Anime Hospital Episode five: Royal Pain in the Neck
begin opening credits
(sung)
We hate Animes
What's with these guys anyways?
Tiny mouths and hubcap eyes
Repair bills are on the rise
Karl better soon get wise
Before it's one of use who dies.
Dr Karl Stoopenstien
Had a little to much wine
Now we're stuck in space and time
Tell us, just what was our crime?
Now we're the
ANIME HOSPITAL!
ANIME HOSPITAL!
Nine to five we're curing ailments
Of people purely fictional!
Toni's got an attitude
Let her bark, her bites hurt more
Heather's got both her eyes glued
On every single guy's barn door.
Mike's a romantic
Pam's a mystery
Karl's always frantic
Brain the size of a flea.
Life's a little dangerous
Doctors only raise a fuss
Screaming out our final plea
All we want's reality!
Cause we're the
ANIME HOSPITAL!
ANIME HOSPITAL!
Nine to five we're curing ailments
Of people purely fictional!
C R A S H ! !
Anime Hospital Episode five: Royal Pain in the Neck
Heather and Mike had made it to the cafeteria for lunch early, and the energetic nurse was showing off some of her artwork to Mike. Mike patiently flipped through her sketchbook, and seemed to be genuinely impressed.
"These are quite lifelike, Nurse Farley," he said as he turned another page. "You are very skilled. It disturbs me, however, to see so many drawings of Doctor Stoopenstein getting killed."
"My favorite is the one where he's in drag and is stuck in the Urotsukidoji Universe," Heather said brightly.
Mike simply winced.
Toni and Pam finally arrived, and Toni glanced at the sketchbook. "Say, those are pretty good!" she said. Mike turned a page, and then quickly tried to turn to the next one, but Toni stopped his hand and looked closer at the picture. Mike was averting his eyes and blushing furiously, while Toni's jaw dropped in stunned disbelief. With a perplexed look on her face, she tilted her head one way to look at the picture, then the other way. Finally, she looked up and said to Heather, "You drew these, didn't you?"
"Do you think it's lifelike?" Heather asked with a bright look in her eyes.
Toni looked back one last time at the picture before Mike turned to the next one. "Well they look real, if that's what you mean, but I don't think the human body can bend like that."
Heather smiled and said, "Oh, yes it can,"
"Nurse Farley!" Mike said, shocked.
After lunch, Heather remained behind to finish her latest picture. Finally, she put her book away and started to head off for work. Before she got far, though, she noticed something lying off to the side of the hall. She walked over to where it was and noticed that it was a strange pair of glasses. She bent over (at the waist, just in case there were guys watching.) and plucked them up from the ground and studied them critically.
They were round, like spectacles, but had a strange yellow tint to them, and the ear clips felt like twined hair. Curious, she put the glasses on, and peered through them.
Just then, a doctor passed by, and Heather started to turn away when she whipped her head back to look at him. Her jaw dropped as she followed the doctor's path, but that gape quickly transformed into a openmouthed grin.
Heather slowly put her hands together and began to rub them in anticipation.
Toni sat at the front desk and searched through her immense stack of papers for a file when the fron doors flung open with a snap and a rush of air burst into the room. Toni's hair began to rise up, but she caught it and stuffed it into her collar, mumbling, "I hate that effect." A lovely, girlish laugh filled the lobby and a man in thick robes quickly came in. Following him was a gurney moving of it's own violation.
"You couldn't just once do a mundane entrance, could you?" Toni said, but since she hadn't said it loud enough to be heard, she simply welcomed them with a "Aren't vampires not supposed to get sick, Miyu?"
The Gurney wheeled its way to the desk, but stopped short a few feet away. Larva fell next to it as he hovered protectively over the girl.
Miyu slowly lifted to a seated position on the gurney and said, "It is so, but there is a very rare disease. A group of shinma found it and I was infected."
Toni rolled her eyes and said, "Lovely, another 'rare disease' left to us to find a cure to. You don't look to worse for the wear. What've you got, a toothache?"
Miyu giggled and said, "No, I have Contrary Hemolitis. I am powerless when too close to non-shinma, and anyone who gets too close to me develops an uncontrollable urge to suck my blood."
"I bet Himiko wasn't very teary eyed when she heard about that."
Miyu simply stared at her with her penatrating eyes. Toni breathed a sigh and said, All right. I don't know how we're going to treat you under those circumstances, but I'll have them set up a room for you."
"Thank you."
Larva and the Gurney floated to the waiting room, while the other people in it parted to form a wide berth for them. Toni watched them move away and said, "I hope Takahashi doesn't catch wind of this. I could just see 'Vampire Forest' popping up in the RumikWorlds."
Suddenly her bemused expression faded away, and she gasped in shock. Had she seen something familiar out of the corner of her eye? She turned to her left and saw a young girl pass down the hall. The girl was about seven years old, and was clutching a Sailor Moon doll in her hands. She had two tails of hair clipped to her head, to make her look similar to the likes of Usagi, though her hair was a dark raven black. She bounced down the hall and out of sight with a giggle, and Toni took a nervous gulp.
"No, please say I didn't see what I thought I just saw," she said to herself. She shook her head and said, "No, I saw it all right. Damn, I can't believe my luck." She picked up the phone at her desk and tapped a few numbers and said, "Hi, Dexter? I need to you stand in for me for a bit. An emergency just popped up."
Not waiting for him to show up, Toni stepped out from behind the desk and left down the same hall the girl had gone down.
Several minutes later, in one of the examination rooms, a trio of doctors were trying to figure out how they could treat Miyu without trying to drink her blood.
First they tied a rope around one of the doctors and let him slowly creep up to her with a stethascope. He edged up to her, nervously. Beads of sweat formed on his brow as he got closer and closer to her. Meanwhile, Larva looked on silently from a corner. He had been given explicit instructions not to interfere, and after a nod from Miyu, he agreed to do as he was bid.
The doctor came closer and closer to Miyu, until he was just a foot away from her, and then he began to twitch as he struggled with himself. He was mumbling something, but it took a while before anyone could make out what he was saying.
"Ventura, ventura, space people. Ventura, ventura, space people..."
"It ain't gonna work!" one of the doctors cried in alarm, and started to strain on the rope. "Quick! Haul him back!" The other doctor also strained against the rope, and they quickly pulled him away from the influence of the disease.
"You want to explain to us again why your buddy can't just do this for you?" one of the doctors asked Miyu.
"The disease can only be cured by a human. Shinma may only make the problem worse," Miyu explained patiently.
They all sighed and formed a huddle to discuss what they would try next.
Soon they were using ten-foot poles to try to examine her with their stethascopes and other instruments. "This sucks." one of the doctors said. "Why can't we have some of the advanced technology they have in the future universes. That'd save us a lot of hassle."
"Because those things don't really work, that's why," another doctor said irritably. "You know those things are only cosmetic and only work when they film one of the shows that they do. When they get real injuries, they have to put up with our stuff."
The complaining doctor let his pole drop and said, "Well this isn't going to work. We'd better try something else."
Just then, the little girl that had caught Toni's attention poked her head in the doorway and looked around. Her face brightened and she said, "Larva! And Miyu! Wow! this is sooooo cool!"
The three doctors spun around and one of them said, "Hey, no otakus here. Beat it, kid."
The little girl pouted, but left.
The doctors looked at each other. "Any more ideas?"
"Robotics from Stoopenstien's lab?"
"Do you really trust them?"
"No, not really."
"Well, I'm starved. Let's go get a snack and talk this over. You stay put, Miyu. We'll figure something out."
The three doctors left, and Larva floated over to Miyu to take her hand with concern. Miyu simply said, "Larva, can you turn on the overhead TV for me? I don't want to miss this week's episode of 'As the World Turns.'"
Heather was striding down the halls of the East wing, trying to remain inconspicuous, but every time a guy passed by, be it doctor, nurse, or patient, she lowered her gaze to his crotch and followed him with her eyes as he passed by. She had a silly grin on her face, and was having trouble suppressing a giggle.
Suddenly, Toni ran up to her and said, "Heather! Have you-" she stopped and said, "What are those stupid glasses?"
Heather turned to look at her, and she jerked her head back in surprise. Quickly, she fumbled with the glasses as she took them off and said, "I'm, uh, going to a party where everyone wears glasses like these. They're really nothing." She laughed nervously while Toni watched her skeptically. In an attempt to change the subject, she said, "So, what did you want to ask me?"
Toni forgot all about the glasses as she said, "Have you seen a little girl, about seven years old, with dark hair and Usagi-chan Hair Clips (tm)? I think she went down this wing."
Heather thought, or, rather pretended to think. With as much attention as she'd been lavishing on the guys, just about anyone could have passed by her without her noticing. "Well, no, I guess I haven't. Why, who is she?"
Toni's eyes consticted with discomfort, and she said, "Just an otaku that doesn't belong in the halls. I have to go now," She ran off down the hall as fast as her legs would carry her.
Heather watched her disappear down the halls and mumbled to herself, "I didn't know she had a tatoo there." She shrugged her shoulders and turned back down the hall, reaching for her glasses again.
"Now then, where was I?" she said with an evil grin. "Ah, yes, now I remember." She chuckled to herself, and started to put the glasses back on.
Suddenly she stopped, and lowered the glasses to watch Mike chatting with another nurse about something. Her mouth twisted into a grossly impish grin and she glanced down to realize that she still had her sketchbook with her.
Slowly, she put the glasses on and pressed her back against the wall, and waited for Mike to walk off. She quickly followed him with as much stealth as she could muster while nearly falling into a fit of mirthful laughter.
* * * Begin Commercial Break * * *
[The scene is a fairly sophisticated laboratory, with many beakers and test tubes containing bubbling liquids. A brainy looking fellow in a lab coat steps in front of the camera, holding a clipboard in his hand.]
Scientist: The value of taste tests have been relied on for nearly seventy years, so when we developed our new cola, we naturally resorted to such tests. The results were quite revealing.
[Cut to a isolated room with a long wooden table. Sitting on the table are three soda cans that are stark white and have the letters "A" "B" and "C" written on each respectively.]
Scientist's voice: We asked a large sample of people to try out each soda and tell us which they preferred. In order to avoid bias, we only let them know each by a letter, so that there would be no brand-name association. Once the choice was made, we provided each tester with a case of the preferred soda to determine its effects. The results were astounding.
[A girl is shown drinking the can with the "C" on it]
Scientist's voice: Those who preferred C-kola lost several dozen IQ points and developed an uncontrollable urge to produce excessively bad cooking.
[Another girl is shown drinking the can with the "B" on it]
Scientist's voice: Those who preferred B-kola gained several dozen IQ points, but became excessively violent and developed an uncontrollable urge to create ridiculous looking robots.
[Yet another girl is shown drinking the can with the "A" on it. She crushes the can and poses with her arms flexed victoriously]
Scientist's voice: Those who preferred our brand, A-kola, became incredibly strong, fast, and beautiful. In addition, they were immediately propositioned by a large number of hentai-perverts. The ones who drank B-kola and C-kola were also propositioned by a large number of hentai-perverts, but didn't deal with it quite as well as the ones who drank A-kola had.
[Cut back to laboratory and scientist.]
Scientist: The results of Project: A-kola were so impressive we decided to name it A-kola. If you have a powerful thirst, give A-kola a try.
Scientist (hesitantly): And please do not ask what happened to the ones who preferred cola "D".
* * * End Commercial Break * * *
The little girl continued down one of the halls, peeking into doors and hoping to find one of her favorite anime characters in them. She walked with a slight skip to her step, but froze when she heard the voice call out from behind her.
"Billie! Stop right there!" Toni said, as she ran up to the little girl. Her look was half-panic, and anger.
"Mo-" she started to say, before the panic side of Toni took over and she quickly covered the girl's mouth with both hands to squelch her voice.
"Quiet!" Toni said. "Don't let anyone hear you." She slowly eased her hand away from the girl's mouth and whispered, "What are you doing here? Where's your dad?"
"Daddy went to get groceries. I wanted to see the animes." She smiled and giggled. "I like this place. It's fun."
Toni glanced up and down the hall to see if anyone was occupiing it. "Never mind that. I have to get you out before anyone sees you. I thought you knew better than to come here."
"But I wanted to see Usagi-chan," Billie whined.
"No arguments. Let's go." Toni took Billie by the hand and began to walk her down the hall. She glanced about nervously, while her daughter hopped along behind her, complaining softly.
Suddenly Pam turned down into the hall. Before she had time to see them, Toni, opened the door they were next to and said, "Quick! In here!" They both stepped into the room, but when she looked around, she saw that it was Dr Stoopenstien's file room, and he was shuffling through them just as they walked in.
Before he turned around to see who had come in, Toni shoved Billie behind her and smiled innocently. Heinrich looked surprised, but brightened when he saw her smile. "Ah, Toni. So good to see you happy at this time. How may I help you?"
Billie was peeking out from behind her mother's legs at the Doctor. Before Toni could say anything, she blurted out with, "You look funny, mister!" and she laughed at her joke.
Toni's eyes widened and she winced. "Don't mind her, Doctor. She's just a lost otaku that I'm escorting home."
"Ah, we so rarely get visitors so young," Heinrich said pleasantly. He walked up and squatted so that he was looking Billie in the face. "And what is your name, little girl?" he asked, producing a candy.
"I'm Billie Li-" She started to say, when Toni again clamped her mouth shut.
Laughing off, she said, "She's Belldandy's biggest fan, she means. Come one now, little girl, we have to be going now." Toni wasted no time in getting out of the room and back into the halls.
Dr. Stoopenstein watched them leave and said to himself. "My, that child looks a lot like Toni. If it wasn't for that hair, I'd swear they were related."
A large croud of nurses had assembled in the cafeteria and were abuzz with excitement. They were chatting back and forth about the "presentation," and more nurses were appearing with each passing minute. Once Heather was satisfied with the crowd, she cleared the throat for silence.
"Ladies and gentlemen, but mostly the ladies, I proudly present to you my greatest masterpiece. I'm sure you will all love it as much as I do." She stepped off to the side to reveal a cloth-covered canvas. She lifted one hand and grabbed a piece of the cloth.
"I call this piece, 'Nurse Jones.'" With a grand flourish, she ripped the cloth away and watched with immense satisfaction as everyone in the cafeteria gasped. Everyone was silent for several seconds, and then they burst out into laughter.
"I want to see! I want to see!" Billie cried, as she jumped up and down on one of the cafeteria tables. Toni had run off to a vending machine to get her a soda, and had told her to stay put, which she was more or less doing. At her last leap, she finally got a good look at the picture, and her eyes widened in surprise.
"Mommy! He doesn't have any clothes on!"
Toni dropped the can of A-kola to the ground and clamped her hands on the girl's mouth. She looked around, but everyone seemed to be transfixed on the picture, and laughing at it. Toni breathed a sigh of relief and whispered, "What did you say?"
"That picture! He's naked!" Billie whispered back, and she started giggling.
Toni said, "Don't move," and started to shove her way through the ocean of nurses. "All right, all of you, clear out of my way. Come on, move it!" Finally, she got ot the head of the croud and saw the center of attention.
True to her daughter's word, the picture was, indeed, a nude Mike Jones, standing languidly with only a nurse's cap on his head. Toni blushed a bit, and then turned on the other nurses. "Get! Go on! Get back to work, all of you!"
The nurses all looked like they would object, but when they saw the look on Toni's eyes, they thought it better to disperse quietly.
"How could you?" Toni said to Heather, once they had all disappeared, and she had shielded her daughter's eyes with her hands. "How *did* you?"
"With these," Heather said, holding up the glasses. "X-ray glasses that really work! All I had to do was follow Mike and the rest was easy. Isn't he gorgeous? He has just the cutest-"
"Nurse Farley!" the voice of Mike said from the other side of the cafeteria. He was staring at the picture with complete disbelief, and appeared to be shivering uncontrollably. "Nurse Farley, you... you..." His hands had clenched tight enough to cut off the circulation of blood and they became vividly paler. "Arggghhhh!" He said and smashed one of the tables with his fist, and then ran off back the way he'd come.
Heather and Toni looked at each other. "Was he crying?" Heather asked.
Toni grabbed a tray and smacked Heather over the head with it.
Mike ran down the halls with tears streaming down his face. He passed by several nurses who seemed about ready to giggle, but when they saw him, thought better of it. Desperately seeking some place he could go to hide, he just picked one room and burst into it.
He quickly found a seat next to a potted plant and began to weep for all he was worth. How could she do it? He wondered. Of all the indecent things she could possibly do, why this? He could not believe his shame, and wondered if he could ever show his face around the hospital again. No, of course he couldn't. He'd be a laughingstock the rest of his life.
Mike reached over and grabbed a piece of cloth and sneezed into it. He rubbed his eyes and tried to calm himself down.
"Please continue," a small voice said. Mike looked up in surprise to see Miyu standing in front of him, or rather, levitating a few inches above the ground in front of him. He turned to the side and noticed that the cloth he had grabbed was not a curtain, but were instead Larva's robes. Even more embarassed, he let the robe's go and tried to stammer an apology.
"No," Miyu, said placing a hand on his shoulder. "Do not apologize. Cry. Your pain makes you immune. Your tears can heal me. Cry." She gently took his head in her hands, tracing each tear with her finger before bringing his face to her chest.
Mike was nervous about finding himself alone with these two, but when he was offered a way to vent out his grief, he accepted it whole-heartedly. He expelled enough tears to fill a bucket, and Miyu made sure that each one of them touched her. As each one did, a faint blue glow began to form a nimbus around her, until she began to shine like a star.
After a while, Mike finally stopped and said, "I can't cry anymore. I'm sorry." He looked up at Miyu, his face a mask of pure dispair.
Miyu brushed her hand through his hair and said, "Fret not. You have cured me with your pain. I am ill no longer." She turned to her companion in eternity and said, "Come, Larva."
They began to fade away from the room, but Miyu looked at Mike, and her face grew sad. Slowly, she faded back into the room and floated up to him. Slowly, she placed one finger on his brow and concentrated. "I understand," she said after a while. She released her finger and said, "Sleep."
Without another beat, Mike's head dipped low as he dozed off, and Miyu vanished from the room, leaving it silent.
"You are going to apologize to Mike just as soon as we find him Heather! No arguments!" Toni said as she dragged Heather by one hand, her own daughter by the other, down the halls.
Heather was very quickly developing a look of defensive irritability, and she was just getting ready to say something, when suddenly, the scenery began to melt away. "What the hell-" Heather mumbled, and Toni held her daughter protectively. Finally, the world stopped twisting, and when it righted itself, they were back in the Cafeteria.
It was empty, except for the nude picture of Mike, and a dubious looking Pam sitting at one of the tables. She nodded at their arrival and took a sip from her coffee cup.
"Pam, what's going on here?" Toni demanded.
Pam simply inclined her head over the picture, where suddenly they saw Miyu levitating just above it. The girlchild gave Heather a severe look and suddenly the picture of Mike burst into flames.
"My picture!" Heather cried, and tried to run up to it, but she suddenly found her way blocked by Larva. "Down boy," she said nervously, but it was she who backed down under his piercing stare.
Once the picture fully disintegrated, Miyu made a sweep of her hand and Larva took his place beside her. "You will be the only ones to remember that picture ever existed. Everyone else, including Nurse Jones, will never recall its creation. Take care, Nurse Farley. You nearly destroyed a man today..." Miyu disappeared with Larva, leaving only the sound of her laughter behind.
Pam and Toni looked at each other and nodded, and they both gave Heather a guilt-inducing stare. Heather cringed under their looks and said, "What? It was just a joke! Nobody but us remembers it now anyway, so what's the big deal?"
Toni took another tray and hit Heather over the head with it saying, "You'd just better be glad Mike doesn't remember it, or we'd make you apologize to him so fast you'd break the speed limit on the Autobahn. Knowing Mike, he'd come up with a pretty demeaning task for you to make it up to him, too." She smacked Heather on the head again.
"I think that might have been more preferable" Heather moaned, as she clutched at her sore head.
Mike walked into the cafeteria for their lunch, shaking his head with bewilderment. "Something wrong, Mike?" Toni asked.
"Nurse Jones," he said to her sternly. "No, uh, actually, nothing's wrong." He looked at everyone to see if they had guessed that he had somehow fallen asleep in one of the rooms, but luck was apparently with him. "Nurse Farley, you look like you've been run over by a train. Are you all right."
"I'm just fine," she mumbled while she lay with her head on the table, both hands weaved through her hair. She moaned once.
Suddenly, Billie bounded up from accross the cafeteria, where she had just bought herself a candybar. "Hi Mom," said, and Toni didn't even bother trying to hush her this time. "Hi Nurse Farley. Hi Nurse Kaburi. Hi mister man in the picture."
As the last was said, all three women jerked in surprise, and dove in to clamp the little girl's mouth shut.
preview of next week's episode:
C-ko eats some of her own cooking and gets sick. Naturally, while she's in the hospital, A-ko and B-ko inevitably declare total war, with the hospital as the battle grounds. But this time, B-ko's cooked up a surprise that not even the strength of A-ko can handle. Anime Hospital survive? Find out next week in "Just B-ko's"
