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The morning before her first official romantic date with Kaylee, Inara had a heart attack. It happened a little while after breakfast, while she was looking over the dinner reservation yet again to make sure that everything was in order. It was: planet and time and date, everything was what Inara had picked out, and it had indeed been booked (she'd had a nightmare earlier in the week that it had completely slipped her mind). She went over the list of garments she'd lent to Kaylee so she could concoct her own outfit for their outing, then hung up the dress she planned on wearing on the curtain rod by the cockpit so she could review it again. She was standing there, looking up at the purple brocade, when she suddenly felt very faint.
It didn't make sense. She'd just eaten.
Inara sat down on one of her little red silk dupioni couches and found that sitting didn't make her feel any better. She felt hot, and her breath was coming short and it felt like she couldn't fill her lungs all the way. They were already planetside, so maybe it would be a good idea to get some fresh air. She stood, intending to head down to the cargo bay and ramp and standing just made her feel sick.
She needed to get to Simon. He'd finished his own breakfast and left the galley to return to the medbay while she was still eating, so Inara left the shuttle and carefully made her way down to the passenger dorm, holding tightly to the railing. She couldn't see him through the infirmary windows, so she knocked on the door of his dorm.
"Come in."
Inara slid the door to the side and Simon put down his encyclopedia unit and smiled at her.
"Inara! What's—"
"I think I'm in cardiac arrest," Inara said. To his credit, Simon took her words seriously immediately and acted fast. He leapt off the bed, put one hand around her wrist and the other arm around her shoulders, and escorted her swiftly to the medbay, where he helped her onto the examination bed. He clipped the oximeter onto her finger and slid the blood pressure cuff onto her arm and set about the process for a blood test while the cuff squeezed her.
"Can you tell me what made you realize it?" Simon asked as he drew her blood.
"The symptoms that they taught us in our rudimentary medical classes," Inara said. "Chest pain, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, nausea. I feel like my heart is beating…irregularly? More quickly than it normally does? I may have a bit of jaw and neck pain, too, but it's minor."
"Okay," Simon said, and gave her hand a quick comforting squeeze as he put her blood sample in for analysis. "Are you experiencing any other symptoms, even ones that you don't remember from the list of heart attack effects?"
"I feel hot all over," Inara said. "I'm sweating even though I'm really not wearing anything heavy."
"You haven't mentioned being at risk for this sort of thing, but is there an existing condition that might result in cardiac issues?" Simon wondered, reaching out to take her hand as they waited for the blood test to wrap up. He'd developed a unique and intimate form of bedside manner in the months he'd been on Serenity; something that would in no way fly at a real hospital, but something that felt more natural when all his patients were also the people he ate meals alongside and laughed with.
"I…as far as I know, nothing I've been diagnosed with has ever been associated with heart issues."
Simon nodded as he kept his eyes fixed on the screen monitoring Inara's heartrate and blood oxygen. He stood there quietly, rubbing his thumb over Inara's knuckles until the blood test machine blinked with a little blue light. He checked that tiny screen next and frowned.
"Okay. There's no indication of the presence of the proteins that follow a heart attack, and your vitals are…well, your heartrate and blood pressure are both high, as is your breathing rate, but they're all even and consistent…" Simon chewed his lip for a moment in a way that told Inara he was holding something back.
"What do you think it is?" She asked.
"Do you have a history of panic attacks?" He wondered.
"No, I don't," she confessed. "Never had one before."
"Okay, so…that may explain why you didn't recognize it," Simon said. "It's not entirely uncommon for people who are unfamiliar with them to think some very serious organ issue is happening when they're actually experiencing their first panic or anxiety attack. That isn't to say that a panic attack isn't serious or indicative of something that needs treatment, but I'm confident that that's what you've experienced."
"Why?" Inara blurted out before she could really think about it. "I mean…sorry, it's just that nothing is happening," she said in confusion, gesturing around her. "You would think I would have had one when we were stranded in deep space or when Mal and Wash got taken by Niska…or when you and River were taken on Jiangying."
"The human body is not necessarily a logical system," Simon said with a wry smile. "You have your dinner with Kaylee this evening, right? Going out on a first date has given more than one person butterflies."
"Okay, firstly, this is what they're talking about when they say someone has butterflies in their stomach? I've always heard it said so wistfully but I feel ill."
"Well…I think people associate it so much with love that it has a sort of fondness associated, but I can't imagine having a bunch of insects in your stomach would feel all that good."
"I guess not."
"It's a normal enough response to a first date, Inara," Simon said as he slipped the oximeter off her finger and double checked the bandage from the blood draw site. "Just nerves."
"I don't get nervous before going out with someone," Inara informed him with a smile. Simon mirrored the smile and Inara felt a pang of embarrassment at how condescending it looked reflected back at her.
"Maybe not with clients," Simon conceded. "But Kaylee is different, isn't she?"
"Of course she is," Inara said automatically. "But…I'm looking forward to spending time with her. I shouldn't be feeling anxiety or dread."
"But you want everything to be perfect, don't you? You'd like to show Kaylee that you've spent time on planning something that she'll enjoy, right? And you've been talking about how you're the one planning the whole evening, so I imagine there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to what you'd like to treat her to."
"You're not wrong."
"If it continues to happen then we can discuss a medical treatment angle if you like," Simon assured her. "But I think this might pass once you're on your date and can really only think about how much fun you're having."
"So…what, until then I just need to take a few deep breaths and have a cup of tea, or—?”
"No caffeine," Simon said immediately. "But River has just got a new tile laying card game if you want to play a bit of that with us. It would probably be more fun than working yourself up so much that you're tired once you go out to dinner. I'm sure there's no more planning you need to do."