Osteogenesis Imperfecta
by Joshua Falken
Thanks to BenRG for beta-read this chapter and to everybody that read and review the prologue of this fic :-)
Just a correction: the correct date of the news article in the prologue is June 12, *2063*, and not 2043.
Chapter 1 - Fractures
Viridian City General Hospital
June 14, 2063
In Room 814 of the Viridian City General Hospital, a woman and a Pikachu observed the boy in the bed, immobilised by means of plaster and various orthopaedic devices. The only sound they could hear was the bleeping and wheezing of various machines attempting to keep the boy's shattered body alive. The only movement that the woman made was to scratch the head of the electric Pokémon, trying to comfort him. It was difficult, however, to offer comfort when she felt none herself.
Delilah Katherine Ketchum jumped when she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.
"It's for you, Delilah." Professor Samuel Oak offered a cup of coffee kindly. She didn't hear him to enter.
"Thank you, Sam."
She turned her gaze back to Ash, sipping on the coffee.
"Has he woken up yet?" Oak asked. The look of fear in the eyes of the small Pikachu answered the question without words.
From the time he was hospitalised earlier that day, Ash had undergone five separate operations to stem the internal haemorrhaging and to attempt to repair his smashed skeleton. Until now, he had not recovered consciousness.
Professor Oak and Delilah stood in silence.
When Delilah couldn't take any more of the quiet, she suddenly stood up. "Where are Misty and Brock?" she asked.
A little afraid, he answered: "Misty is still giving her statement to the Security Police." Delilah frowned. "Well, she found Ash, you know... and Brock is talking with the doctors..."
Delilah nodded sadly. Prof. Oak observed her carefully. She seemed to be under control, in spite of the clear anguish in her face, but he knew her very well. He knew that she could break at any moment. The only time that he had seen her in that way had been when...
"My God!" She exploded and began to cry. "I can't believe it! Ash has gone so far... and now ... this!"
The only thing that Samuel Oak could do was to try to console her, hugging her in a clumsy way. But he could not alleviate her torment. What she always feared was happening now.
The nightmare that she had lived every day of her life for 13 years...
Pallet Town Memorial Hospital
February 14, 2050
Delilah had shut her eyes, holding back the pain screams.
"Push! Harder! One more time!" The doctor encouraged. "He is coming!"
Delilah pushed and heard a strong cry. She smiled. Her son had been born.
The cry got stronger. Much stronger.
Feeling that something was wrong, she opened her eyes. She saw that the nurse took her baby outside of the childbirth room, quickly and the doctor's astonished glance. But what scared her were her son's arms and legs. They hung of the body... as if they were...
"What happened?"
The only answer that she obtained of the doctor was a haunted glance.
=========
Later, she went into the nursery. And she saw her son, Ash, for the first time.
In some ways, it was an impossible vision. His limbs were immobilised with plaster. The white of the eyes had a strange blue tone. The whole scene seemed surreal, making her heart wrench in her chest with pain and fear. She could see the pain in the son's eyes...
"Mrs. Ketchum?" A short red-haired doctor asked. Delilah nodded mutely. "I'm Dr. Brenda Wiggins. I think we need to talk."
===========
Two weeks later, Delilah brought Ash to his home, in the outskirts of Pallet Town. He slept in the cradle beside her bed, while she read the diagnosis for the seventeenth time. A strange, almost alien-looking name that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
She began to sleep and the paper dropped in the ground. The light of the lamp illuminated a name: Osteogenesis Imperfecta.
Osteogenesis Imperfecta: A rare disease of the bones where colagene failed to lock' into the required shape. It left its victims, of which Ash was one of less than thirty known in the whole world, with bones that were frequently awfully malformed and always dangerously brittle. Worse, there was no cure. It was a genetic disease, an error in the proteins and codes of the DNA. In most severe cases, like Ash, it is a terrifying curse without any hope, and without any escape. Delilah would spend the rest of her life fearing that it was, somehow, her fault. That she had done something wrong in those nine long months that had condemned her son to life as a helpless cripple.
The day was perfect. Delilah was playing with Ash in the Pallet Town Park. Both smiling, one for the another.
"Ash, catch!" she tossed a volleyball to him, that he caught easily. He began to run in her direction, when, suddenly, he fell. The sick sound of bones cracking could be clearly heard. She tried to move, but she was paralysed. The sound continued, as the number of fractures increased, the bones shattering and punching out through his flesh. That sound began to compete with Ash's agonised screams...
Delilah woke up, drenched in cold sweat. It was just a nightmare. She left her bed running, and she hugged her son, who slept peacefully in his bed...
Pallet Town Pokémon Research Centre, offices of Professor Samuel Oak
October 7, 2056
In the living room, three people were drinking coffee: a strong white-haired man, a tall red-haired woman, and a brown-haired woman, with very elegant clothes. The redhead had a tense expression, and was staring out of the window, not turning around for a second.
"Calm down Delilah! Ash will be okay!" Her old friend, Prof. Samuel Oak, said smiling.
She smiled, embarrassed. "I know, Sam. I just can't help it."
He shook his head. "What could happen with him playing with Gary and May?"
"He can get Gary in trouble." Sarah Millicent Oak, daughter-in-law of Prof. Oak, said. Sarah was visiting her father-in-law that day.
Oak rolled his eyes, silently asking Delilah to forgive his son's wife: Sarah was the most arrogant person than he knew; he didn't understand how Kevin could have wanted to marry a woman like this!
In that moment, a girl with long black hair, more or less eight years old, entered in the room, scared out of her wits.
"Mommy! Grandpa! Mrs. Ketchum!"
"May! What's going on?" Her mother asked, angry for her daughter to be so hysterical when her mother was with other adults.
"Gary and Ash were talking about who could get a ball that was caught in a tree branch, over there, by the lake." May choked down a few sobs and began to wave her hands urgently. "Gary dared Ash to climb in the tree, and he climbed and he got the ball. But then then Ash slipped and fell. Now, he is screaming in pain!"
By the time May reached that part, Delilah and Prof. Oak were already running in direction of the lake. Oak threw a Pokéball in the air. There was a red flash and a Marill appeared.
"Marill, search for Ash... NOW!"
The water-type tracking Pokémon took them directly to the place. Gary was wearing the biggest expression of idiocy in the world. He simply gazed in stunned amazement at the fallen boy in the base of the tree, with his legs distorted in an impossible angle. Impossible for anyone with leg bones still in one piece, that is...
"ASH!" Delilah screamed, running towards her son. Oak drew another Pokéball, this one with the Red Cross symbol, and threw it forward. A Chansey healing Pokémon appeared and she went directly to the casualty, joining her Trainer, Prof. Oak himself.
After a fast examination, Chansey verified that Ash had broken both legs below the knees and recommended immediate hospitalisation. Oak called up his Kadabra, and he asked him to teleport Ash, Delilah and Chancey to the Pallet Town Memorial Hospital.
The four of them disappeared in a blue-white flash. Professor Oak drew in a deep breath and looked at his grandson with a fierce expression. Gary looked up at him, still wearing an expression of utter idiocy and innocence, something that did not fool his grandfather one bit.
"I think you owe me an explanation, Gary."
Pokémon Indigo Division Stadium, Viridian City
October 26, 2056
"Trainer Sharpler recalls his Venusaur and ... choose a Stellix! Will the rock Pokémon stand the heat of the flame-thrower of Trainer Vonnegut's Charizard?" The commentator asked the crowd, which cheered and urged the two Pokémon on.
"Go Stellix!"
"Turn that stone to charcoal, Charizard!"
Delilah looked at her son, at her side, in the crowds. She smiled, when she saw the way that his eyes shone, not losing one moment of the Pokémon's movements. He had completely forgotten the crutches that he had to use, due to the accident at Professor Oak laboratory. Indeed, it was Professor Oak who had given the tickets for the Pokémon League Indigo Division finals...
The Stadium's loudspeakers relayed the orders of the Trainers with perfect clarity.
"Charizard! Flame-thrower! Maximum power!"
"Stellix, dodge and Burrow attack!"
Before there was a chance of the fire touching him, the rock Pokémon dug a hole in the middle of the arena floor. Before the Charizard had a chance to realise what was happening, it was knocked out as Stellix exploded out of the ground directly underneath it.
"Bout and Match: Sharpler and Stellix!" the umpire confirmed.
"Richard Sharpler wins the 2056 Indigo Division Championship! That was the faster rock against fire fight I already saw..." the commentator enthused.
Later, Delilah and Ash went back home and Delilah had to run to keep up with him, so thrilled that he was.
He spoke, when they stopped in front of the house: "Now I know what I want to be!"
"And what you want to be, Ash?"
With the eyes shining, he answered: "A Pokémon Master!"
Although she smiled at Ash, inside Delilah's heart shrivelled with fear...
Pallet Town Central Police Station
March 18, 2058
"I understand how you must feel about this misunderstanding, Mrs. Ketchum, but please understand that it is my duty to properly investigate this sort of accusation." Official Jenny Clancy said in an embarrassed and apologetic tone.
"I understand." Delilah Ketchum snapped. She turned and left the police station, without once looking back. She got into her car and started it, still looking very upset look. Ash watched her carefully and, bless him, noticed her anger at once.
"Mom, is everything ok?"
"Huh? Oh, yes sure." She tried to smile, but she couldn't. She could not believe what had happened. Ash's teacher had, based on the injuries caused by a fall, accused Delilah of abusing him! How could that... that witch even think that she could do a thing like that to Ash?!?
The oppressive silence continued while they proceeded home. Ash suddenly spoke up, sounding embarrassed and ashamed. "Mom, I'm sorry."
"For what?" she asked in surprise.
"For being this way."
Delilah couldn't believe what she had just heard. "What?" she blurted.
She saw the uncertainty in his blue and brown eyes. "You got in trouble with the police because I hurt myself," Ash explained. "I've caused you so much trouble... because I'm not, well, 'normal'."
Delilah started crying. She had to stop the car at once. As soon as they were stationary, she leaned over and hugged Ash as hard as she dared. "Oh Ash! You don't have to apologise for being who you are! Remember this: you are the best thing than happened to me in my life! You're perfectly normal and you can be anything you set your mind to be! And whoever says that there are limits to what you can do is completely wrong!" She looked at his eyes. "Do you understand?"
"I understand," Ash said, his usual sunny smile re-emerging. "I love you Mom."
Ketchum Home
April 25, 2060
"Pokémon Journey Application (Parent/Guardian Approval) Form" was the name of the document that she read. She just need sign it, and her son would receive his Novice Trainer's licence and leave on his Pokémon Journey in May 1st.
For any mother, that was a difficult decision, but for Delilah Ketchum that was the most difficult decision of her life. She knew that the life of a Pokémon Trainer was hard, very hard. She feared that Ash could not stand it, that he could be hurt so seriously that...
In her head, images of when Ash was born with his arms and legs broken and when he suffered the most extensive fractures in his body. Her every instinct screamed at her, saying: Don't sign! Don't let him leave to be part of that madness!
She got up off of the sofa in the living room and went to her son's bedroom. It was entirely filled with things about the Pokémon and the League. Ash slept, with a smile in his face and a book on his chest: "History of the Pokémon League."
This meant a lot for Ash and she knew that he dreamed about it everyday. Since he saw the finals of the League when he was six years old, there had been a light in his eyes... and she remembered a chat that they had in the car in an afternoon of March of 2058...
She lifted the pen and signed.
In that night, a nightmare that she didn't have for ten years came back... And one day, three years later, it finally came true.
Viridian City General Hospital
June 14, 2063
"I'm sorry, Sam," Delilah said trying to restore her composure. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, embarrassed by her reaction.
"It's alright. You had to blow off some of stress that you must be feeling."
Pikachu tapped his Trainer's mother's leg, trying to reassure her.
"Did you see? Even Pikachu thinks it was all right."
She smiled thankful at the electric mouse. "Thank you. To you both."
On that moment, Brock Harrison, the Gym Leader of Pewter City's Boulder Gym, entered in the room.
"Hello Professor Oak. Hello Mrs. Ketchum."
"Brock, hello. Have the doctors have any information yet?"
"Actually..." Brock was interrupted by a coming sound of the bed.
"Huh? Brock? Pika...chu?"
Delilah, Brock and Pikachu ran to the bed, while Prof. Oak called the ward nurse. Suddenly, everyone smiled. Ash Ketchum had recovered consciousness.
To be continued... Chapter 2 coming soon!
What do you think?
Read and Review! :-)