#LungScan

[shreevi-clinic]

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[lisablasstudio]

Monday's image: August 28, 2023

Kit Paulson, Lungs, Glass, 32.4 x 24.1 x 8.6 centimeters, 2020, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

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[jamescallahansr]

A…

It takes so little todrown,just an ounce or sosuckedinto the lungscan begin the end;a simpleaccident,a chance mistakea gaspora bath inmiserywhen misery is all,allthere is, all that’sseen in an everdarkeningdawnwithout a silver lining,without a hintof hope;it takes so little,so little,to drown a life.

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

All the Days Ahead, Chapter 5: All The Fear And Fire Of The End Of The World

Mal x Simon, Firefly. Simon POV. Also on AO3. Ch 1-4 on my blog.

All those years of study, training, perfecting his skills...what good are they if he can’t save the man he loves? 

Simon is up to his wrists in Mal’s blood when the love of his life stops breathing.

The supplies on board are rudimentary. Even with Mal’s begrudging acquiescence to Simon’s requests the last few months, even with careful additions of whatever they've been able to scavenge during other jobs, they’re nothing like what Simon would have access to at an Alliance hospital. He can’t track Mal’s antibodies this way, or transfuse him quickly and easily. 

He’s going to have to rig a transfusion soon, easy or not. Mal lost far too much blood before they brought him back to Serenity. But that, like potential infection, is a secondary issue. In this moment, Mal isn’t breathing, and Simon can’t even use an intensive lungscan to pinpoint the origin of the problem. 

“Simon?” Inara asks from behind him. 

“He’s not breathing,” Simon says as he steels himself to begin chest compressions. “Stand back, please.”

“But--you got the bullet out. You said the weave was working.” She moves toward the doorway, giving him room. Her hands clasped tightly together aren’t joined in prayer anymore but to stop herself from rushing over where she doesn’t belong. 

“It is. And yes, the bullet’s out, but it did a lot of damage.” Simon leans in, his ear above Mal’s chest, and listens. Silence.

“Ta ma de!” he snaps out, beginning compressions. Mal’s heart should be louder than usual as the stitches tried to mend his broken skin--not difficult to hear. 

Kaylee and Zoe watch from outside the room as Simon counts out his efforts, breathing air into Mal’s lungs and pausing for a response. 

Again.

“One, two, three,” he repeats into the brittle silence of the room, palms to Mal’s heart, lips to Mal’s lips.

They have only had five months together as a couple, months spent living openly on the ship as more than a confusing crush of limbs and heat in the darkness. They’ve still been sliding past definitions, outright talk of feelings, though Simon doesn’t need to hear Mal say anything to understand his own. 

He spent so much of his life attempting to live up to expectations, and then trying to resist them to save River...he barely had time to live, before. But he has never been happier than he is on Serenity, as a fugitive with a pirate by his side. 

Simon ignores the sound of the others nearing the infirmary, drawn together the way families are during a crisis. The voices swirling beyond him are mild irritants, flies on a dusty backmoon planet. 

He will fix it. He has to fix it. He is a doctor, damn it--he is meant to heal. All those years of study, training, perfecting his skills...what good are they if he can’t save the man he loves? 

He reaches for a syringe to shock Mal’s heart into waking back up, gives it a moment to enter his bloodstream before he tries again. 

One, two, three. Air to the lungs, a prayer to the sky. Hands above the heart. Careful with compressions, the weave is still fragile.

Simon listens again, thinks maybe he hears a wheezing hint of lungs expanding. Another second and he knows he’s grasping at nothing. 

It cannot end this way. 

He gives up on prayers and looks down at Mal’s unsettlingly peaceful face, directing his demands to the man in question instead. 

“Malcolm Reynolds, I will never forgive you if you die on me. I will curse you to the outer moons and you will not rest again in whatever afterlife the galaxy has planned for you. Dong-ma?”  

Simon doesn’t realize that he has slipped into Chinese, or that he is dripping sweat onto Mal’s bare chest as he tries to force color back into him, desperate enough to bruise. All he is aware of is the one square foot of space where Mal’s heart is without its beat. 

“Come back, damn it. Don’t leave me here without you. Come back!” 

It’s that last hard push that does it, somehow--Simon doesn’t know why. While medicine is a science, not everything can be explained, certainly not the shaky line between life and death. And even the best doctors learn they’re unable to save every patient. 

He can’t claim that his love for Mal, his need for Mal, meant the difference between life and death...but Mal rejoins the world of the living, and Simon feels his own heart contract with relief and joy so intense it hurts.

“Xie-xie.” Simon sags downward, resting his hands on either side of the bed. The sound of Mal’s ragged breath is such a beautiful thing. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he adds in English, his voice a whisper. 

Simon couldn’t have said who he was thanking in that moment--though his reasons are different, he is as skeptical of religion as Mal. But he is grateful, in every language he knows, for the rise and fall of Mal’s chest. For the pulse he can see jumping along his throat, and the way his eyes are hazy but focused enough to stare at him.

“Hey,” Mal rasps. His eyebrows furrow at the grin Simon can feel stretch across his face. “Hey, where’d you go?”

Simon shook his head. “I didn’t go anywhere, but you almost did. Don’t do that again.”

“Just fell asleep for a minute. Man’s allowed to get...tired.”

His color is returning, though Simon’s fingers on his wrist find a pulse less steady than he’d like.

“You scared the living go-se out of me. I almost lost you.”

“It’s okay. I’m right here.” His voice softens, taking in the entirety of Simon’s appearance. “You really had your hands full with this one, huh? You’d think you’d be used to bullets by now, doc.”

“Bullets I can handle. Your heart stopped beating. Losing you--I don’t want to have to handle that.”

Though the others are still outside the infirmary, none of them enter. With Mal conscious again, the worst of the danger has passed--but the two men form an intimate tableau. It turns the crew into an audience, witnesses to their reunion. 

“Don’t talk crazy, you’re not gonna lose me.”

“You can’t promise that,” Simon argues, straightening up to take a deep breath. “The life you lead...we lead...it’s nothing but risk, and danger.”

“And wacky fun.”

“Gorram it, Mal. I’m not joking. You know how many times I’ve had to patch you up since we met? Do you?”

Mal blinks up at him, cautious of the brittle way Simon’s standing. “Can’t reckon I do.”

“Nineteen. Everything from a wrist fracture when your punch landed wrong, to that idiot swordfight of yours. So don’t talk to me like I’m the one who’s overreacting!”

Simon kisses him before he can respond, his mouth careful but desperate, just a second of contact. Reassurance and heat.

“I love you,” he says, and Mal’s eyes widen before they narrow. “I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it, because it makes things messy. I love you, and I want the rest of my life to be with you--preferably a life that lasts longer than the next few hours, if you can do me the kindness of staying alive.”

“I-” Mal swallows down a vague panicked sensation that tastes like pennies. “Simon, what’re you gettin’ at, exactly?”

“I’m trying to tell you that you’re too important to me to go running off and getting shot!” Simon’s relief has faded into frustration, as he watches Mal look bewildered by his intensity. 

His survival in this moment can’t keep Simon from picturing the next job-gone-wrong, the next bar fight. That future feels inevitable, and it scares him. He has to speak his mind. 

“I know we’ve been avoiding the complicated feelings side of this, this relationship. But I wouldn’t be with you, if I didn’t want it to mean something. And I think you’re the same way.”

“Well, yeah.”

He laughs at the simplicity of Mal’s answer. Well, yeah, he thinks. The Malcolm Reynolds version of a love confession.

“Why I fell for such a yu bun duh adrenaline-chasing sky pirate, I’ll never understand,” Simon mutters, as he reaches for Mal’s hand and holds on. “But I did. I love you, and I don’t ever want to go through this again.”

Mal’s nodding and about to agree, as though he can honestly control who decides to shoot at him--until his tongue freezes. It’s in good company, with the rest of him. He has to take a deep breath. “What did you just say?”

Simon's smile fades, to match the seriousness of the moment. They could die any day, right? Given that, holding back would make him the idiot in this situation. And he has always been smart.

“I said, marry me.”

[jamescallahansr]

So little…

It takes so little todrown,just an ounce or sosuckedinto the lungscan begin the end;a simpleaccident,a chance mistakea gaspora bath inmiserywhen misery is all,allthere is, all that’sseen in an everdarkeningdawnwithout a silver lining,without a hintof hope;it takes so little,so little,to drown a life.

[jamescallahansr]

It takes…

It takes so little todrown,just an ounce or sosuckedinto the lungscan begin the end;a simpleaccident,a chance mistakea gaspora bath inmiserywhen misery is all,allthere is, all that’sseen in an everdarkeningdawnwithout a silver lining,without a hintof hope;it takes so little,so little,to drown a life.

[jamescallahansr]

Just an ounce…

It takes so little todrown,just an ounce or sosuckedinto the lungscan begin the end;a simpleaccident,a chance mistakea gaspora bath inmiserywhen misery is all,allthere is, all that’sseen in an everdarkeningdawnwithout a silver lining,without a hintof hope;it takes so little,so little,to drown a life.