Spoiler
Red lights flashed all around inside the ER of Mushroom Kingdom Hospital. Doctor Mario Mario, professional surgeon, physician, anthropologist, and everything else that could identify a person as a Doctor, pushed the double doors open and walked down the hallway. He followed the stretcher wheeling down to the closest available room ready for treatment.
The Doctor pulled on a white thin glove over his burly hand. The short, stocky mustached Italian was dressed in a white coat over shirt and tie, and blue overalls; a stethoscope was draped around his neck, and a head mirror strapped around his big forehead full of knowledge.
Doctor Luigi Mario, Doctor Mario’s younger brother, was in step beside him, head down in a clipboard; Following the two brothers, came a bunch of frightened, worried toads, carrying microphones and recorders. Some had cameras.
“Doctor Luigi,” Said Doctor Mario. “You’a called security to dispose of these reporters, right?”
Doctor Luigi hadn’t seemed to have heard. His eyes were scrutinizing the words on the clipboard. He was mouthing the words as he read.
Mario slapped him across the face.
Luigi’s eyes widened. He cranked his head towards him. “Yow Mario! That’a hurt!”
“I’a told you to call security!”
Luigi shifted his eyes towards the pressing reporters. Their tiny voices flooded the air:
“Is he dead, Doctor Mario?”
“What is your theory diagnosis?”
“Any thoughts on the background check, Doctor Luigi?”
“Peanut butter?”
The last question didn’t make any sense. A lakitu hovered over them all, a video camera hanging from a fishing pole. Mario turned sharply and addressed far off into the crowd. “Hey’a! Can I have’a security over here? Get rid of’a this crowd!”
The doors behind them opened and big, fat purple yoshis stepped through. The dinosaurs opened their large, toothless mouths and whipped out their tongues like red lassos.
The crowd of toads cried out as the tongues wrapped around them and pulled them all back out the door. Even the lakitu wasn’t spared.
The hallway was silent. It was just the two brothers and the flashing lights.
“Are they’a going to get eaten?” Doctor Luigi asked about the reporters.
“There’s a no time for such curiosities.” Mario noticed the stretcher had already entered into the surgery room.
Doctor Mario hurried on, Luigi following at his heels. They stepped through the door and into the small surgical room, with the patient already planted on the bed, the stretcher taken out and folded in the corner. The nurse was standing beside the patient, so beautiful in her slim pink nurse scrubs that cut to the bottom of pale thighs, her blonde hair was prepped up behind her, and wide, blue eyes, which appeared in such panic looked over at him.
“Doctor,” She said. “What took you so long? We’re losing the patient!”
Mario and Luigi rushed over. Mario loomed over the character lying on the bed.
“Hmm,” he said. “This looks serious.”
Donkey Kong barely fit on the bed. His burly arms dangled off the edges, too big for the thin blanket over him. Even his smaller feet dangled over the end. The Kong was breathing heavily, his eyes bulging and cracked red, his mouth foaming.
“ARRREH, ARREH!” The patient cried out. Suddenly he began flailing his arms.
“Doctor Luigi! Hold’a him down!”
“Yes’a, Doctor Mario!” Luigi grabbed at Donkey Kong’s shoulders, then pushed him down with all his might.
Donkey Kong met this by trying to thrash about. Doctor Luigi, in no way as strong or stronger, was immediately having trouble. He was nearly being thrown over just trying to pin him down.
“Hurry, Mario!” he said. “I’a can’t hold him for long!”
“I’m’a aware of that,” Doctor Mario said. He turned to his blonde personal assistant. “Nurse Toadstool,” he said.
“Doctor?”
“Give me a red and blue pill. Red on the top, blue on the bottom.”
Nurse Toadstool nodded. She turned, and bent over the table, picking around inside the bag full of pills. Doctor Mario caught a glimpse of her magnificent buttocks outlined in her slim scrubs. But he turned away, ashamed, red in the face. No, he thought. I must not think such thoughts! We are professional acquaintances, and nothing more!
Meanwhile Donkey Kong was dry heaving, thrashing his body about. Doctor Luigi was lifted up in the air for a moment, before luckily the gorrilla settled down enough for Luigi to land on his feet.
Nurse Toadstool brought out the right pill; the thing was bigger than her hand. Mario snatched it quickly. “Doctor Luigi, open his mouth!”
Doctor Luigi pried the gorrilla’s mouth open. In a quick, violent motion, Doctor Mario shoved the pill down Donkey Kong’s throat.
Donkey Kong went still.
“Nurse Toadstool,” Mario said. “Bring the x-ray!”
Nurse Toadstool brought over this square contraption attached to a metal pulley that reached all the way to the opposite end of the room. She pulled the screen over Donkey Kong’s body. In a flash the square screen glowed to life. Small, squirming images were found within the outline of the stomach.
Mario took a closer look. With a solemn frown, he said. “I don’t’a believe this.” he said.
Nurse Toadstool and Doctor Luigi peered at the screen with him.
“What is it, Doctor Mario?” Nurse Toadstool asked. “What are those?”
The screen zoomed in on the bouncing yellow viruses, their faces stretched into a smile of sinister delight. They slammed against the sides of the inside of Donkey Kong’s stomach, and immediately The gorrilla met this with an unconscious spasm, but that quickly subsided.
Mario looked over to the patient and sighed with relief.
“Good. The sleeping pill has taken effect.
“Mario!” Doctor Luigi said, pointing at the screen. “Look!”
One yellow virus looked strained, its expression pained. And then, to the team’s terror, the virus duplicated itself.
“That’s a not good,” Doctor Mario said.
He turned around, towards Luigi. “Doctor Luigi. Make sure to supply the other nurses with those pills. This cannot be treatable right now.”
Doctor Luigi and Nurse Toadstool looked at each other. Fearful.
“Why’a not, Mario?” He asked.
“Because he was’a poisoned by a synthetic virus.”
“What do’a we do?”
Doctor Mario looked at each of them in turn. “We must do some background checking with the data you recorded, Doctor Luigi. We must find’a where Donkey Kong had been, and find out who’a could’ve given him the virus! They must know the antidote!”
Doctor Mario squinted his eyes at the screen, scanning the view of the viruses dancing and snickering about.
He ordered the screen to zoom in on one virus. Closer, closer.
He began to sweat. He was seeing something.
Closer.
Finally, after getting ten times closer on the scope. He found something tiny on the forehead of each virus.
It was the letter, “W.”
--- --- ---
The night was done. Donkey Kong was asleep in the ER, Nurse Toadette assigned to take regular checkups on his condition. Dr. Mario and his brother Doctor Luigi were walking down the hallway towards the elevator that would bring them to the base floor.
“So Wario is’a behind this,” Dr. Mario growled. “Why would’a he do such a thing?”
Dr. Luigi was skimming through his clip board. “It’a says here that Donkey Kong had been taken in by the Emergency Toads at’a around sunset, at his tree house in Jungle Japes.”
“That is’a pointless,” Doctor Mario spat. “Wario is’a the culprit. We shall’a make him spill the antidote so that I’a may cure Donkey Kong! We will go investigate first thing tomorrow!”
The elevator made a light ding sound, and the doors whispered open. The brothers walked side by side. Meanwhile a nurse sat behind the great white counter, dressed in a white and cyan colored nurse’s scrubs. She regarded them and smiled sweetly. She had white-blonde hair and a gorgeous pale face.
“Goodnight, Doctor Mario. Goodnight Doctor Luigi.”
The brothers smiled and nodded to her, then took their leave out through the main glass doors. The night sky glittered with numerous stars watching over the Mushroom Kingdom.
“That’a Nurse Rosalina,” Doctor Luigi nodded back towards the entrance. He whistled. “She is sure’a something! I’d’a like to take her out sometime!”
Mario blew air out of his mouth in mock gesture. “I’a thought you were after’a Nurse Daisy?”
“I..uh…” Luigi reddened. “ It’s a not working out.” he looked away, and said nothing more.
As they walked along the path, towards home, a sweet, familiar voice called out.
“Doctor Mario,” She called.
Doctor Mario turned back to see Nurse Toadstool striding towards them. Luigi nudged at his arm and left him, alone. Alone with Nurse Toadstool.
Doctor Mario cleared his throat. “Miss Toadstool….err, uh I mean Princess. How’a may I help you?”
Nurse Toadstool smiled at him. The twinkling light from all the stars made her beautiful complexion beam.
“How about walking me home?” She said.
Doctor Mario nodded. “As’a...as you wish.”
They walked along the path. Instead of taking the left path towards Mario’s home, they headed straight, towards Nurse Toadstool’s castle. The glittering stars gave the grassy domed hills around them a bluish green tinge, and it artistically looked perfect with the pleasant coolness of the night.
But despite the cool, Doctor Mario felt heat rising in his face. It was indeed a gorgeous night, a night for couples or just plain lovers to enjoy each other's embrace. He was a teenager once, long ago. The memory of nights like this back in his school days, came back to him. Especially during this moment. He glanced over at Nurse Toadstool, while holding in his breath.
“You know, Doctor,” She said, looking straight out at the path ahead. “I’ve never been one to break rules before. Never.”
Doctor Mario raised a brow. “Oh?”
She looked over at him, and nodded. “A princess seldom breaks the rules.”
“What rules would those be?” Mario said dumbly.
The great castle appeared before them, though still a great walk away. It’s shaded red spires in the night still showed magnificence and enchantment to the castle.
“Well...Mario,” Nurse Toadstool said. “If it’s not any trouble, would you like to stay for a while in the castle? I know we’ll be breaking the rules of curfew, but I could make you something.”
Mario’s face turned red as a cherry. His eyes darted away. He thought he heard steam blow out from his ears. They had been through a lot together, him and Princess Peach-- Nurse Toadstool, he should say. The princess Peach was a dutiful ruler, while nurse toadstool was a part time nurse, wanting to do her best at helping her own citizens other than just sitting around in a throne room all day.
“Well, a Princess...I’a...I’a can’t. I need to look over some paperwork regarding Donkey Kong’s condition. Wario’s behind it, and I need to…”
Princess Peach undid her braid, letting her blonde hair spill down her shoulders, starlight- tinted yellow silk.
“I understand,” she said, sighing.
Mario’s primal desires were banging at him from the inside, begging to be released. He wanted to kiss her then. He wanted to go to her castle and eat her snacks and do more kissing. He wanted to express how he felt towards her, after so many experiences and drama they both been through. That was why she was his personal assistant; not just because she was also the princess, but because of how much they’ve been through as a team. Because of how much they’ve been through together.
But alas. Donkey Kong’s life was on the line, and so would their focus on their occupation. He couldn’t afford to have this now, and neither could she.
Toads riding on green yoshi’s caught up to them on the hill just high above the castle. They each carried spears and red homing shells in their hands. A red yoshi, bare-backed of a rider, was in between them.
“Welcome back, Princess.” One of them said.
The princess nodded to them kindly. She turned, and embraced Mario for one short sweet moment. “Good night, Mario,” she said.
She released him and with the two toads’ escort, she mounted the red yoshi and the three of them rode down towards the castle.
They were barely small dots in the night when Mario decided to turn around. He was still dressed in his white doctor’s coat, so he put his hands in the pockets. He cast his head down, and on the long and dark way back home he tried his best to shake away the feelings.
--- --- ---
Topic: Dry Bones--A Dr. Mario Drama (Read 3575 times)
