"How's he doin'?" Zoe says from the doorway of the operating room. She says it in her Amazon voice, all soldier-y and firm. Perhaps this is why Daddy answers as though reporting to a superior, with a long string of medical jargon and a few recognizable phrases scattered in: "bullet path," "tissue damage," "reconstructive surgery." Andie looks up from her perch on the stool, but Daddy is in the middle of a stitch. His eyes are on the wicked curved needle sliding through Mal's skin. Ordinarily he'd have his apprentice Rebecca here to assist, but she's visiting her folks, so there's only Andie to pass him what he needs and clean up as he goes. She knows just enough to hand him the right thing when he asks for a dermal mender, and not much more.

Zoe seems to understand about half of what's said, but the state of her friend's large intestine is not really what she's asking about. "He gonna be all right, Doc?"

The question softens the cold, clinical crease between his eyebrows. "There's a lot that could go wrong still," he tells Zoe gently. She nods, relaxes her grip on her belt loops, and pulls up a stool opposite Andie's. "But I think between the two of us," Daddy says, trying for levity, "Mal and I know all there is to know about recovering from gunshot wounds."

Andie squeezes Mal's limp hand, as she's been doing periodically since her daddy doped him senseless two and a half hours ago. "Have you been able to reach Inara?" she asks Zoe.

"She knows. She and Ben are on their way here."

"And you found Kaylee and Mariel? Kaylee knows Bertani's crew is in town?" Daddy says, looking up at last.

"Yeah. She's at the shop still, keepin' the kittiwake out of the way and waitin' for the bastards to clear out." Andie's unsurprised but a little indignant to hear Zoe use that pet name. "Kittiwake" is Mal's term of endearment, and doesn't sound right comin' from anyone else. And yet everyone likes it so much, it's started to pass into general usage. At least they don't call Andie "mollymawk," if onl