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"We just break atmo?" Kaylee wondered as Simon poked his head into the engine room.
"Sure did. Wash will have us on the ground in just a few minutes."
"Well, just in time for the engine to have some rest time," Kaylee said. "I'm just working on a bit of a coolant flow issue."
"Oh…that sounds important?"
"It is," Kaylee confirmed. "But also it's just pretty tedious. Captain just needs to get it into his head that things need replacing. I know I'm good, but it ain't like I can conjure new parts out of thin air," she said as she pulled a tube out of its socket and quickly kinked it so it couldn't leak everywhere.
"Is it supposed to be doing that?" Simon asked hesitantly. Kaylee turned around to see that he was pointing at one of the heat exchangers. She had just a bare moment to watch the shower of sparks flying out of it and cascading onto the floor before it exploded.
Someone was speaking. Kaylee didn't know who, and she couldn't quite tell what they were saying, but she could hear a voice. Just one. It didn't sound like a conversation. Just talking, smooth and low. As Kaylee floated into awareness, she recognized who it was.
"'Nara?"
"Kaylee!" Inara's voice was suddenly sharp and startled and Kaylee whimpered at the noise. "Sorry, sorry sweetheart. I didn't mean to shout."
Kaylee realized her eyes were closed and tried to open them, but the lights were too bright and she gave another groan of protest. Next to her, Inara was moving around, walking away from Kaylee's side for a few moments before she returned.
"Inara, wha' happen?"
"What's the last thing you remember?" Inara asked.
"Fixing things…explosion!"
"Okay, good. That's right. How do you feel, in general?"
"Hurts real bad," Kaylee admitted. "Whole body."
"Simon's coming," Inara assured her. "Now that you've woken up he can start better judging what kind of medicine you need."
The sound of another person quickly walking into the medbay grabbed Kaylee's attention.
"Hi there, Kaylee." Simon's voice was soft. "Glad to hear that you're back with us and talking."
"She says she's in a lot of pain, Simon," Inara said tightly.
"It's good she's awake and aware enough to be able to say that," Simon said. "Kaylee, can you open your eyes, please?"
"Too bright," Kaylee complained, but she knew she'd do it in a moment. She just had to brace herself.
"Does she have to?" Inara asked.
"Just for a moment, just to check on her."
"Can you not turn the overhead lights off?" Inara pressed.
"I need to be able to see in order to make judgements," Simon reminded her evenly. "It will just be for a moment."
Kaylee pried her eyes open; it felt like her eyelids weighed a ton. She could see Simon above her in a dark blue short sleeved shirt, one arm wrapped in white gauze.
"You're hurt too," she managed to say.
"It isn't that bad," he said. "Zoe handled it. You're the priority." He checked her eyes and hummed as she flinched away from him. "It's good, Kaylee. The fact that this is bothering you and you can move your eyes means that both of them still work. Will you tell me more about how you're feeling?"
She tried her best, comparing her pain to the bullet wound she'd gotten when they'd first met and the time she'd broken her arm as a kid, and he nodded in consideration.
"What actually happened to me?" She asked.
"The most severe and urgent injury was part of the ah…heat exchanger? Part of that going through your abdomen. It needed removal and it punctured your liver. Aside from that, you have a concussion, lots of bruising from the impact and the blast, eardrum damage, and…a not inconsiderable amount of burns."
She blinked up at him and saw that there was an angry red patch of skin from his right cheek to his chin and a few blisters along his jaw.
"Oh."
"You'll be okay," he promised. "I've seen worse." He stepped away from her to start looking through one of the cupboards and Kaylee let her eyes close again. Inara's hand found hers.
"Does this hurt?" Inara wondered.
"No, that's fine."
Simon left after he'd finished with whatever medication he'd chosen and added it to her fluids.
"Where are we?" Kaylee asked eventually.
"Wash set us down on Bhima."
"The explosion didn't take out anything too important?"
"It took you out, sweet girl. The most important part of the ship and how it works."
"But the parts…the landing wasn't too bad?"
"It wasn't. Wash managed fine."
"He always does," Kaylee murmured. Inara squeezed her hand.
"And so do you. You kept the rest of those parts in good enough condition that Serenity could withstand a surprise parts failure."
"Were you talking? Before I woke up? Something about…an apple?"
"I was reading to you," Inara said. "I brought a book of poems."
"Could you read again?" Kaylee asked. "Until I fall asleep again?"
And so Inara did.
Kaylee awoke again some time later when there was suddenly more noise in the medbay than the soft constant of Inara's recitation.
"Inara, you need to rest," Simon said.
"Kaylee—"
"Kaylee needs her rest too, and other people want to check on her. If you want to be the most effective caregiver and attendant, you need to be taking care of yourself at the same time."
"I haven't been doing very much to warrant rest. I've just been sitting here."
"At heightened stress levels, not eating, and fully awake for…I think twenty seven hours now. Go see if you can get some sleep, have a meal, maybe cry in the shower a little."
Inara huffed out a few nearly soundless laughs that sounded like she might have been nearly crying already.
"Come on now," came Jayne's voice. "Let me have a turn in the chair."
"Alright," Inara conceded, sliding out of the stool next to the exam table with a rustle of her skirts. "I'll be back as soon as I can be," she told Kaylee, and left with one more squeeze of her hand. Moments later, someone else settled into the chair and Kaylee knew it was Jayne.
"How're you feelin', little Kaylee?"
"Not good," Kaylee confessed. "But better since Simon put something in my needle line."
"Yeah, doc gave you the good stuff, I'll bet. You scared us all real bad, you know that?"
"I'm sorry."
"You know I'm kiddin'. But I ain't never heard 'Nara scream like that," Jayne said. "Didn't know she could, if I'm bein' honest. You got mountain lions on Kowlonshi?"
"Nah. 'Dun think so."
"Foxes?"
"Yeah, we got 'em."
"Heard 'em scream?"
"Yeah?"
"Sounded like we had one on board," Jayne said. "People always said it sounded like a woman screaming and it sure does, but I'd always figured it probably sounded like a mom finding her kid dead or somethin'. End of the world type screaming. Didn't expect it. Inara was real worried about you."
"She didn't scream when I got shot, did she?"
"You were in bad shape when we got to you and found the doc dragging you out of the engine room," Jayne said.
"Oh…is it that bad?"
"No, it ain't. I seen men survive worse. You're a tough cookie."
Kaylee floated in and out of sleep as Jayne left and she only vaguely noticed when Shepherd Book and River visited. In her defense, neither of them spoke, instead choosing to sit quietly beside her. Shepherd Book must have been praying. She didn't know what River was doing. Simon eventually returned along with Zoe to help Kaylee with eating and relieving herself and then they gently cleaned her up and put her back on the exam table, where Simon added a stronger dose to knock her out and let her rest for a little while longer.
When Kaylee woke again, Inara was back.
"Where's the cap'n?" Kaylee wondered. Inara hesitated.
"He'll come visit you eventually," Inara promised. "He's just…he feels terrible. He knows you kept asking for either the time planetside to really fix what needed fixing or the money for a new part and he knows this was his fault."
"It wasn't—"
"It was, Kaylee. He needs to listen to you when you listen to Serenity. Simon laid into him while Zoe was bandaging him up," she said, a hint of ironic laughter in her voice. "I've never seen anyone yell like that at Mal, let alone Simon."
"Mm…I hope they're not too mad at each other."
"I think Mal knows why he got a lashing," Inara said, and then held up a little book. "I brought a romance novel this time. Does that sound good?"
Inara read three chapters of the romance novel (they just got to the point where the debutante heroine argued with her baroness mother about if marriage was about financial security or love) before Simon, Zoe, and Wash appeared at the medbay doors.
"Kaylee? Sorry to interrupt the story, but I'm back, and it's time for a bit of a procedure, okay?"
"What kind?"
"Some blister draining and other burn wound care. It's going to be somewhat painful but the medications you're on now should mitigate a lot of that and I'll be quick." He took a deep breath. "Inara, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the medbay," Simon said after a pause.
"I can handle seeing anything—"
"It's not about you," Simon said, his voice unusually clipped for speaking to Inara.
"You'll probably need someone to stand in as nurse, right?"
"I've asked Zoe to come down and do that," Simon said.
"I can—"
"I'm making decisions for Kaylee's care as a medical professional, Inara. I know you just want the best for her and you're trying to help as much as possible, and I really do appreciate it, but right now, I'd like for you to step away."
Inara eventually did as he asked, but Kaylee could tell she was stomping angrily as she left. Simon and Zoe were efficient as they could possibly be, but it was still painful and Kaylee was grateful when Simon was through. She closed her eyes again and tried to relax into the bed and wait for the medication to soothe her.
"Get as much rest as possible," Zoe said, lingering for a moment after Simon left. "And take all the time you need."
She turned off all the lights as she left, apparently deciding that Kaylee had had enough visitors for the day, but left the door open, and before Kaylee could fall asleep yet again, she heard Wash and Simon having a quiet conversation in the lounge.
"…Sounded like a script," Wash was saying.
"It was," Simon admitted. "We had a whole course in MedAcad on what to say—"
"Oh, wow, like Bedside Manner 101?"
"Essentially, but for trauma patients, it's more like…waiting room manner, since the people I cared for were often not conscious. There are basically cheat sheets and flow charts we're taught to follow in order to handle an overbearing partner."
"Overbearing partner?" Wash sounded startled.
"Oh, sure. There are sort of…types of spouses that come in. There are the weepy ones, who need a lot of very gentle handling and reassurances. Then there are the ones who are trying to keep it together as much as possible, usually for the sake of the couple's children, and so I always tried to be as straightforward as possible. The overbearing ones…they don't ever leave the room if they can help it. They usually have at least some semi-formal medical training, usually the sort given to school teachers or maybe a long ago lifeguard certification or the…the course that Companions take. They mean well, but they often end up just getting in the doctors' way, they question a lot, they push back in situations when a professional really just needs the space to work."
"And those overbearing ones are the worst, I'd wager," Wash guessed.
"Oh, no. Not by a longshot. The worst spouses are the ones who don't seem to care if their partner lives or dies and leave you sort of wondering why they're even in a relationship at all. I'd rather deal with the overbearing ones for the rest of my life," Simon said. "You were very nearly one, hovering like you were."
"Ah, yeah. Until Mal threw me against that wall."
"Yeah."
"Uh…Doc, you seem to be very…cavalier, I'll say, about referring to Inara as Kaylee's…spouse."
"She reacted like one," Simon said quietly.
"I mean, I guess so, but are you…don't you—"
"That isn't the priority right now," Simon reminded him firmly. There was a beat of silence. "But we'll all eventually talk about it, I'm guessing. Right now, Inara wants to take care of her, and Kaylee deserves as many people taking care of her as possible."
"Might be a difficult talk," Wash warned.
"We'll get there when we get there. Inara loves her and…whatever that might mean in the future, right now it means she wants to help her recover."