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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"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?"

"Sure. Of course," says Gaeta. A thought surfaces, and his eyebrows rise in time with the memory. "He said it wouldn't react badly with the morphine, I asked before I took it."

See, Simon? He was responsible!...sort of.

"That's good," he says, keeping his tone reassuring. "And it looks like he was right, but we'll still want to make sure."

"Okay." He grins. "Yeah, that's a good idea. 'S important to double-check everybody's work."

He smiles back, and shifts to get to his feet. "If you'll excuse me for just one moment? There's something I need to fix here."

"All right." Genial, as his gaze wanders back up to the ceiling. "I'll be here."

He said the same thing to the man who gave him the cigarette, and remembers being crushed by the weight of his own words. Now, the statement has all the casualness of Gaeta sitting on a couch, waiting for Simon to come back from getting a glass of water.

...Hey. Water. He could use a little more of that.

Simon retrieves the battery from the bedside table, and takes a few moments to replace it in the smoke detector. Whoever removed it left the detector itself dangling from the wire, very clearly empty; either he wasn't interested in covering his tracks, or he wanted to make very sure that the lack of a battery would be noticed.

He sighs silently as he replaces the detector on the wall.

When Simon returns, Gaeta offers him another smile, and a tiny wave to go with it.

Hopeful, if a little hesitant: "Is it okay if I smoke the other half of that later? Since it didn't do anything bad?"

Pause.

Carefully: "I think it would probably be better for you to take it in a more refined form. Smoke does spread, you know, and we wouldn't want to accidentally affect any other patients."

"Oh," he murmurs. The good humor fades to disappointment as Gaeta casts a faintly longing look at the cigarette. Resigned: "Yeah, you're right. Okay. I didn't think about that, I'm sorry."