A DAY OF PRAYER

"Tell me again," Simon said as he pulled the gauze out of a drawer. "How did you hurt your hand?"

"Well, it all started in bed . . ." Wash said, holding his injured hand in front of him like some sort of peace offering. Perhaps, to Zoe, it was. To Simon, however, it was just a simple problem with a simple solution.

"You can skip that part," Simon said quickly, then glancing up at his patient nervously he asked, "Can’t you?"

"I guess," Wash said, clearly enjoying how unnerved the young doctor was at the prospect of a blow by blow account of his nuptial bliss.

"Let’s just say we got into an argument that could only be solved by hand to hand combat."

"I . . . see," Simon said slowly, not seeing at all.

"So I challenged her to an arm wrestle. Best two out of three."

"Do you solve all your martial problems that way?" Simon asked, taking Wash’s hand and prodding the swollen thumb joint very carefully.

Wash winced and kept up with his story, though his voice was thin and tense, "So we go get the Captain to be the ref and we set up in the common room right?"

"I’m starting to think I don’t want to know how this story ends," Simon said. "It looks like the thumb is just dislocated. I’m going to have to pop it back into place."

"Well then, pop away," Wash said.

"Who won?"

"Oh, hello Shepherd," Simon said, before he turned back to the counter to prepare the anesthetics.

"Hey Book, what up?"

"I heard you got injured fighting with your wife," Book said in a knowing tone that only a Shepherd could have.

"Fighting isn’t quite the word," Wash said, "Epic battle is more along the lines."

"Ok, Wash," Simon said, approaching him with a dope gun. "I’m going to numb your hand, you’ll have to . . ."

"Wait, wait, wait," Walsh said. "Numb my hand? I need my hand.&quo