~
Ace and Sabo and Luffy peeked at Chopper, Law, Marco and Hongo, talking amongst themselves after checking on Uta. The three brothers wanted to know about their sister's condition but the doctors had shooed them out of the room because they were being too loud.
"Listen, no insult to Luffy and the two, but they're incapable of looking after you, Uta." Hongo said as gently as possible.
"Yes, they're incompetent as fuck, I left you in their care for a few hours and you've caught an infection." Law grumbled, shooting a glare at the three heads peering inside the room.
"Is it bad?" Uta asked, tiredness showing in her eyes and voice.
"We found out about it early, so we can counter it easily." Chopper answered, hoping that his cute face will minimize any mental damage the news would do. "But an infection in the early days of your stitches is not ideal and says a lot about the care you're receiving."
"If any care at all, yoi." Marco shook his head in disappointed, also looking back at the three brothers.
"It would be best to transfer you to our base, where we have proper devices and caregivers." Hongo tried.
"But I wanna be with everyone." Uta complained, her voice barely audible.
"It's either a hospital, or our base. You choose."
"Everyone can visit you any time you want, but you cannot stay in this environment for long or you won't get any better." Chopper backed Hongo.
"How can you even prove that my brothers are responsible for this infection?" Uta tried a last time, defiant.
"I forbade them to feed you chicken and eggs, in excess." Law answered immediately. "What have you consumed in the past ten hours?"
The woman hunched her shoulders and avoided eye contact. "Fried eggs and lots of cola..."
"You guys have lost the right to take care of her, yoi." Marco scolded turning around and walking to the brothers at the door.
"Oh come on, a little doesn't hurt!" Ace fought back.
"What part of a 'it's a sensitive site' did you not understand?" Law joined in. "I'm disappointed."
"Stop it, I wanted to eat that, so they had no choice..." Uta tried saving her brothers from the blame.
"They always have a choice." Law turned sharply. "They just weren't strong enough to enforce it."
"We're sorry." The brothers all hung their heads, accepting their mistake.
"As such, Uta needs to be around people who can tell her a solid no." Hongo took his chance. "So our base then."
"But I want at least five knives so I can stab Shanks if he starts crying again." Uta rolled her eyes, remembering when the red haired man visited her in the house and immediately started crying.
"Boss is barred from the med rooms."
"He drinks all the spirit." Uta told everyone present before they could ask. Law and Marco nodded knowingly, having done that same deed themselves.
"So you're taking Uta?" Sabo looked about ready to cry himself.
"Yes." Hongo answered. "You guys can visit three times a day at least."
"Ok!" The brothers saluted.
"Doubt you'd have the time though." Hongo nodded at Law, who raised an eyebrow. "Exams?"
"News travels fast, I see." Law sighed.
"The Surgeon of Death is leaving us, of course we'd know yoi." Marco patted Law's shoulder.
"I'm not dying." It was Law's turn to roll his eyes.
"What exams?" Uta and Ace asked, the only ones who didn't know.
"Torao's taking exams to get his medical degree and license." Luffy answered excitedly. "Torao would be a real doctor then!"
"I still am a real doctor!" Law defended his skills.
"Yeah but after you get your license, you'd be real real!"
"How's that any different from now?"
"I think what Luffy means is that you would be able to be a doctor relatively more publically, without having to worry about the legality of your actions." Chopper worded out his friend's thoughts.
"Yeah that!" Luffy nodded. "When someone's hurt, you'd flash your license at them and say 'I'm a doctor.'" The young man imitated his boyfriend.
"Nobody does that..." All the doctors present in the room said at the same time.
"It'd be so fun! You and the funny guys and Bepo could come up with new things too! And then they would be able to write your name in the papers too!"
"That... would be nice." Law agreed, patting Luffy's head, a fond smile on his face.
"But once Law starts working in a hospital, you won't get to see him all the time. Have you resolved yourself for that, Luffy?" Hongo grinned in mischief.
"Whaaaat?" Luffy drawled, pouting.
"Yeah, doctors have a tough schedule yoi." Marco nodded in agreement.
"Yes Luffy, and since Law is very capable, he would have a busier schedule than everyone else." Chopper backed.
"That's not fair!" Luffy stomped his foot. "Torao you gotta be bad at your job then, so you have free time."
Law chuckled. "That's like asking you to not be sunny." The surgeon realized he had said that out loud, in public, a little too late. Law felt blood rush to his face.
"It's ok bro, we all think the same." Hongo patted Law's back with a snigger.
"Sengoku actually already told me I'm not allowed to work regular hours." Law said after clearing his throat. "Something about my heart being as it is."
"Yes Torao, take it slow, a stent's no joke." Chopper frowned and advised.
"So I keep getting told."
Once Hongo began making arrangements for Uta's transfer, everyone was dismissed and Law was needed back at the house with his friends for other steps of the arrangement. Luffy was torn between going with Law and making sure Uta was ok, but the decision was made for him when Law told his boyfriend to go with his sister and that he had to talk about boring stuff with his friends anyway.
Picking up some noodles from a nearby place, Law went home. The four Hearts ate in relative peace before they began talking again.
"Ok so before your exams, doctor Kureha wanted to go over all your experience in medicine." Penguin said sipping on the tea Law had made for the four of them.
"All of it?" Law repeated.
"Yapp, buddy, all of it." Shachi sighed.
"You have all the reports already made right?" Bepo asked.
"Yeah but..." Law scratched his chin. "I'd have to ask Luffy about how much data I can share because... you know." The doctor trailed, not wanting to word everything out.
"The reports are that explicit?" Penguin asked, surprised.
"I had to write why I did what I did, so yes, they had to be explicit."
"Doctorine wanted a hard copy, pretty sure your grandpa and his two friends would also want one, we're ok with the digital copy, Chopper's ok with a digital copy too." Shachi counted.
"Sengoku and others are sitting in on this one?" Law raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Otsuru-san said she wanted to listen about your capabilities herself."
"The compilation into a singular file would take me some time though."
"Make it chronological too." Penguin added and Law groaned.
"I guess then the reports start with curing myself of amber lead, then your arm Peng." Law smiled to himself.
"Man you were just thirteen!"
"So you keep reminding me."
"You were younger when you made a cure for amber lead." Bepo said hugging Law. "Our captain is the best."
Later in the day when Luffy came over to Law's to spend the night, to make sure Law had eaten and would sleep, the older took the chance of Luffy inquiring about Law's day to ask the younger about the reports.
"Luffy." Law gathered the younger's attention, sitting on his bed, legs crossed and chin resting on his palm.
"Hmm?" Luffy asked back, his hands still occupied with petting Godfather on the carpeted floor.
"Kureha wants all my reports about everything medical I have done." The older started. "That includes your time in Flevance after Swallow." The way Luffy tensed at the unsaid did not go unnoticed by Law.
"Do you have to give her everything?" Luffy looked towards the older and asked in a small voice, and Law's heart clenched.
"That is why I'm telling you. If you want, I can redact a lot of details and your identity too."
"What will that look like?"
"After I take out those things, it would be that I had a patient with very bad health. I will leave out the circumstances and the causes." Law said and bit his lip.
"But?" Luffy asked because he could see that word hanging unspoken in the air.
"But, Tony-ya might be able to make a connection, he knows about your health as much as I do, so he might connect the dots."
Luffy shrugged. "Chopper's ok, you can't do anything about that."
"I guess so." Law breathed. "Tony-ya already also knows about your Drum misadventures, and the time you got that rod in your shoulder."
"Yeah Chopper knows most of it."
"Hell, most of my portfolio is going to be about you."
"That's cute." Luffy laughed.
"It's not! You should take better care of yourself!" Law scolded.
"But I have you, so I don't need to, nishishi."
"That's the most careless thing I've heard you say." The older shook his head.
"Oh! Can I come to that thing with baasan?" Luffy asked, excited.
"Your grandfather's going to be and if someone asks questions about you, we all know you're a shit liar so... it's your choice, I don't mind you being there."
"Ok I'll come!"
"You'll get to listen to all the cool and shady stuff I've done." Law grinned, wanting to see Luffy being impressed when he would listen about Law's experience.
"Will there be pictures? Because I know I won't be able to understand all the medical things." Luffy tilted his head to the side, puffing his cheeks sadly.
"Very gore pictures, but yes."
"It's gonna be fun!"
~
When the three marines entered the conference room in the local marine base, they were not expecting the desk to be filled with files upon files. The particular conference room was selected because it had an overhead projector that Law wanted to use for showing pictures and research data. One by one, the seats filled until everyone had gathered and the door had been locked from the inside.
"If anyone has to go to the bathroom, now would be the time, because as you can see, we're going to be here all day." Law said pointing to the stacks of files on the table.
"We can take breaks in between, it's no problem." Sengoku said peeking inside the first file.
"Before we begin, I would like to point out that some data and identities have been redacted in adherence with the terms of doctor-patient confidentiality."
"That much is to be expected." Otsuru said and the session began.
Law started with being allotted a marine facility to make a cure for himself, how sick he was and the mistakes he made. "I hadn't been able to research much on other specimen of the amber lead disease so I was my own test dummy. There is a fruit called Ope-Ope no Mi that is found growing in the freezing wilderness of the North Blue, the essence of that fruit has just the right chemistry to break the compound of amber lead into harmless components."
"And how did you come to know of its existence and who acquired it for you?" Shachi asked, the three Hearts were hearing about this for the first time themselves, a part of the life Law had before meeting them.
"My parents had already been working on a cure, comparing data from various other things, they had theorized about the effects of Ope-Ope no mi but they didn't have it in hand. I found out about the existence through their research papers and journals that I used to read before shit went to hell." Law said as casually as possible, trying not to use medical terms and such to make it easier on the marines and Luffy present. "Cora-san was sent to find and retrieve it."
"So once you were sure that you had made the correct formula, how did you test it for side effects?" Kureha asked, tapping the pencil she had on the file, circling the parts that had been left vague on purpose.
"I didn't. There was no time for that, I was already dying." Law shrugged the memory off. "What the perfected formula did, was accelerate the lifespan of the amber lead's base compounds and made it live out it's time in an isolated manner. The broken cells and the residue of the disease cells were then attacked by the WBCs and thrown out of the system."
"When you say accelerate the lifespan, does that mean that the body went through the complete effects of the amber lead in the time it took for the disease cells to come to their life's end?" Chopper asked.
"The cure formula attacked the amber lead cells and isolated them first so they weren't attached to the healthy cells anymore." Law began explaining with the help of the whiteboard there was in the room, making drawings and arrows to make it easier to understand. "The isolation wasn't a hundred percent though and there were still some cells attached to each of the diseased ones, so only a few of the body's own cells suffered."
"But that would mean the body would suffer extreme muscle loss and organ damage." The little reindeer pointed.
"Yes." Law answered plainly.
"What were your safeguards against the pain and fever?" Doctorine asked continuing the line of questions Chopper had started. Kureha had own research on amber lead and knew of the excruciating pain that the patients experienced, one of the main factors that led to eventual death. The woman wondered how Law had managed against it knowing that the pain one person was supposed to feel in months of the escalating illness was then concentrated into a few days of worse pain.
"None." When the old woman raised an eyebrow and it looked like Chopper was going to ask him about it, Law continued. "I was only making it for myself, I would have tinkered it to reduce the side effects if I was making it for public use and like I said, I was running out of time."
"Ok." Chopper kept his mouth shut. Every doctor in the room was shaken by what they had heard, they had massive respect for the man in front of them, to make a cure for himself when he was on the verge of death, to be brave enough to take it knowing the amount of pain he would have to go through, and he was talking about it like it was something trivial, a bug on the shoulder.
"Moving on..." Law took the opportunity, he was getting uncomfortable talking about that particular time in his life.
Luffy could see Law's mouth moving and explaining and talking to everyone present but he couldn't hear anything, his mind was stuck on the point where Kureha had asked Law about the pain. Luffy remembered that the older had told him about the pain and fever that only got worse until it killed the patient. The young man felt like he had seawater in his lungs, sapping him of his strength and drowning him, the realization was like that, heavy and painful, that Law went through extreme raw pain, unguarded, went through all the agony of the cure with nothing to dull it, and all of that only because Cora had protected Law and saved him from the older's bad, bad brother. Luffy rubbed at his eyes to get the moisture away, his Torao was so kind but so stupid, his own life that he had saved because he promised Corao, he was going to throw away for Corao too.
"Who's the idiot that ate amiudake?!" Kureha slapped her forehead and her loud voice brought Luffy out of his thoughts.
"Luffy..." The Hearts and Chopper responded tiredly, all eyes going to the young man.
"Oh yeah, that happened." Luffy nodded with a grin and zoned out when Law shook his head at him with a smile on his face, starting his explanation on how he had saved Luffy from that.
"These things sort of happened back to back, liver transplant is first and then delivering four babies is like a few days after that." Law sighed tiredly and sat down because there was no need for pictures or diagrams for these two things.
"Where did you get the liver from?" Otsuru narrowed her eyes.
"That's inconsequential."
"The black market no doubt." Shachi said with a snort.
"Your hands would be tied when you're a proper doctor. You're going to have to abide by the rules of the government." Garp pointed, a finger in his nose.
"I know, but I have some ideas about changing the situation if the world government isn't too cowardly and afraid to implement them." Law grinned.
"We will go over your ideas when you have started working for us." Otsuru said. "You're more suited for research though, that's what I feel from hearing about your experience."
"I refuse to only be a researcher. There's just something about having my hands in another human's viscera, research alone doesn't satisfy that itch."
"You would have to learn to not talk like that in front of patients." Sengoku sighed.
"You're not going to tell me to hide my tattoos right?" Law looked at his hands.
"The world is changing, if people cannot accept... eccentric doctors, that's their loss." Otsuru said standing up. "We will reconvene in an hour."
It took another five hours for Law to wind up about his research and then everyone was allowed to go home. Luffy left with Chopper, very clearly stating that his brain was hurting from being around human doctors.
"How come this was the first time we were hearing about the details of the time you made the cure for amber lead?" Shachi pointed a finger at Law, chewing on the rice they had bought on the way back home.
"It never came up, I guess." Law answered, stirring his rice around, not feeling like eating. "And I don't like talking about it too, so there's that."
"We've seen your organs though," Bepo started. "There isn't as much damage as I suspected there would be..."
"That's because of something I didn't mention in that conference room."
"You left something out?" Penguin's jaw dropped.
"Don't tell me you have another secret research." Shachi groaned.
"Not my research, my parents'." Law said taking a mouthful when Bepo nudged the older to eat. "They had made a serum that regenerated muscles and cells, even neurons-"
"HOW THE HELL?!" Penguin stood up, pulling at his hair.
"I have no idea, I only had the last serum they made, and to ensure that I wouldn't die during the course of curing myself, I had to take that. I want to replicate it, but I don't even know where to begin, all their research and data was lost in the fire, just think of all the diseases we would be able to cure just from that serum alone." Law mentioned, stars in his eyes at the last thing. "Brain damage, boom, gone. Amputation? Not necessary anymore. You don't have a match for your dying kidney? The cells can be brought back to life. So much that could have been done!"
"That would have been so cool. Man your parents were geniuses!" Shachi said, awed.
"But Captain..." Bepo brought the attention towards himself. "In a way, your parents gave you life a second time, you can use that life to try and remake the serum."
"Even in death, they were doctors, huh." Law smiled, sad.
"Those shoes sound too big to fill." Penguin laughed. "But if there is someone who can do it, it's you."
"I don't plan on disappointing my parents any more than I already have, so I guess I'd have to do it."
"You at least have my support." Bepo smiled.
"And my bow." Shachi laughed.
"And my axe." Penguin continued on the joke.
"Sure Peng, you're the dwarf, but Shachi, there's no way you're Legolas with those red hair." Law stuck his tongue out.
"You aren't pretty enough to be an elf either." The redhead retaliated.
"Luffy can be your Samwise." Penguin added.
"Sam? He had more Merry and Pippin vibes." Law laughed.
"You guys are blind, Luffy has Aragorn vibes." Bepo said, paw on his chin.
"Aragorn? Luffy?" The three human Hearts asked at the same time.
"If Luffy's Aragorn, that makes Law, Arwen." Shachi laughed, taking Penguin with him.
"SEE! I'M AN ELF AFTERALL!!" Law rejoiced. "AND A HEALER AT THAT!"
"Captain would make a good Arwen." Bepo said and renewed a round of laughter from the two oldest Hearts. Law didn't mind being Arwen one it, that only meant he belonged with Luffy's Aragorn, and that trumped all.
~
Man, I just love Tolkien's works <3
Another comiccon's around the corner, on 25th of Feb, preparing Enel for that XD
I was reading Law's novel and thought about translating it in English, like a fan-translation thing, primarily to keep me motivated to read it because autism and adhd get really bad when I have to read Japanese -.-
Fan-translations for free can't get sued, right? XDAnyway, enjoy!