Chapter 8

Dark Growlithe’s group was the first to return home and he dismissed his students and headed to the caves to rest, leaving a glistening red trail behind him. He stumbled into the “hospital” cave where the vaporeon who looked after the sick and injured pokémon was chatting to Steam.

“Are you alright?” asked the vaporeon doctor, a smaller-than-normal, female vaporeon.

“My paw’s injured,” he said, collapsing to the ground.

Raticate’s teeth had cut deep and Dark Growlithe was dizzy from the loss of blood.

“You seem to have a talent for injuring yourself,” commented Steam as the vaporeon nurse brought some long leaves to wrap around Dark Growlithe’s paw, “When you arrived you were injured and practically drowned and now you’re bleeding to death.”

Dark Growlithe smiled weakly.

“I’m not usually like this.”

“Are the eevee okay? I heard you were taking them hunting.”

“They’re fine. Bandit chased a rattata and caused a raticate to attack.”

“Bandit’s always a problem. I can’t get him to listen. Get well, I’ll try talk to him,” said Steam as he left the cave.

“Drink,” commanded the vaporeon nurse, putting a shell filled with some liquid in front of Dark Growlithe.

“What’s this?”

“It will help your wound heal and replace your lost blood. It’s not as good as my seaweed ointment but that would burn you since it has to be wet.”

“I’m making your life hard.”

“Nah. I’m used to treating other types of pokémon. Sometimes flareon come here from our allied pack and get hurt. I have to look after them too.”

Dark Growlithe drank some of the medicine he’d been given and almost threw up as the bitter liquid went down his throat.

“This is disgusting!” he explained, coughing and trying to spit out the taste.

“Medicine is supposed to taste bad. You heal faster.”

“It doesn’t have to be this bad!”

“Just drink it all. You’ll have to have more later today. I’m just going to get some special berries for you.”

Dark Growlithe watched her go and grimaced as he looked at the mostly full shell of medicine she’d left him.

*****

The eevee that had been with Dark Growlithe were all sitting around and talking about what had happened.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” asked Cream. “He was bleeding a lot.”

“He only had a bitten leg, he’ll be fine,” Kitten reassured her.

“I was scared of him at first,” admitted Bramble, “but he was really quite nice. He even taught us what we had to do to find prey.”

“Pity he couldn’t fight well enough to look after himself,” sneered Bandit. “I knew he was weak.”

“He’s not weak!” shouted Cream, “That Raticate was the leader of his group. It was your fault that he had to fight the raticate.”

“Yeah,” said Kitten, backing her friend up. “He even saved you. If he hadn’t been there you’d be dead.”

“I was fine,” replied Bandit, “That old rat wouldn’t have caught me. Anyway it wasn’t my fault he had to fight the raticate.”

“Then whose fault was it?” demanded Kitten, “Anyone except you obviously.”

“It was Cream’s fault!” accused Bandit. “If it weren’t for her Dark Growlithe wouldn’t have been hurt.”

“What!” exclaimed Cream and Kitten together.

“How’s it my fault? You were the one that chased the rattata when you were told not to.”

“So? I didn’t want our prey to get away. You were the one that screwed up and made the rattata run. If you’d caught it then it couldn’t have run off, I wouldn’t have needed to chase it and Dark Growlithe would be uninjured.”

“But-”

“If you weren’t there then no one else would have messed up either. It’s all your fault, Cream! You always ruin things. Now you almost got Dark Growlithe killed. Are you happy?”

“That’s not true!” protested Bramble. “It was an accident that Cream stood on the twig.”

“Shut up!” snarled Bandit, leaping at Bramble, “It’s none of your business.”

Bramble dropped his ears and tail and moved away from the angry eevee. Bandit then walked off; smirking while Cream began to cry.

A few moments later, Vaporeon-sensei and the other vaporeon returned with the rest of the eevee. Vaporeon-sensei immediately came up to Cream.

“What happened?” asked Vaporeon-sensei urgently, “Why is Dark Growlithe’s blood all over?”

“It’s all my fault!” cried Cream, tears pouring down her face and darkening her fur.

“No, it’s not,” whispered Kitten in Cream’s ear, “Don’t listen to him.”

“What happened?” repeated Vaporeon-sensei. “And where’s Bandit?”

“Bandit left,” Kitten informed him bitterly, “after making Cream blame herself for what happened.”

“Which was what?” asked the exasperated teacher.

“We were out hunting like we were supposed to,” explained Kitten, “and Dark Growlithe told Cream to try and catch a rattata.”

Cream’s crying increased in volume and Kitten paused her story to calm her best friend down.

“But the rattata escaped and Bandit cased after it.”

“Dark Growlithe told him not to,” added Bramble.

“Then Bandit came back, being chased by a raticate. So Dark Growlithe fights the raticate and tells us to stay put. He disappears and when he comes back his leg’s bleeding badly. He didn’t tell us what happened but brought us straight back.”

“Where is he?”

“He went to the healer,” stated Bramble.

Vaporeon-sensei then told the other vaporeon to handle everything while he went to see Dark Growlithe.

*****

When Vaporeon-sensei entered the hospital room he saw Dark Growlithe lying on the floor, a blood-stained leaf wrapped around his paw and a small pool of blood on the floor.

“Dark Growlithe?” began Vaporeon-sensei; “Can you hear me?”

“He’s unconscious from loss of blood,” stated the vaporeon nurse from behind Vaporeon-sensei, causing him to jump in the air.

“How is he?” he asked as soon as his nerves calmed.

“To tell the truth he’s bad. The raticate bit right through a vein. The bleeding’s only just stopped. I’m trying to replace it now.”

The vaporeon healer checked on a liquid boiling above a fire in the cave and picked up a hollow, sharpened reed in her mouth.

“Come here,” she mumbled, “I’ll need your help.”

“What must I do?” asked Vaporeon-sensei.

“You’re not squeamish are you?”

“Not at all. Although I can’t stand dead bodies that weren’t killed for food. It just freaks me out for some reason.”

“Well, I certainly hope Dark Growlithe won’t die. I need to replace his lost blood. I’m going to inject that mixture,” she nodded at the liquid boiling in a krabby shell, “into his veins.”

“Is it water?”

“Some of it.”

“But, won’t that hurt him?”

“It’s not pure water but yes. That’s why I’m boiling it. The hotter it is the less it will hurt him. What would have been best was if I had another fire pokémon here and could transfer their blood into Dark Growlithe but I don’t have a fire pokémon.”

“So what do I have to do?”

“I’m going to insert this reed into one of his veins. When I do his blood will squirt out. The opposite of what we want. To stop that you’re going to have to hold the reed in your mouth and block it off using your tongue. Then I’ll get the mixture and spit it through the reed. We just keep doing that until we’ve used all the mixture then we pull out the reed and bandage the wound we make. Alright?”

Vaporeon-sensei nodded.

“Good.”

Vaporeon held the reed in her mouth and pointed the reed at one of the veins in Dark Growlithe’s neck. With a little push the sharpened reed sunk into his neck a short way. Vaporeon grunted and Vaporeon-sensei got ready to block the reed when she left it. As Vaporeon moved her head away Dark Growlithe’s blood squirted out the thin reed and over the two blue pokémon, creating red lines down their bodies. Ignoring that, Vaporeon-sensei closed his mouth over the reed and pressed his tongue against the opening, holding Dark Growlithe’s remaining blood in his body. Vaporeon then took a bite from a piece of seaweed lying near the fire.

“Stops burning,” she explained as she also smeared it over her face.

She then took a mouthful of the burning liquid and came back to Dark Growlithe. The two switched quickly and as they did a drip of the mixture fell on Vaporeon-sensei’s foot. He winced and looked down. There was already a red mark showing where he was burned. Using a form of watergun, Vaporeon shot the mixture into Dark Growlithe before switching over with Vaporeon-sensei again. They repeated the process again and again and by the time they were finished both were covered in blood. Vaporeon assured Vaporeon-sensei that she had been able to put more mixture in than blood had come out, though looking at himself Vaporeon-sensei wasn’t sure. But even he could see that Dark Growlithe looked healthier after the treatment than before.