(no subject)

[gabriel_tam]

It's been seven years since the passage of the IIGA. Seven years since the assassination attempt. Seven years since Vincent Navarro had given Gabriel Tam his professional medical opinion and warned him in no uncertain terms what the results of his remaining in office would likely be.

He doesn't regret his choice.

Still, things are becoming more difficult, these days. He does his best to cooperate with Navarro's continued recommendations, working with his ever-efficient assistant Mark Jiang to make time for the additional treatments and the now-compulsory pulmonary rehab sessions (which take place in his office, in secret, as much as possible), to listen to Regan and reassure her as much as he can. Even so, it's difficult sometimes. Today was one of the harder days - and there's still a dinner party to endure tonight.

Gabriel makes his way slowly into the bar and to an armchair seat by the fireplace. He'll just rest a bit here, before he goes. Just for a while.

Comments

[gabriel_tam]

"Simon."

Gabriel sounds truly delighted.

"I wasn't expecting to see you."

[simon_doctor]

"Likewise --" He's close enough now to offer his hand. "How have you been?"

[gabriel_tam]

His grip is firm, even as he gives silent thanks that he's seated.

"Pretty good," Gabriel says. It's not even a lie, not really; pretty good is all he can ask for, these days, and he's grateful to have it.

"And you and Kaylee? And Jessamine?"

[simon_doctor]

"We're all doing well," he says, a touch more brightness coming into his face at the mention of Jessie.

(That's the reaction he doesn't mind being visible. There's the other one that he's trying to stifle, as always; it has to do with how much weight his father has lost, how pale he is, how the faint grayish-blue tint of cyanosis is visible under his fingernails.)

"I'm afraid I'm turning into the kind of father who carries vidcaptures around. If you'd like to see one."

[gabriel_tam]

His (slanted, always slanted) smile is sudden and brilliant.

"I'd love to."

[simon_doctor]

He's seated himself by this time, in the armchair perpendicular to his father's. It's the work of only a few moments to dig out his pad, flick rapidly through a few menus, and hold it out to show him.

Jessie is sitting up on her play rug, wholly absorbed in the process of pulling brightly colored plastic blocks out of a bucket and scattering them on the floor. The capture's an eight-second loop; at the end of it she looks up at the viewer and beams.

[gabriel_tam]

"She's mĕilì."

There's pride and delight, both, in his voice.

"She looks like you both."

[simon_doctor]

"I think she's going to have Kaylee's hair," he says fondly.

(He also thinks she looks just a little like baby pictures of River.)

[gabriel_tam]

"She may, at that."

There's a softness in his face, in his voice.

[simon_doctor]

Simon glances at his father's face, and has to swallow down a lump in his throat.

(There are so many moments in the past, he's thinking, that could have meant this moment never happened.)