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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He smiles back, carefully. "How are you feeling?"

Maybe it's an idiosyncratic reaction to the morphine. Or lingering effects of the other medication ...

He glances automatically at the chart at the foot of Gaeta's bed, to see if any other doctor has been in to see him and made a note. Nothing.

"I'm fine. I'm great."

Isn't that wonderful? Gaeta certainly seems to think so, from the way his smile broadens. "How've you been?"

... or possibly the stubbed-out remains of a cigarette in the nearby metal pan might be sufficient explanation.

"I'm fine. Thank you." He keeps his own smile in place, showing no sign of alarm -- and indeed there may not be any cause for alarm, if that's what he thinks it is. "You're not in any pain?"

"Mm. A little," he decides, reaching to idly scratch his elbow. "It's not that bad, though, it's just kind of twinging. You know how you get a little bit of an ache if you sit too long? Like that."

He takes a seat on a nearby chair, eyeing the monitors. Slightly increased heart rate, yes, and no change in blood pressure; that's consistent with the conclusion he's tentatively drawing.

(He's pretty sure he recognizes the smell, now.)

"Better than when you first came in here, then," he concludes. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Much better, yeah." He laughs a little, leaning his head back to watch the ceiling again. "I'm good."

A beat.

"Do you have any idea who built this?"

"I'm afraid not," he says. "We expanded this area a little when we first established it as an infirmary, but ... the basic structure was there already."

He's going to want to draw a blood sample, just to confirm.

"Oh. Okay," he says. Gaeta draws tiny circles along his elbow with his fingernail: not really scratching it anymore, just absorbing the feeling. "I always wondered who thought up tessellations in the first place. It's a pretty impressive formation when you think about it, for something that simple. You can do a lot with them structurally."

Half a beat. "Really?"

The instruments he needs are on the counter behind him; he can get up and collect them while Gaeta's talking.

"Mm-hm." He smiles, vague but content. "Not just design work, either. I mean, yeah, tessellations have their place in art, and it's a good place, but if you pick the right shape, you can make some pretty strong walls, ceilings, supports....Hexagons," he says, as if a lightbulb has gone off in his head. "That's the shape you need. Wonder if you could make a whole building out of hexagons."

He hasn't thought about this subject since he was nine years old. It's fun.

"Well," he says, sitting down again, "there's the Honeycomb Tower on Sihnon. Famous landmark. It's got a hexagonal motif, although I don't know if it's made entirely of hexagons. -- Can you hold out your arm, please?"

"Yeah?" Gaeta brightens. "How big is it?"

Obligingly, he holds out his arm.

"I'm just going to take a small blood sample," he says. "The Honeycomb Tower? I'm not sure -- it stands out because it's on a small island in the mouth of a river, not because it's exceptionally tall. I could find you a capture, if you like."

"Okay," he says, and: "Yeah, I'd really like to see that sometime. Thank you."

A civilization stable enough to build towers. Towers filled with hexagons.

If he weren't so enamored of the thought, Gaeta might be a little jealous.

He's already withdrawing the needle by the time Gaeta's finished talking.

"You're welcome."

Gaeta flexes his fingers, turning them over to study his knuckles.

Musingly: "Do you guys have that phrase, too? 'Like the back of your hand?'"

"As in, to know something well?"

The device he needs to analyze the blood sample is small, handheld; he's working with it as they speak, touching in the sequence of tests he wants prior to inserting the sample.

"Yeah."

He wiggles his fingers, contemplating the creases that appear and disappear in his skin.

"It's weird. I wouldn't be able to tell you what the back of my hand looked like unless I was looking at it. I don't know it that well."

He breathes out in quiet relief as the results cycle through: there's no sign of any idiosyncratic negative interaction from combining the two drugs.

Which doesn't make it any less completely irresponsible of whoever it was who took it upon himself to supply the extra medication.

"I imagine that's pretty common."

"So how'd it become such a popular phrase in the first place?"

This is a rather serious quandary, from the sound of it.

"Who made it up?" Another sudden revelation: "You think older civilizations might have had to memorize their hands for survival?"

"Not that I've ever heard," he says, lightly. "Mr. Gaeta, can you answer a question for me?"

"Sure," he says, easily. They can always get back to talking about hands later. "What is it?"

"That cigarette." Gesturing at the makeshift ashtray. "Did you have it with you, or did someone bring it here for you?"

He follows the gesture, lingering more on the movement of Simon's fingers than on what he's pointing out.

"Oh." Gaeta's smile goes a bit more sheepish. "Somebody brought it for me. He wanted to help."

"That was thoughtful of him." No irony makes it into his tone. "Was it a friend? Or one of the doctors here?"