Ch 18: Hiatus
It's not a secret that Wintervale is known as the ritziest of all the cities in Ilragorn, being the one that garnered the most money in taxes from its wealthier citizens, and thankfully a lot of that money went back into the government-funded buildings like the Wintervale Pokemon Center. With the overflow in funding, the resources at Wintervale Center way exceeded any simple old Poke Class in the basement of the Peltagrow Center.
A Salamence had come zipping through the sky bearing a blue-and-yellow scarf wrapped around its body symbolizing it was government-affiliated, with Nurse Joy clinging dutifully to its neck. The blue dragon had blown a massive hole in the opening of the treetops with a mighty Dragon Pulse, and had descended to the forest floor with urgency, its body taking up the entirety of Sillstone Cemetery. Nurse Joy worked quickly, prioritizing me after seeing the mangled state of my right arm, saturating me with a myriad of different potions and drugs, calmly explaining that the pain killer she was using on me was extracted from Butterfree's Sleep Powder specifically since Butterfree's are known for their sleeping moves to work the fastest. That was the last thing I remembered as Nurse Joy released a Chansey that wobbled over to my fainted Tropius while Drapion and Haunter just watched them work to save our lives. Then everything had blurred out.
I had been invited and encouraged to stay and recuperate at the Wintervale Center (with a significant chunk to the wallet) while I waited for my arm to heal from the damage. It turns out I had not broken it, but dislocated my right shoulder instead. While it was a quick fix due to the miracles of plenty of ice, some potions, more pain killers, and plenty of bedrest, the sudden shift from constantly being on the move in my nomadic lifestyle to being able to just sit around and lounge all day reading was pretty damn comforting. It almost reminded me of the solitude and calmness I missed of my old bedroom in Lunaris.
The long periods with no human contact since Nurse Joy had so many tasks to fulfill on a daily basis could have potentially been pretty lonely, but I happened to share a room with another trainer, a few years youngers than me and definitely less experienced. His name was Tyson, and he had confided in me that he had been fishing for some pokemon, in an area by the local boardwalk, out of sight anybody in the usual area around Wintervale Beach. Tyson said he was hoping to catch a rare pokemon in the ocean waters since he didn't have enough money to buy one over at the Wintervale Daycare where pokemon were specifically bred and trained to be as competitively viable as possible. Tyson had been attacked by a Carvanha; it was unusually aggressive, bouncing from the waters to chomp on Tyson's left hand, taking off a few of his fingers in the process.
Tyson had definitely been shaken by the experience, in much the same way I had been by both losing Kabutops as well as almost dying, and I think we both found some solace in finding a new friend to share our adventures with who was so interested. Tyson found my traversing through bug shit in the Gord as interesting as I found his details of privileged life as a resident in Wintervale.
Before I knew it, the month staying there turned into months, and I knew that I was dragging ass out of fear going back out there into the world of battling. I was right there - I was at Winterale City. The gym was right here in this city, probably a 20 minute walk away from the room I'd been in for going on three months now. My arm had long since recovered to its previous unimpressive glory, but I continued paying into my savings to stay tucked away in my lavish room, joined by Tyson as we both shared our stories of the glory days while we kept taking more and more painkillers harnessed from Butterfree's Stun Spores and Sleep Powders to dull the pain of boredom of accepting that we were trapping ourselves in this hospital room.
Even while I was doping up on powders, I made it a point to let the members of my team get some air and remain active. Drapion, Tropius, and Haunter especially thrived outside of their balls, and spent most of the time wandering in the play area for pokemon, sparring with each other or other healthy pokemon in the area for some battle experience. Haunter was impressive, using his free time to befriend the head Blissey and get extra favors from the head nurse's main pokemon such as free range over the entire hospital that the other guest mons would never dream of. It wasn't uncommon late nights for Haunter to bring me back free snacks he had phased through the vending machine, and we never faced repercussions from it, even when I know Chanseys or Blisseys in the hallway saw him lugging an armful of gummy bears.
Drapion stuck mostly to the play area where he was essentially the king of the hill, as none of the other pokemon ever seemed to want to battle him, even with him egging them on with a snarl. The only pokemon that had challenged Drapion was a young, arrogant Dhelmise that had taken one Knock Off before falling to the floor, unconscious.
Tropius spent far more time in his pokeball than the other two, his enthusiasm for battling fading along with my own. When he was out, he stayed along Drapion's side since he knew him the longest and they shared a bond in their loss of their comrade Kabutops. There was definitely a shared respect that Tropius and Drapion bore toward Haunter, knowing he was responsible for their lives as well as mine being spared from the horrors of spooky pokemon in their natural habitat. They never gave Haunter an attitude or challenged him to fight.
It went on like this for a while, with me and Tyson beginning to encourage each other that it was totally fine to take as much time as we need to recover fully so that we would feel less guilty about doing it ourselves. There were times I felt so frustrated with myself, as I knew my team was even though they never openly voiced their concerns. My team was so damn strong, even without Kabutops, and the positives from that scenario are how much stronger me and my team were for overcoming it. Yet there was something terrifying about getting back up on that horse after falling in such a spectacular way. It just seemed too easy to keep overdosing myself with Stun Spores every day rather than check myself out of the center and go that next step of facing the second gym. Maybe I had been more shaken by my first gym encounter than I would care to admit to myself, and there was something nerve-wracking about going inside one again and facing such a tough opponent like Zach.
What made my decision to check out was decided for me: Tyson had stolen a few extra vials of Stun Spore powder under the nose of the Chanseys with the help of his tiny Pichu, and had spent most of the night injecting himself with much more than the automatic machine could ever safely administer into our bodies with the remote attached to our armrest. He had, of course, overdosed. His Pichu was taken away the next morning to be taken to the Pokemon Daycare for review of usefulness, where it was likely not going to be sought after competitively. Tyson had told me that spare pokemon in Wintervale were to be donated to the Daycare, as per the law of the city, and that the undesirable ones were usually skinned and sold to the black market or sold to restaurants for food. The desirable ones just had a life consisting of training, learning specific moves, and breeding specifically natured babies, which did not seem like much of a win to me.
Tysons accidental death was the kick in the ass, the bucket of cold water, the piano landing on top of me that I needed. The day I discovered one of the only people I ever considered a friend was no longer on this earth with me and had spent his last few months wishing and dreaming for something better but did nothing - that was the last day I was checked into that center.
I hurried to throw the disgustingly comfortable silk white pajamas onto my bed and threw on the weathered jeans and t shirt I wore when out training that I hadn't felt against my skin in over 3 months. Nurse Joy was busy trying to safely get a wild Zubat that had entered through the automatic glass doors to exit where it had come from, using a rather large butterfly net made of metal. I grabbed my backpack, where Tropius and Drapion were still sleeping in their balls. On my way down the hallway toward the front door, Haunter emerged from behind a wall and snuck a few last gummy bears into my backpack as I returned him to his pokeball. I left the center, stopped briefly outside as I recalled which direction Tyson said the gym was, and then continued on.