Mal started to sweep the apartment, following the wall to the break that served as an entrance to the kitchen. As in any room he'd soon enter, the business end of his pistol went first. Kitchen, clear. No sign of a struggle. In fact, no sign of anything aside from Inara's habitual neatness.
He didn't skip a door, not even the coat closet as he headed down the hallway, anxiously hoping at each turn that he'd be shouted at, scolded for not only letting himself in but for having his weapon out in her home. Who would have ever thought Mal would actually be looking for Inara to holler at him? The last doorway belonged to the bedroom and nowhere else was the stale scent of old incense stronger. Nothing had been lit in awhile, but no air had been circulated behind the closed door either. Not a wrinkle in her bedcovers, not a pillow out of place. Mal grunted in frustration as he backed out into the hall.
When he came back out into the living room from this other direction, Inara was all too apparent, sprawled out across her couch. "Inara!" Mal was already dismissing sleep as he rushed across the room to her. She would have woken up at just about anything he'd done thus far. When she didn't even flinch at her name, Mal knelt beside her, picking up the hand that had fallen to the floor. She felt chilled, but not the lifeless kind of cold he was all too familiar with. Mal pressed his thumb into her palm, seeing if the pressure stirred any reaction.. nothing. His brows furrowed and the captain set her hand near it's mate and turned his attention to her face. He leaned in close so that his cheek hovered quite literally a breath away from her lips. Warm air lightly rose to meet his skin, so she was breathing.
Next he moved his hand so that his thumb drew up her eyelid, watching for a reaction from the eye beneath. Mal was unjustly rewarded with nothing yet again. Already his mind was racing for what to do next. This was the one time in the City thus far that the doctor would have been useful but who knew where Simon was save for the hospital. And getting her to that building was going to be problematic in the snow and the cold. Reaching into his breast pocket of his dusty maroon shirt, Mal produced a small communication unit. Wash had dropped him off at Inara's and had gone off to look for his wife -- but Captain's orders were about to override that.
He pressed the call button and spoke into the recessed mic. "Wash." Nothing. Not even static. "Wash?!" Anger, not at the pilot but at his current situation, rose in his tone. But that had no effect on the lack of response on the communicator nor the woman laid out on the couch beside him. Tucking the electronic device back beneath his jacket, Mal's hands returned to Inara's face, palms cupping her cheeks. The last reports of the fate of the citizens of Miranda was playing as a haunting soundtrack within his mind. Pacified to the point of giving up, too placid to even move, eat, breathe. He wasn't going to let this happen to her.
"Inara! Come on." Her head was shaken in attempt to wake her. "Inara!" There was a twinge of panic to his calls. The panic of being completely isolated, of it the snow being too deep and the wind too cold to carry her to the hospital without risking the weather killing her... all contributing to the overall panic of watching Inara slip away and not being able to do anything about it.