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 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?"

"No, I don't think he was one of the doctors." Thoughtful. "Maybe he was? I hadn't seen him before, though -- I didn't get his name."

"Could you describe him?"

He's spotted the other item sitting next to the pan, and it is getting harder not to show any sign of anger. Somebody -- presumably the same thoughtful gentleman who provided the cigarette -- has left behind what looks very like the battery to one of the infirmary's smoke detectors.

"Um." Gaeta thinks. "Little older than me, I think. Light skin, dark hair -- " He breaks into a snicker. "Hair was sticking up all over the place."

It doesn't immediately bring to mind anyone he knows, but he'll definitely be on the lookout.

"All right. Thank you," says Simon. "I'm going to take a look at what he gave you, and if it's what I think it is, I should be able to give you the same thing in pill form. I want you to let me know, though, if you feel any strange effects when it starts to wear off, or afterwards. Can you do that for me?"