章 25: Emergency operation
Mariko was about to take a bite of the strange apple, but suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her chest. Her body tensed up, making it hard to breathe, and her consciousness began to fade.
"Mom? Mom!" Karin saw her mother suddenly start convulsing and tried to approach, but the tall man in the room stopped her and lifted her up to eye level.
"I need you to calm down and listen to me; your mother is going into cardiac arrest. I'm going to save her, but you'll have to help me, do you understand?" Karin was in a panic, but finding a direction to help her mother, she nodded despite trembling.
"Follow the steps I'm going to tell you while I help your mother," Enel approached Mariko and tore her clothing with his hands, exposing her chest to ensure there were no obstructions when he used his hands as defibrillators.
"Pick up the golden apple that fell from your mother and turn it into a paste, then dilute that paste in a glass of water," Enel began administering shocks while speaking. "Then stay by my side, and when I ask, give me the glass. Let's go!"
Karin followed the instructions and picked up the golden apple. She quickly mashed it in a bowl with a metal spoon, being careful not to let her tears fall into the mixture, anxious not to accidentally ruin it. Then, she climbed onto a stool, took a wooden glass, filled it with tap water, and poured the crushed apple inside. She stirred it, and when it looked uniform, she approached Enel, staying by his side, holding the glass while looking at her mother.
Due to her position and the height difference, she didn't notice how Enel was frowning intensely.
"How many people did she heal with her ability for her heart to deteriorate this badly?" he thought while doing his best to keep Mariko alive, using shocks not only to ensure her heart continued beating at the right rhythm but also to prevent muscle blockage suffocation and negative body reactions.
"We'll have to take somewhat more drastic measures," he muttered to himself as he removed a gold earring from one of his earlobes. Using the metalworking knowledge from his original Enel, he heated the metal and reformed it with a few moves to make it look like a long, thin scalpel with a hole from the handle to the tip.
The weirdest part was that it had a funnel on the handle. It wasn't elegant, but it was functional enough for his purpose, and its incandescent state sterilized the gold just enough.
"Get ready to give me the glass," Enel said while holding the strange scalpel in his right hand and patting Mariko's abdomen with his left to locate the target. "This might be unpleasant; you might want to close your eyes," he warned.
Karin didn't know what he meant, but she was scared enough to follow whatever he said without questioning. She tightly shut her eyes.
Puchi!
Enel stabbed the scalpel at a specific location and angle with surgical precision while using his thumb to cover the hole in the funnel to prevent blood from getting inside. Once he reached the exact depth, he stopped and removed his thumb. He examined the hole carefully to make sure no blood had entered, then took the glass from Karin and poured the pasty liquid through the funnel into the pierced stomach.
Once the glass was empty, he waited a second and then removed the scalpel in one swift motion, even before any blood could start flowing. The effect of the golden apple on the stomach kicked in, healing the stomach's wound, the abrasions from the abrupt surgery, and rapidly restoring Mariko's health.
"That's it, little one; you can open your eyes, and you'll see that your mother is safe," Enel reassured Karin, stroking her head to comfort her.
Karin cautiously opened her right eye and saw that her mother had a much more relaxed expression and was breathing evenly. She suddenly felt her legs turn to jelly, and she fell to the floor, unable to move, while wiping away her tears.
"You were a great help," Enel said, patting Karin's head to calm her. "I need you to go to where your mother keeps her clothes and bring another shirt for her. I don't think she'll like to see herself like this when she wakes up, and we need to go."
"Mm!" At the moment, Karin was heavily reliant on Enel, so she tried to get up to fetch clothes for her mother. However, her legs simply wouldn't respond to her command.
"It's okay, stay with her. Just point me in the right direction," Enel lifted Karin and placed her on the bed next to her mother.
"There, the right-hand wardrobe," Karin pointed.
Enel was about to walk there, but the unconscious Kusagakure ninja on the floor were starting to regain consciousness again. He decided to put them out of their misery. He couldn't keep stunning people every two minutes; it was quite annoying. From Karin's perspective, it seemed like Enel had knocked out the Kusagakure ninjas again, but in reality, he damaged their brains to make them stop breathing without regaining consciousness. Externally, they appeared to be unconscious.
"Wow, your mother seems to really like purple," Enel said, noticing that ninety percent of the clothing was purple, while the rest was lavender or gray. Even the underwear wasn't an exception. Perhaps the village was just lazy, giving everyone the same-colored clothing for easy identification.
He grabbed the first shirt he could find and closed the wardrobe. What about the bra? Well, he only knew how to remove them from his previous life, and Karin wasn't old enough to understand such things yet, so the shirt would have to do for now.
It wasn't that Enel was in "doctor mode," where he was indifferent to the patient's body while changing the torn clothing. He just wasn't interested in Mariko as a woman. One of his life rules was never to get romantically involved with someone who had children. Not because he had anything against mothers or children per se, but because he felt personally insulted at the idea of helping raise another man's offspring in those circumstances.
Helping a mother like Mariko? Sure, no problem. Helping an orphan like Haku or Kimimaro? He wouldn't refuse that either. But if he dated a mother, he would inevitably think that he was being used as a substitute rather than truly loved. Yes, it was very peculiar and for a very specific situation, but everyone had their own thoughts. The same applied when he saw the opposite situation with a single father. If he remarried, he would think that he was using his new wife as a substitute rather than truly loving her.
(Thoughts from the character to give him some unique personality quirks and to clarify that mothers are outside his personal romantic interest. However, everyone deserves a second chance at love!)
Once he made sure Mariko was wearing the shirt properly, he picked up both her and Karin to get them out of the burning village. It seemed that Ameyuri was really excited; how many minutes had she spent inside the house for everything to end up like this? Shaking his head, the three of them disappeared, leaving behind only a few arcs of electricity.
週次パワーステータス
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