Crossover Fan Fiction / Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ Reason And Accountability ❯ Hospital Ward ( Chapter 21 )

I awoke in a hospital bed. There was a beeping machine beside me and one of those IV bags. I was female with perky teenage boobs and serious wound in my abdomen. I started Heal and found that YET AGAIN, the gods of this world had attacked a woman by stabbing her in her womb. What the hell, gods? A gentle query of the entirely worn and tormented girl’s brain found she was named Tokiwa Kyoko, aspiring war zone photojournalist (rethinking that now). She was best friends with Chidori Kaname, a lovely girl with a terrible temper and a boyfriend who looked like the guy from Samurai X, called Sagara Sousuke, an alleged military otaku who knew far too much about explosives, IEDs, weapons, and combat. Investigating him and frequent observation suggested he was actually a child soldier, not an otaku, and his cute military flashes were actually post traumatic stress disorder and legitimate training with an actual private military company. He knew about places like Afghanistan and spoke a number of foreign languages. Her research eventually found his name on a passenger list for a plane forced down by hijackers in Afghanistan in the early millennium.

Tokiwa’s current injuries were related to something similar to their failed Okinawa school outing, when the plane had been hijacked to a militant region called Khanka. They’d been rescued, but the air crew were murdered and a really scary guy had demanded Kaname as a hostage. This time there was an attack on their school involving a bunch of guns, a giggling villain with a mecha, and exploding vests. A bunch of kids were killed. School itself was partially destroyed. Her peaceful life was damaged and Sousuke was racing to save Kaname, yet again, from a kidnapper. Those two and their kidnappers. Always with the giggling villains.

The heal spell eventually repaired a bunch of damage to her intestines, one of her ovaries, a large cut to her womb, and bits of metal and debris from the explosion. The kind of stuff that would have left her crippled and unable to bear children if not repaired carefully with magic. The kind of event that would give her nightmares for the rest of her life.

The ward nurse found her awake and called for a doctor to give her the news about the damage that was already healed by me. I hardly know how to feel about being a spirit with magical powers, hopping bodies like this. It reminded me of that one movie with Denzel Washington about evil angels hopping bodies to commit murders. That movie gave me nightmares for months.

When the doctor removed my bandages and found my stomach smooth and healthy he was shocked, as you would be.

“There must be some mistake? You look like the patient but the wounds are gone?” he was very distraught and went to the ward nurse, searching for me. I stripped off the bandages, and disconnected and removed needles and tubes, stopping machines at my bedside. I was unable to find my school uniform, so I walked out of the hospital ward, getting stronger. I would like a cheeseburger. Some American food to celebrate my recovery. Of course I had no money, so I couldn’t do that, but the huge military APC parked out front of the hospital gave me an idea.

“Oi! Buy me a burger,” I called through the open window. A soldier stuck his head out.

“That’s subject Tokiwa. You were wounded. What are you doing out here?” asked the young man.

“Some stuff. I’m better now. But I want a burger.”

“We’re on duty, ma’am. The terrorists could come back.”

“They won’t. They were after Chidori and Sagara, as usual. Those two are gone so the terrorists chased after them.”

“Well, that’s as may be, ma’am, so you should go back inside. The cafeteria can serve you a burger.”

“Really?” I asked them. They confirmed this. I went back inside the hospital. There were a lot of bored or sick people with forms and pens, filling things out. I guess I could do what I usually do in hospital. Started randomly healing people in the waiting room. Cured a guy on dialysis. Fixed a sore back, a common injury. Healed a broken arm on a crying kid, who stopped crying immediately. Cured a colicky baby with a worried mother. Fixed a mother’s milk fever, which was on the way to killing her. No hot baths when you’re a breast feeding mother, ladies. The stain of expressed yoghurt and free flowing milk was an embarrassment she’ll be able to live with. She rushed to a bathroom with her baby to clean herself up.

I wandered through the cancer ward, healing all the sick there, then the dialysis center, which had a dozen people sitting through blood treatment because their kidneys failed. That was always a delay in death. Dialysis is always fatal. Healed kidneys, with their millions of nephron cells restored, would give them decades a life. Fixed some heart attack damage in a series of obese patients, and fixed some blood pressure problems in a frowning lady executive with a headache that was an incipient stroke that would have shredded her brain and left her a vegetable. Timing was critical. I eventually found the café area and ordered a burger. They raised an eyebrow and I told them I was from the school so the bill went to them. A burger and fries, and a plastic chair and a bunch of families of the wounded. What had happened to Japan that international terrorists would invade a high school in suburban Tokyo?

The really strange thing? I can’t cure baldness.

Returned to the ward I’d woken up in, tired after eating and found a quiet chair to rest, drifting off into a nap.