Three months, two weeks, and six days.

I'm cleaning up the sickbay. I'm surprised this model of ship has one, but it does, and it's my place now. The equipment here is hideously primitive - like something out of the twentieth century on most of it! Any further in the backwoods, and I'd be using bone saws and leeches.

I think this crew…well...I'm sure you've heard the jokes the Core Worlds call the frontier. Family trees that don't branch, people who are too damn ignorant to understand elementary concepts like land cruisers, who don't bathe and can't read, and spend their time shooting at each other. I hate to admit that the stereotype holds water in some cases, but it doesn't in others. I'm just hoping I don't say something stupid and get River and I stranded somewhere.

The crew has never seen her the way she was before. She and I could not be separated when we were young. One of my earliest memories…I was five years old when she was born. One night, she was sick, crying all night. I stayed awake most of the night to be by her crib, singing nonsense to her, talking to her, trying to mask the fact that I was scared because I didn't know what was wrong with her or how to help.

"Shh, mei-mei. Go to sleep. Don't be scared…"

I hear the same old words on the bad nights, and it shocks me to hear a man's voice - I'm always five years old again when I say them.

I'm used to taking care of her. It's maybe why I got into medicine - I'm so used to taking care of someone who's sick that it comes naturally. Well, Dad also had a hand in it, I suppose. The funny part is that he never talked about plans for River. At the time, I didn't notice. As Inara can tell you, a rich girl's job is to be a good society wife - supportive, ornamental, and next to useless.

When River hit her teens, things started to get strange. Mom and Dad had business to take care of and appearances to maintain. River just made those appearances a lot harder. Mom and Dad spent a lot of time arguing about her future. I was b