"Code Blue"
By I am a good fighter
Powerpuff Girls created by Craig McCracken and all characters associated with the show are owned by Cartoon Network
Blossom had been sitting up when the three walked in, and she flew right past Sara to the professor the moment she saw him.
"Why is this happening to us?" she cried into his chest. Sara had already told her that the professor's device was not going to be able to help her sister. He had no answer for her. He lifted her chin.
"Blossom, this is Dr. Vora. She's going to make you all better."
"Hello, Blossom." she said with a smile, extending her hand. Surprised, Blossom put hers out. Vora was amazed at how soft it was, thinking that it would feel like the steel battering ram it always looked like on the news.
"Can you really help me?"
"Yes, Blossom, I think so."
"But why can't you help Bubbles?"
"You must not think about that now. You must concentrate on positive thoughts. It will help you to get well faster, and that is what Bubbles would want."
"I know." she sobbed. "It's just so unfair!"
All of the adults in the room agreed with her and none knew what to say. Just then, the door opened and in stepped the young technician that had done the CAT scans.
"Dr.Waldman, you wanted to know when I was finished with Buttercup?"
"Yes, thank you." he said. "I'll be right there."
She closed the door. Sara said. "I'll see you before you go in, Blossom. I'm going to go sit with Buttercup."
"It will be all right for her to come here." Dr. Vora said.
"Yes, that's a good idea." Waldman agreed, and headed for the door. He opened it for Sara, then said, "I'll be back in a few minutes." and left.
The professor carried Blossom back to the bed and put her down. The doctor came over to stand next to her. "Blossom, would you like to ask me any questions before I leave to prepare?"
"Is it gonna hurt?"
"You will be asleep. When you wake up, your head may be a little sore where I've gone in, but we can give you some medicine for that. Your brain can't feel pain itself. When you get a headache, it's in your blood vessels that you feel it. So it shouldn't hurt too much at all."
"When can I fight crime again?"
The doctor didn't know how to answer that one. She looked at the professor. Blossom followed her eyes to his.
"Honey, we can't answer that right away. You girls have always healed quickly, but this is a little different. With the way you get banged around, I want to be sure you're completely back to normal first."
She considered that. She knew he was overprotective of them but that did make sense."Hmmm. Yeah, if I get my head smacked on the sidewalk before it's all better, that wouldn't be too good."
"Okay. Am I gonna lose my hair?"
Vora took over again. "Well. We will have to shave you where I'm going in, so that means you'll have to lose most of your ponytail, but not what's on top. It will grow back, though."
"I'm gonna have a bald spot?"
"Yes, for a short time."
"Well, in that case…Professor, me and Sara were talking and she told me about a place that takes hair and makes wigs for people with cancer whose hair falls out."
"I've heard of that, I think." he said.
"It's called 'Locks of Love." Vora told them. "That's a very nice thing to do, Blossom, if that's what you want."
"Yeah, if I get better, it'll grow back. If I don't, then I won't be needing it anymore."
"Now, Blossom, you'll be up and around before you know it. I don't want to hear you talking like that."
"I'm sorry, Professor." she said, her eyes downcast. She glanced up at him. "Will you come with me?"
"No, honey, I have to stay outside. But I'll be right there when you wake up."
"I want Bubbles to be there, too."
"I'll be there with you, Blossom," she heard Bubbles voice say. "I'll always be with you."
She began to cry.
It had been nearly a half-hour since LeBeau had left the imaging center area for the front of the hospital, and he was back there again, in the same disguise. He knew he was wearing it out and he thought he knew how to take care of that. But before he left for the media room and, what he felt, was a bogus press conference, he wanted one more piece of information. He slipped unnoticed into the empty room across the hall from the prep room and waited with the door open a crack. Several white-coated doctors, surgical team personnel in green scrubs and nurses in blue frocks and pants walked past, and a few beds were wheeled by with patients on their way to be taken either to the imaging chambers or, in the other direction, to surgery. After a few minutes, he heard a voice he recognized, that of Buttercup, complaining loudly about something. He peeked out and saw her floating alongside Bellum. They went into the room across the hall. Less than a minute later, Waldman came down the same hall and also went into the room.
Cautiously, he took his mop pail out into the hall. He was in luck. Waldman hadn't closed the door all the way. He went into his act, mopping the floor, head down. During the next several minutes, he would be interrupted once. A security guard came out around the corner far down the hallway and spotted him with his ear to the door, not mopping for the moment.
"Hey! You!"
LeBeau spun his head around. "Oh, man! Think fast!"
"Que?" he asked. He'd learned Spanish as the required second language for earning his degree.
"Whatta you think you're doin'?" the man asked loudly, coming faster.
LeBeau looked down and started mopping, acting disinterested.
"Hey, buddy, I'm talking to you! What's so interesting in there?"
He looked up. "Que?" he said again. He shrugged. "No comprende. No habla Ingles."
The guard sighed. He pointed to the door and cupped his other hand up to his ear. LeBeau again shrugged. "Quién sabe? Todos esta hablando Inglés." "Who knows? Everybody is speaking English."
The guard was equally lost with the unfamiliar language. "Well, get back to work." Seeing LeBeau's perplexed look, he made exaggerated mopping movements with an 'air' mop. "Muy el moppo. No el listeno."
LeBeau laughed inwardly. "You'd think this place could afford to hire some bilingual security." What the man had just said was, "Very moppo. Not the listeno.", and would never know that it wouldn't mean a thing to someone who knew no English.
He gave the guard a sheepish grin and looked at the floor while resuming his 'mopping'. "Lo siento." he said, and the guard gave him a final stern look and moved on.
The interruption would prevent him from hearing everything but he learned some very important information. When he first began to listen, he heard loud sobbing coming from inside.
Sara had told Buttercup the situation with Bubbles, and upon seeing Blossom, she flew to her and they embraced each other.
"Oh, Blossom, what are we gonna do?" she wailed. The adults just left them alone for the moment. They needed a few minutes together.
"I know, Buttercup," Blossom said softly into her sister's hair. "But we hafta find a way somehow. I hafta get better and we just hafta go on. Until I'm better, it's gonna be up to you."
Buttercup pulled away, the sudden sense of her responsibility hitting her. She sat next to her sister on the bed and looked up at the grown-ups; the doctor, Sara and the professor. Dr. Vora had already left to go over Blossom's chart and CAT scans with her surgical team of four nurses and the anesthesiologist, and to wash up and change. Buttercup saw Waldman looking right at her and he was holding a piece of paper in his hands, and she knew. "Oh, great, me too. Right?"
"No! NO!" Blossom shrieked and threw her arms around Buttercup, who just smiled grimly. "I shoulda expected it."
The professor looked at Waldman for explanation. Sara made her way behind the girls and placed her hands on their shoulders. Buttercup told the doctor, "Go ahead, Doc, I can take it."
"I'm not quite sure what to say." he began. "There is definitely something here." He showed the professor the side view first. A small spot, much smaller than the one on Blossom's scan, appeared in the same spot, near the brain stem. The top view showed nothing.
"This is nearly identical to Blossom's." the professor said. The girls looked at each other.
"Yes, just not as advanced." Waldman stated. "I'd guess one to two weeks' difference." He looked at Buttercup. "Buttercup, I don't want to risk doing surgery on you until we see how it goes with your sister."
He looked at the professor. "I wish Dr. Vora was here to see this. Girls?" he asked suddenly. "Can either of you recall being exposed to anything unusual recently?"
They looked at each other again and shrugged. "I can't think of anything." Blossom replied.
"Me either." Buttercup agreed. "Everything we come up against is kinda unusual, so who's to know?"
"What are you saying, Doctor?" the professor demanded. "You think this might not be cancer at all, but something caused by an outside substance or force?"
"I think it is cancer, but the fact that it's happened to all three of you girls suggests an outside influence. Long term exposure to chemical agents could cause it, even something short-term from monster secretions, but both the spacing and the seemingly identical patterns tells me it's not environmental."
LeBeau never got to hear the rest. He'd forgotten the time; what he'd been hearing was so fascinating. But it was just after one-thirty and he had to get to that press conference…
"What? You mean somebody DID this to us?" Blossom asked, suddenly outraged.
Buttercup flew off the bed, a dangerous look on her face. "I bet it was Mojerk!" she yelled. "Or Him! Or…" She ran out of gas along with possibilities, and slumped down next to Blossom. "I can't remember anybody sticking us with anything…"
"Or spraying us with anything, and not exactly two weeks apart, either." Blossom said.
"I know who did it." the professor said, slumping into a chair. Everyone spun their heads his way. "I did it…it was me, girls. Without knowing it, I must have planted the seeds of your destruction within you when I created you."
They were all over him. "NO!" Blossom wailed. "NEVER!" Buttercup bawled.
"Professor, that couldn't be either," Sara protested, "or it would all be happening at the same time."
"Professor, I understand you want to find something to blame it on, and it's easy to look to yourself, but she's right." Waldman told him. "This isn't your fault and it may not be anyone's fault. We may never know what caused this, but it isn't important right now. TREATING it IS."
"Yes, Doctor, of course, you're right. I'm sorry, girls, I'm not helping things any." They just continued to sob softly into his chest as they clung to him.
Just then, a member of the surgical team, a woman in her forties dressed in green scrubs, came in. "It's time to get you ready, Blossom. Professor, Dr. Vora needs you to demonstrate that gun, so I need you to scrub and change for me."
The girls looked up. It was time for things to start happening. They hugged each other again.
"I love you, sis. You're gonna be OK. I'm gonna be right here." Buttercup said quietly.
Blossom suddenly remembered all that she never got to tell Bubbles. And now there wasn't time, again. "I love you too, Buttercup. Don't worry 'bout me. Go be with Bubbles." It struck her that she might not see her sister alive again, and her eyes filled with tears again. She whispered, "Tell her for me…" It was all she could get out.
"'Kay."
"Come on, Buttercup, let's go get something to eat." Sara pulled gently at her arm.
"Okay. 'Bye." She waved to her sister, who gave a weak smile back as they headed out. "'Bye, Professor."
Outside the room, she told Sara she wasn't really hungry. "Where's all our stuff?"
"Oh. Back in the waiting room. After we get it, what would you like to do?"
"I wanna go see Bubbles."
Waldman was just stepping out of the room. "I'm headed there myself. We can go together."