Someone was still pressing a wet cloth to his forehead, Mal thought as he woke up again. Kaylee. The fact that she was still in the room with him, when for all he knew he'd been asleep for an entire day, infused him with a sense of serenity that didn't really befit a recent gunshot victim. Eyes still closed, he pictured her – fresh-faced after taking a shower, back in her mechanic's overalls, hair cascading down her back – and he smiled on the inside.

Considering the picture he was painting, Mal was understandably surprised by what greeted him when he opened his eyes. Simon stared back down at him, one hand on the compress on his forehead and the other digging into his surgical apron for…something. Mal couldn't tell what. The doctor started speaking to him, but Mal couldn't seem to focus enough to hear what he was saying.

His head was fuzzy. All of his limbs felt heavy, and…why was he still so hot? All the gunshot wounds he'd seen and treated during the war, his fever should have broken already. More than that, Mal really didn't care much for Simon playing nursemaid as well as doctor. He reached up an arm to move the doctor away…or at least, he thought he did. Mal's arm never moved.

That troubled him a great deal. Before he fell asleep, moving around wasn't an issue any more. The doctor's medication saw to that. Was he paralyzed? Panicking slightly, Mal drummed up every ounce of strength he had left and tried to urge motion out of any one of his limbs. It didn't matter so much which one, just as long as it moved.

"Mal. Mal!" Watching the heart rate monitor climb to a dangerous level, Simon interrupted his own diagnosis. "You've been heavily sedated and anesthetized. I need you to stop trying to move around. You're still running a fever and one of those bullets barely missed hitting your heart. Just…calm down. I can only lift the effects of the sedation when the body is in a resting state."

Why was the doctor repeating himself? Simon told him the same damn thing last time he was conscious.