for intel on those that killed his family… the thought trailed off, replaced by a steely determination to help the merc, whether he wanted it or not.

It surprised her, however, when Jayne entered a building sporting a sign for 'Dr. Baker', rather than any one of the dozen seedy bars they had passed. Why's he going there? We got Simon on board… A slow smirk tugged at her face. Unless it's something he don't want us to know about. Maybe one of those li'l problems picked up from his preferred bedmates that usually wind up painfully embarrassing. It made a twisted sort of sense. For all that Simon was bound by all the same confidentiality oaths as any doctor, Zoë couldn't see the kid being able to keep from needling Jayne about an STD.

Satisfied with her assumption on Jayne's problem and his motivations for not going to Simon, Zoë decided to leave him to it. Figuring she might as well get a head-start on locating a licensed pilot, she headed to the public-access cortex nestled up against the side-wall of Dr. Baker's office. Like most of the cortex terminals in the area, this one was tucked back in an alcove and covered in the grime of countless fingers. She'd just entered in her search parameters when Jayne's voice, distant and tinny-sounding, seemed to speak just behind her. She twisted around and spotted a vent in the wall only a couple of feet from the terminal.

"…can't see proper, doc, but it's just the one side."

Another voice spoke next, older and just a bit more refined. "And you say that bruise shoulda healed by now?"

"Yeah, doc. Weren't more 'an a pound or two o' force. A wrench flipped up when we was movin' stuff. Shoulda been an' gone in two, three days. It's done been near on three weeks now."

Zoë abandoned the cortex and slid over to stand next to the vent. This doesn't sound like what I thought it was gonna be.

"Anything else?" the doctor asked.

"Gotta nosebleed 'bout ten days ago. Bad one. Medic on the ship had ta burn the vein closed."

Inside the doctor's office, Jayne sat on a wobbly exam table. His boots, socks, shirt, and gunbelt were piled on a bench next to the door. Dr. Baker, a man who was probably a couple of years older than Shepherd Book would have been had he lived, was an old acquaintance of Jayne's. He'd been seeing Baker for various injuries over the last ten years and trusted the man far more than the squirrelly kid Mal'd picked up, not the least because Baker had yet to drug him into motionlessness just to prove a point.

Baker picked up a small instrument that had a bright pin-light at one end. He stepped over to Jayne and used one hand to hold Jayne's eyelids out of the way, then peered through the instrument. "Look up for me, Cobb," the doctor said. "Now left. Right. Down." Jayne followed the instructions.

"Whacha seein'?"

The doctor repeated the procedure on Jayne's left eye. "Hmm…"

"That a good hmm or a bad hmm?"

"Just a hmm hmm," Baker replied, then switched to an instrument with a slightly different shape. "This is probably gonna be a mite uncomfortable, but I wanna see what your medic did," he said.

The teeny probe was snaked up Jayne's nose. He grasped the edge of the exam table with a white-knuckled grip and forced himself not to sneeze. Gorram thing tickles like hell. The inside of his nose was displayed on a small monitor on the wall to Jayne's right. Since he'd never seen the inside of his own nose before, Jayne hadn't a clue as to whether or not what the probe was showing was right or not.

Removing the probe, the doctor made a couple of notes, then asked, "You been fightin' recent?"

Jayne shook his head. "Not for near-on a month now. Even that was just a li'l fight, more like a tussle."

Baker chuckled. "I seen your idea of a tussle, Cobb. But I'll take your word it wasn't so bad as that." He grabbed a new instrument from his table of supplied. "Hold out your hand," he ordered.

Jayne knew what was coming and handed the doc his left. His right was still white-knuckling the table. Why's it I can be shot, stabbed, an' whaled on in a fight, but that finger-jab the docs're so fond of makes my skin crawl? He couldn't quite repress the wince when the machine's lancet pricked his index finger and drew a drop of blood.

Baker hit a couple of buttons to tell the gadget what he wanted it to test for, then started speaking while it compiled data-points. "The cauterization was well-done, you oughta thank your medic. Not too many folks have a steady enough hand for the tiny vessels like that one."

"What 'bout my eye?"

"That's somewhat more of a problem. As far as I can tell, you ruptured one of the veins in your retina."

"My what-na?"

"The part of your eye that actually sees. Your eye's full of blood, Jayne."

The mercenary shivered a little, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. One of the main reasons he preferred Baker was that the man actually kept his office a little warmer than a fully-clothed person found comfortable – another big reason was that Baker actually made the effort not to use medi-speak. "Don't sound shiny."

The doctor nodded. "It ain't. Only a coupla things can cause that. Main one's gettin' smacked hard in the face, but if that was what caused it, then you'd have one helluva black eye. Second reason also don't fit you – if a person's got really high blood-pressure, it can sometimes make little veins and arteries burst. But your pressure's always been textbook perfect, except today, an' today it's runnin' lower than normal."

Though the doc's words were perfectly understandable, they weren't all that reassuring. "If that ain't what caused it, then what?"

The little machine beeped and interrupted them. The doc read the results and frowned. "Disease," he said.

That little flutter of suspicion grew in strength and was now a percussive hammer at the back of Jayne's mind. He swallowed hard, his mouth dryer than dust. "Which?"

Dr. Baker dragged his eyes up to meet those of his patient. "Ruby fever."

Jayne closed his eyes and swallowed again. "Ain't… There ain't no doubt on that?" He re-opened his eyes.

"None whatsoever," Baker replied, his own face a study in sympathy. "But… I think you knew that already."

Jayne nodded, the movement barely there. "Reckon so. Didn't wanna think it, but was the only thing I knew what fit."

Baker laid a hand on Jayne's shoulder. The warmth and weight of it was somewhat reassuring, but did nothing to close the gaping chasm that had suddenly opened beneath Jayne's feet. "You know there's not much I can do, right?"

Jayne nodded minutely again. "Know that. What I don't is what you can do." He leveled a determined look at the doctor.

"First off, we'll drain the blood out of your eye. If it's not quit bleeding on its own, I'll repair it the same way your medic did your nose."

"Then what?"

"Then… Well, untreated, you got, at most, eight weeks. With treatment, you might can stretch that out to about three, maybe three-and-a-half months. Either way…" Baker trailed off.

Jayne could finish that sentence his own self. Either way, I'm dead afore year's end.

Back outside, Zoë felt like she'd been dunked in ice-water. Ruby fever? Isn't that the one that crystallizes your blood cells, turns them into teeny-tiny shards of glass? No one had taken her place at the cortex yet, so she returned to it. Instead of looking for a new pilot, though, she pulled up a general entry on ruby fever.

Ruby Fever (Kurohaima). A contracted disease which is caused by a biohazard safety level 2 virus of the filoviridae family. Unlike the other viral diseases in the filoviridae family (see Ebola, Marburg for more information), Kurohaima is non-communicable from person to person, save through direct blood contact. The virus behind the illness targets red blood cells and crystallizes them. Once crystallized, the cells then cause massive internal damage to the capillaries and internal organs of the host. It is rare among humans, with only 2,513 cases reported system-wide in the last five years. Kurohaima's origins are currently unknown, but common belief is that it is contracted through eating contaminated meats, specifically dog or cat meat. The Kurohaima virus can remain undetected in the body of its host for several years before symptoms present themselves; it is this long incubation period that is responsible for the current mystery as to its origins. Once symptoms present, if left untreated, the infected individual has 5-8 weeks before the damage done is too great and death is imminent. If treated, this time span can be increased to a maximum of five months. There is no known cure for Kurohaima.

"O, zhe zhen shi ge kuaile de jinzhan…" Zoë breathed the words, unaware they'd even escaped her mind.

A/N2: I completely made up 'ruby fever'. I hope any real medicos out there will forgive me for it, but there really wasn't anything already out there that I knew about that really fitted what I wanted to do with this story.

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