WESTERN CAPITAL GENERAL HOSPITAL
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VEGETA.WGH
Doctor Richard Taber, Ph.D.
8721402
Patient complains of severe pain in left knee following prolonged usage/activity.
Traditional healing methods failed to alleviate symptoms.
Following physical examination, tentative diagnosis of severe patellofemoral syndrome and possibly tendonitis.
Underwent six weeks of physical therapy with no improvement in severity of condition.
Recommend CT scan in eight five-degree increments.
Possible treatment includes lateral release surgery to correct patella malalignment, depending on CT results.
8721414
CT scan results as follows: 56 42 87 16 98 5 23 71
Definite patellofemoral syndrome.
Prime candidate for lateral release surgery.
Reccomend surgery for treatment, followed by 2 weeks of non use and 6 weeks of physical therapy.
Pending patient's decision.
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Bulma turned off the monitor, leaned back in her computer chair and stretched. Turning to her tacit companion, she asked, "You saw the hospital file, and we've already tried a senzu bean, so do you have any more qualms, Vegeta?"
He sat next to her, brows furrowed in concentration as he took in the hospital's report on the chronic knee pain he'd silently suffered for over a decade with no previous means for respite. She took his stony silence as permission to continue with, "I promise, you'll be in the hospital for barely half the day, the procedure takes all of twenty minutes, during which time you'll be asleep, and I'll be there with you, so you'll be fine."
"I never said I was afraid."
"I never said you were. So there. Now do you want me to make you an appointment with Dr. Taber?"
"Fine." He stood to depart, and by depart I mean limp, to the doorway.
---
"You have four new messages. Message one."
"Hey Bulma, it's Yamcha. Just calling to see how you've been doing since--BEEP!"
"Message deleted. Message two."
"Hello, this is Dr. Richard Taber's office calling in regards to Vegeta's appointment tomorrow. We're sorry but because of personal problems the doctor is unavailable at that time. We can reschedule for nine thirty AM next Tuesday if that's acceptable, please call to confirm. Thank you."
"Message three."
"Hey, it's me again. You wouldn't happen to have my blue sweater lying around over there someplace, would you? I can't seem to find it and, well, I kinda sorta want to wear it tonight, 'cause you always said it made me look ta--BEEP!"
"Message deleted. End of messages."
Finally home, Bulma left the groceries on the table for her mother to sort through, then went up to Vegeta's room to inform him that he had another five days to chill before facing the dreaded anthroscopy. She found him meditating on his bed, sitting Indian-style, a half-melted bag of ice resting on his left knee.
Opening one eye as his host entered, Vegeta quickly shoved the ice onto the mattress next to him, out of view, and waited for her to state her business.
"I know your knee is killing you, so there's no need to hide the evidence. Speaking of which, your surgery's been moved to Tuesday." Biting her lip, she worried at the chance of an outburst of the world's injustice from him. It'd taken her weeks of passively observing him sneaking ice packs and tabs before she realized something about him was physically amiss. Days to convince him to let a medical professional investigate the problem, and hours of detailed argument and discussion of the medical reports to make him realize that this surgery was necessary if he wanted to be able to use that knee without being hounded by almost arthritic aches and pains.
She wondered why she did so much to improve his comfort.
While any other man would've paled at the news, this one just furrowed his eyebrows before tersely stating, "What?"
"Sorry, it got changed. The world is an imperfect place. A few more days to wait won't kill you, nor will the suspense, so just cool it."
"I am cool--"
"Sure you are, hot stuff," she interrupted, inwardly laughing at her own humor, though her companion did not fully comprehend the deeper cultural reference of the joke. "I know that in the time it's taking for this surgery to take place I could've built you a regeneration tank, but you--"
"Those tanks heal flesh wounds, they do not realign ligaments and bones."
"Thank you for that informational update. Like I was saying, you should be grateful that there is a doctor around here willing to do the operation."
He scowled, disturbed that he was being forced to acknowledge, "Since when did I state I wasn't?"
Considering that for a moment, "Point. What are we up to?"
"Me: 27. You: 23."
"This is the last time I allow myself to be dragged into a month-long battle of the wits with you, Vegeta. It deflates my ego and only serves to bolster yours." When he did not answer, she sighed, turning to exit the room. She could only take being in his vicinity for so long, until his uniquely absent personality really started to get to her. "I'll let you get back to... whatever the hell is was you were doing. Remember, Tuesday morning, bright and early."
---
Vivisection:
The cutting of or operation on a living animal.
Or person.
Vegeta had looked it up in a computer once, when he was younger. He'd wanted a name for it.
Monday night arrived faster than he would've liked, but that was life for you. Dinner with the Briefs family had started out in tense silence, giving way to tense normalcy when Bulma fell out of her chair while reaching to pick up a fallen spoon from the floor. This caused her mother to burst into a fit of giggles, as she was sporadically prone to do, and her father to smile behind his coffee cup. Vegeta took little notice of the scene, absorbed as he was in his own thoughts, but that was to be expected. Going under the knife does that to one.
Though he refused to discuss his hesitancy towards the procedure with any of the table's other three occupants, that didn't mean he denied himself the luxury of self-examination. He admitted, it wasn't the chopping-up-his-extremities part that bugged him. It was being at someone's mercy while he was completely out of it that got him a bit bothered.
After a dessert composed of some sort of fluffy, sweet, sugary substance, each diner went their separate ways. The older couple retired to the living room to catch a movie on the classics channel, something about a robot named "Johnny Five" that, for some reason, considered itself to be alive. Bulma withdrew to her bedroom and grabbed her nearest banned book; soon she was completely engrossed in the question, "Where do the ducks at the pond go in the wintertime?"
Acknowledging that he wasn't going to be getting much sleep that night, for whatever the reason, Vegeta went to bed early, in hopes that the extra time set aside would assuage any ill effects brought on by recurrent sleeplessness.
And nightmares.
He was ten years old, small for his age, but powerful. It took two of Frieza's full-grown cronies to hold him down on the table that he'd long-ago broken the straps off. A tank of anesthesia sat in a corner of the room, deemed unnecessary, at least for use on just a pathetic monkey. Why try to prevent pain when it was your goal to cause it?
Squirming as a cart scattered with various sharp medical implements was wheeled into view, someone hit a pressure point in his neck to stay him. He bit back a scream, refusing to give in to the urge to cry out, no matter the degree of his physical and psychological suffering.
Frieza approached. The bane of his existence terrified him twice over, once just by being present, and again by holding up a shiny, steel, rather painful-looking serrated instrument.
His fear made him forget himself. He cried out, in an almost extinct, now forbidden language, an act that would surely cause him more pain later on. "Co je tohle? Co chcete? Jdete pryc, Frieza! Ne tak rychle, neco je v neporafku strasny nemocnice! Do prdele! Nechci! Do prdele! Jdete pryc!"
Accompanied by a loud thumping noise, was a feminine voice calling, "Vegeta! Wake the hell up!"
Now aware of his surroundings, and the present year, he became quiescent as Bulma's pounding on the wall they shared soon ceased. The silence took prevalence in the atmosphere for a minute, then was broken by, "Good. Now try to actually get some rest, we have a busy day tomorrow."
He did not reply. Though the nightmares were infrequent, it still angered him when they occurred. Granted, no one had ever entered his room to awaken him from one, for which he considered himself extremely lucky. But he knew that the entire household was aware of the problem. Not that he should care.
Though he did.
----
Nightmares were such a pain in the ass.
That was all Vegeta deemed necessary to admit to himself in the blackness of his room. His nighttime visions were never entirely accurate depictions of past realities, just twisted perversions resulting from latent fears and unexpressed animosities. All of that particular night's grief was borne from a bad bout of childhood appendicitis, compounded by not nearly enough anesthesia present in his thick Saiya-jin bloodstream, and the entire operation being performed by a certain white lizard that had, for a time, a passing interest in the medical arts.
The young man still bore the scars from the resulting first--and, invariably, last--attempt at healing instead of destroying.
But still? the seemingly innocuous facts entwined in the memory did nothing to assuage the pit of anxiety that appeared in his stomach every time he thought about that which was taking place in the morning. Phobias were such highly inconvenient things, he concluded, so it was no large surprise realizing he'd unconsciously formed one over the years, just to be a nuisance to him. Fate was like that. After tomorrow, Vegeta decided he'd find a way of overcoming that particular weakness before it became too much of a liability. There would be no more of this worrying crap, after tomorrow.
That is the LAST TIME I eat a bite of Mom's "secret recipe special macaroni and cheese," Bulma thought to herself as she exited the bathroom around four a.m., rubbing her eyes with her knuckles as she headed back down the hallway to her blesséd, warm, sleep-inducing room. There was a half-full, soon-to-be-empty bottle of Imodium AD in there, more precisely, in her handbag resting on the dresser, with her name on it.
However, as she passed Vegeta's door, she couldn't help but give in to the urge to peek in and check on him. If judging his screams by volume and portent, this had not been his worst nightmare to date; she was concerned nonetheless about his emotional state considering the circumstances. He never spoke a direct word about it, but there was still an almost tangible anxiety about him whenever the subject of correcting the developmental problem with his knee was brought forth.
Luckily, the prince appeared to be in quiet repose at the moment, when Bulma's eyes adjusted to the darkness enough to discern his appearance. One would think that, being oblivious to the rest of the universe at the time, his features would smooth out as he slept, and he'd cease his ferocious scowling. Such was not the case, however, and even when he wasn't dreaming of past transgressions made by or against him, that ever-present frown and furrowed eyebrows prevailed.
It was almost like that signature expression on his face had been chiseled out of granite. The same with indifference. He frequently wore that mask, as well.
Breathing a sigh of relief that all was well in the universe, the woman retreated back to the familiarity and normalcy of her own living space. She had a foreboding feeling in the pit of her stomach where tomorrow was concerned, and any missed sleep was bound to worsen the stress. When she got up again in a few hours, the first thing she planned to do was brew a double pot of coffee, with extra for the road. Because of the effects of the drugs and the surgery, she was pegged to drive the reluctant Saiya-jin to and from the hospital. Hopefully he'd still be lost in his thoughts during both trips, so she wouldn't have to attempt conversation.
----
As the Briefs family usually rose at different times every morning, breakfast was rarely a family affair, and Tuesday was no exception, leaving the younger generation to dine with only each other. Just as he had last night, Vegeta spoke very little, allowing Bulma to try to maintain a cheerful conversation all by herself. After a few minutes she got the hint, and sipped her second cup of coffee in relative silence. The man's entire being seemed that much more reserved, and she couldn't help but compare this image of him to the Vegeta he'd been at the time of when he wished to Earth from Namek. She remembered him standing on the grassy ground, laughing and loudly gloating about how, now that his two greatest adversaries were (presumed) dead, he was free to do whatever he pleased. That included destroying the planet and taking over the universe. Of course, these seemingly schizophrenic actions of his only led those around him to stare, wondering if dying has done something to his brain.
And now... Now, sitting silently at the table, watching her pick at her plate of scrambled eggs, he seemed to almost be a completely different person. Maybe I should ask Dr. Taber about the effects surgery can have on people like Vegeta?Though, people like him are, admittedly, few and far between.
Leaving her empty plate where it was for someone else to clean up, Bulma stood and glanced around for her keys and purse. "It's almost nine. We'd better start heading over to the hospital so you can get this over with."
She was rewarded with a look that clearly stated, Don't patronize me.
--Which she promptly ignored. "Unless, of course, you'd rather just sit here staring at the table like a catatonic. I'll be in the car."
An answer followed, one which the woman had definitely not expected.
"I am not afraid."
His steadfast gaze slightly perturbed her as he made that solemn declaration, looking for all the world as if it were true. The paler than usual color of his normally ruddy face gave his true feelings away, though. "Did I say you were?"
"You implied it. Close enough."
"Well I apologize, O Fearless One. Just remember, I promised to be there when they knock you out and when you wake up, so that's what I'm going to do, whether you like it or not!"
"Why?"
"Why the hell not?" When no reply was forthcoming, she continued gleefully, "Point for me! That makes 24. I'm gaining on you."
"Like hell," he grumbled, standing from the table and making his way across the kitchen tiles to the outside door, where he paused to look over his shoulder at her. "Coming?"
Bulma swiftly grabbed her travel mug off the counter and into it poured the rest of the contents of the coffee pot. Steadily sipping it as she crossed the lawn to her car, she abstractly wondered how in the world she would ever be able to function without her daily dose of caffeine.