All characers property of Joss Whedon and associates. I have not profited from this literary endeavor other than getting a story like out of my head that will not go away otherwise.

Right Through You

Scene 1

(Table, story time)

(laughter)

MAL: Indeed he was.

ZOE: Hey, at least he got that tub installed right side up on the second try.

RIVER: Thermoregulation to within one tenth of a degree, on demand.

KAYLEE: Cedar scented, and it doesn’t leak. Not a bad little splice into the recycling unit for the water outflow either. Just scrubs the water and sends it for recirculation, what’s left behind goes straight to septic.

ZOE: Whose idea was that anyway?

MAL: A pregnant genius.

ZOE: Ah yes, that would be me.

JAYNE: Your turn QBG, tell us onea them funny nursin’ stories about some poor slob with his pi gu in a sling.

JAZ: I never worked that floor.

SIMON: People in serious discomfort are as funny as an infarct, aren’t they?

JAYNE: A what fart?

JAZ: Speaking of heart attacks, I’ve just remembered a story.

So I’m floating to the cardiac unit one evening. We’ve got a 15 year old boy on telemetry in a private room, everybody else being older than Bhudda’s loincloth. We’d managed to steal a comic book from the Residents’ Lounge for him after the vid service went down that afternoon. Everything else was Flower Arranging Monthly or Livestock Quarterly. Poor kid’s bored out of his mind.

Just after dinner his monitor goes off, his nurse runs in cause he’s gone tachy on us, spiked way up there. She comes back to the desk and says he’s fine. Sure enough his heart rates’ back to normal. 10 minutes later off the alarm goes again. Same thing. She’s scratching her head, nobody can figure it out. She goes off to dinner and hands him off to her cover nurse. 15 minutes go by and off it goes again. He goes in to see what’s wrong. The charge nurse is ready to get the Doc on the line, we’re thinking equipment failure or haunting. I go to the door to see if he needs any help. “No, it’s fine