Yeah, so my fanfiction interests range far and wide, who cares?

Anyways, to all you new people here at the Avatar section, hello! I'm a fan of Avatar, and have always been fascinated at it's mysticality and otherworldliness. But one thing that has bothered me - and is the inspiration of this fic - is that Sokka and his father seem to be the only ones who think rationally, logically, and rely on science and understanding in order to survive in a world filled with psychotic element-manipulators. So here I thought, "Hey. Why not introduce a concept that hasn't been heard of before in the world? Why not introduce medicine into Avatar?" If a Sokka simulating firebending by using explosives is allowed, then why not have a full-fledged doctor working in the Fire Nation? And that's where this came from.

This one-shot comes from Ty Lee's point of view, because I said so, and introduces an OC of my own. I think you can figure out who he is as you go through the story. It's up to you on how to interpret this story, so I'll leave you to it.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Avatar. All rights and ownership belong to Nickelodeon. The Doctor belongs to me, and only me.

He looked at her with an odd expression. "How many times did you tap him?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. Ten…eleven times?" she played with her hair naïvely while watching the sixteen-year old boy.

He gaped. "Eleven?!" he yelled. "That's a little excessive, don't you think?" he examined the pressure points again. They were blue and black mainly, with a purple tinge in some spots.

Ty Lee shrugged yet again. "I dunno. Seems fine to me. Though he's going to be upset when he wakes up," she glanced at the body. He looks so peaceful. Hard to believe that she did that to him. He was still cute though.

"Please stop ogling him," he sighed, somewhat annoyed. Well, actually, he wasn't really annoyed. Ty Lee was alright company to have around. The problem was his cynicism that always got in the way of everything he did, giving him a negative disposition of life in general. "I still need to run a few more tests before he's ready. Plus he still needs to wake up from that concussion there. Probably wasn't a good plan to tap his legs as well." he raised his eyebrows as he looked at her.

Ty Lee nodded. "Well…too late for that now, right?" she smiled weakly. "Will he be alright?"

"Oh, no worries. He should be up soon. And hopefully his blood will be running also, so he can shake off the paralysis." he looked at her. "This is just my own opinion, but you should try to ease up on the pressure point thing."

Ty Lee raised an eyebrow at him. "Why? It's fun." she grinned.

He glared at her sharply. She instantly lost her grin. "Because," he grabbed a small bottle filled with a clear liquid. He snatched a plastic package from another table, and opened it as he talked. "Whenever you cut off their…chi," he closed his eyes as he said the last word. "You're actually cutting off their circulation to their limbs. The disconnection is so sudden, that the limb goes into shock; aka the paralysis."

Ty Lee stared at him blankly. "What?"

"Never mind," He rolled his eyes. "It's too complicated a concept for you mystical people. With your elemental bending and such." he waved his arms around to exaggerate the point. "I just had to be born into the nation that started this pointless war."

Ty Lee cocked her head to the side. "Pointless?"

He groaned in annoyance. "Yeah. Pointless. This war is freaking pointless in every single way. Only reason why it was started is because Sozin wanted power. Nothing but friggen' power. And in order for that to happen, they freaking mowed down every single airbender in this goddamn world." he sighed deeply. "And the really sad part is, the airbenders could have fought back, but didn't. Fire depends on air in order to take form. They could have just made a vacuum around the flames in order to cut off their source of combustion," he said, oblivious to her blank stare.

Ty Lee had a sad expression, and she looked down at her shoes. He had that tendency on people, making them upset or pissing them off. She didn't know why that happened. Perhaps it was his aura. It was unusually orange today, with streaks of yellow, though he always had some sort of yellow incorporated into it. He was a very smart fellow, despite his irritability. He was like Mai in that sense, if you were looking carefully. She looked back up and studied him. Yes…it is orange. Very orange, but with a little yellow as well.

He noticed Ty Lee staring at him. He raised an eyebrow. "What are you looking at?" he sneered. Her eyes widened at the sudden question.

"N-nothing, nothing. It's just that your aura…it's a little unusual." She didn't really know why she was scared of him, but there was something about him that made her quiver in her shoes.

To her surprise, he took an actual interest in what she said. "My aura?" he repeated. "What's so unusual about it?" he asked genuinely, giving Ty Lee a rare smile.

She smiled with him. It wasn't every day that a guy like him smiled, so she might as well take advantage of it. "Well… I see that it's very orange," she walked closer to him, arms crossed. She wagged a finger at him. "But there is a little tinge of yellow with it. That's supposed to mean extreme intelligence."

He shrugged. "Well I can't really complain on that, now can I?" he smirked. "What does orange mean?"

The acrobat stiffened a little, not sure if she should answer him truthfully. If she did, there would be no knowing what would happen. But she was never really that good at lying, so she just went with her gut. "Basically means irritability," she replied with optimism, giving him a toothy grin. Here it comes…

To her surprise, he just shrugged. "That's true. I have been told before that I am an irritable person. Probably has to do with my cynicism, I guess." he said, turning around. He went up to a cupboard, and pulled out a small box. She saw him as laid it out on a table beside where the cutie was. "What's that?"

"Just a needle. He needs a shot of adrenaline so he can wake up sooner. Azula wants him up for questioning by tomorrow, unfortunately," he said, opening the package.

Ty Lee felt a chill going down her back as she saw him take out the needle. She never liked needles. The thought of a pointy shard of metal being dug into her and spitting out who-knows-what was unnerving. She couldn't understand how he could be ok with injecting some chemical into someone, even if it was for their own good. She saw him placing the needle into the bottle, and drawing out the liquid into the tube, filling up three quarters full. He placed the bottle onto the table, and flicked the needle. What was he doing?

Her eyes widened as she watched him. He brought the needle up to the boy, and brought it dangerously close to his neck. Her hands unconsciously went up to her mouth in horror as she saw him stick the needle into the boy. She watched as he pushed the liquid into the body.

She must have unconsciously whimpered or something of the like, as she heard him speak. "You know, you can just look away. You don't have to watch if you hate needles."

"I know…" Ty Lee looked down at the ground. "How do you take it? I mean, how can you not feel sick when you stick a needle into someone? I find it sickening." she shuddered, though it was exaggerated. He raised an eyebrow, and a slight smile crept onto his lips.

"I don't know. Some people can take it, some people can't," he shrugged.

Ty Lee was about to say something in return, but decided against it, and kept it to herself. Besides, it wasn't even really relevant to the conversation anyways. She merely pushed it from her mind and moved on.

She found herself walking around the examination room, looking at all the different diagrams and posters of the human anatomy. There were all sorts of complicated terms and big words that were labeled on the posters, each pointing to a part of…something… in the body. She looked at a poster that had a cross-section of an ankle, and cocked her head to the side in curiosity. Why did he need a poster of an ankle? Shouldn't he already know this stuff? She went up to it to get a closer look.

She looked at the picture that was shown at the center of the poster, and studied the different parts of the ankle. Her eyes widened as she counted the number of terms that pointed to a specific part of the joint. Wow. Who know that there would be so much for an ankle! she thought to herself. She looked down at her feet, and back up at the poster. 

Her eyes fell upon a certain ligament of the joint, one that everyone knew about. Problem is, there was a different name than from what she knew that pointed to the ligament.

"I know exactly what you're going to say." she heard him speak, as if on cue. She turned around, wondering what he was going to say now. "'Why isn't it called Odaku's Ligament?'" he chuckled as he walked up beside her. "I'll tell you why. It's because that's not really what it's called. One:" he pointed to the ligament on the far left of the diagram. "That's not a ligament. It's a tendon. It joins muscle to the bone, not bone to bone." he explained. "And two: Achilles tendon sounds a lot more accurate, if you draw upon the story of Avatar Achilles," he added.

Ty Lee nodded. "How do you know so much about all this?"

He shrugged. "I just do. It takes lots of studying, practice, and being able to stomach all the things that you go through when choosing this profession." he explained.

The acrobat cocked her head to the side in confusion. "What sort of things?" she asked.

"Well there's-"

He was interrupted by a bang, and the squeaking of wheels and hurried feet. They turned around, towards the door, and saw it swing wide open, with some firebender guards rolling in a moving table into the room. Something was happening, and it was big.

"What's going on here?" she heard him bellow, marching over to the guards. A few turned around, and moved aside to examine who was on the table. She heard a gasp coming from him; an exceptional rarity.

"What happened?" he demanded. Ty Lee saw multiple guards shrugging. She walked up to the table as well, wondering what the fuss is all about.

As her eyes set upon the person at the table, they widened, and she gasped, hands covering her mouth. "No… how….?" she whispered, looking at him with pleading eyes.

He didn't look back. He kept focused on the one on the table. He faced the lead guard.

"Take the Water Tribe boy and swap the two out. He checks out fine, put him in the Green Room and leave a few of your men with him until he wakes up. When he does, inform me immediately. In the meantime, I'll get to work on her." The guard nodded, and he issued orders to the others.

The table was rolled out beside the stationary one at the center of the room, and the men scrambled around it. The two teenagers watched as 2 firebenders lifted the boy off his table, while the others lifted the new patient onto it while the boy was set back down onto the rolling table.

Without hesitation, he was rolled out of the room with amazing speed, leaving just Ty Lee and the doctor alone yet again.

A beat.

"Mai!" Ty Lee suddenly cried. She scurried over beside the table, and placed a hand at her friend's cheek. With a yelp, she recoiled, and pulled her hand away from her. Mai was burning up badly. She was sweating severely, with huge beads of sweat dripping from her face, and despite her unconsciousness, she was shaking violently occasionally, her breath came frequent and shallow. The circus performer had never seen something like this in her life. She looked up at him, who had brought out a blackboard from who-knows-where. He rolled it out to a sufficient area where it wasn't obstructive in any way, and grabbed some chalk. He wrote down Mai in big letters at the top, and underlined it.

"Congratulations, Ty Lee. You're now going to help me diagnose a patient," the doctor said. "I want you to tell me anything unusual about your friend. Come on, anything that might be associated as a symptom of an illness.

Ty Lee stared at him. "What?! How?" she said, surprised. "I can't do that! How do you expect… I mean I don't think I'm…." she trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

He rolled his eyes. "Oh come on. It might sound intimidating, a person with absolutely no experience at all helping a trained professional with a serious matter, but it's been done before. Don't worry; you'll do great. I trust you," he complimented her, giving her a smile to boost her self-esteem.

But she was still somewhat unconvinced. Uncertainly, she looked back at Mai, unsure as to where to start. "Well she's sweating balls." she commented, a slight smile forming at the sexual innuendo. "She's got a high fever as well."

"High…fever…" he repeated slowly as he wrote it down under Mai's name on the blackboard. "Good, good. What else?" he asked.

Ty Lee beamed, happy that she got it right. She looked back at the patient, and noticed her breathing. "Shallow breaths, and not through her nose," she told him.

"Excellent, excellent. Keep going, I think I'm close."

This continued for another five minutes, with Ty Lee giving one detail about Mai's condition, the doctor writing it down, encouragement followed, and repeat

Ty Lee was about to speak, when she was again, rudely interrupted. But not by some lower status guards. No, the Crown Princess herself had entered the room at that moment, smirking like she had just achieved something.

"Hello there, healer," she mocked him. Ty Lee gulped, and noticed his eye twitching.

"I am not a bloody healer. I am a doctor! Get it right!" he snapped. Azula just rolled her eyes.

Ty Lee quickly changed the subject. "Azula! What are you doing here?" she asked nonchalantly, a smile appearing on her face, though Azula just brushed her off.

"I'm just here to inquire as to why one of my prisoners is not where she should be," she stated simply, nodding to the unconscious Mai. "I hope I'm not…interrupting anything," she glanced back at him sardonically.

He gave a mock smile. "No…of course not. I'm merely just diagnosing the patient's condition so I can treat it accordingly. We wouldn't want to have a misdiagnosis and accidentally kill her, now would we?" he replied sarcastically.

"No, I don't really think we would." Azula replied. She leaned back on the wall. "How about you carry on as if I'm not here, hm?" she suggested. "I'm interested as to how your system works."

Ty Lee nodded an affirmative, but he sighed deeply. "Fine. But you don't say a word, understand?" he told her. He really didn't even wait for an answer. He turned back towards Ty Lee, and started talking.

"Ok, so here's the rundown," he said, taking a quick glance at Azula. She was filing her nails, not seeming to listen. "From what I can gather from Mai's different symptoms, in her current state are three conditions that may cause them." he pointed to the right side of the board, where said conditions were written. "Pneumonia, pulmonary edema, and a major flu."

Ty Lee looked at the three conditions, eyebrow raised. "What do they mean?"

"Pneumonia is basically a sickness that affects the lungs, in a nutshell," he said. "Pulmonary edema is swelling and fluid accumulation of the lungs – nasty little condition, and a horrible way to die." he shuddered. Ty Lee felt a chill going down her spine "And you should already know what the flu is, so I won't go in depth of that." he rubbed his chin in thought. "But which one is it…"

"It can't be a flu." Ty Lee put in. "I don't think a flu would account for shortness of breath."

The doctor nodded. "Yes…yes… that's true." he grabbed another piece of chalk and drew a line through the word flu on the board. "So that leaves two more. Oh joy." he waved his hands in sarcasm.

Ty Lee smiled optimistically. "Don't worry. You'll figure it out."

Azula merely gave a snort of disbelief.

He apparently ignored it, as he kept staring at the board, at the two remaining diseases. Ty Lee, however, found herself staring at him. She really couldn't make out many details, as he was wearing a baggy red and white lab coat over his regular uniform. But she could see a little detail that wasn't present in most Fire Nation people.

"You know, you're really brown." she said.

The acrobat saw him freeze, and turn his head slowly to face her. The expression on his face was priceless. "Excuse me?" he blinked. "That's not random at all." he rolled his eyes in sarcasm. "Where did you even get that from?"

"Well I don't know. You have that ugly little lab coat on, so I can't really compliment anything else about you, so I just went for what I got!" she grinned cheerfully. She was apparently on a high now, as she was oblivious that Azula was still in the room. Hopefully she wouldn't mind.

That's when she saw him stop what he was doing. "Brown." she heard him say. It sounded like he just realized something. "Brown." he repeated. "Brown. Skin." he walked back up to the board, and tapped on the words Pulmonary edema. "Edema. Symptom is pale skin." he marched over to where Mai was lying down. He placed two fingers on her chin, and moved her face around to get a good look at her skin tone. "Pale, but not sickly pale." he smirked in triumph.

"It's not Pulmonary edema!" he said, power-walking to the board. He scratched off the disease on the list, leaving only one left.

"Pneumonia?" Azula raised an eyebrow, intrigued as to how he got that answer. "Interesting."

Ty Lee looked at Azula in inquiry, but was interrupted by the doctor yet again. "Azula, where was she before she was brought here?"

Azula looked at him, a slight smirk on her face. "Oh, nowhere important. Just the Boiling Rock, that's all."

He rubbed his chin. "She must have caught the disease from either a sick cellmate, or from the rats that might have scurried through her cell," he thought out loud.

Ty Lee blinked. Why wasn't he concerned as to why Mai was at the Boiling Rock in the first place? She looked at her palms, and rubbed them together. She was locked up at the Boiling Rock as well, but only for a shorter period of time for one reason or another. Azula had either come to her senses, or had something else in mind planned for her. The contortionist shuddered; she didn't want to know which it was.

"No! That's not happening! She will not stay here with you!" Ty Lee came back to her senses, looking for who just said that. It turned out to be Princess Azula, who was now arguing with the doctor. During her tune-out, the two must have come into conflict with one another. She looked at them, blankly.

"It has to be done! Pneumonia's highly contagious! Do you really want every single one of your personnel on a sick day because of a selfish decision?" he retorted. "This is for the good of the Fire Nation and for the good of the people present in the area." he stated. "She is staying with me here until she's ready, and that's final." he must have decided that the matter was closed, as he was already walking around the room, gathering different medicines and supplies that were scattered around.

Azula's eye twitched, and Ty Lee watched her as the princess went up to the doctor, and grabbed him by the cuff, pushing him against the wall. The different boxes and bottles that he was collecting spilled on the floor as she brought two fingers up to his throat. "Do you know who I am?!" she bellowed.

"Are you stupid or something? Of course I know who you are! Otherwise we wouldn't be having this confrontation," he replied smugly. This seemed to push Azula even more up the irritable scale, as she lit her fingers with her trademark blue fire.

"If I were you, I would watch that mouth of yours. The only reason why you're still alive is because you're an asset to us. There will be a day when you won't be….necessary," she warned him. The princess loosened her grip, and took a deep breath, supposedly to calm herself down. Slowly, softly but harshly, she said a goodbye, turned on her heel, and left the room.

As soon as Azula was out of earshot, the doctor let loose a deep breath, relaxing visibly. He rubbed his temples in relative annoyance. Ty Lee gaped.

"How can you be so calm about all this?!" she yelled at him. "You just got threatened by Azula! Holy crap, this is not good, this is not good." she paced the room, a hand on her forehead in worry. "Oh god… what the hell is wrong with you?!" she yelled at him. He had gotten up and was now brushing himself off. "Stop being so casual and take this seriously!"

He raised an eyebrow. " Me? Take this seriously? This coming from the circus performer." he rolled his eyes. "Ty Lee, calm down. She can't do a thing to me."

She wasn't convinced. She continued to pace the room, and was now border-lining hysteria. "I-I can't believe this! I mean, I've been threatened by her before, and so has Mai, but she hasn't actually done anything to us because she needed us. But you. You're different. She doesn't need you, you're just a tool that can be thrown away just as easily! How am I going to get you out of this? What the hell am I going to do?!" she suddenly felt a rough, but precise hand fall on her shoulder, stopping her pace.

"Listen to me," he ordered the acrobat. She froze immediately, and looked up at him. "I am not going to get hurt. I will be fine, and will be on this world for a heck of a long time, I can guarantee that. She forgets who's superior to whom, I can tell you that." he wagged a finger at her. "And another thing: why do you even care about what happens to me? I'm not important at all to you, why are you so concerned as to what happens to me

Ty Lee looked down, unable to look him in the eyes when he asked that last question. "I…I honestly have no idea. I…" she took a breath. "I just don't want you to get hurt, that's all." she looked up at his face. It was hard, but had softened slightly with compassion and gratitude.

The doctor smacked his lips, and took a breath through his teeth as he thought for a moment. "I think that Water Tribe boy's going to wake up any minute now. Why don't you go check on him for me?" he asked her genuinely, giving her a sweet smile.

Ty Lee smiled as well, but had a hurt expression on her face. Did he not want her around? She thought that she was acceptable company, especially to him. She turned around, and started walking towards the door.

"Oh, and Ty Lee?" he called after her. The acrobat turned around, eyebrow raised. He still had that sweet smile on. "Thanks. You know, for caring."

Her expression changed to happiness. He really does care. With this revelation, she grinned. "Anytime." she winked at him, and exited the room, heading towards the Green Room like she was asked.

The smile still on his face, the doctor turned around, and started to collect all the medicines that were on the floor. He picked up small boxes that had a bottle of some sort of chemical inside it. As he stacked them up on the nearest table, he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

It was the bottle that he had administered to the water tribe boy before. The adrenaline.

Without thinking, he grabbed it, and was about to put it away, when he noticed something about the label. He furrowed his brow, and brought up the small bottle to get a better look at it.

"High Grade Aphrodisiac," he read out loud. "Warning, extremely effective. Lasts 4 hours." He shrugged and quickly checked the top of the plastic covering to see if it was the one that he used on the boy. Yep, there was a small hole on it.

He let the information that he found out to sink in. His eyes widened, but he had a wide smile on his face.

Ty Lee was going to be in for a huge surprise soon.