All The Ice Cream You Can Eat
2: The Bedridden Alchemist
Warning: Post series and pre movie; this story may contain spoilers for both.
Disclaimer: I don't own FMA nor any of the characters. I just like to play in it's world for awhile.
Rating: T, just to be on the safe side, there might be mild cursing later.
Author's note: Would you believe I wrote this back in MARCH!
After what seemed like an agonizingly long wait - just five days actually - but it felt like a year to an impatient ten year old - Izumi sent her answer. Just one word - "Come" - and she'd enclosed a second-class train ticket. Alphonse was so excited, he tried and failed several times to properly pack a suitcase, so Granny Pinako did it for him. All the way to the train station in the village, he only half listened to the lectures Winry and Rose gave him about proper behavior on the train and at Izumi's house.
When the Dublith-bound train finally arrived, he was jigging madly in place while Rose spat on a handkerchief and used it to wipe jam residue from around his mouth while he protested "I'm not a baby any more!" This was his first solo train trip and he couldn't wait to get going. As the train chuffed from the platform, he leaned out the window and waved until he couldn't see Rose and Winry anymore. Alphonse watched the country side fly past for a while, but that got boring after twenty minutes, and he eventually fell asleep, using his suitcase as a pillow.
When the conductor called "Next stop, Central!" he woke up quickly, excited all over again, to see the capitol city of Amestris. It was distinctly underwhelming, and Alphonse was happy to leave it behind as the train started southward from Central; through Palm, New Optain, Rush Valley, and finally - DUBLITH. Not only Izumi, but also her husband, Sigu came to meet him. And if Izumi was surprised to see a ten year old, and not a fourteen year old boy, she never let it show on her face. But it was hard to surprise Izumi Curtis anymore, she had seen so much.
Training would start the next day, so Alphonse was sent to bed early; Izumi would have him up at dawn for exercise. A light breakfast followed, while Izumi quizzed Alphonse to find out what he already knew. He had retained quite a bit of what she had previously taught him, but it was obvious there were woeful gaps in his alchemy education. On the good side, the boy was eager to learn, and easier to train than Edward had been.
Alphonse happily settled into his new routine: up at dawn, workout, breakfast, training, lunch, then more training until supper. He soaked up knowledge like a sponge and made only a very few errors, and consequently Izumi handed out comparatively mild disciplinary beatings. He grew stronger in both mind and body, and each night before going to sleep, he would repeat his mantra: "Soon, Brother, I will find you!"
However...
He'd just passed the six month anniversary of his arrival at Dublith when he awoke one morning with a fever and sore throat, bad enough to make morning exercise difficult. Alphonse tried to hide his discomfort, but when Izumi noticed his reddened face, she cut the work out short and ordered him back to bed. The soreness made swallowing difficult, so Izumi alchemically brewed throat medicine and gave him a tablespoon of it once an hour. It helped - a little - the fever went down, but the pain in his throat came back, and was even worse the next day.
Alphonse was now thoroughly miserable, and his throat hurt very badly, even when he didn't swallow. Izumi went to work on stronger medicines - they tasted bad - so she mixed them with rich beef broths which she fed to him a spoonful at a time. She was an excellent cook and the broth was delicious, but the medicines didn't work - the pain kept coming back. When Izumi felt under his jaw, she noticed hard swellings, and just gently touching them made Alphonse wince and pull away. She was obviously dealing with a chronic condition - Alphonse would need the help of a traditional Hippocratic healer.
The pediatric healer, Dr. Uhuru, was a cheerful lady who tried her best to put the unhappy Alphonse at his ease. She seemed to know at once what the problem was, but she was also tactful enough to confirm it with Izumi. Putting a tongue depressor in his mouth, she used a small flashlight to point out two fleshy swellings partway down his throat.
"See those Miz Curtis?"
A cool nod was Izumi's reply.
"Those are his tonsils all swollen like that and making the poor boy miserable, I'm afraid they will have to be removed before he gets better!"
"Tonsillitus?" Sigu said that night, after Izumi had put Alphonse to bed. "Poor kid. On the good side, a new pediatric hospital opened here last year, so you won't have to take him all the way to Central to get them taken out."
Izumi flashed a brief smile in reply. "I'll take him there tomorrow and he'll undergo the surgery the day after that."
She packed a small overnight bag for him that evening; and Sigu took the next morning off from his butcher shop to lend support to them. Alphonse wasn't thrilled by the prospect of surgery, but he couldn't take much more of the pain his tonsils were causing him.
Dublith was small enough they were able to walk there from the house, the new pediatric hospital being only a mile away. It was a cheerful looking building: four stories high, it's outer bulk was broken up with bays, and punctuated with lots of windows, the whole painted in bright, primary colors which befitted a hospital dedicated to caring for children.
Izumi nodded in approval at the main entrace to the hospital, a series of arched entryways which progressively became smaller as they approached the street made it look inviting, the smaller scale obviously designed to reassure nervous patients. On one level, Alphonse knew he had nothing to fear, but he stopped short before the doors and hung back. He had a feeling he couldn't explain to either Sigu or Izumi: this place gave him bad vibes.
It took Sigu getting down on one knee and talking gently to Alphonse for a few minutes to persuade the boy to enter the building. Once inside, they walked through a cheery, sunlight and plant-filled atrium to the main desk. Sigu kept a hand on Alphonse's back with his fingers rubbing it in gentle circles, he could feel the boy trembling under his touch. Izumi turned and frowned at Alphonse, she could sense his growing unease, as if he was ready to bolt, and it made her strangely irritable.
An instant later, her mood was broken when a teenage girl in a pink and white striped uniform bounced up to her and chirped "Good morning, ma'am!" Izumi'a eyes flashed at the word ma'am. "May I have the patient's name, please?"
"Alphonse Elric." Izumi gave her a slightly creepy smile. When she had to, she could do shiny, happy too, although it made her teeth throb.
"And what procedure is Alphonse here for?" asked the perky candy striper, who either didn't feel Izumi's death-ray look, or she was pretending she didn't.
"A tonsillectomy."
The girl turned her syrupy smile on Alphonse, who started like he'd just seen something terrifying, it clearly said you poor thing, I'm glad I'm not in your shoes.
The girl nodded and made a notation on the clipboard she carried, then chriped again. "If you will walk this way please, I will take you to the exam room." She turned to her right and practically skipped away, which caused Izumi to give Sigu and Alphonse a sharp look which clearly said don't you dare!
The admitting process started with a physical exam from a way-too-cheerful intern who took Al's pulse, listened to his heart and lungs (with a very cold stethoscope), and weighed him. Alphonse slapped his hand away when he tried to touch the swellings under his jaw - his throat was by now extremely sore - but the intern didn't seem too perturbed.
But when the man approached him with a needle and tried to take a sample of his blood, Alphonse objected so strongly, both Izumi and Sigu had to step in to calm him down. He held his breath and looked away as a finger tip was pricked, and blood filled a small tube.
"Now then, that wasn't so bad, was it?" the intern chirped in an almost perfect imitation of the candy striper's.
Alphonse scowled back - he was in agony - why was everyone so damn cheerful?
He could walk perfectly well, but a nurse took over and made him sit in a wheel chair to be taken to the children's ward. It was all a lot of bother over nothing as he was able to get out of the chair and go behind a privacy screen to put pajamas on before climbing into the hospital bed. The ward was full of other kids - a few his age - but most younger; nearly of them also admitted for tonsillectomies.
"It's like a tonsil plague." Sigu muttered.
Now the admitting process was done, it was time for the adults to leave. Sigu ruffled his hair and gruffly muttered "Be a good boy now".
Then Izumi lightly kissed his forehead before she murmured to him "Your throat will be very sore after the surgery, so you can have all the ice cream you can eat afterwards. What's your favorite flavor? Vanilla? Chocolate? Strawberry?"
Alphonse just smiled andnodded after each question- as long as he could have ice cream, the flavor didn't matter. Izumi gave him one last smile before following Sigu out, and then he was alone.
Alphonse clutched the thin bed sheet to his chest and wondered what was coming next. He soon found out when a no-nonsense nurse in a highly starched uniform walked up to his bedside, flipped him over on his stomach, pulled down his pajama bottoms and stuck a thermometer where the sun doesn't shine.
The boy uttered a startled "Urk!" and looked back in shock. He tried to pull his pajamas back up, but she slapped his hands away with a preemptory "Stop that!" Alphonse could feel his face warming with redness - he felt every kid in the ward was staring and pointing at him - his blush deepened to kill me now before I die of embarrassment proportions. This couldn't possibly get any worse.
Yes, it could.
Author's note: OK, I used some artistic license in the finger sticking department, but I remember the embarrassing agony of that damn thermometer. Poor little Alphonse, it's about to get worse for him.