Who Da Boss Lady? 48 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRai

Who Da Boss Lady?

Chapter 48

-VB-

Mari nervously looked around as she landed softly on the roof of the biggest local hospital in Kuoh Town. 

She didn’t want to sound the alarm and ruin everything right now. 

Yesterday, when Venalita had suggested that she visit the local hospital to try and get better and healing, she had been aghast. That was basically experimenting on people! 

But Venalita made a very convincing argument. 

She would do her utmost best to return them to “good state” if Mari messed up on her healing. 

So she looked around and found no one on the gorgeously decorated rooftop filled with benches, plants, and a fountain. This hospital had to be one of this megacorp rich hospitals, because keeping a rooftop garden of this size - almost as big as a soccer field - had to be ruinously expensive for the simple fact that shit was heavy. 

Mari used magic to make herself less noticeable and soundless as she made her way through the door. 

She waved her hand to try to determine if there were any alarms, but her magic told her there wasn’t, so she opened the door cautiously and waited. 

No alarm.

Great! 

She snuck into the hospital from there.

“You should go to med-surg first.”

She looked up and saw Venalita floating above her.

“What’s that?”

“Med-surg, or medical-surgical unit, is the ‘general floor’ for patients with various illnesses that do not need critical care,” Venalita replied with a hum. “That’s where you would find people who are only here for like a day or two or only here because of a surgery.”

“Right… and you know where that’s at?” 

The mascot stopped. “Eh, no. We could look around.” 

Mari sighed. “I guess. We’ll look around. But, I don’t know, it would have been great if you could, you know, scout ahead. You had a whole afternoon to do it.”

Venalita looked at her quizzically. “That sounds like a great idea! Why didn’t you do it?”

She wanted to strangle the doll. 

“I was trying to say that you, who can somehow remain invisible without even needing to specifically cast spells, would have been great for it.”

The mascot looked shocked. “I didn’t know you were so into making more magical girls!” 

Mari stared at her. 

“... What?”

“Hospitals make for the best place to find magical girls, you know! All of those desperate little girls just begging and waiting for a glorious return to normal life…! I wouldn’t be able to help myself if I came here alone… And you would be left with a dozen new magical girls to teach. It would only be right because you would be their senpai.”

Mari quickly shook her head. “I’m good!” she hissed out. “I am not in the business of baby sitting when I can barely keep myself occupied.”

“Aw, you sure?”

“Very sure.”

Venalita let out a disappointed sigh. “Fine,” she grumbled. Then she paused. “Oh, I found where the med-surg is. Time to go down the elevators!” 

They walked until they found one in this surprisingly maze-like place. The elevator dinged and then they walked in.

Mari stared at the twenty floors.

“So where is it?”

“From 3 to 12.”

She looked at Venalita.

“What?”

“From Floors 3 to 12. You choose. Those are all med-surg units according to the signs.”

She gawked. 

Almost ten floors dedicated to just that one unit?!

“... seven, then,” she mumbled and pressed. 

The elevator doors closed and, with a lurch, began to move down. 

“Oh, and you might want to disguise yourself.”

“Huh?”

“To look like a nurse! What? Did you think that hospitals are empty during the night?”

She stared at Vena. “I mean, yes -?!”

Ding.

Her head snapped toward the floor reader. It read seven.

Oh shit.

The doors began to open and -.

“Oh, you’re a new face!” the man standing on the other side of the door said with a bright smile but with eye bags so dark and heavy he looked like he had eyeliners on. He looked scruffy with his stubbles and mid-length hair (for a man) despite how well kept, clean, and straight the rest of his uniform looked. 

Also, male nurse. Those were rare.*

“Yes, I am! I just came to… to this unit to… uh…”

“Student nurse, right?”

She bit her lips. 

Somehow, she’d made magic do its thing. It wasn’t a set idea, though, so the nurse man in front of her was seeing what he wanted to see. 

“Yes…? My, uh, nurse went somewhere and I haven’t heard from… her yet.”

He clicked his tongue. “Has to be Kimi. That girl is always “Cool,” he grinned. “I’ll show you around the cardiac unit. Come, come.”

She reluctantly followed and felt Venalita, also invisible, following her.

“Anyway, I did say this is the cardiac unit, right?” 

“Y-Yes.”

“Cool. Which means we’ll be dealing with a lot of fluids, blood pressures, cardiac rhythms, electrolytes, and drug-related to hearts! Can you name me a drug?”

Her eyes whipped side to side trying to find something and -.

“C-Calcium…?” 

“Calcium? You mean calcium gluconate?” he asked as he looked over his shoulder. 

“Yes…?” 

He smiled and looked forward. “Correct. Calcium gluconate is used when our patient’s hearts are trying to give out on them for any number of reasons like hyperkalemia and hypocalcemia! The former because too much potassium causes the heart to start palpitating like a child on sugar and the latter because not having enough calcium makes your heart also jittery.”

Fascinating information and all but -.

She paused.

Wait, wasn’t this basically what she wanted? How to heal people. Sure, it wasn’t exactly what she was looking for, but she’ll be able to know how to better heal them. She could fix all of the wounds she could, but what she could do right now wasn’t going to be able to come close to fixing … whatever hyperkalemia was. 

A lot of medical jargon was getting thrown at her. 

DING DING DING DI-!

She nearly jerked around when she heard that, but the nurse in front of her was almost casual about what sounded like an alarm.

“That’s probably Monikiha-san. He usually needs to get up at this time of the night to use the urinal. Can you go help him? He should be over there in room… 21.”

Her shoulders sagged and nodded. She hurried over even as she began to reconsider all of this.

She hesitated before knocking.

… And then using the hand sanitizer. That’s something she saw nurses do in medical dramas. 

“Hi, Monikiha-san,” she greeted the man trying to get up. “Do you need help getting up?”

He was an elderly man with liver spots everywhere. 

“I can do it myself,” he grumbled. 

She looked around at the hall and then at him before sighing and walking up to him. “Here. Let me help you up.”

Mari gently pulled him up from the bed.

Subtly, she used this chance to run her mana through his body. Just like how “Urahara-san” (if that was even his real name) did that sensory thing when she was experimenting, she was doing a similar thing. Just looking at things on a smaller level. 

And immediately, she saw a few things. 

First, his heart wasn’t beating right. 

Second, water(?) seemed to be backed up because of the heart. 

Third, because the heart wasn’t pumping right, the blood vessels between the lungs and the heart looked a little … flat? Not as robust. Not enough pressure? Ugh, she didn’t know how to explain all of this stuff. 

Then she saw him pulling his gown aside while pulling out a bottle-shaped thing. 

Oh, right. That’s what men peed into when they were stuck in bed.

She looked away and waited for him to piss. 

But even as she did so, she felt the water leaving him was somehow helping him? The … pressure in the veins leading into the heart let off just slightly. 

So why was the right side of his heart not working properly? 

She focused with her magic just as the old man finishing pissing. 

“Thank you, dear,” he said and then coughed. “Ever since I’ve had that heart attack, things just aren’t right.”

“Your welcome, Monikiha-san,” she smiled. 

And then she realized it just as her magic also saw it. 

Heart attack! It must have damaged his heart muscles, and her magic was confirming that when it showed her very weak muscles along the right side of the heart. 

Then… she hesitated. 

If she messed up here, then this old man might die. 

But his heart was already weak and it really wasn’t the only problem he had. His kidneys didn’t look great, either. And his liver was … not soft. 

Besides, it wasn’t as if she was going to make something new to replace something lost! He was still alive, his muscles were there, and so … she was just giving him little bit of help.

Yeah. 

She was just helping. 

So she focused on the mana already in his system and sent them to cover his heart with the intent to regenerate lost tissue and strengthen existing ones. She knew that muscles had different proteins that did different things, releasing and grabbing in sync to do the flexing and releasing.

So she imagined that there were … more of them and copied the living cells on top of the existing ones while extending the blood vessels.

Uh, capillary was between the tissues, right? 

By the time the old man hooked his urinal to the side of the bed and capped it so his concentrated urine wouldn’t stink the room, she managed to make his heart stronger than before. Just a little stronger, though. The copying and pasting took a lot more time and mana than she expected. 

“Thank you, dearie,” he said with a sigh as he laid down. “I feel better already.”

She smiled tightly, though she wasn’t sure what he was seeing. But with the last moment of touch, she confirmed one thing: his heart was working better. 

Mari left the room after that, and without prompting from the other nurses, she went to check on the other patients.

Or, well, she was going to except there was a security officer waiting for her outside the room.

And that nurse who directed her here? Standing on the far end of the corridor, not quite looking at her directly but also definitely glancing.

… He figured out she wasn’t supposed to be here. 

Damn.

She only managed to do one healing session! 

“Miss, I’d like you to come with us.”

Yeah, no.

“Sorry, but no,” she said with a sigh as she flashed her magic. The magic went off like a bang mentally rather than with light, and it stunned the officer. It staggered back, and she used that chance to make a run for it. 

Venalita laughed out loud as soon as they were out of line of sight while running for the emergency staircase -.

“Now, this is the kind of adventure I wanted!” she cackled.

“You set me up!” Mari hissed at her.

“Nah! You just suck at infiltration!” 

Mari ran up the stairs and back out onto the rooftop, turned herself invisible, and flew away. 

The day after, she would hear on the news about an intruder in the local hospital…

Yeah, no. She wasn’t going to go back there. At least, not how she did it before. 

But it did make her feel better when she saw Monikiha-san weeks later, walking around and not tired at all.