550 CH23 (545), Hospital (1)

The next morning I made my way to the hospital and it was 6:55 a.m. when I showed up to report my arrival. Yet, even though I was 5 minutes early the nurse I was talking to actually told me that I was late, which was not true since I was told that my shift started at 7 a.m.

When I told her that, she just gave me a smile that screamed "Oh, you poor, naive, little thing" before she explained that 7 a.m. was the time I was expected to start working, but I still had to change into hospital clothes and ensure that I was appropriately disinfected, which was going to take a few minutes, so she advised me to show up 15 minutes early instead of "just" 5.

I could have tried to argue that changing into hospital clothes should count toward the working time, but I knew better, so I just nodded and thanked her for the advice, before I attempted to head to one of the employee's only rooms, in this case, the changing room. Attempted, because the nurse stopped me mid-step.

She informed me that I was supposed to head to the ER (emergency room) once I was ready since that was the unit I was assigned to, and she actually looked a bit sorry when she said that. I had an idea why that was the case, and honestly, I had the urge to groan when I heard that I would be working in the ER.

From what I had heard, on the internet as well as in real life, the ER was the messiest and most chaotic place in a hospital. It had the reputation of being the worst place for any hospital workers to work at, hence my internal reaction.

Still, considering that my assignment to the military hospital, and consequently the ER was probably related to Professor Oak's commitment to ensure that I got the "best"/most useful practical year experience, I did not object and simply acknowledged the arrangement.

Anyway, after quickly changing into the hospital garb, and disinfecting my hands, I made my way to the ER and notified those at the registration desk of my arrival. The lady at the desk acknowledged my presence and began chiding me for being late since it was 7:01 a.m., which took another minute by the way, before doing something on her computer, after which she told me that she marked my arrival.

She then called another nurse over and told her that I was the 2-month intern they had been informed of. I could swear that I saw a glint in the eyes of the nurse when she heard that. A moment later the nurse gave me a warm smile and told me that I had come just at the right time since one of the patients had puked all over one of the treatment rooms.

She told me that the patient had been moved to another room after he had stabilized and that my first assignment was to clean up as well as disinfect the treatment room. I considered there and then whether I should look for Doctor Bethany to complain since I came here to learn how to do medical stuff not to clean vomit.

Still, I chose to wait and see how the rest of the day went before deciding whether to tattle/complain to Doctor Bethany or not. As a result of that decision, I followed the nurse to the supply room and grabbed the cleaning supplies before following her to the treatment room that had to be cleaned. She left me there after telling me to be thorough and to report to the nurse station/room once I was done cleaning.

Once she was gone, I stood at the door to the room for another few moments, mentally grumbling about her swift retreat. After deciding that there was no reason to delay it, I opened the door and stepped inside, before promptly stepping back outside and trying to get some fresh air while trying to forget the smell I just inhaled.

I could not help but chide myself for not foreseeing that the room would be stinking badly, especially after the room had remained sealed for a few minutes. That explained the nose clips I saw among the supplies, which I previously dismissed because I thought that I did not need them, and I still didn't.

I simply used my aura to block my nose and sense of smell, just to be sure. Though this time I made sure to wear a mask to avoid directly inhaling the foul air, even though I knew that regular masks did not work like that.

Anyway, I moved back into the room, and I could not help but gape at the state of the room, though one could not see it. Seriously, how the heck did the patient manage to soil not only two walls but also the ceiling? Rather than vomiting, this looked more like the patient tried to use Sludge Wave.

Regardless, after a nearly hour-long cleaning session that I would rather forget, I moved to the nurse station to report the completion of my task, which earned me a "good job", before I was promptly assigned a new one. This time I was told to stock up some of the supplies that were about to run out in the treatment rooms, so for the next 30 minutes I kept moving between the supply room and the six treatment rooms of the ER.

Once that was done I already had enough of playing coolie. Thankfully, my next few tasks actually involved proper medical work. Not that I was the one that was doing stuff since I was told to just watch, but even simply watching the nurses and doctors working was better than cleaning and carrying stuff.

I got to see how one of the nurses drew blood, I saw a doctor stitch someone up, and I got to see how the nurse gave someone an infusion, although that and drawing blood involved the same basic process. The only difference was that one let something flow out, while the other let something flow in the tube they poked into the patient's vein.

After I got to watch a few proper minor "medical cases", I was once more delegated to coolie duties, like swapping out all the empty disinfectant bottles around the ER. Roughly an hour before my shift was up, I got another period of proper medical assignments, which gave me the feeling that the staff was applying a carrot and stick approach, though the stick was much bigger than the carrot.

While I was seriously considering whether I should complain or not, Doctor Bethany actually showed up at the ER and called for me. She told me to follow her, and we headed for a room that was apparently used by the hospital staff to train rookie doctors.

She led me to a table, and brought over a batch of needles as well as a bunch of threads, along with a few sheets of some kind before she began to explain that she would be demonstrating one of the three main/standard suturing techniques I was supposed to learn.

It seemed the sheets were made out of a material close in texture to skin, and I was allowed to use up to 100 of them per day, which considering their size should give me up to 300 attempts per day, as long as the cuts I made were not too large. I honestly thought I would be using bananas to train my suturing before moving on to animals, but it appeared that the sheets were a better alternative.

After she demonstrated the technique four times, she told me that she would show me the next one after I reached a certain level of competence with this one. Following that she asked me to give it a try to see how much I got from her demonstration, and once I was done with my first attempt she made sure that I knew what I did wrong before doing another demonstration, but this time she told me to record it so that I could use the video as reference material.

After that final demonstration, she left, and I ultimately did not complain about the "coolie" work I had to do at the ER. I spent around two more hours in the training room until I had used up my daily quota of sheets before I left the hospital.

The rest of my first week followed the same rhythm as my first day, with me doing coolie work most of the time with around 2 hours of proper medical work mixed in. I also stayed around 2 more hours at the hospital to train and get proficient with the suturing technique.

By the time I was done with my training session on Dialday, I was confident that I was good enough to satisfy Doctor Bethany's requirement, but I knew that she was already off work, so the new technique would have to wait until Arcday.

I had the weekend off, and I had already made plans with Ace for Kyoday. Ace happened to have the day off this Kyoday, and since it had been some time since we last met up, I would be heading to Coral City shortly before lunch. Once we met up, we mostly strolled around the city since Ace said that he enjoyed being able to walk on the ground like this. I did not mind, so we ended up walking quite a bit.

Later on, Aunt Rouge joined us at "Mito's Meat Paradise" for dinner, and after I managed to wrangle the bill from them once we were done dining, I made my way back to Aero City despite Aunt Rogue's repeated attempts at inviting me to their home for tea.

I spent the next day inside Utopia, and I got some good news during the weekly check-up. When it was Beldum's turn, I saw that Beldum was closing in on the regular limit of the iron stage, with more than half his parameters already at A-value. Only two of them were still at B-value, and I was hopeful that those would catch up in another two or three months.

That ended up being pretty much the highlight of that check-up session, and after a quick lunch pause, everyone eagerly began their training session while I went around to supervise them. Direct supervision/participation on my part had become a bit uncommon during the last few months, for obvious reasons, which was the reason for everyone's eagerness.

Anyway, around 40 minutes later, while I was watching Hashirama/Venusaur create a literal Leech Field using a combination of Leech Seed and Growth, Hades/Haunter suddenly popped out beside us, startling Hashirama, which naturally made Hades laugh.

Once he had calmed down, I asked him why he had decided to come over. I had checked up on him just 10 or so minutes ago, after all, so I was curious about what he suddenly wanted. When he told me that he, just now, abruptly felt like he was ready to evolve, I could not help being surprised.

I was obviously curious about what caused the change, and after another status check, I saw that he had apparently raised his third parameter to SSS right after I had stopped supervising him. Seeing how that seemed to be the only change since the last check-up, I assumed that this improvement happened to be the final straw, which was great to hear considering how much resources he had ingested so far.

Hashirama ended up being the first one to congratulate Hades on his upcoming evolution, and I naturally followed suit as well. Our actions attracted the attention of those who were training close by, and while they came over, I announced the good news over UtopiaFM.

I told them to head to Hades' place instead of coming over since that was where we were going too, and after finishing the announcement on the upcoming evolution, we collectively headed there as well.

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