FEARFUL OF THE NIGHT
By: Cy Mendoza
CHAPTER 11
THE HOSPITAL'S SECRET
Rotom floated beside Chip as they entered the pokemon center. Chip reached the main desk, finding Joy looking at him a bit suspiciously then looking at Rotom. When it appeared that Rotom wasn't being brought in on its deathbed, she finally relaxed and smiled at him. Sure, Rotom didn't look amazingly healthy, but at least it didn't look horrible, and she liked that Chip had learned his lesson from last time.
"Ah, you're back. That was fast. How can I help you?" she asked.
"Could you heal my rotom? I used a lot of potions, but… they didn't work for all its injuries." Chip reached to hold the PokeDex, and Rotom popped out of it with a little squeak. Chip stored it in his backpack for the meantime.
"Certainly. Could you place Rotom back in its PokeBall? I can heal it up right here on the machine behind me."
Chip looked at Rotom, and it shook its head. "Rotom doesn't really like being in a PokeBall. Can you take care of it like this?"
"Yes, of course. I'll call for a stretcher right away."
Rotom could feel that some parts of its body just weren't right. One of its eyes was blurry, and Rotom suspected that the explosion from Mimikyu's Shadow Ball had caused that. Both of its electric wings hurt, and the one that'd been broken still hurt when Rotom moved it. There were various other scrapes and injuries on its body that the potion hadn't fixed. All in all, Rotom felt grateful to be at the Pokemon Center.
The large doors leading into the PokeHospital opened, and a chansey waddled up, pushing a small stretcher. Chip took Rotom in his hands and gently set it down on the stretcher. Chansey started rolling the stretcher back toward the doors when Rotom let out a squeak of alarm. The chansey immediately came to a halt.
"Is something wrong?" Joy asked. She and Chip watched as Rotom and the chansey briefly conversed, then the chansey turned toward Joy and said something to her. "Hm. Your Rotom seems to be suffering from separation anxiety. It doesn't want to be taken from you and won't go into the hospital without you."
"Er… I thought we weren't allowed?" Chip said. He'd never seen a trainer go into the hospital unless they also worked there.
Joy sighed. "Trainers aren't allowed in the hospital, no… but sometimes we make exceptions if the need is great. If your rotom won't go into the hospital without you, then we'd prefer you come with than let it continue to suffer."
Chip nodded, and approached the stretcher. He ran a hand gently over Rotom's head. "Don't worry. I'll be here the whole time."
The inside of the hospital was far different than Chip would have expected, based on how human hospitals ran. Instead of having separate rooms for all the pokemon, there were stretchers lined up, and helper pokemon ran from stretcher to stretcher, checking on each one of the pokemon and writing on a clipboard. The chansey rolled Rotom's stretcher beside others of the same size. Chip looked curiously over the pokemon that were resting on the stretchers—a pikipek, pichu, and rockruff were Rotom's neighbors, it seemed. The rockruff was alert and watching the others around it. The pikipek was asleep, but looked okay enough—the pichu, however, had a blissey watching it and didn't look very healthy. It looked like it had been starved.
"That pichu had been abandoned," Joy said. Chip jumped a little, not realizing she was behind him. He thought she'd stayed in the front, but she had brought a chair back to the hospital for him to sit down in. He took it gratefully. "When you work in a place like this… you wonder why pokemon trust us at all. That pichu had been locked in a metal cage and left in an empty apartment after its owners moved out. Someone finally heard its cries. It came to us like this… barely holding on and starved. We think it hadn't been fed for two weeks. At least thankfully it had water."
"Seriously?" Chip asked, his eyes wide. "What will happen to it?"
"We'll be doing everything we can to make sure it heals up strong. When it's feeling better, one of us will take it home and take care of it until we can find a trainer that will treat it better than its first one did." Joy's eyes turned kind of dark. "But to be honest, none of us feel very good about adopting out an abused pokemon. Instead, usually one of us adopts it for good."
"How often does this happen?" Chip asked. Were there enough kind Joys in the world to adopt all the pokemon abused by their trainers?
A dark look crossed Joy's face. "More than I wish. But I just wanted to bring you this chair, okay? That blissey over there—her name is Gabriella—is assigned to your rotom. She'll be over in a moment to look over it and make sure everything's in tip-top shape." With that, Joy disappeared back through the hospital doors toward the front of the pokemon center. Chip sat in the seat, feeling like his naive view of humans and Pokemon getting along together had been shattered. He hoped to whatever deity watched over pokemon on this island that the pichu would recover from its mistreatment.
It took about ten minutes before Gabriella, the blissey, came up to the stretcher. Her curls bobbed and her wide smile brightened the room, making even Chip feel a little better when it approached. The blissey giggled pleasantly and leaned over Rotom, holding a clipboard in hand and writing on it. Rotom watched the pokemon curiously, its electric wings fluttering a little. The blissey had brought a cart with her, and was preparing something on that cart. As Chip leaned over, he saw the blissey was mixing a couple of different liquids and something powdered together.
"Blissey, blissey," said the nurse, chattering lightly with Rotom. Rotom nodded a couple of times and Gabriella moved to take some measurements—checking its heart rate, breathing, looking into the eye that was foggy, and so forth. She wrote down each measurement on the chart she was filling out. She continued her light chatter with Rotom, though whatever she was saying—and her voice sounded kind of teasing—must have been embarrassing Rotom, because the ghost blushed a little, then followed up with a couple mumbles of its own.
Gabriella looked up, then reached for something on the cart. She had a small package in her hands and offered that package to Chip. Chip took it, looking over the plastic curiously, then pulled it open. Inside were PokeBeans. What was he supposed to do with these? Surely the blissey didn't intend for him to eat them?
"Blissey," said the nurse pokemon, gesturing a little toward Rotom.
"Oh." Chip took one of the PokeBeans in his fingers and held it out to Rotom. The ghost pokemon's eyes rounded out in surprise and it leaned forward to take a bite from the bean. In the meantime, Gabriella hummed pleasantly to herself as she dipped a brush into the combination ishe'd mixed and started painting it carefully on Rotom's body. Rotom shuddered in pain, letting out a yelp—the concoction must have stung. Almost instantaneously, the bruises that'd stubbornly held on despite Chip spraying them with potions faded away.
Rotom munched on the PokeBean, though it grumbled a little from the residual stinging. Gabriella was preparing a needle and tapped it a little, gesturing again for Chip to give Rotom another PokeBean. It was then that Chip realized the beans were there to distract the patient from whatever the nurse was doing. Chip took another bean out of the package, this next one a pale green color, and held it out to Rotom. Gabriella injected something into Rotom, causing it to squeak in alarm and look back over to what the nurse Pokemon was doing, but it was quickly distracted by PokeBeans again and contentedly chewed on them.
"Blissey, bliss, blissey," the nurse said, clapping her hands in delight. Chip felt a little like she was congratulating him for doing a good job, and he smiled back a little in return.
The blissey then pulled out some sort of magnifying glass with a bright light and leaned over Rotom, looking at its foggy eye. Rotom looked a bit perturbed by this, squirming from the magnifying glass. Gabriella paused a moment, then said something offhand. The ghost responded, a nervous look on its face. The blissey gently put a paw on Rotom to hold it in place, then looked into its eye again with the magnifying glass. Rotom squirmed again, turning away from the light of the magnifying glass, and Gabriella sighed.
"Here, let me try," Chip said. He gently took Rotom in his hands, holding the ghost in one palm while gently stroking its head spike with his fingertips. He could practically feel the tension leaking out of Rotom's form as it relaxed with a mumble. Gabriella waited for a moment, then leaned over to look into Rotom's eye again. Chip felt Rotom tense up, but as he continued stroking it gently, Rotom tolerated the nurse looking into its eye without squirming too much.
After studying the nature of the injury, the blissey turned back toward her cart and started mixing something up again. Chip gently set Rotom down on the bed again, stroking its cheek gently with his thumb. "It's not so bad, is it?" he asked.
"Ro-to…" Rotom mumbled, blinking heavily. The bright light of the magnifying glass made it feel like it was blinded. The only thing that kept it from freaking out was Chip's gentle touch, so it closed its eyes tightly and leaned against its partner's hand, taking comfort from him.
Gabriella's new solution was clear, instead of thick and cloudy like the painted one. She sucked some of the liquid into an eyedropper and carefully squeezed some into Rotom's eye. Rotom flinched as the liquid hit its eye, its electric aura jumping around and hissing as it scorched the sheets. But as the ghost pokemon blinked a few times, Chip realized that the foggy color of its eye had returned back to normal!
"Aww, look at that! It worked really well," Chip said, reaching to pat Rotom's head with his hand. Rotom floated off the stretcher, fluttering its electric wings with a smile. "Is it free to go?" Chip asked Gabriella. "I mean, is there anything else that should be done?"
"Blissey. Bliss, bliss, blissey." The nurse pokemon held a small spray bottle out toward Chip. He took it and looked it over; it had a small label on it that said "spray on electric wings once every thirty minutes for the next two hours."
"Oh. Well, that doesn't sound too difficult," Chip said. He put the spray bottle in his backpack, then leaned down to pick up Rotom. The electric pokemon looked up at him and smiled, then nodded lightly at Gabriella and told her something. The nurse pokemon waved a hand with a laugh and pushed her cart off, moving onto the next patient.
Chip carried Rotom about halfway through the hospital before the ghost started floating and moved to hover over his shoulder. When he exited the hospital, Joy was back at her station near the front of the pokemon center and flashed them a warm smile when they approached.
"So how did it go?" she asked. "Is Rotom feeling better?"
"It was easygoing," Chip said. "No problems at all."
"That's wonderful to hear! We always love it when that's the case—" An alarm blared from inside the hospital. Joy started then stood up, rushing toward the doors. "If you'll excuse me, it appears we have a medical emergency."
Chip found himself tense, wondering what had happened, but he couldn't go into the hospital, not while Rotom no longer needed any medical help. He sat down in one of the waiting chairs for the moment, though, listening to the alarm blaring inside the hospital doors and setting Rotom in his lap. He pulled the prescription potion out of his backpack and—as Rotom offered up each electrical wing—sprayed the ghost pokemon's aura down.
"Roro…" Rotom said with a heavy, contented sigh. It flopped back in Chip's lap, letting its electrical wings rest against his legs, though its wings twitched slightly with each blare of the alarm.
The alarm fell silent. Chip sat up a little bit, waiting to see if anything would happen. When it didn't, he relaxed again, and started stroking Rotom's head with his fingertips. "Do you feel better now?" The ghost nodded excitedly. "Really? You're sure?" he teased, his fingers sliding down to tickle the ghost under one wing. "Really really?"
Rotom squeaked, rolling side to side as it giggled. "Ro-to! Ro-to!"
"Good. I'm glad. I think we should get some malasada now, and then we'll get back to training, okay?" Chip noticed that Rotom didn't seem all that thrilled about the prospect of more training. Honestly, he couldn't blame it. Maybe they could use a break. "Or maybe we'll eat and go to the beach… guess we'll have to see, huh?"
Rotom perked curiously at the mention of the beach. It had never been to a beach before, and even though it was an electric type pokemon instead of a water type, it was still curious. It nodded lightly then closed its eyes and rested while Chip sat there, until Rotom heard the sound of the hospital doors slamming and opened its eyes once again. It floated out of Chip's lap when it saw Joy heading back to her station. Her cheeks were streaked with tears that'd been brushed away, but her eyes were still red rimmed and inflamed. Her gaze seemed dazed, like she wasn't entirely there.
"Joy? Is everything okay?" Chip asked, standing up and approaching the front counter.
Joy didn't say anything, but just from the expression she gave him when he approached, Chip guessed what had happened. Rotom let out a long, sad trill, and Joy wiped her eyes again. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry. You'd think I'd be used to this, but it never gets any easier."
"The pichu…?" Chip whispered. Joy slightly nodded. Behind her, Gabriella slipped out of the hospital doors, a frown on her face. Rotom had never seen a blissey with a frown. It was the happiness pokemon, after all… but maybe under the circumstances, it could understand why she couldn't invoke any happiness right now.
"Blissey…" The nurse pokemon reached into her pouch and pulled out a small, hard-boiled egg, offering to Joy. After a sniffle, Joy took the egg and took small, steady bites from it. The light was returning to her eyes, and slowly she started smiling again. "Bliss… blissey?"
"Thank you, Gabby," Joy said. The smile on her face seemed eerily forced, Chip noticed. But he couldn't really blame her for wanting to medicate herself against the uncountable deaths and torment she witnessed as the pokemon center attendant. Hell, Chip would probably do the same thing, if he didn't quit the job out of sheer emotional overload.
She was strong, dedicated to pokemon, and Chip respected her for that.
A/N: I was checking my raw writing document and noticed this story is closing in on 100k words. Holy! I've never written a fanfiction this long before. I hope you guys are enjoying this too! I just had a ball in a later chapter introducing some reoccurring Team Skull folks. ;)
Special thank you to WyldClaw, RadBattery, and ShiningAura who have been so sweet to review my newest chapters. It really means a lot to me, guys!