Valencia Hospital
Aug. 7th, 2005 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walk_insThe Valencia Hospital on Praxed is the charitable work of a group of Dao-Catholic nuns, and was one of the earliest buildings in the community of Logan City. From a small wooden lodge converted into a clinic on the side of the eastern hill, it's grown into a gleaming white-washed idol looming benevolently over the city's sprawling marketplace, directly opposite her hillside docks.
The clinic has gently but firmly rejected all Alliance funding despite increasing pressure; the current administrator, Brother Zhongzi Dan, has steered a difficult course of appeasement and resistance with official Alliance medical boards, all the time somehow scraping up funding to keep his hospital as equipped, staffed, and stocked as it can be under the circumstances.
All this is to say that Simon Tam is able to run a fairly comprehensive diagnostic on Anthy Himemiya with no trouble whatsoever; whether or not medical science can give an insight into her particular troubles is an open question, but at least he's got the data.
[Reader's note: These subthreads follow each other in chronological order.]
The clinic has gently but firmly rejected all Alliance funding despite increasing pressure; the current administrator, Brother Zhongzi Dan, has steered a difficult course of appeasement and resistance with official Alliance medical boards, all the time somehow scraping up funding to keep his hospital as equipped, staffed, and stocked as it can be under the circumstances.
All this is to say that Simon Tam is able to run a fairly comprehensive diagnostic on Anthy Himemiya with no trouble whatsoever; whether or not medical science can give an insight into her particular troubles is an open question, but at least he's got the data.
[Reader's note: These subthreads follow each other in chronological order.]
no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 05:29 am (UTC)There's a moment when she's still staring over her shoulder at the next bend in the alley, pale and determined and terrified, and then she looks at Anthy.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 05:32 am (UTC)She tilts her face up to kiss River.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 05:42 am (UTC)That gradually shifts to
(I think she's a Reader)
Dangerous, like you.
horrified comprehension.
"No--" she whispers, tears starting to spill over. "Don't." But her voice is already slurring and weakening, and her eyelids are growing heavy.
"D--"
Can't be controlled.
River collapses.
Her face is slack, now, eyes closed and limbs limp. She lies in a tangle of limbs and hair and skirts, motionless.
Powerless.
Can't be trusted.
It won't last long. But just long enough.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-31 05:57 am (UTC)Now would be the ideal time for Serenity to appear, roaring over the alleyway, Jayne dangling from a harness with a big damn gun.
It doesn't.
It would be lovely if Simon showed up now, at the head of a posse, Roland and Mal side-by-side, guns blazing.
They're late.
If River's got any tricks left up her sleeve, the moment has come.
The moment passes.
There's no god left in the machine. The umbrella of protection that makes sure that most of the time bad things don't happen to mostly good people is all shot to shit, and the two tall thin things in blue gloves slip right through the holes and up the alley, smirking.
This is what happens:
Footsteps come up the alley. Closer. Closer. Closer. And stop.
And then a miracle doesn't happen.