DISCLAIMER: All characters and whatnot belong to Joss Whedon, any bizarre reference belongs to other owners of other rights. It's just something stupid-i-hope-fun that i wrote...try to just laugh and enjoy.

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It had been a very, very, very long week for Mal.

River, it seemed, had finally unlocked the doors, releasing the recovering invalids from their bunks. She and Book were the first to recover fully, as they had been the first to be able to sleep off the hysteria. It was generally due to the fact that the crew had been leading and cajoling them back to bed each time they had climbed, clambered or clawed their way out again. Nevertheless, Book made soup and was able to nurse the crew back to health one by one, with an inordinate amount of patience for dealing with the fever-induced hallucinations.

When Simon had recovered enough to keep his own soup down, he had resumed the role of medical care provider, which had been considerably good timing, since that was when Inara's hallucinations had really taken off. Apparently, she had been convinced that a family by the name of Cohen was in the other shuttle, and had continually tried to contact them. But that wasn't nearly as entertaining (according to Kaylee, the main source of information for Mal while he was bedridden) as when she had insisted her mother, with some nearly unpronounceable name involving lots of "la-la" sounds, and some guy named Daniel were trying to thwart all the plans she and some "ornery" (Kaylee's memory of the word) people had planned and counted on for so long. Mal, of course, had missed it, thanks to the blow River had delivered him. The minor concussion had increased Mal's nausea and dizziness, but thankfully, had cut back on the hallucinations. The splitting headache aside, he was grateful his dreams remained in his sleep. However, since Simon had not been reliably healthy to measure out pain medication for Mal, the first few days had been inordinately painful.

He remembered why it was so ve