Side Story #5: Momoko's Clinic

<Author’s note: This story takes place before the events of Book 1.>

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Side Story 5: Momoko’s Clinic

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■■ Jijinto ■■

“Momo-chan, have you seen my spectacles? I seem to have misplaced them!”

It was early morning in Hyuga’s largest city. The day had yet to break when Doctor Matsuyo Fujii and his apprentice began to set up shop in their little corner of the Eastside slums. They weren’t selling merchandise, but conducting a medical practice: a clinic, one of the first of its kind and certainly the only one that the poverty-stricken of Jijinto could afford.

“They’re on your head, Fujii-sama,” Momoko giggled as she handed the doctor a list of papers concerning today’s appointments. “Let’s see, aside from walk-ins...we have a dozen checkups, two bloodletting sessions to relieve high blood pressure, and several persistent cases of worms.”

“They wouldn’t be so persistent if our patients learned how to cook their fish!” Doctor Fujii grumbled, lowering his goggles—custom, experimental eyewear. It helped him read yet gave the appearance of magnifying his eyes, which led this little clinic to be dubbed ‘Fish-Eye Hospital’ by its patrons. Oddly fitting considering many of them could only afford to pay in salmon and mackerel.

Momoko opened the door after finishing the necessary clerical work, welcoming patients new and old with a warm smile. The business-end of keeping the clinic running was among the more mundane aspects of being a doctor’s apprentice, but Momoko considered herself fortunate to have such a job at all.

Sadly, the most unfortunate aspect of the job decided to make itself known first thing in the morning.

“Came down with somethin’ real bad—*cough*—might just be, uh, fatal,” said a male client at the front of the line. He was little more than a teenager, and looked like one of the street toughs who came in with cuts, bruises and broken noses. Most were either too stupid or stubborn to ask for help, but that didn’t stop them from trying to flirt with her.

“My heart just can’t stop beatin’ around you, Miss. So how’s about I take you out to dinner after your shift?”

Momoko gave a complimentary smile for the young man’s courage. She could spot his friends from outside the window, anxiously awaiting their buddy’s fate. She used to shut down these advances far more harshly than she did now. Her new technique helped the line move along much quicker, she found.

“The treatment for heart palpitations is leeches across the sternum. We’ll have some particularly large ones coming in next week, if you’d like to set up an appointment.”

The love-struck streetfighter declined Momoko’s offer and promptly fled. Without missing a beat, the doctor-in-training called upon the next patient.

“The burdens of being a beautiful woman! How are you, Momoko-san?” This patient was one she already knew. It was Eguchi, a barkeeper from a local izakaya who suffered from tendonitis in his right hand.

“I am well, and pleased to meet you again, Eguchi-san. Is your hand bothering you still?” 

Momoko took Eguchi into a nearby room. She often took over minor cases that didn’t require Fujii’s expertise, especially when the clinic got busy. Some patrons even preferred her care over the aged doctor’s—her bedside manner and beauty being the chief reasons why.

Momoko only wished that her expertise was just as desirable. To be taken seriously in the medical field was all but impossible for a woman like her. She must’ve spoken her frustrations aloud, because Eguchi felt it necessary to comfort her.

“Now now, you’re nothin’ short of a professional, young lady! Not your fault these dirty bums think with their...well, you know how men can be,” Eguchi shrugged. “But you might do well to stop being single one of these days. Even this lot would hesitate flirting with a married woman.”

“Marriage?” Momoko spoke the word as if she didn’t know the meaning of it. She shook her head and starting applying an antiseptic ointment to the patient’s wrist. “I’ve honestly never had those sort of feelings, towards anyone I’m afraid. Now then: have you been keeping up with your wrist exercises every day?”

Eguchi let out a nod and a grunt. “Think I’m more worried about you than me! The Canary may not be a Yamato teahouse, but we serve all types. Why, there’s even a samurai came by yesterday. In town for a job. Send ‘em your way for a checkup, if you’d like.”

Momoko replied as she inspected her patient’s mouth and teeth, eyelids and pulse. “I recommend adding more broccoli and leafy greens into your diet, Eguchi-san. That should ease the swelling in your joints. As for samurai...most do not interest me. But thank you for the offer.”

Eguchi couldn’t help but grin. “This one isn’t like most samurai.”

■■■■

“I understand your circumstances, Chisato-san, but our records show that you are several months delinquent in your payments…” Momoko let out a tired sigh. Getting patients to pay on time or at all wasn’t just difficult, but it took a lot of energy she couldn’t afford to waste. Thankfully this old lady was the clinic’s last customer.

“Are you calling me a liar? Why I—I’ll take my business elsewhere if that’s the treatment I can expect! You act as if asking for a little extra pain medication is downright robbery!”

Momoko’s practiced smile faded for but a moment. Chisato-san had a hip injury that never fully healed. Aching bones were not uncommon among the elderly, yet she couldn’t fault the woman for wanting to be able to move about without pain.

Pain relief was by and large the most demanded medication they had, yet the numbing agents currently available were expensive to obtain and results weren’t always reproducible. This was why Momoko and the doctor were researching an alternative involving poppy flowers.

Doctor Masuyo Fujii came out from a backroom, carrying a parcel and forcing out a rare smile. “How does the evening find you, Chisato-san? I have your herbal extracts prepared. The same as usual, correct?”

The old lady was positively charmed by the old doctor, and only left after several exchanges of pleasantries. Momoko all but ran to close shut the clinic’s doors behind her. A smile—an honest one—crept on her lips. The day-to-day affairs were finally done. Research could resume.

“Now...where did we leave off last night, Momo-chan?”

“The seeds should be finished soaking by now, Fujii-sama!”

The two were an odd pair, both giggling with delight as they looked upon their creations in their sanitized lab. Every countertop was filled with papers and plants, test tubes and diagrams pertaining to experimental ideas. The most recent one also held the most promise: extracting the milky fluid from out of poppy seeds.

Dozens of methods had been attempted, each of which Momoko documented to the utmost detail. She took notes as Fujii took measurements, and the pair discussed at length the merits to different approaches, experimental variables and possible applications. In their excitement they didn’t hear the knocking at the door.

“Get the hell out of the way, Daisuke! These bastards will open up one way or another!”

A well-muscled and foul-mouthed woman pushed aside her large comrade. This was the yakuza captain, Nishi, who knocked on the door with a swing of her spiked kanabō: a large club that crumpled the shoji door and sent it flying off its hinges. Before Momoko and Fujii could make sense of it, three yakuza carrying a body rushed inside.

For a second Momoko feared the clinic was late on its protection payments. This area of the city belonged to the Yamagata-gumi: a criminal syndicate with brutal methods and fearsome enforcers. But these three each had tears in their eyes or close to it—the bald giant called Daisuke was openly weeping as he carried a body in a blood-soaked cloth.

“Please help! An assassin came and—*sniff*—you must save Yama-sama!” That plea came from Keiko, a yakuza with cherry blossoms inked up her neck and across her cheek. She was short and her head only made it up to Momoko’s chest, which she used to bury her face into and start crying uncontrollably. Nishi had to yank her off.

“Get off her tits!” Nishi yelled, pointing her kanabō at Doctor Fujii. “And get to work, damn it! This is some kind of hospital, isn’t it?!”

Momoko and Fujii recomposed themselves and exchanged nods, and the emergency protocol for blood loss victims began. A table was cleared up and soon bandages, cloths, stitches and antiseptic would be applied. The skin that wasn’t slashed apart was inked in tattoos. The designs were evidence enough that this really was Yamagata-sama, the yakuza boss who owned half of Jijinto. The most prestigious man that ‘Fisheye Hospital’ had ever operated on.

He was middle-aged, and though he had a gut the rest of him was well-muscled. The elaborate designs on the yakuza’s skin were as impressive as they were distracting: elaborate dragons, naked women and blossoms adorned his arms, back and shoulders. But the design across his chest was what kept Momoko’s attention the longest:

起死回生

“Wake from death and return to life,” Momoko said to herself. It was a timely phrase which meant to ‘turn a dire situation into a success’. She wondered if the yakuza ever imagined just how dire a situation he was in.

“Momo-chan! Bandages!” Doctor Fujii’s yell snapped her back into the present. She assisted her mentor just as she always did, but never before had she seen a body so...well carved. Yamagata was in shock and a quarter of his blood was already gone; the cuts across his body were too deep and done with such precision that Momoko doubted her eyes.

Doctor Fujii also admired the assassin’s handiwork. “Remarkable...these cuts each follow a major systemic vein...cut in half with surgical precision! Was this truly done with a katana?”

“Shut the hell up and save our boss!” Nishi yelled, thrashing about the lab and sending papers and glass scattering about. Momoko bit her lip and looked to Doctor Fujii with concern, but her mentor and his magnified eyes remained focused and determined. He wasn’t ready to give this one up to the spirits just yet.

“Momo-chan, calm down and hand me my sewing kit. I’ll then need you to apply the experimental anesthetic.”

Momoko hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until now. She had never been under such pressure before in her life, yet Doctor Fujii—a man as old as even their oldest patients—didn’t have a single bead of sweat across his forehead. If he was nervous he certainly didn’t let it show.

You wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but this grumpy, wrinkled doctor once served the Imperial Family during the Golden Era. They say he stitched together men with more limbs missing than not, and was either a shugenja or a saint: the samurai he saved couldn’t decide.

But right now, at least, Momoko was happy to work by his side.

“Yes, Fujii-sama!”

The bald giant was squeamish at the sight of blood and had to be excused, while Keiko mostly kept to herself in some sort of prayer. Seeing a yakuza act like a shrine maiden would’ve been funny were circumstances less grim. Nishi was the only one of them fit to speak, though her words were mostly mumbled regrets.

“...I should’ve been there. Ever since he married that Shiroyama woman, there’s been hits damn near every week. Yama-sama would laugh them off, play it off like he didn’t give a shit...maybe he didn’t,” Nishi sniffled, “but I sure did. Kuso!”

“I’ll cut both my fingers off for this!” she yelled, snatching a scalpel from right under Momoko. Keiko cried out to stop her, but the stronger woman shook her off like a wild horse. The doctor-in-training knew what was going on, as some of their patients were members of crime syndicates.

‘Finger shortening’ was a yakuza ritual for atonement, where the atoner amputated their little finger right above the knuckle. Dismemberment was all too common among the people of Jijinto, with infection adding insult to self-inflicted injury.

Momoko hated violence in general but especially in her operating room, where mixing even just a drop of blood could poison another. So for the sake of her patient, she dampened a cloth with opium and forced it against the yakuza’s nose and mouth. Even before Nishi could push away, the yakuza began to stagger like a drunkard before collapsing to the floor.

“What in the...hell is...that?” she asked before slipping into unconsciousness.

Momoko took the scalpel from Nishi’s grip and proceeded to sanitize it before placing it back where it belonged. Keiko—the only conscious yakuza in the room—gulped, with a newfound fear for the doctor’s assistant.

With peace and quiet returned, Doctor Fujii and Momoko began a long and tireless night of work.

■■■■

“My...spectacles, where are they...Momo-chan?” Though he was something of a living legend, Masuyo Fujii was also an old man up well past his bedtime. Momoko smiled as she tucked him in. The doctor began snoring the moment his head hit the futon.

“Sleep well, Fujii-sama. Your patient might just make it through the night. The opiate is more effective than we ever imagined.”

The hours spent in surgery had not been wasted. The experimental anesthetic lowered Yamagata’s heart rate to give the two of them enough time to patch the yakuza boss back together. It wasn’t their cleanest work—as evidenced by Momoko’s blood-stained kimono—but it seemed to do the job.

Momoko slid closed the door to the doctor’s room and sighed. She had already consigned herself to a sleepless night, as Yamagata still required constant monitoring. She started boiling up some tea to keep up her energy while her thoughts remained on flowers.

Poppy flowers, to be exact. The months of research into them had borne fruit—or more accurately, a distilled milk to relax and numb the body. This had tremendous potential, and the excitement lended a spring to her step as the doctor-in-training carried a tea set into the operating room.

There beside Yamagata was a shadowy figure who Momoko assumed was a yakuza. But no yakuza she knew of carried a katana that gleamed in the darkness along with a pair of eyes that did just the same. Except these eyes gleamed in gold—like some magical, feral beast.

“First time...I’ve had to kill a man twice,” it said. Man or woman or animal, Momoko wouldn’t find out before it plunged its blade right down into Yamagata’s heart, spraying a mist of blood all across its face and chest.

*BAm* *crAck*

Momoko shrieked and dropped her tea set, the porcelain kettle and cups shattering against the floor. The figure turned and glared those golden eyes at her. It was the predator and she was the prey. Her legs gave out from fear and so she scuttled backwards as far as she could. But when she hit against the wall and when her eyes couldn’t look away, Momoko knew she was its captive.

“W-who, who are you? The assassin?!” she gasped.

There wasn’t a reply. The beast that was now bathed in blood watched her for moments more, heaving in deep and heavy breaths. Fear had consumed Momoko but even still, her hands felt around the floor in a frantic search for a tool or a weapon. She found both after pricking her finger on a fallen scalpel. She was quick to hide it behind her in a clenched and shaky grip.

“You...you got what you came for. N-now leave!” she yelled, her voice wavering.

The figure curled up before pouncing forward, the assassin’s katana held out and aimed at the nape of her neck. Momoko found out then that she was paralyzed; all of her was frozen save for her heart that felt as if it would break out from the confines of her chest.

“No!” she gasped as the katana pierced her, as it plunged into her neck and through it. She felt tremors of pain burn up every nerve inside her body. Her face was but an inch away from the bloody, golden-eyed glare of a monster. Of a beast in human form. Reflected in those eyes she saw herself: trembling yet stiff, horrified yet oddly serene

But beside her reflection there were other horrors, too, held within the dilated pupils of her killer. The longer she peered into those eyes the less she understood and the harder it was to look away.

As the seconds lingered on Momoko realized she wasn’t dead or even dying. The katana had missed her neck and cut through the wall just one hair’s width beside her jaw. No, it wasn’t that it missed—the beast had chosen not to kill her. She wanted to ask why but couldn’t get a word out before the assassin placed its bloody palm against her mouth.

The taste of bitter iron should’ve disgusted her. But for some reason or another, she couldn’t help but savor it. It meant she was alive.

“The words...what do they say?”

It asked her just once, yet the question repeated endlessly inside Momoko’s mind. Every word was rough and savage, yet every one made her body quiver just a little more. She was so focused on the voice she nearly didn’t think about the words. The beast wanted to know what was written on the man it had just turned into a corpse.

“Wa-wake from death and return to life. That’s what it—” Momoko was cut off when the assassin returned its hand against her lips. She didn’t mind being silenced, for beneath the coat of blood across her face, her cheeks were flushed a crimson red.

“Why would you ever want to wake up to this?” The figure asked, not to Momoko but to itself. She didn’t have any answers though she wished she did. She also wished she could move her fingers. If only she had the strength, she could send her scalpel through this monster’s heart. But she couldn’t move.

Or maybe, deep down, she didn’t want to. Whichever it was, the bloodied, golden-eyed beast stood up and looked away from her. It would never look at her again.

“Forget you ever saw me, doctor.”

The figure left as quickly and quietly as it came. Momoko’s heart still raced and her legs remained numb as she sat there in heated silence for minutes, even hours more. Her mouth was covered in blood from the man she and her mentor had tried so desperately to save.

Yet all she could think of now was the emptiness that had been, for just a moment, filled. The fear, the smell and the weight of that tortured beast against her, the intensity and sadness held in its stare—it unlocked within the woman passions she thought she could never have. A feeling that she believed no one would help her find, much less bring to bear.

“I won’t forget you...whoever you are.”