A Different Start

Chapter-32

Riolu let out a soft whine as he placed a soft black paw on his daddys' face. There was a weird plastic piece over his muzzle and Riolu didn't like it. It kept fogging up and leaving weird marks on his sunburned face when the weird smelling people came by to take it off every now and then. There was also a big white patch on his daddys' forehead that had a bad cut underneath it.

He also didn't like the weird plastic strings that were attached to one of his daddys' arms. It had a weird liquid in it that made him sneeze the one time he got too close to it. The beeping from one of the boxes near the bed his daddy was in was annoying too, but the purple haired person, his daddys' mate, had told him it was good that it was still beeping. So he left it be.

Riolus' black and white ears pinned back against his head as he let out another whine when he felt larger paws wrap around him. Looking up he saw that it was his uncle, Zoroark, who had picked him up. He tucked his tail between his legs as he was brought over to the pile of small pokémon. Riolu didn't want to be over there. He wanted to stay near his daddy.

It was nap time according to his uncle, but he didn't want to sleep. He wanted to be awake so he could be the first to see his daddy awake. Riolu tried several times to get up, but Zoroark had stopped him each time. By the third time he tried to get up Zoroark had pinned him down and growled softly in a lullaby making his eyes droop a bit.

Riolu supposed that taking a small nap wouldn't hurt after all.

By the time Ash woke up the sun had already gone down for the day, or was it just getting up? He didn't know. He just knew that he was in pain and that there was an oxygen mask over his face. Blinking a few times to get the blurriness out of his vision Ash looked around the room. There were flowers in a vase next to him along with a few unopened cards as well as a balloon tied to a teddy bear. Other than that he didn't see anyone in the room, no Paul or his own pokémon.

Just as he tried to sit up in the bed to look around some more the door to his room opened as a woman in green scrubs walked in. She was average in height with purple hair and pink eyes and she had a kind look on her face as she saw him awake.

"Good morning Mr. Ketchum," she said as she walked over and helped Ash sit up a bit by raising the upper half of the bed before checking his charts that hung at the end of the bed, "Would you like some water?"

"Please," Ash croaked out before let out a few dry coughs and was able to remove the oxygen mask only to be replaced with a nasal cannula. The kind nurse handed him, as soon as she knew he could hold it on his own, a small plastic cup with ice chips and water in it as well as a straw. He took a few sips of water before licking his dry lips. "Who are you?" Ash asked, his voice a bit raspy, but better than the croak he let out before.

"I'm Nurse Kathy," she said as she wrote a couple of things from the monitors around him on his chart, "are you hurting anywhere?"

Ash hummed softly before nodding and gestured to his side, head, hand, and right leg. His hand was hurting from the previous wound Meowth had given him while he assumed he had gotten the other injuries from the ship. His skin also burned and had a weird tight feeling to it.

"As soon as you are able to get more pain medication, you'll get it," Kathy said as she opened a jar, that Ash didn't notice she had brought with her, and the scent of aloe came to nose, "You have about thirty minutes until your next dose, but I can give you a little relief from your sunburn if that is okay with you?"

"Please," Ash asked as he nodded slowly since his head throbbed a bit. As she begun to carefully coat his face with the after sun ointment she told him that the police were wanting to come by and speak with him about what had happened to him. She also mentioned how this other teen with purple hair, Paul his mind filled in, was taking care of his pokémon after the creatures showed aggression to the usual handlers the hospital provided to take care of them if their owners couldn't at the moment.