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The lights were getting brighter; lights and pain. Both sharpened, and Simon winced, his face contorting. A second later the pain subsided and he began to slip back into the comfortable warm darkness.

This time there was a man’s voice. "Doc." Again the pain shot through him.

"Hey." Another jolt of pain, more distinct, stabbed at his side.

"Quit kicking me!" he heard his own voice say.

"Mornin’, Doc. Rise and shine," Jayne said with a smile.

Simon realized he was lying on his stomach in the infirmary. He lifted his cheek off the floor and squinted up at the towering figure above him. The room swam into focus, a wreck of shattered glass and bent steel. The overhead lights flashed on and off like bursts of lightning. "What... happened?" he managed, struggling to turn over.

"Nothin. Why?" Jayne said casually.

"Are you… Are you some kind of a lunatic?" the doctor asked with growing outrage. "Wait, of course you are, what am I saying. Why were you kicking me ? I could have had serious injuries."

"Yeah. You don’t." Jayne seemed disinterested in the whole conversation and was slicing off a piece of a ration wedge.

"How could you know? You’re not even-"

"Cause ya ain’t crying like a itty-bitty child. Ya ain’t even... cut up too bad or nothin’," Jayne said, waving the knife toward Simon and looking him over with disgust. "Luckiest sumbitch in the verse, you ask me."

As much as he disliked the idea, Simon was forced to agree. A patient’s table, which had ripped away from the floor, had sheltered him from the brunt of whatever destroyed the infirmary. "Is everyone all right?"

"Well, now, that’s all relative, ain’t it?" Jayne said.

Simon’s eyes widened. "River. Where’s River?"

"Case in point." Jayne popped a ration wedge into his mouth and motioned upwards with his knife.

The doctor raised his eyes to the ceiling and found himself face-to-face with his sister. She had lodged herself between the walls near the entrance and was staring down at the two of them, her expre