AU Yeah! August 11: Mermaid

Maki was simply receiving patients in the A&E to help her parent's hospital.

"Expect the unexpected," they say. But if you could do that, it wouldn't be _

the unexpected, now, would it? (AN at end of chapter) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Receiving in A & E

As an old-fashioned hospital, the owners of Nishikino liked to have their daughter, and sole heir, Maki involved while she was still in secondary school. This weekend, she was helping with Receiving in A & E. Her mother, Nishikino Kikuko, had run her through their normal training before leaving her on her own. The very last thing she'd said to Maki was never to forget to protect the patients' privacy.

Confidentiality was emphasized so much, Maki wouldn't have been completely surprised to see a bunch of tattooed patients coming in overnight with stabbing or shooting wounds.

Of course, in reality, it was the usual — young people injured in mishaps or fights, middle-aged people with chest pains, and so on.

Maki wasn't even looking at the latest one, just at what she was writing down as she listened to the ambulance medical staff. But as she realized this was an unusual case, she looked up.

Although the girl was found naked, according to the staff, Maki noticed her wearing two beautiful engraved bracelets that appeared to be made of gold, like a wedding ring. It made her almost think of something that she couldn't quite recall. It would probably nag at her that night.

The little girl's skin had tears all over the part of her upper body not covered by a sheet. What could do that? she wondered. It was as if she'd been hit with a barbed whip. The crew said they'd had to resuscitate and defibrillate her. Her heartbeat was very rapid but weak.

It wasn't Maki's function to speculate, though. She processed the patient's forms quickly and accurately, and was ready for another ambulance that had come in behind the first.

Choosing a Career

Taka Shou had figured it out. Japan's so-called meritocracy was a joke. Not only couldn't he get into a desirable school, but once he finished where he'd ended up, and became a trainee, he already saw very few worthwhile hospitals that would accept him, and that meant fewer worthwhile opportunities once he was a doctor.

And now he was reading an article saying the Nishikino brat, all of five years old, had a pre-arranged place waiting at their family's prestigious hospital. A place he'd never be able to work at no matter how well he did going forward.

He kind of liked the tone of the article, to be honest. It felt like the writer was raising one eyebrow at the doings of the upper crust. Unlike medicine, tabloid journalism was a true meritocracy. No one helped you or pushed you down. You wrote what you want, and if it sold, you were prosperous.

He had been pondering quitting for a month now. It would be painful to let his time and money go to waste, after all. But to test the waters, he nonetheless contacted the same place he'd read the article.

The author of the piece in question eventually talked to Shou. It turned out he was retiring and had at one point been a private physician. He was leveraging his medical knowledge to help other reporters with exposes of hospitals and pharmacies. He recommended Shou finish his school and training, and meanwhile, do occasional articles under another name for the paper. When he told Shou what he was getting paid, he whistled. It was about as good as he'd expect to make as a doctor. Hopefully, for much less work. And you didn't have to kowtow to anyone.

Pearl Diving

Maki was a little young to enjoy traveling to Europe, but she did like the weather in Greece, so far. They were watching pearl divers right now. It was a family — a mother and two of her daughters. Maki had been shocked to see that two other children, little more than toddlers, were tethered by one ankle to a post near where the pearls and money were kept. The woman was somehow very pretty, as, so Maki decided, were her daughters. The eldest daughter seemed to be about Maki's age, or a little younger, but was already working all day, earning her family's keep. Her younger sister didn't dive as often as the girl or her mother, but was still impressive.

All three females stared back at Maki after a while, very directly, and smiled. Maki was embarrassed, for some reason. She had been staring at them because they were all so pretty, after all. Also fascinating were the two gold bracelets each of them wore, even the two littlest by the post.

After a while, they swam in and the mother untethered the two youngest children. When their sisters called out to them, still in the warm ocean waters, Maki found that they swam like fish. This afternoon and their happy laughter remained Maki's main memory of Greece after they left. The eldest daughter looked over again at Maki and yelled something that sounded exactly like the word for "cute" in Japanese. Her mother looked at Maki then, too, and laughed and nodded.

Mermaid Confidential

Maki couldn't help it, the second she got a break, she went by where the girl had been taken. As she got closer, she heard an alarm beeping. Since the hospital only had serious alarms, to avoid alarm fatigue on the part of the staff, she ran into the room. No one else was around, and she started to try to stabilize the patient, who didn't respond to her efforts. Any minute — no, any second …

"Maki! Step away, we're going to sedate her into a coma and move her to the lab room!"

It was her mother, and her father was in the doorway. She titrated a powerful sedative into the girl's intravenous feed. She seemed dead, to Maki's eyes. She was ordered to help her parents carry the girl's limp, nude body all the way down the hall and then down another to the left, into an elevator. They went all the way to the basement, then her father entered a password into a box on a small door at the end of another hall.

The lab room looked like something out of a horror movie or, being gracious, an old science fiction film.

Shockingly, they deposited the girl over the railing into a shallow tank with an aerator. It didn't submerge her face entirely, but nearly. Needless to say, none of this had anything in common with anything Maki had been trained to think of as medical procedure. Despite what her mother had said about an induced coma, the girl was responding feebly. It must have been salt water, because it appeared to be aggravating the lacerations on her upper body.

"Oh, good," her father said, speaking for the first time. "Maki, go look her over."

Maki was really starting to feel like maybe she was simply dreaming all this. Nonetheless, on the off chance that she wasn't, she automatically obeyed. As she bent over the rails of the tank, the girl's eyes flew open. They were hypnotic — there was no other word for it.

She sat up suddenly, grabbed Maki's shoulders so firmly she bruised them, and brought her lips to Maki's.

As Maki tasted salt-water, she felt herself becoming drowsy. The girl didn't release her for a while. Then, just when Maki was on the verge of teetering over and passing out, a sharp pain in her arm woke her up. The girl had sunk her jagged teeth into Maki's bicep and was frantically licking the blood that oozed out off her arm!

Maki was frozen in horror, but as further proof that she was drugged or dreaming, the girl seemed to be turning into a fish. Her mother started a pump going and the water rose a bit. The girl stopped licking Maki's blood, stared deeply into her eyes, licked her lips, then submerged herself and laid still underwater. Her lower body was now covered with scales and her legs had merged into a fish's tail.

Her mother disinfected Maki's arm and bound it, quickly. "Sorry about that, dear. I think she likes you!"

"What IS she, mother? Father?"

"Well, she's not human like you or we are, Maki. She kisses to release toxins, and she drinks blood to heal. Her saliva is what made you sleepy. Which you have no time to be. We're both going to be very busy keeping her alive. You need to find her bracelets."

Her father handed her a ring of keys and a taser. "Work fast, as fast as possible. You've been around the A&E the most, recently. Who would do this, rob a dying patient?"

Nishikino Maki, Girl Detective

Maki had no time to over-think anything. If the culprit wasn't Taka Shou, her least favorite person at the hospital, the girl was probably doomed. But even if it was, making a scene wouldn't work. And if it wasn't, the furor it would cause would delay her even more. Still, it couldn't be helped. She had a universal locker key and she dashed over to the locker room and ransacked his locker. All she found that was suspicious was a flash drive. She ran to the spare office she used when she was tasked with helping with paperwork. The computer there was always on, so she shoved the drive in and opened it up.

Well, well.

The most recently opened document began "Girl Dies in Freakish Experiment at Mysterious Nishikino Mad Doctor Lair." Given that she hadn't, in fact, died yet, the story was a little premature. Maki had always detested Shou, who was whiny and lazy and chased after the other interns. But today she forgave that part: a bunch would be hitting the break room now, so she could probably find him there.

He was leaning against the door and harassing the smallest and prettiest intern. Bingo. Maki had no time to reason with him, anyway. She jammed the taser into him and gave him everything it had. As he collapsed to the ground, she stripped off his jacket and shook it. With a tinkly clank, the bracelets rolled out of a pocket.

Endure Your Happy Ending

"So, what is she besides being a succubus and a sea vampire?" Maki said, glaring at the tank.

It turned out the creature (Maki wouldn't call her a girl until she was one, again) could understand Japanese, and glared right back at her.

Her parents were alternating an hour with and without the bracelets, elevating her head when she was unable to breathe water. According to them, this pattern had stabilized her condition, and would make her heal twice as fast.

"Nico is the #1 pearl diver in all of Kalymnos, the #1 cutest mermaid in the universe, and is going to be the #1 idol in Japan - for starters. Maki-grump should show respect. Just because Maki-chan is unable to smile now — don't worry, Nico-nii will help Maki not be such a grump."

"I thought that was sponge-diving," Maki began, then suddenly, remembered the family in Greece. It had, sure enough, been pearls they were recovering.

"Ah ah ah!" the creature said, smirking. "You remember, right? Maki-chan was so cute visiting Kalymnos."

She looked at Maki's mother and shook her head theatrically. "What happened to that cute, sweet little girl, I ask you? What?"

At that, Nico faced Maki. "I'll have you know, Miss I'm A Human Doctor Wannabe So I Know E-ver-y-thing, that if you know where and how to dive, you can still find pearls in Kalymnos, just like we've been doing for millennia. Pays much better than sponges."

She informed Maki, in a more sober tone, that the family had migrated from pearl diving off the coasts of Japan to Greece after Nico's father was killed by fishermen, which they had nearly done to Nico now that they'd returned. Japan had much meaner fisherman, but Nico was planning on giving up diving anyway.

Then she looked a little thoughtful. "Nico owes you a lot, little girl. Thank you for retrieving my bracelets. If you give us …" she paused, calculating, ".. three years, Nico can bring you your weight in pearls. Don't go off your diet, though, that's cheating."

"What about my parents?" Maki wondered.

"They told Nico just having the chance to study her is reward enough. When Nico is tired and wants a break, she'll check into Nishikino Hospital and rest, and they can observe her. Besides …"

Could whatever weird thing she was … Okay, Maki, just admit she's a mermaid, already … blush? She seemed to be.

"… when Nico kissed Maki and tasted her blood, she discovered Maki is suitable to be the mate of the #1 mermaid idol in the universe. Nico has no idea what wonderful things Maki did in a previous life to deserve this, but there you go …"

"It's a chance to explore things no one else will get to do, Maki-chan. If I were young and single, I'd jump at the chance. Your career as a researcher is a certainty, and the things you can do to help people would be limitless. And her kind bond for life. We've talked with her mother, and they're fiercely loyal. Since she bonded to you, she can't have anyone else. And as long as she has the bracelets, you can have perfectly normal relations."

Perfectly ….normal?

Then she made the mistake of meeting Nico's eyes.

Nico grinned happily.

AN

Because I lined out and wrote up part of most of the AU Yeah! August prompts before becoming too busy in mid-August, I decided to finish up at least the ones I started. This is my first time doing this type of story series, even though I took up fan writing for writing practice two years ago.