![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
May. 29th, 2006 03:47 pmThere's a sense of coming full circle, the day Serenity sets down on Jiangyin again.
It's a different place, halfway across the continent from where Mal sold his cattle a year or so ago, but it's the same in many ways: the dusty main street that's almost all there is to the town, the seedy general store. And the half-starved hillfolk, watching the mobile clinic they've set up, warily as though suspecting some kind of trick. Staring as the first hillwoman marches her limping son down the dusty street and through the clinic doors.
Sometimes you need a doctor.
Untreated sores, infected cuts, broken bones poorly set, minor sicknesses persisting longer than they've any right to: he's seen all this before. He passes out instructions along with medicines, where he can; offers explanations of how the ailments got as bad as they are, where the people seem at all receptive. One teenage boy with an ear infection stays after receiving his treatment, sitting on the floor against the wall and watching with silent curiosity. River wanders silently in and out, keeping back from where he's working, keeping out of his light.
Something about this, something about making it possible for these people to get what they need to survive without resorting to criminal behavior.... Mal's deal with the patron of this village holds: half a dozen of their strongest young boys to haul and carry for the length of the day, unloading cargo, for their part of the clinic fee. The town's part of the clinic fee comes in cash money.
It's significantly less than the work he's doing is worth, less than a tenth of what his services would bring on a Core planet, and somehow he can't bring himself to care.
Because they're coming in sick and wounded, and they're walking out on their way to healed.
It's a different place, halfway across the continent from where Mal sold his cattle a year or so ago, but it's the same in many ways: the dusty main street that's almost all there is to the town, the seedy general store. And the half-starved hillfolk, watching the mobile clinic they've set up, warily as though suspecting some kind of trick. Staring as the first hillwoman marches her limping son down the dusty street and through the clinic doors.
Sometimes you need a doctor.
Untreated sores, infected cuts, broken bones poorly set, minor sicknesses persisting longer than they've any right to: he's seen all this before. He passes out instructions along with medicines, where he can; offers explanations of how the ailments got as bad as they are, where the people seem at all receptive. One teenage boy with an ear infection stays after receiving his treatment, sitting on the floor against the wall and watching with silent curiosity. River wanders silently in and out, keeping back from where he's working, keeping out of his light.
Something about this, something about making it possible for these people to get what they need to survive without resorting to criminal behavior.... Mal's deal with the patron of this village holds: half a dozen of their strongest young boys to haul and carry for the length of the day, unloading cargo, for their part of the clinic fee. The town's part of the clinic fee comes in cash money.
It's significantly less than the work he's doing is worth, less than a tenth of what his services would bring on a Core planet, and somehow he can't bring himself to care.
Because they're coming in sick and wounded, and they're walking out on their way to healed.
