InsaneJournal

Who: Simon Tam
When: Wednesday afternoon
Where: Clinic in downtown Lawrence
What: Possession time
Status: Narrative; complete

The real privilege of wealth and brilliance, Simon had come to think, was that you didn’t even have to ask for the best tools the ‘verse had to offer, only to hold out a hand, and people were falling all over themselves to give them to you. In school he’d written his papers on computers that pulled up information practically the second the wish for it formed in his mind and had practiced surgery with lasers that, with a steady hand, could split a hair to its root without damaging the scalp. The only limit he’d ever encountered back on Osiris was his own mind. That was what he missed most about his old life, other than having River whole and sane and safe of course.

It was his sister who had prompted this mental tangent back to Osiris, as she prompted most things he did and thought in the year or so since he’d exchanged a life founded on a career for one founded on a rescue mission. He was sitting in the shabby office of the clinic where he worked in downtown Lawrence, posture ramrod straight, limbs completely still, and eyes focused on the schematics of his sister’s brain he’d attempted to draw from memory based off the ones he’d made electronically on Ariel. He’d taken to staring at the reconstruction whenever he had a few free minutes between the walk-in patients who drifted in and out of the office with their minor medical complaints, hoping to continue the work he’d done on Serenity. There had been little progress, the tools here were worse even than what had come with Serenity’s med-bay, and it could be maddening. Now that he was working outside the complex the difficulty didn’t only apply to River. Weekly he saw patients with conditions he knew how to cure but he was helpless to act on the knowledge without technology and medicines that wouldn’t exist for centuries, if ever, in this world. Still, he was unwilling to give up or admit frustration aloud: puzzles were never completed by those who threw the pieces aside in pique and River’s moments of lucidity or happiness, gardening on the roof with Karl or dancing, as well as the patients at the clinic he could help, were still encouragement enough.

Determined optimism or not that kind of train of thought tired you and Simon didn’t even hear the knock on his door, if one had even sounded, he couldn’t have said, just turned around to find a boy of about fifteen standing behind him silently. Simon wasn’t the type to startle loudly (maybe if he had been the next few moments would have gone differently but as Jayne said “If wishes was horses we’d all be eating steak”) and so he merely blinked quickly a few times. Like most analytical minds Simon transitioned slowly from problem-solving to social mode and he didn’t think to ask why the young man had come in without being announced by the receptionist or wonder why he just stood silently instead of leading with some complaint like most of his patients who couldn’t seem to take a breath without caterwauling about their bunions or asthma, didn’t even really take in much about him other than his gender, age, and lack of apparent injury.

“Ah, yes, sorry to have kept you waiting, if you’ll just take a seat on the exam table I’ll be right with you…” he muttered as he turned to sweep his papers into a drawer. “Interesting drawings,” the boy said, and there was something in his voice that made Simon pause, made his hand go up to the protective charm around his neck reflexively. “I’m sorry?” he said, tone carefully, politely puzzled. “Of course,” the boy went on, “she has an interesting brain doesn’t she? Nooks and crannies, hidden secrets, some of them not even hers, and all that power. She’s too weak to hold it but I’d box her up somewhere in a corner or maybe let her feel just enough, just the right things, to grind her right out of her own mind make her—“ Simon swung out suddenly with a scalpel he’d slowly worked into his hand during the demon’s monologue, hands steady, motion fast and fierce, but not practiced enough by half. The boy caught his wrist, wrenched, and the scalpel fell from his fingers. Another quick motion and Simon was pinned against the wall with inhuman strength and the host’s hand over his mouth.

“Like I said,” the boy’s eyes flipped black as he cut the chord around Simon’s neck with the discarded scalpel, “she has an interesting brain. But right now? You’ve got a useful one.”

---

In the front room the receptionist raised her head at a series of bangs and scuffles from exam room three. She looked down at her cheese and pickle sandwich and then back up at the door, reluctant to abandon her lunch, especially just to check on snooty Dr. Tam. Anyway it was only a moment before he poked his head out again and smiled at her apologetically, “Sorry to interrupt your lunch Linda, the young man who came in here just had a seizure, I’m afraid I’ve had to sedate him. Could you call the hospital? I think he should probably be transferred there while he’s still out.”

“Mhm,” Linda responded, already punching in the numbers on her phone and pushing aside her sandwich. Strange, she thought, with the apology and all he actually sounds almost human today.