ways_infirmary | (no subject)

(no subject)

"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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Gaeta cracks his eyes open. Manages to focus on the man above him, after a beat.

He can't quite tell if he's one of the doctors or not.

"Yes, sir," he manages once another beat has passed. "They're not helping much."

Boyd nods, taking this in.

Taking in the half of the missing leg, too.

"What's your feeling on marijuana?"

"...on what?"

His brow knits. There's a similarity of the word, as fuck is to frak and morphine to morpha. Gods help him if he can parse it all the way through, though.

(Some frakking help the morpha's being: taking away his ability to think and taking so little of the pain with it.)

Boyd's brow furrows.

But all he says is, "It's something you smoke. Can help with pain, nausea, anxiety. Gives you a little high. What I've got on hand is a little aged, but it started out potent, so it might do the trick."

Gaeta wets his lips.

"'S it gonna react with what they've got me on now?"

"That depends on what they've got you on." He sounds awfully calm about it. "You know what all it is?"

"Morpha. -- Sorry, morphine," he corrects, and his eyes drift closed for a second. His leg twinges; grimacing, Gaeta's fingers tighten on the bandage.

"You're in luck."

Boyd's still studying him. His voice is calm and even. And quiet.

"Anecdotal evidence suggests it's a good pairing. It won't kill you. And the one enhances the effect of the other."

He forces his eyes open, studying the other man as best he can.

At last, one corner of his mouth twitches up in a faintly rueful smile. "Yeah, sure," he says, exhausted. "Why the frak not."

Anything to make it stop.

Frak, the man says; Boyd notes this without amusement.

"It's in my truck," he says, slipping his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

His landlady won't have anything illegal in the house; he respects her wishes, as it's not something he used to do very well, and he's trying to make up for past sins as best he might.

"I'll be about five minutes."

"All right," says Gaeta. The humorless twitch to his mouth makes a reappearance. "You know where I'll be."

...No. That's not any kind of joke he ought to be making yet, he realizes dimly as his throat tightens near to choking.

His eyes close again, harder this time.

Dispassionately Boyd takes this in. Without a word he turns to go.

He'll call giving up his stash his good deed for the week.

The infirmary sinks back into quiet, for a brief span.

It isn't long before Gaeta picks up the same tune as before, each note carried by phantom pain as much as melody.

Boyd returns within the limit he set himself, feet silent on the infirmary floor. As he pulls a plastic sandwich bag out of his pocket: "Pretty song."

Gaeta's easy to read, even when morpha hasn't pushed every emotion right to the surface: it's clear from the look on his face that he hasn't even considered whether this counts as pretty.

Aesthetics aren't why he sings.

"Thanks," he ventures, so uncertain it nearly tips into a question.

The other man might be easy to read, but even Boyd Crowder isn't enough of an asshole to use that against him under these circumstances.

He's pulling a joint out of the sandwich bag, anyway. "You know if this room's got a smoke detector?"

A tiny huff of breath. "No godsdamn idea," he says.

If he's going to smoke anything, unhooking the cannula seems wise. Clumsily, Gaeta pulls it from his nose -- it hurts a little, but not nearly as much as other hurts -- and lets it fall to his neck.

Boyd nods, resealing the bag. He tosses it on the bedside table and pulls out a lighter. "We'll get you started, and I'll go look."

The hand-rolled joint is about four inches long. "You want to smoke about half of this at a time. Effects'll wear off in about four hours." Boyd speaks absently as he lights the joint and holds it out. "Get you an ashtray, too. Or something you can put it out on."

"All right," he mumbles, accepting it with shaky fingers. "Thank you, sir."

The smoke's much sweeter-smelling than tobacco, if a little acrid and green at the edges. Gaeta sets the joint to his lips -- his hands tremble badly enough to require a couple of tries -- and draws it in.

The heart monitor beeps a little faster.

Boyd pays attention to the sound without turning around; he's stepping away from the bed to scan the walls.

The taste and heaviness of the smoke throw him off a bit; he coughs, taking a second to chase it out of his lungs with a few shallow breaths. A moment to rest. Another draw on the joint.

This time, he doesn't cough.

"Four's the magic number," Boyd murmurs, having spotted a blinking light up on a dimly-lit wall.

He moves closer to inspect it. "Four-hour high. Try keeping the smoke in you for four seconds. If that's a little too much, that's fine."

Looks like a smoke detector to him. Carefully Boyd reaches up to twist it; it comes off, and he takes out the battery. "Mission accomplished."

"Okay," murmurs Gaeta. It could be in response to the instruction, or the affirmation that the smoke detector's off. Very likely, it's both.

The next drag's a little deeper, and, obligingly, Gaeta counts off the seconds in his head: one, two, three, four. The room starts to swim; quickly, he exhales.

Boyd glances around the infirmary, and sees an aluminum pan -- a clean one -- on a table next to an empty bed.

He picks it up and carries it back over. "Got you an ashtray." He tugs Gaeta's table forward, lowers it some, puts the pan within easy reach. "If that works for you."

"Yeah, that's fine," he says. "Thank you."

The scratchiness to his throat isn't bothering him at all. The bed feels a lot more comfortable all of a sudden, too; Gaeta huffs a tiny, cracking laugh. "Think it might be working," he says, tapping off some of the ash.