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Tenko clumsily tumbled through the door, knocking over a metal rack next to the door full of various types of bandages, antiseptic, and over the counter painkillers. The bottles and bandages plummeted to the floor with a hollow clang, pills rattling around noisily in their containers as Tenko followed suit, hitting the ground with a loud thud.
“AAAAAAAAAH!”
The shrill screams a certain skittish nurse pierced the ears of the frazzled girl laying down on the linoleum floor.
“Hi Mikan!” She chirped enthusiastically as though having a conversation from the floor while surrounded by strips of gauze was perfectly normal, trying to ignore the stars spinning around her field of vision.
“Tenko! W-what...no, why...AHHH! WE NEED TO GET YOU FIXED UP IMMEDIATELY!” Mikan shrieked, grabbing both of Tenko’s arms and attempting to hoist her off the floor. The buff girl who had just been practicing martial arts earlier tried to stand up to face her, but collapsed to the floor again.
“Oh n-no, this isn’t”—”Don’t worry Mikan, it’s just some light bruising I got from training earlier! Just hand me some painkillers and I should be better in no time!” Tenko said cheerily, trying to ignore her quickly swelling ankle.
“Tenko no! This is bad! We need to get you patched up right now!” Mikan’s voice became uncharacteristically steady, her face no longer contorted with fear. Tenko looked up from the floor, expecting to be met with the quivering girl she often passed in the hallways or saw in the courtyard, feeble and shaky and frail. Instead, a look of both worry and determination was etched clearly into the nurse’s face; right now, in this moment, nothing mattered more than taking care of her patient, and right now that patient lay splayed out on the floor of her domain with a sprained ankle that was getting worse by the minute.
Tenko stared into those eyes filled to the brim with a self confidence she’d never seen before in this girl and slowly reached her hand out to grab hers. Why was she shaking?
To her secret dismay, Mikan retracted her hand and crouched down next to her, throwing Tenko’s arm across her shoulder and lifting her up by the waist. “Come on, to the bed you go,” she stated, firm yet kind. The two walked the short distance from the doorway to the bed, Mikan supporting Tenko and her poor ankle the whole 10 steps there.
“Wow kinda silly that I couldn’t make it there myself, huh?” Tenko teased, slightly embarrassed that she had to be helped just to get across the room.
“W-what? No! You can’t put weight on that ankle! Now sit down, I need to...bandage you up.” Mikan said, at first assertive, but voice softening near the end. For some reason, Tenko felt heat flood her face and turned away, grabbing the pillow behind her as an excuse to not meet the purple haired nurse’s oddly striking eyes.
“Here, ice your ankle.” Mikan said strongly as she handed her an ice pack from the fridge in the far corner in the room. Tenko took the ice pack from her hands and although it was cold to the touch, she could’ve sworn she felt fire in the brief moment when their fingers just barely touched.
The girl so versed in Neo-Aikido watched weakly from the bed as Mikan flitted around the office like a hawk; she moved so swiftly and so naturally that she seemed as graceful as water. Tenko thought back to all the times when she’d watched Mikan fall in the dining hall, or trip while playing sports with her class, or somehow gotten herself tangled in some bushes in some uncompromising position to be the laughing stock of people around her.
This was not the same girl that so often fell victim to her own clumsiness; rather in this certain space, Mikan was in her natural environment. She was so in tune with her patient’s feelings and with the world around her. If you asked, she could name every single type of painkiller and their location all around the room from memory, was capable of cleaning and dressing a wound with her eyes shut and her hands tied behind her back, and always made sure her patients left happy and healthy. Right now, her one concentration was treating the beaten up girl sitting on the bed and her rapidly swelling ankle. At this moment, nothing else mattered.
Tenko hadn’t noticed she was staring until Mikan stood right in front of her and was taking the ice pack from her hands, unsure of when she had gotten there. “I’m going to wrap your ankle now, okay?” The nurse said, gentler now.
Tenko nodded dumbly. “O-okay.” When had she become the one who stuttered? She hoped that Mikan couldn’t see the rosettes that bloomed on her cheeks as she wrapped her fragile ankle, the swelling slightly gone down from the ice.
Mikan took a bandage roll of white gauze from the shelf (she had quickly cleaned up the mess on the floor while Tenko helplessly watched) and began to coat Tenko’s ankle in the soft, stretchy material. Every wrap done by the nurse was gentle and light, as though her touch was made of silk. Her movements were quick and calculated, but also smooth and fluid, like Mikan had never even known the word “clumsy” in her life. Every inch of her became as graceful as a ballet dancer and this small white office, ripe with the smell of antiseptics, was her natural dance floor. Tenko’s pain slowly thawed away alongside the ice pack that lay forgotten on the floor, her whole body melting into Mikan’s touch.
Suddenly she forgot all about why she was here in the first place.
“Tenko?” Mikan’s voice sounded like an angel, distant in her ears.
“Yes! Mikan!” She responded quickly, snapping out of her odd reverie.
“Your ankle is...um...all w-wrapped up.” Mikan stated as she stood up to be eye level with the girl sitting on the bed, trying to keep her voice stable to the best of her ability. Now that the patient was relatively tended to, her instincts as a caretaker began to dwindle. “And you have to stay off th-that ankle! I’m going to g-give you crutches on your w-way out!” She said, attempting to regain her composure.
Oddly enough, Tenko found that the last thing she wanted to do right now was leave.
“Thank you so much Mikan! You really are amazing! I can see why they call you the Ultimate Nurse.” Tenko said, giving her a warm smile.
The nurse who, just moments before, was moving with poise and speaking with kind assertion, felt tears begin to wet her eyes. Tenko’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Mikan! W-why are you crying? Is it something I said? Did I—”
“N-Nobody’s ever called me that before!” Mikan wailed, tears beginning to trail down her cheeks.
Tenko frowned. “What? Amazing?”
“Y-yes!” Mikan sniffled and wiped the wetness from her face.
In the heat of the moment, Tenko grabbed her by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Mikan. You are a fantastic girl and a fantastic nurse! Don’t ever let anyone make you think otherwise!” Now it was Tenko’s turn to be firm.
Mikan felt saltwater on the rims of her eyes once again. “R-really? You think so?” She sniffled.
“Yes! I really do! You’re a wonderful girl and you deserve to know it! And you’re far better than any of the degenerate males at this school!” Tenko exclaimed, staring into her watery eyes. “In fact, I—I think you’re one of the most amazing girls in the world!” She blurted out, color rushing to her cheeks once again.
Out of nowhere, Mikan melted into her arms, hugging her tightly. “Thank you,” she sobbed into the injured girl's chest, the top of her head nestled beneath the crook of her chin. Tenko stroked the top of her head and buried her head into her hair, feeling how soft it was. The two stayed like that, both girls afraid that any movement would break them, until Mikan’s cries turned into soft breathing.
Just before the fragile nurse was about to pull away, the girl with the bandaged ankle pulled her caretaker onto the bed with her, the two of them silently dissolving into each other as an unspoken feeling knit their arms together. They lay there for hours, feeling the rhythm of each other's breathing, until Mikan began to doze off, bundled closely in her patient's arms. As she counted each beat between the steady rise and fall of Mikan’s chest, Tenko inhaled the smell of her strawberry shampoo that mingled with the fumes of alcohol that wafted through the nurse’s office and easily thought to herself that this must be her most favorite smell in the world.