Regaining
consciousness swiftly, however, soon proved to be one of Sano's dumber
ideas, when not a minute after he'd begun coming to terms with the fact
that he was now Megumi than a knock sounded on the door and a child's voice
spoke timidly, "Um, Dr. Takani? I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you, but Dr.
Genzai really needs you at the clinic." Groaning, Sano propped himself
up into a sitting position and rubbed gingerly at a growing bump on his
head, calling back grumpily, "Yeah, come in." A creaking sound signaled
that the messenger boy had accepted his invitation, and soon afterwards
a kid around Yahiko's age pattered uncertainly into the hallway.
"So
they need the fox lady--uh, I mean, me--at the clinic, huh?" Sano demanded
dryly, his mind whirring for an excuse to worm out of his doctor's duties.
"Listen, kid, I'm not the person you want, why don't you try bothering
this really mean, grumpy-looking policeman called Saitou...?" He started
to suggest, when he noticed that the messenger boy's face had slowly begun
to turn an interesting shade of red. Sano paused in mid-ramble, giving
the boy a funny look while demanding, "You all right, kid?" The boy quickly
averted his eyes, apparently finding the wooden floorboards in front of
his feet suddenly very interesting, while he squeaked out, still blushing
furiously, "Y-y-yes, Dr. Takani." Sano started to thoughtfully tap his
chin, wondering if this peculiar behavior was all a part of growing up
in the Meiji era.
It
took him a full five minutes, with the messenger boy still keeping his
eyes steadfastly on the floor and occasionally squeaking some lame excuse
that he should go to the clinic, for Sano to figure out that as "Megumi,"
he'd been wearing nothing but a flimsy little white nightgown during the
entire conversation.
"Oh."
Personally, since this was Megumi's body being disgraced, Sano wasn't exactly
all heartbroken, but common sense told him that if he was being forced
to make house calls in the middle of the night, it might be wise to throw
on something warmer than just a flimsy nightgown, so he grumbled, "All
right, all right, I'll go change and assist Dr. Genzai at the clinic."
He started to get up and head on over to his--Megumi's--bedroom, when he
suddenly remembered something. Turning around to the messenger boy with
a small frown on his face, Sano asked pleasantly enough, "Hey, kid, do
you happen to know how a kimono's supposed to be put on? I mean, can you
help me dress, because frankly, I have no idea how to--" He never got to
finish his sentence, when the messenger boy gave a little croak and fainted
dead away. Sano stopped, looking down thoughtfully at the poor kid.
"Hmm.
Now, how am I supposed to fix a nosebleed again?" he wondered to himself.
Personally,
I never knew how fanatically organized a little clinic could be at two
in the morning, Sano thought wryly to himself as he watched all the
patients lined up in a neat, straight procession, waiting to be treated
by one of the best doctors in Tokyo, Dr. Takani Megumi.
"This
isn't good," Sano swore under his breath, wondering where to begin.
After
five long minutes of debating where to start treating the patients, he
finally decided he might as well begin with the healthiest-looking patient,
a tall, strapping youth in his late twenties. Walking over to the young
man and trying to look as knowledgeable as he could, Sano spoke, "What
is your name, sir?"
"Hanazawa
Shigeru, Doctor...but I'm planning to change my name for my religion,"
he answered seriously. Sano nodded, pretending to look attentive while
the man's words went in one ear and happily zipped straight out the other
as he wondered to himself whether he could take one more step in Megumi's
kimono, with its insanely straight and narrow skirt, without tripping and
falling on his face.
"Religion,
huh?" Sano improvised, asking, "Are you a very religious man, Mr. Honolulu?"
"It's
Hanazawa," the man corrected him, "And yes, I am quite religious, Dr. Takani."
"Good,
good. Here's what you should do," Sano began to dictate. "Pray five times
everyday to Buddha, and he'll, uh, purge your body of this uncleanness."
His patient leaned back, startled.
"But
I am not a Buddhist," he said slowly. Sano shrugged.
"Oh,
so you're one of those Christian converts, then," he guessed. "Fine, pray
to Jesus five times everyday, and he'll purge you."
"Dr.
Takani, you don't seem to understand," the patient interrupted. "I am a
devout follower of Islam." Sano nearly tripped over the clunky soles of
Megumi's wooden sandals and fell flat on his butt at hearing that, as he
gabbled, "You are? How many kinds of missionaries do we have in this country
anyway? Never mind, just pray five times to, uh, whomever Islams pray to,
and you won't need me to prescribe you any medicine."
"We're
called Muslims," the man replied in a tight voice, as Sano shrugged and
shooed him off, grumbling, "Whatever, I don't care." He grabbed a little
dark bottle and shoved it into the man's hand, adding, "But take this medicine
along, anyway, in case your higher powers don't cure you." Interestingly
enough, Sano failed to notice the little label pasted on one side of the
bottle, which read in the real Megumi's neat, careful handwriting, Constipation
Treatment. Out loud, he congratulated himself as his first patient
left the clinic, "Hmm, I'm starting to get very good at this. Leave it
to Megumi to exaggerate all the hard work and duties that goes with being
a doctor! I can handle this with my eyes closed!"
Half An Hour Later...
"Dr.
Takani, we need you to attend on Mr. Ishino's surgery--"
"Dr.
Takani, you have three new patients waiting to be treated by you--"
"Dr.
Takani, little Emi's thrown up again, can you help us clean up the mess--"
"Dr.
Takani, there's been a complaint that you prescribed horse medicine to
a pregnant woman for her chronic vomiting--"
"Megumi," Dr. Genzai spoke quietly, "the elderly Mrs. Matsui has just informed me that your language with her was rather, er, how should I put this, vulgar and disrespectful?" Sano, collapsed exhaustedly on the floor and cursing the higher powers that had brought on this switch, glanced over dully at the good doctor and mumbled, "Was I? It sounded like my regular everyday language to me."
Fortunately
for Sano, before Dr. Genzai could start questioning Megumi's sanity, a
new person walked into the clinic--an American girl.
"Please,
I'm looking for a doctor," she spoke urgently in awkward, badly-accented
Japanese. "My mistress is in, well, she's been in a certain condition for
the last nine months, and she needs a doctor desperately tonight," the
little maid finished delicately. Dr. Genzai nodded to Sano, asking him,
"Megumi, you won't mind cutting your impromptu break short, will you? Perhaps
you can go and treat the patient at her house." Sano shrugged, muttering,
"Sure, all right. I've been through it all tonight, how could it get any
worse?" He started to get up and follow the little American maid out the
clinic doors, before a thought suddenly occurred to him and he turned around
and asked, "Wait a minute--what is this condition that I'm supposed to
treat, anyway?" He then tripped and fell for the umpteenth time from inexperience
with walking in long and narrow kimonos, failing to hear Dr. Genzai's reply
but assuring himself that it couldn't possibly be too bad.
At The Americans' House...
Nurses
and maids scrambled everywhere, carrying washcloths and hot bricks wrapped
in towels in the wake of a long and difficult birth. Just then, a man walked
up and flagged down the nearest house servant, asking anxiously, "How is
she?"
"She's
definitely not in the best shape of her life, but she'll survive," the
little maid replied seriously. "She's resting now. Do you want to see her?"
The man nodded.
"Of
course," he said. "I'll have to bring her back to the clinic with me...By
the way, how did the birth go?" The little maid's face shone with pride,
as she gushed, "Oh, he's a beautiful baby boy. His name is going to be
Raiford Jonathan Hampton, after both his father and his grandfather. Mrs.
Hampton was so brave during the entire birth, she never panicked, not even
when the supposedly experienced and dependable doctor you sent over fainted
dead away during the first stage of labor." Dr. Genzai frowned thoughtfully
to himself at that, thinking out loud, "I wonder what's wrong with Megumi
tonight. She's not acting like herself at all."
An Hour After That...
Sano settled himself on the front porch of Megumi's house, exhausted out of his mind and somewhat embarrassed that he, Sagara Sanosuke, ex-Sekihou Tai member, the former gangster and fighter-for-haire known as Zanza, had passed out cold and hit his head against the knees of some bossy black woman everybody called Big Mama at his first glimpse of where babies truly came from. The bedroom where the American woman's baby had been delivered was as hot as Hell itself...but at least he got something good out of it, he thought wryly to himself, glancing down at the insanely wide hoop skirt he was now sporting instead of Megumi's kimono. Sure the hoop skirt ballooned to ridiculous proportions--all of Sano's earthly possessions could easily fit under it with plenty of room to spare--but at least it allowed him far more mobility than the neat, narrow, and straight skirt of Megumi's kimonos that had caused him to trip and fall down with every other step and were responsible for the several red-and-purple bruises now decorating his body. The entire American household had been too preoccupied with the new addition to their family to notice when Sano had stolen one of the ladies' dresses...but it was still so incredibly hot in this outfit, even with the generous skirts. Sano reached down and undid the top three buttons, then glanced around to make sure nobody was around to see him, before hitching up the hoop skirts to his lap and fanning his legs.
Suddenly, there was the sound of pounding footsteps screeching to a halt, and, as Sano started to look up, his own voice shrieked at him, "YOU BONEHEAD, ARE YOU PURPOSELY TRYING TO RUIN MY REPUTATION?!!!"
Present Time...
Sano
nodded wisely as he finished his tall tale.
"And
that's exactly what happened. I promise," he said earnestly, while beside
him, Megumi continued to fume. Kaoru looked confused at the ending, and
Kenshin asked incredulously, "So you spent the entire evening dutifully
looking after patients, paid one last house call and sacrificed your sleep
while doing so to attend on a dying American woman, miraculously brought
her back to life but was then ambushed by her evil American son, who tried
to convert you to Christianity and forced you to wear one of their Western
dresses, but you somehow managed to escape after initially running around
in hysterics like the "idiot fox lady" that you are, came back here, and
flipped up your skirt to take off the miniature Bible the evil American
son had tied to your ankles?" Sano nodded again.
"That's
right," he confirmed, the picture of innocence, then glanced around at
all the wide, disbelieving eyes fixed on him, and scoffed, "Oh, come on!
Is that so hard to believe?"