Chapter 25
Getting better
I only had to wait five minutes for the medic to show up. She strode down the long ward with an air of importance and confidence. She sat down in the chair next to my bed. She wore a yellow blouse and a green Mino style wrap around skirt. A red facecloth covered most of her pale face. Her brown hair was pulled back into a neat bun, with not a hair out of place.
She sat in the chair stiffly, her face held not a hit of a smile. “Good afternoon, Fi-Rico. I am Me~Ra~Kalito and I’m one of the specialists in Sting treatment here at the Capital Hospital.” Her voice was a complete contrast to her body language. While her body was stiff and proper her voice was lyrical and relaxed with a hint of a western accent; she pronounced her ‘s’ almost as a hiss and her ‘t’s were slightly clicky.
She checked my temperature, breathing and pulse. I only had one coughing fit the whole time she was examining me. Yay me! “You’re very thin. When was the last time you kept a meal down?”
I wracked my brain to find the last meal I had properly ate. I took a strained breath and said, “maybe three days ago.”
“That’s not good, we’ll have to change that.” I could see a faint smile in her eyes. Me~Ra~Kalito stood up and put her things away. “I’m going to see if I can get you your own room. I can’t imagine you’ll sleep very well here, and you need to sleep.”
“Thank you Me~Ra~Kalito.”
Me~Ra~Kalito found me a room. Nurse Go-Kamata took me to my new room. It was small but had a window. The city bellow was visible through my small window. People rushed up and down the street. Carriages thundered along the road throwing up cobble stones. I had never been to the city before, I was amazed by how so many people could be in one place. So many people living and working in such a small area. It was amazing to watch. From my bed I had a perfect view out onto the street. That view was what got me through my Sting recovery. Without it I would have been driven insane by boredom.
My room was quiet and comfortable. For the first time in a very long time, I felt safe. I felt like a piece of shit that had been run over multiple times by a carriage full of bricks, but I felt safe.
I was just thinking about how amazing sleeping in my new bed was going to be when Nurse Go-Kamata came back into my room with food. Food, great, my favourite.
Nurse Go-Kamata sat in the chair next to my bed setting the tray of food down on the bedside table. He offered me a pill and a glass of water. “This one is better than the ones they have out in the field It’s the newest formula.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
I looked at him quizzically and asked, “why haven’t you supplied the field medics with it yet?”
“It’s being sent out now, but it was only recently approved to be mass produced.”
I took the pill. I was really hoping that it was safe to have. I had to trust they had tested it properly. The pill he to be forced down my throat. My body did not like eating anything. When I had swallowed the pill, Nurse Go-Kamata held the bowl of soup out to me.
Nurse Go-Kamata told me, “It’s vegetable soup. We found it says down the best.”
He was right. The soup went down much easier than other foods. It was still a struggle to eat but it was slightly more bearable. I was most happy by the fact that it wasn’t meat. Meat was the thing that made me feel the worst.
I managed to eat a significate portion of the soup. Nurse Go-Kamata seemed happy with how much I had eaten. I also didn’t throw it back up until five minutes after I had eaten it. Improvement! Nurse Go-Kamata had to hold the bucket out to catch vegetable soup. And that was exactly what it was. It looked basically the same as when it had when it had sat in the bowl just in a bucket instead.
When Nurse Go-Kamata left he gave me a sleeping pill and a remark about how sleep is important. And by stars did I sleep. No dreams visited me, and I didn’t wake up coughing or woken by someone else coughing. It was amazing. Unfortunately, I had to wake up.
When I woke up all the pain came back. The blissfulness of unconsciousness could only last so long. The morning came with food. Food that refused to stay down longer than five minutes. Then I went back to sleep (sleep was the only thing I could do). I was once again woken by food at dinner time. Food that came into my room in a bowl and left in a bucket.
This routine went on for a week and a half. I was too weak to do anything more than just lay there while people did everything they could to take some of my pain and discomfort away. Nurse Go-Kamata was my primary carer. He would always have a conversation with me even if it was often quite one sided ( my lungs hated conversations). He was kind and thoughtful. His kindness and my widow were what made my recovery possible.
* * *
After a week and a half at the hospital I woke up feeling better than I had in two weeks. I had been slowly getting better but that morning I felt leaps and bounds better than I had since coming to the Capital Hospital.
The bed that had once been luxury now drove me insane. I hated having to lie down all the time and have people do everything for me. That morning, I told Sting to go fuck itself and finally got out of bed. I stumbled to the chair, that Nurse Go-Kamata would sit in at mealtimes, and slumped into it. I was so happy with myself at that small achievement.
I was smiling like a little kid when Nurse Go-Kamata walked in. “Fi-Rico! You must be feeling better.”
He was smiling broadly as well. “I think I’m ready to have some breakfast.”
“Willing to eat. That’s a first.” He set the tray down on the bedside table. And in a pompos voice he said, “would you like to have your breakfast sitting in the chair or would you like to have it in bed.”
“I think I’ll stay in the chair Nurse Go-Kamata.” I had worked to hard to get to the chair not to stay in it.
“I think it’s been long enough for you to call me Kamata. Just don’t tell anyone it’s seen as improper.”
“Then you can call me Rico, Kamata.”
I ate all my breakfast that morning and didn’t throw up. I did feel so sick afterwards that Kamata had to carry to get me back to bed, but I felt so much better that morning that it was worth the coughing fit and stabbing pains that came with the movement. I was just so happy that I had managed to get out of bed all on my own. It was the best feeling.