Chương 23: 23-Interrogation

Waking up in the Joy home and getting back to the hospital was a… chaotic affair, a mess of 'stolen' items found up and down the singular flight of stairs carefully navigated by three pink tinged regulars who are clearly used to the barely directed chaos. Tanya, for her part, made her way downstairs once, and made a large pot of oatmeal for herself. Using a serving spoon in her psychic grip to shovel the fuel into her mouth as fast as possible to fill the hole in her stomach.

Electing to wait out the storm from the relative peace of the kitchen as the trio create a localized hurricane. The only acknowledgement of Tanya's existence for the first half hour of the morning was Joana slamming a jar full of honey next to the 'mon before rushing back upstairs, complaining to Jigglypuff that her 'good pants' were left in the dryer.

If the chaos didn't seem so normal for the house Tanya could almost excuse it as a side effect of Amelia's decision to go on a journey, but those parts seem almost ancillary to the rest. Thankfully, the house is small, so Tanya could hear every conversation as plans are formed, creating a mental ledger of things to suggest or add herself once they get in the car.

No surprise, but becoming a trainer and going on a journey –especially on such short notice– requires a good deal of last minute preparation and paperwork. The obvious first step being to register with the League, then complete a compulsory exam to ensure she's educated enough to survive in society, then some kind of written wilderness survival test. Of course then comes the shopping; food, clothes, medical supplies, shelter, water storage and purification. The standard kit for a multi-day hike.

In all, the process has a timetable that's rounding up to four days till it's time to leave, contingent on the government's response time. But the first step before Amelia can do any of the half dozen things she needs to prepare is to drop Tanya back at the hospital. The rain had kept her far past when she'd been supposed to get back, and until the hospital –and thus, the Joy clan– are satisfied, they have final say on the discharge of every 'mon under their care.

Add to that the risk of latent health issues with the recent evolution and Tanya finds the policy quite sensible. Plus, she needs to say goodbye. The 'mon slows her chewing of a spoonful of oatmeal slightly as she's suddenly aware of all the small differences she can feel in her body, the way how subtle movements in the air gently move across her whiskers and how her body instinctually understands the input and interprets as a direction.

The way the intestines under her bulk writhe slightly differently than how they used to as they digest food. The strange new muscle beneath her pouch and the egg as it rests half in/half out of her body in a way that's almost possible to ignore. None of this… adjustment is foreign to her. In fact, in any other universe she'd be the foremost expert in adapting to radical changes in size, shape, gender, and species. But this is the first time she's dealt with such a change happening without having died beforehand.

Tanya looks at her reflection in the spoon, a funhouse mirror reflecting an already distorted version of her previous face. Or having to go back to people who knew her as she once was. The 'mon in the spoon's reflection tilts her head. She still recognizes herself, the shade of her fuzz and many of the subtle identifiers in facial structure are still unmistakable, but enough has changed that she looks… different. The spoon is sent back into the oatmeal as Tanya dismisses the directionless cloud of emotion.

She's not exactly sure why those thoughts keep creeping into her mind, but they're neither productive nor seeming to point toward any kind of conclusion. Finishing up her oatmeal the pot is back where she found it by the time mother and daughter are fully dressed and at the front door, Amelia struggling to finish her left braid as the party makes their way to the car, Jiggypuff included, and drive off into the outer world.

The car continues to be a mess, people talking over each other as Tanya joins her partner in planning, dividing the required research along roughly equal lines while the duo in the front talk over an already loud radio tuned to the morning news.

But, soon enough they're back at the hospital, the building more like an entire small campus of buildings with a town built around it, three out of every four humans on the sidewalk sporting pink hair in the few moments they were visible before the car pulls into a fenced parking lot. Joana doesn't turn off the engine as she unbuckles and turns around to Tanya with a fake smile, eyes daring around as she tries to hide her nerves.

"Alright Chansey! We're here! Do you think you can walk your way to the door you went through yesterday and let yourself in? I don't want to bothe– Gah!?" She's cut off with a yelp as a fist gently raps on the driver's side window. Head Nurse Joy leans down slightly so her face is visible in the window, pauses for a second, then knocks again with the exact same force. Joana swallows, then slowly turns her head and rolls down the window.

"... Yes Miss?" She says, then twitches as soon as the words leave her mouth.

"Head Nurse! I mean!" The woman takes a second to respond, unblinking gaze held on the legal adult and mother.

"Good morning Joana, how nice to see you again." She says levelly, allowing the other nurse to nod before speaking over her attempt to respond.

"I'm glad to see everyone safe and sound after that storm. All that excitement." She says, eyes deliberately lingering on the partners in the backseat.

"Well I couldn't call it exciting exactly. But I've got to get to–""I'd disagree Joana! Honestly! I didn't even realize we had a Happiny off the property. Where did you take her again? Some kind of 'festival?'" She asks softly, a grandmotherly smile on her face.

"I wasn't aware there was a festival within a twenty minute trip of the hospital. Otherwise I would have had to be informed of the departure. And look, things got exciting enough that Chansey here evolved." She says with a small laugh, gesturing at Tanya.

"Well–""No harm done I suppose, but I just have to ask you to come to my office for some tea and conversation. Sometimes reports and a one minute eight second phone call just isn't enough to get the full story."

"I've got wor–""I insist. I've already asked Hanna to cover your shift. As far as anyone knows you're already at work. And I'd bet Amelia here would love a tour of the facilities" She says with that same gentle voice, then there's a popping sound and Blissey is standing in front of the car in a flash of white.

"Blissey, would you mind escorting Chansey here to get a checkup? Joana does good work, but you know me… worrier." Blissey nods and makes her way around to the passenger side door and opens it, leaning down with a ghost of a smile on her face.

"Good morning. We're going to make sure you're healthy, then I'm taking you home. Please follow me." She says, holding out an arm. Tanya nods and unbuckles herself, taking the offered arm and following behind as the Head Nurse's one sided conversation falls away.

"Goodness, Jigglypuff! I almost didn't notice you there! You seem to have gotten over that infection pretty quickly…" —-- –_– —-- The following checkup is a mirror of the one she'd already received, though the blood draw is reduced to a single ampule and it's taken out of the room to be analyzed. Tana follows the procedure with just as much attention as it needs, allowing her to consider the nurse in front of her.

It took her a while to notice the mismatch in definitions between her previous lives and here, but in this world the title of 'Nurse' assumes a much greater deal of rigor and prestige than in others. Here, a 'Nurse' means something closer to a general practitioner, capable of prescribing prescriptions, making diagnoses, and operating a full medical practice without any higher authority.

The title 'Doctor' is in turn elevated to something closer to a medical researcher or a specialist requiring extreme skill in a particular field, like a surgeon. At least with pokemon, because the human centric medical field seems closer to how she remembers. But pokemon nurses are perfectly capable of offering medical care to humans, so there's obvious overlap. Tanya blinks slowly as a thought occurs. Is that because… the human doctors are human specialists? She squints, trying to correct the cognitive dissonance.

No… because veterinarians and doctors are entirely different… but pokemon aren't animals to any degree that they'd be called as such in other universes. But they wouldn't just… Her thoughts trail off into nonsensical circles as the checkup comes to a close, the nurse performing the height and weight check and, just like Joana, seems equally confused by the findings. After a second, she walks over to a drawer without a word and pulls out a laminated card.

Placing the paper on the examination slab, Tanya is brought out of her musings as she glances down at the sheet to see two tables of heights, diameters, and weights. After a second to get her bearings with the format, Tanya scans her eyes across the table and finds her measurements to be literally 'off the chart.'" The nurse pauses at the information, half shrugs, then clicks her pen and walks to the door to the examination room, opening the door to hang the chart on a peg on the outside wall.

But before she can even get the clipboard halfway out the cracked door, a pair of familiar pink arms grip both sides of the gap and yank it open the rest of the way. The sudden removal of the door makes the nurse stumble and look down in shock as Caretaker charges in, either ignoring or not noticing the gaze, staring back at her charge. There's a pause, and suddenly Tanya can feel the air across her whiskers aga–"You're so big …" Caretaker murmurs. Tanya quickly hops off the examination slab and straightens up.

She can see the top of Caretaker's head now. The realization makes something inside twist.

"Good afternoon. Sorry I couldn't make it back to the–" She stops as Caretaker steps across the space between them and wraps her in a hug, somehow compressing herself to get her body wrapped around a large portion of her charge's slightly larger form.

"You evolved! You're so big! I can't believe it! You're all grown up!" She lets out in a rush of excited chirps as Tanya allows the hug to happen. The former soldier shakes her head.

"Nurse says I'm still not completely matured." Joana said this morning that she'd asked when she called the hospital, and it's too early to determine how large she will be as a fully matured Chansey. It seems to be because her particular ratio of volume to body density index seems to be rare, proven by the laminated card. Tanya's eyes flicker to the offending object as Caretaker pulls back, following her charge's line of sight before wrapping her in another embrace.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"No, you're not, but that thing just gives estimations, those equations turn into nonsense if you plug in outliers. I mean if you followed the normal chansey growth pattern you'd end up bigger than this room!" She giggles, grabbing Tanya by the arm.

"Let's get back home. Your sisters missed you!" Tanya allows herself to be led back toward home, navigating familiar halls from a new perspective that makes them at once familiar and alien. But as they approach the door Tanya slows to a stop, resisting Caretaker's gentle tug. It's… important that Caretaker knows, yet at the same time Tanya wishes she didn't have to.

"Were you made aware of Amelia's plan for…" She trails off as Caretaker slowly looks behind her, a watery smile on her face.

"I know." She says quietly. There's a moment of quiet in the corridor, the faint sound of Tanya's siblings beyond the door just around the corner. Tanya looks into Caretaker's eyes, trying to find the appropriate words for this new and completely foreign situation.

"... Sorr–""No." She interrupts, tuning around and wiping an arm across her eyes.

"I knew it was coming, I just… didn't expect it to happen this year. Habit I guess." She says, eyes focusing on some distant point as she looks into an imagined future.

"Your batch is supposed to evolve this weekend, then stay here for another six months while your partners get settled in at nursing school, shadowing one of us in the hospital to learn how to use our aura to heal." Caretaker fades into silence, and Tanya stares at her, eyes flickering across that paradoxically regretful yet proud expression as her mind frantically gets to work.

Because, despite not being able to identify a single clue that would support the conclusion, somehow she knows the unspoken desire that causes that regret. The idea of doubting her conclusion is unthinkable with how obvious it is, even lacking any of the evidence she'd normally use to verify the desires of others. Almost without conscious thought, Tanya finds herself speaking.

"Amelia needs four days before everything is ready for her to start her journey. If you are willing to teach me, I will learn how to heal from you before I leave." Caretaker surprised, bordering on incredulous. But then she sees something in Tanya's face and her surprise fades to amused fondness.

"Of course you will, my little battler." She half warbles, happy tears forming in the corners of her eye.

"I'd love to teach you." Tanya nods, feeling awkward with the outpouring of emotion. There are a great deal of good reasons why she'd asked Caretaker to teach her such a useful skill. Easy, intuitive reasons she could rattle off in their dozens on how it will allow her a better future. But as she looks at those tear filled eyes, she can't think of even a single one. Caretaker wipes her eyes again and the messy emotions fade, not suppressed, but let go as simpler joy is allowed to rise to the top.

"Well! We'll start after lunch. But I had to stop Happiny from breaking out of the nursery again last night and commandeering a car to go get you. If we keep standing out here she's absolutely going to come to us." Tanya blinks, slotting that particular piece of information into her mind, then nods, allowing herself to be led to the door to the nursery and, after the both of them take a second to steel themselves, Caretaker opens the door. And the room goes silent.

Tanya pushes down a flare of hesitance as she looks out at the nursery at her new height and realizes just how small it really is. Then she notices the same with her sisters, their head tufts barely reaching her arm's new height as they look back at her. The silence is broken as Happiny drops a notepad she'd been trying to hide behind her back, revealing a crude –but accurate – map of the roads between Joana's house and the hospital. Then she opens her mouth, as every happiny in the room begins to stand." Big Sis!"

—-- –_– —-- Tanya adjusts her position slightly in her impromptu nest of pillows, blankets, and siblings to get into a slightly more comfortable position, the movement has every eye in the pile open at the same time and look at her, as if she'd somehow slip out of her position at the bottom of the pile. It was…

slightly difficult to determine the her siblings reasoning to why they restrained her like this, as none of them were very interested in talking as they almost carried her larger body to the center of the room and pulled her to the floor. But from what she can tell it was less the fact that she'd been gone that agitated them, and more the fact that she'd been forced by the worst storm in their entire lives to not be able to return. Something flares in her chest as she corrects herself. Tanya could have made it.

Because –if the need arose– a storm couldn't stop her. But it was an unnecessary risk in this circumstance. That storm, combined with the reveal that Tanya would be leaving with her partner shortly, seems to have sent her siblings into some sort of frenzy. The thought of leaving has a sour twist on that same emotion flare in her chest, but it's dispersed by every happiny pressing inward at once, mirrored by that same gentle tugging in her soul, neither stronger or weaker than it had been last night.

Happiny –or Boss as her siblings call her– adjusts in her own perch, sitting on Tanya's stomach just below her face and flips a page of her notebook.

"From there the plan was to get Singer to incapacitate the EMT's and search their pockets for the keys to an ATV ambulance if we didn't find them in the office. Then, for command and control, I had started training Muscle, Happiny, Assistant, and Happiny some monosyllabic verbal commands that were modular enough to let us improvise a control scheme for the wheel, pedals, and other necessary controls." Tanya nods.

"Clever, but as I said the road was closed, meaning flooding was too dangerous to traverse. Not to mention the fact that the humans would wake up and send an alarm, they'd be on the lookout for a rogue ambulance before you could get far." Happiny scratches the space between her eyes with the butt of her crayon, leaving a faint streak of green.

"... I didn't think about the road. But the humans wouldn't wake up, Singer would have stayed behind along with Sneaky and Quiet. On the tour of the x-ray lab I noticed a high voltage breaker box that controls the power of the room. I assumed the garage would have a similar breaker. They'd flip the breaker to disable the cameras in the garage after we'd left, then send an email from the office saying the storm cut their power." Tanya hums as she considers the idea.

But halfway though musing on ideas to improve the plan she remembers that this started as an attempt to scold Happiny for trying to steal hospital property and run headlong into danger. She'd gotten wrapped up in the intricacies of the plan somewhere along the way and lost the thread.

"... That's beside the point." She says, forcing the conversation back on track.

"The root cause for all this was unnecessary, not to mention an unjustifiable risk to yourself and your sisters." Tanya ignores the feeling of fifteen of the twenty six bodies pressed against her cringing with guilt. Happiny lowers her pad and crayon, blinking rapidly at the reprisal.

"But… But–" Tanya talks over the feelings in her chest and the attempted justification.

"Running headlong into danger to help those in actively harmful situations requires more than a half formed plan and a desire to help. It's hard, dangerous work that you need to put everything into every moment of every day." She says, drawing on memories of combat medics pulling wounded out of a position that's being actively shelled.

"You need intensive specialist training, mission specific equipment, and extreme physical aptitude." She will not discourage loyalty, or trying to help others, as that goes contrary to what Tanya knows about her sisters as individuals and their future function in society. But an understanding of risk management is crucial to both survival and effectiveness. Happiny blinks, staring down at her sister's serious face from her position atop her.

"There are people whose job it is to be a… Storm Nurse?" Tanya huffs a laugh at the childish name and nods.

"You'd have to ask someone else for the details. But I'd guess they'd be some part of the EMT… Or maybe a part of the forestry service." She says after a moment's thought. Happiny nods, staring back with head titled slightly and focused eyes flitting across the scene below her, lingering on a few happiny in particular, then lays down on her stomach and wraps her arms around as much of Tanya's bulk as possible.

"Sorry Big Sis. We won't go anywhere too dangerous for us again. Promise." Tanya nods at the sensible decision, corroborated by the agreeing chirps all around. It's times like this when all that networking and building up her position as 'Big Sis' pays dividends, allowing her to simply instruct her sisters on how to behave in a way that is best both for them and society at large. Knowing those instructions will be understood and obeyed by her sister to the best of their ability.

They will be much more able to contribute while they're inside of major cities and towns, safe, and helping significantly larger numbers of patients with near zero assumed risk. Satisfied with the result of this meeting, Tanya tries to rise from the pillowy prison.

But as the 'mon lifts her head, she finds herself halted as every arm suddenly latches into her as one, followed by Happiny hopping off her sister's belly before her eyes glow purple and a blanket is drawn over Tanya's middle and its edges are gripped by more arms. Tanya blinks, wiggling a bit more firmly only to realize she's unable to move, then huffs an incredulous laugh. Clever. But she's got other things to do today, she'll have to make her leave.

"I don't wish to disturb anyone, but I have a prior engagement with Caretaker. If you don't mind…" She trails off as she pushes for her freedom more firmly, only to be answered by disgruntled chirps and everyone holding tighter and pressing closer. … Curious. This state of confinement lasts for a few more minutes, just long enough for the incredulity to fade and for her to begin trying to escape in ernest.

Then Matron enters the room with a tub of food for lunch and Tanya eases back and waits as she watches the cart approach with satisfaction. This problem seems to have just resolved itself. –_– Tanya tries to glare as sternly as she can at the offered kibbles, then opens her mouth and allows them to be deposited on her tongue. They'd organized a system of shifts, a few eating their meals and running snacks to those on restraining duty, then a special contingent devoted to feeding her specifically.

The former soldier opens her mouth again as more kibbles are offered, and crunches down with another glare. But she's got a plan. The guard rotation is happening in five minutes. The perfect time to make her move.