A/N: *triumphant music* Yay! I got the chapter up before leaving!
So yeah, this means no more updates for about a week. I'll probably be able to get a chapter up a day or so after I get back, and maybe another the day after. :)
.:':. .:':. .:':.
They endured another silent car trip, Megamind still unconscious, and the two conscious occupants too keyed up to make small talk. One good thing about driving around in the invisible car, Roxanne reflected, was that nobody would see them until just before they entered the hospital.
Minion insisted once more on carrying the incapacitated blue alien. In truth, he felt a sense of responsibility for not having recognised earlier that something was seriously wrong, despite the fact that he'd had no way of knowing that things would get this bad. They made their way to the front desk quickly – luckily, there were few other new patients checking into the hospital. The receptionist, blonde and a little on the plump side, started as she recognised the trio, and her shock made her forget herself. "Oh dear, what's happened? I've heard what's on the new, of course, but they don't know much, anyway, and-" She stopped, realising that now was not the time for chatter. "I'm sorry," she apologised quickly. "That was unprofessional of me. What seems to be the problem?"
Roxanne ran a hand through her hair, clearly on edge. "We don't know. He's been unconscious since the …incident… at the mall, except for about fifteen minutes ago, when he woke up and started vomiting blood."
A small crease of concern formed in between her eyebrows and she pressed the intercom button. "Could I have Dr. Malloy to the front desk, please? Dr. Malloy to the front desk."
Noticing Minion and Roxanne's questioning gazes, she explained, "Dr. Malloy is the chief of staff. We've never had to deal with extraterrestrials here before, which is understandable." She smiled slightly, trying to lighten their mood. "I'm not sure how much help it'll be, but he's the best doctor we have at this facility."
The doctor appeared about five minutes later, carrying a clipboard in the crook of his arm. He had short, spiky black hair that was generously flecked with grey, was a little under average height and a face creased from a lifetime of smiling. He appeared to be somewhere in his late forties. "What's happening, Jenny?" he asked the receptionist. Then, his eyes lighted on Roxanne and Minion, the latter of which was still cradling the inert form of Megamind. "Ah, I see. Why don't we take the elevator to one of the upper floors?" he asked them. "I'm guessing that the less people see him here, the better?"
Roxanne nodded, glad the doctor had caught on so quickly. "Yes, that'd be good, thank you."
Nodding himself, he rubbed his hands together. "Okay, come along this way." He led them towards the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. Their ride was quiet, much like the trip to the hospital had been.
Once they arrived at the designated floor, he directed them towards an empty room. They drew numerous stares as they made their way through the corridor, and many of the patients that could walked to their doors and watched them go past.
"Okay, so what symptoms has he been showing, and for how long?"
"Um," Roxanne took a second to gather all her thoughts, making sure she didn't forget anything. "It started with tiredness – that was about three weeks ago, wasn't it, Minion?" The fish nodded. "Right. Then, a few days after that, he had an onset of amnesia, which he still hasn't recovered his memories from yet. That's happened twice more since then, but I'm fairly sure that he's got his memories from both those times. He lost different amounts of memories each time," she added. "And each time it took a different trigger to get him to remember. The first one, we still don't know. The second time, I slapped him, which seemed to work." She coloured a little as the doctor grinned at her, nodding thoughtfully. "The third time – that was at the mall earlier this week – he seemed to snap out of it at my voice, but he was unconscious a few seconds later so I can't be sure. Then, just before we took him here, he woke and started vomiting blood for about two minutes before going under again – that was when we decided we really did need to get him to a hospital, even though you might have some difficulty testing an alien." She smiled to show she meant no offence.
"Well, that's certainly a list," he said mildly, and Roxanne's cheeks flushed lightly once more with embarrassment. "No, no, that's good," he assured her. "In these situations, we want as much detail as possible. I'll need to assemble a team so we can get testing underway, and hopefully figure out what's gone wrong with our city's hero. I'll be back in a few minutes," he promised.
Dr. Malloy left the room, then returned soon after, a small team of doctors and nurses trailing in behind him. They proceeded to run several tests on the unconscious blue hero.
There was a brief moment of commotion when Megamind woke while one of the nurses was taking a blood sample. Convinced he had somehow ended up in an alien research facility, he lashed out at the nurses around him, knocking a number of them to the floor with the suddenness of the attack. He glanced around wildly, chest heaving, then paused as he noticed Roxanne and Minion hurrying over from where they had been waiting across the room. Roxanne had been sitting on one of the plastic hospital chairs and Minion had been standing, seeing as he would have crushed the small chair if he had attempted to sit on it. They quickly reassured him that he was in a hospital, and that the staff meant him no harm. He quietened down, still seeming a little suspicious, but apologising to the downed nurses regardless.
Minion and Roxanne exchanged a relieved glance as they helped up the knocked-over nurses. Megamind then insisted he didn't need to be in hospital, while Roxanne insisted that he did. She reminded him that he'd been vomiting up blood. His face blanched. Obviously, he had forgotten that until now. He was swept with a wave of dizziness and fell back, unconscious again before he hit the pillow. The rest of the testing was completed in relative silence.
Dr. Malloy came and went during the entire process, often jotting down notes on his ever-present clipboard, and once everything had been finished, he returned to the room once more to talk to Minion and Roxanne.
"Now, it'll take a few hours for us to get the results, then a few more for us to try to diagnose what's wrong with him. We may not be able to do too much in that aspect; after all, he is an alien, and we're unfamiliar with the way that he functions. But we'll try our best." He smiled at them reassuringly. "That's our job, after all. I'm assuming you'll want to stay with him for the wait?" They both nodded wordlessly. "Yes, I rather thought so," he murmured. "Well then." He shuffled the papers on the clipboard that seemed to be surgically attached to his arm and smiled at them again. "I'll see you all again in a few hours' time, hopefully with good news." So saying, he left the room, his doctor's coat billowing slightly. Minion and Roxanne settled themselves in. it would be a long wait.
.:':. .:':. .:':.
"Well, it was certainly a challenge for us here, though probably not as much as we'd expected." Dr. Malloy told them several hours later, once the results had come in and a diagnosis reached. Megamind had woken sometime earlier, and remained conscious. He was a little weak and had deigned to stay in his bed, but he was more or less back to his old self. "After all, aside from the blue pigmentation of his skin and his enlarged skull, his anatomy is essentially human.
"But his brain… it really is fascinating." He ran a finger down the paper on his clipboard to keep check of where he was. "It's significantly larger in size than a human's, suggesting a far superior brain capacity. What's more, the scans we took indicate that, percentagewise, he uses approximately ten times as much of his brain as a human would at any one time. And that's without even factoring in the size differences. Basically, he's the smartest person on this planet."
Megamind leaned towards Minion. "I like this guy."
Dr. Malloy, overhearing the blue alien's stage whisper, grinned briefly, but quickly became serious again. "Fortunately, the problem doesn't lie in his brain – as far as we can tell, it's perfectly healthy. We've theorised that the amnesia he has been experiencing is merely a symptom.
"If it's I'm not sure we'd be able to successfully operate on his brain without causing damages, due to the fact that we don't really know that much about how it functions compared to a human's, or how it would react to surgery in the first place." He tapped the clipboard absently with his forefinger.
"We are fairly certain we have discerned where the problem lies." Roxanne and the two aliens all unconsciously leaned forward. "It's his lungs."
"My… lungs?" Megamind looked down at his chest, as if he thought that if he looked hard enough, he'd see his lungs, and what was wrong with them.
"Yes, your lungs," Dr. Malloy affirmed. "Why do you seem so puzzled?"
The bed-bound alien shrugged. "I don't know. Just one of the last things I would have expected."
"Well, what was the first thing you'd imagined it would be?" A glint of humour danced in the doctor's eyes.
"I don't know!" he repeated, slightly flustered. "I just never would have guessed that the problem would be my lungs."
"Oh, I'm sure you would've guessed it eventually," Roxanne couldn't resist chiming in. "After all, there are only a limited number of things in the body that can go wrong."
"Quite," Dr. Malloy replied, feeling that they were getting a little off topic. He decided it was time to steer the conversation back to where it was supposed to be. "So, yes, the problem is in his lungs.
"See, as far as we know, Earth has a unique atmospheric composition – that being roughly seventy-eight per cent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, one percent argon, and a few other trace gases, including carbon dioxide. Whatever planet Megamind came from had a different composition, which is understandable – most planets have differing compositions anyway. But that's where the problem is." He tapped his clipboard again. "Megamind, the air of this planet is killing you."
"Of course it is," he replied, not understanding. "With all the pollution you humans produce, I'm surprised the life expectancy of your race is anywhere near where it is." He turned to Roxanne with a grin. "I have been trying to come up with something to counteract the way you people are poisoning your planet."
Dr. Malloy shook his head. "That's good, of course, but you misunderstand me. It's true that the harmful airborne substances are having effects on pretty much all life on Earth, but you in particular. Your body was meant to function on the atmospheric composition of your own planet, not this one."
"Wait, you mean… I'm dying?" he asked, the doctor's words finally sinking in. Roxanne and Minion swivelled their heads towards Dr. Malloy in a synchronised movement, eyes probing questioningly.
The doctor nodded glumly. "I'm very sorry, but without knowing the composition of the air of your home planet, there isn't much I can do to help you."
Megamind squared his shoulders. "Have your machines at least told you how long I have left?" He didn't completely succeed in keeping his voice from quavering.
His eyes dropped to the clipboard. He always hated this part of his job. "From our estimates – which may not be entirely correct mind you. You may have more time." Or less, he added to himself. "You have about three months."
.:':. .:':. .:':.
A/N: I realise that a lot of the in-hospital stuff might – no, scrap that, I know it does – sound off, but I've never been to hospital before and I've got no idea how things are conducted. Sorry for what are sure to be numerous inconsistencies compared to what would occur at an actual hospital. D: If you have any suggestions for the betterment of that, please share.
Though I do have to admit writing all that medical-techy stuff for Dr. Malloy was way more fun than it should have been. :P
Oh yeah, and Megamind has three months to live. There's that too. *grins*
-pixie.