ways_infirmary | (no subject)

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"Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
With my three wishes clutched in her hand..."

Simon finally hooked him up to a morpha -- morphine, whatever it's called here -- drip once the nerve block wore off and the supposedly unidentifiable opioid had left his system. Gaeta's half-drowsing, eyes closed in a vain attempt to sleep outright; the pain's still too great, though, and the exhaustion more prominent.

And if he sleeps, that means he can't do the only thing that's worked so far.

"The first that she be spared the pain
That comes from a dark and laughing rain..."

The words are a little roughened with hoarseness, a touch slurred by morpha -- but his voice still rings clear through the infirmary.

[ooc: for continuity's sake, all threads now take place before Boyd's and Simon's.]

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"'M good."

He thinks. He has to give it a try, at least.

Gaeta manages to push himself a couple inches higher: not really sitting up, but it'll keep him from spilling the water everywhere. He wraps both hands around the water bottle, clasping it as tight as he can to keep it steady.

A couple drops run over the sides anyway. Gods, why can't he make his hands stop shaking?

The corners of his lips hitch up a little. It's as close as he can get to matching her smile -- to offering something in return for the vision she presents.

"Guess it's kind've a habit," he says.

"With my three -- frak," he wheezes, voice thickening with fresh tears. The heart monitor beats faster; his whole face is screwed up in pain. "Frak, frak, gods -- "

Please make it stop, he begs silently, to no one.

Edited 2012-04-02 01:44 (UTC)

He thinks -- though he's not quite sure -- he just heard something.

The pain crests, begins the slope downward. As it diminishes, Gaeta opens his eyes in search of the source.

"It's Earth."

Boyd's gaze flicks up to Gaeta's face; not for long, though. If he has to specify it's Earth, then that might explain a little of the language.

But those aren't questions to get into right now.

"North America. United States. Tennessee's in the southern part -- the southeastern part," he amends. "Kentucky sits right on top of it. That's where Harlan is. Mountains in both of them."

"Please," he mutters, and shuts his eyes. "If you're doing your captainly duty and checking on your fallen officer, at least have the godsdamn decency not to treat me like an idiot."

Or like she wasn't even there.

(Some vague thought nudges the back of his mind, trying to poke a hole in the morpha cloud.)

"No. No." He shakes his head -- or rolls it from side to side across the thin infirmary pillow, more like. "It's not a guy, it's a...ship. Sewage ship. Gods I still frakking smell it everywhere."

(The last just sounds tired, resigned, as only one can be after smelling the same stink for two months straight.)

"We took it out on a mission."

Andrew swallows.

"Sorry. I didn't ... you probably don't want to talk about it."

"Here." Reaching forward, he steadies the bottle, his hand over Felix's. "You're doing great." When he nods it's a go-on-and-drink nod and he's not lifting the bottle for the guy. Just making sure it doesn't spill all over the place, 'cause he doesn't see anyone here to... to clean up, to change the bedding, none of that.

Personally, he's not sure how anyone could have not followed the sound of Felix's voice. He swallows hard, pulls his hand back, nods again. He's out of words. If he knew the details of the situation -- if he'd done what Felix said he did, what that... that poor leg or what's left of it is evidence of -- would he feel better or worse? 'Cause he can't see himself shooting anyone unless there was damn good cause.

But he doesn't know the details and doesn't want to know. This place, it's an intersection of worlds, of time, of space. What if... what if Felix isn't from his world at all, but some... some alternate version of it? Or maybe he's just grasping at straws: he doesn't know, but that'd sure as frak make him feel a whole lot better.

Gaeta nods, lets out a small, contented sigh.

"Definitely have to see that when we get there." Whatever kind of rolling paper this is, the texture feels fascinating. He's so close to finishing the required half, but maybe it'll be okay if he just holds it without smoking for a bit. "Right after the tropics. Already promised I'd go there first -- somewhere with a big view of the ocean, a lot of space to sail, things like that."

A brief laugh.

"Wish we'd had a little more luck and made it there three years ago. Hell, a year ago would've been okay."

Gaeta's quiet for a long moment. The incessant beeping of the heart monitor continues.

"I asked them to take me back before it got worse." Tiny, and with a trace of helpless bewilderment. "They couldn't."

Didn't.

(An ugly thought that's been creeping around the edges of his brain, fogged as it is: if the roles had reversed, and he'd shot Anders, would they have aborted the mission for his sake?)

Well. Looks like he wants to talk about it after all.

Andrew comes a few steps closer, and looks around for a chair or a stool to sit on.

"Back to ... the rest of the fleet?" he guesses, quietly.

"It's an all right place."

Slow. Meditative.

"Stay out of the desert. I never spent much time at any ocean."

She laughs.

Like her singing voice, it's low and sweet and intimate-- like she's sharing a secret.

"Gosh," she says.

"I wish more men had those sorts of habits."

Despite himself -- or, rather, despite what he knows, despite the almost three-year gap dividing him from Anders -- the look he gives the other man after you're doing great is a little flat. Don't condescend to me, it says.

Still, as if to make up for it, he does mumble another brief, "Thanks," before swallowing down a mouthful of water.

...And another, and three more, more hastily than he intends.

Gods, he had no idea he was this thirsty.

"Yeah. To Galactica."

His throat works.

"We were, were out there for fifteen hours. Fifteen hours after he shot me."

His eyes widen.

(Hard to say whether the bigger shocker is fifteen hours or he shot me.)

"Frell."

Just for an instant, the faint smile grows into a grin.

(It aches a little, as all unused muscles do when you stretch them again.)

"What's your name, ma'am?" he asks.

And with that the choice is made for him: Ganymede very, very lightly touches his fingertips to the back of Gaeta's hand just to get his attention away from what's paining him. It dimly occurs that he doesn't even know the boy's name.

"What medicine are they giving you?" he asks. He's no doctor, not even close, but he can't leave the man alone in such pain.

Gaeta pulls a fairly impressive face.

"Desert," he says, the same way other men might say sewage dump. Pointing to Boyd with the joint, "That's not just Louis rubbing off on me, I don't want to be anywhere near a desert anymore. No food, no water. You can't get anything to grow there."

One last draw on the joint, and then, reluctantly, he presses out the tip into the ashtray. His fingers linger on the paper a while longer.

"I never saw the ocean growing up, either, though. How come you didn't?"

Gaeta closes his eyes.

"You wanted to know what living in space is like?"

Boyd listens to the man's speech -- and at the question, he glances at him again.

"Kentucky's landlocked," is all he says.

If the man continues to press, Boyd figures he can come up with something.

The touch doesn't register right away: not until the pain finally eases up, enough for him to feel something besides the agony in his leg. Gaeta swallows on a dry throat.

"Morpha," he says. "Um, morphine."

(you could tell me more about)

"Yeah." Muffled.

"Oh." His fingers move on to smooth the makeshift ashtray. "I'm sorry."

(And he does sound genuinely sorry, as if he's brought up a topic much more painful than the chance to see open water.)

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