Chapter Five: In which things get worse.
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Things were definitely getting as back towards normal as they could under the circumstances, but a lot of that was through sheer effort of will on the part of the crew. So the remaining members of the crew were very careful to not notice that Kaylee seemed extra distracted a week or so into her repairs on the broken shuttle. They likely even suspected that having to spend that time in the shuttle was what was affecting her so severely, despite how long she'd waited and that her mood didn't seem so terribly affected until some time well after she started.
Mal didn't ever talk about feelings if he didn't have to, his or anyone else's. Simon had gotten better about not constantly sticking his foot in it with Kaylee, but better was not the same as actually good at talking to her. Zoe's method of dealing with grief had a lot to do with shutting down, and she wasn't sure that there was anything she could say to quiet anyone else's mind in the place where her own was. Jayne wasn't as insensitive as he liked to play at, but words weren't his strong point and he found womanly tears plain unsettlin'. It wasn't that no one cared, it was just that things had been too hard for too long and without a request for help, no one was willing to take on anyone else's pain. Even when that anyone else was someone at the heart of their tight little group.
When Kaylee didn't show up to greet the crew returning from a pickup off-ship, it was generally assumed without a word being spoken by most of the crew that she was off dealing somewhere in her own way. It was a strange circumstance, though, as she'd made a pointed habit of being nearby to greet the returning crew every other time that they had gone out on a job since Miranda. Therefore Mal gave into the niggling itch of wrongness nagging at him about it enough to send Simon off to find the girl. The doctor had been too busy obsessively cataloging his latest infirmary supplies to wonder where the mechanic had gotten off to on his own initiative.
He didn't really expect to find anything wrong, despite that. So when he heard Simon yelling in extreme upset from down in Kaylee's bunk, it came as a shock. He'd been making his way onto the bridge, but at the noise he'd turned around to be confronted with the sight of Simon hustling back up the ladder, face flushed and eyes wild. The boy only gave a single distressed exclamation about needing his medkit before taking off at a full run – presumably heading for the medical bay.
Mal hesitated. That wasn't at all like him, but there had just been too many terrible things one right after another, and he wasn't sure he could take something else going wrong. Plus, if there woulda been something he could do to help out any, Simon would have surely said so before tearing off. It was only a minor afterthought of a consideration that he hadn't been down in little Kaylee's bunk since she moved her things in. He dithered back and forth long enough that Simon came racing back through before he'd decided one way or the other, which made the decision for him to let the doctor do his work without interference unless the boy called for him. He was standing right there plain as anything and the doc didn't so much as spare him a glance, so he took up a space of wall just outside the hatch, close enough to be within calling distance if the boy changed his mind about needing help. Mal fidgeted a bit in nervous helplessness, which only served to start making him angry. The last thing this crew needed was more bad news.
Time was something he lost track of pretty fast just standing there, though he supposed the other members of the crew might have told him had he asked; all of them came by sooner or later, asking what was going on and he told them the little he knew. Over the years he'd seen enough of medical treatment to know that the time it took didn't much mean anything – if the boy'd come back out right away it could have just as easily meant there was nothing he could do, but this extended length of time didn't mean that he had figured out what was wrong and was able to fix it. Simon'd left the hatch open behind him, but there weren't any kind of useful noise being made to tell him what was going on down in the mechanic's bunk. As much as he liked to irk the doctor in the regular course of things, he wouldn't take even the slightest chance of being a distraction in a situation like this.
The captain saw River wander down from the bridge just before he heard Simon start climbing up the ladder. Mal tried to take a read off the doc's expression and wasn't best pleased with what he saw. Granted the look the boy was sporting wasn't the kind of complete hopelessness he'd expect if Kaylee definitely wasn't gonna make it (and how he hated having to even think that!), but it wasn't a pleased expression either. There was definite distress and what he had to figure was confusion – with Tam loosening up some since he truly decided to stay on Serenity permanent-like, the captain had become a much better hand at reading the doc's face.
"You like to tell me what is going on?" Mal hadn't really meant to spit it out quite like an accusation, as he knew anything wrong with Kaylee would cut Simon deeper than anyone else on the ship, but he was too worried hisownself to be bothered with the niceties.
Though it probably wouldn't have mattered if he'd spoken differently, as Simon just blinked heavily at him for a moment, apparently in some kind of daze. "I, I'm not sure." The doctor paused. "I thought she was just sleeping. I didn't know why she'd be taking a nap, but..." he trailed off, before clearing his throat to continue. "I couldn't wake her, and then I noticed her breathing wasn't quite right, so I ran to get my bag. I checked for everything I could think of, and I can't – there's no reason I can find, but she just ... won't wake up."
Zoe and Jayne had joined them while Simon had been speaking. They'd been doing their own lurking in wait, just from a bit further away. It was around now that it occurred to Mal to think pessimistically that they wouldn't survive the loss of Kaylee. Some days anymore, it seemed like she was the only glue left holding them all together. Was this some form of additional punishment? Had his life just not been bad enough before? He clenched his jaw and pushed the thoughts out, because he had to; it was what he did.
"Is there anything we can do?"
Simon thought for a few moments – long enough for everyone to start to wonder if he was actually going to get around to responding at all. "There doesn't seem to be any reason that she shouldn't be moved, and although it's relatively limited, I do have some better diagnostic tools in the infirmary."
It turned out to be more than a bit of a tricky maneuver, getting the girl up out of her bunk. Generally folk got injured elsewhere and just didn't go back down into the crew quarters until they were well enough to make it up and down the ladders under their own power. Still, between Jayne and the sling they fashioned they managed to get her down to the infirmary. The rest of the crew took a moment with the unconscious girl, but the way that Simon was bustling about turning on various instruments and sifting through cabinets for attachments ushered them all out of the medbay fairly soon. No one wanted to be in the doctor's way.
The crew that gathered for the evening meal that night was an even more sombre one, by a far greater degree than the absence of one person should have been able to account for. Simon had still experienced no luck in figuring out what was wrong with their engineer. He told them that he was still waiting on the results of a few tests that he was running overnight, but he wasn't terribly hopeful; he had moved on from eliminating the likely and the unlikely and was currently looking for the extremely improbable.
Mal, captain of an increasingly shrinking crew, watched as they all headed off after eating one by one. Jayne took off for his bunk, though if past behavior and his current mood was any indication, the mercenary would probably be making a stop off at the infirmary to look in on Kaylee sooner or later. Zoe had spent the afternoon while Simon was in the infirmary doing some inventory of what they had stowed away in the cargo bay and its various nooks – busywork, basically, and she muttered something about finishing up before taking her own leave. The Tams got up to go at the same time, though they were heading off in opposite directions, Simon back to the infirmary, probably to hover, and River to check the helm and make sure they were on course. Which left him sitting alone in the galley.
Eyes roaming the cheerily decorated walls that Kaylee had spruced up just weeks after she'd come onboard to make the place more homey, Mal decided he could really use a drink. It wasn't so many days past since Kaylee'd presented them all with a fresh stash of her engine brew. Even if things had been approaching on more towards normal, there still hadn't been anybody in the mood for celebrating, so the jugs were still sitting full up in the pantry.
It was probably a downright terrible idea, but that didn't stop him from grabbing up a jug and sprawling out on the lounge located off to the side of the kitchen area. Maybe he should have found his way down into his bunk, but he figured he'd be morose enough here. Chancing it down in his bunk where he and Inara had spent so much time in the last few months, well, that was an idea as bad as the way his plans had a way of working out, most days.
All things considered, it wasn't any kind of a surprise that the thought of Inara came to stick in his head and he found himself dwelling on the memory of her. Their relationship had still been so new, and it'd happened after so long, after he'd spent so much time sure that it never ever could and that he was a fool to even contemplate the possibility.
Despite what Mal Reynolds might be tempted to say about himself in terms of his relative grounding in reality, he was a man that had an occasional tendency to get stuck in his own head. In addition to the fact that he was quite a few drinks past the first, he was ensconced in the comfort of his ship out in the black. Those two things and the alcohol all combined had him in such a relaxed state that he didn't realize at first when someone else entered the room with him.
If he'd have been thinking more clearly, he'd have no doubt been disgusted with himself for dwelling on thoughts of his time with Inara, but between the liquor and the stress of the day and the series of days before it, he was letting himself get caught up in the memories. While some of them were just fond remembrances, a great deal of what his mind was replaying so vividly was a bit more salacious in nature. So when he half registered the sensation of a hand moving up his thigh through the pleasant buzz of alcohol, he figured it for a particularly fevered bit of imagination gone wild.