A B-I-G Tummy Ache
Part One: One Sick Effelent
by
Melody & John
”Hello. I am trying to find a vet who can treat my son’s pet elephant.”
Click.
Melody was getting tired of hearing that sound. Maybe she should phrase her question differently?
She tried again.
“Does your vet treat large animals?” Melody asked the receptionist of the next vet on the list in the Yellow Pages with a weary but hopeful voice.
“Yes we do.”
“Wonderful!” Melody exclaimed joyfully, her enthusiasm puzzling the receptionist. “Does he or she make house calls?”
“Yes he does.”
Quatre came running into the kitchen looking panic-stricken. He was so pale that Melody was quite alarmed.
“Come quick! I think Queenie’s dyin’!”
“Could you tell him that we need to see him as soon as possible?” Melody said distractedly, hurriedly giving the address and entirely forgetting to give details about the animal in question before hanging up. “It’s very urgent.”
A group of worried chibis were stationed at various points from the driveway all the way to the back yard where the sick elephant was. They thought they had devised a clever communications system, not realizing that the driveway was in full view from that part of the back yard. Well, they meant well and it kept them busy, Melody thought.
“He’s here!” Duo shouted to Heero who told Trowa who passed it on to Relena who called to Wufei who gave the message to Quatre to tell the Maguanac Corps that the doctor had arrived. As soon as everyone was informed, all the little ones ran to help the doctor out of his car and to show him the way to the back yard so the doctor would reach his patient more quickly but being that he was now in a crowd of children—children full of questions, as children usually are—it actually hindered the doctor slightly but he liked kids and was good-natured about it.
“Oh, Doctor, we’re so glad you’re here!” Relena exclaimed as she and Duo “helped” the doctor to carry his medical kit, which, of course, made carrying it a bit more difficult.
The doctor smiled. “Well, where’s my patient?” he asked pleasantly.
Ignoring this, Quatre asked the question that was on everyone’s minds. “Do you think she’ll hafta to go to the aminal hopsbital?”
“I don’t know yet,” the doctor responded, smiling at the kids and thinking about how cute they were. “But if she does I’ll let you know, okay?”
“How would we get her there then?” asked Trowa.
“Yeah, she’s awful big,” added Wufei.
“We’ll just have to think about that if it becomes necessary to hospitalize her,” the doctor said reassuringly as he looked around for a stable or a barn and saw neither. “Now, where is your pony?”
“We don’t got a pony,” Heero informed him with a slight look of surprise that was detectable only by his family.
“Your horse, then?”
“Nope!” Relena answered with a big smile. She liked guessing games.
“Guess ‘gain!” prompted Duo.
"A potbellied pig? A fainting goat?" the vet gave the best guesses that he could think of from the reasonable possibilities of odd pets.
“That’s not it either,” said Wufei, who was wondering why the doctor didn’t know what kind of animal he was supposed to treat.
“A llama?” remembering that some people really do keep llamas. He could tell by the looks on the children's faces that he was wrong again. “Well, it can’t be a cow,” the puzzled doctor said before giving up.
“She’s a effelent!” Quatre proudly revealed the answer to the “mystery animal game.”
The doctor didn’t have time to compute that information before the Maguanac Corps made a path for the doctor to get to his completely unexpected patient.
Queenie lay on her side, breathing heavily and looking very ill. The doctor realized why there was a large tarp under her head when he heard a chorus of “Ew!”s. With calculated efficiency, some of the Maguanac lifted the poor thing’s head, took the soiled tarp away and disposed of it, put down a clean one and sprayed Lysol liberally into the air. Apart from the “country fresh scent” the scene was just as it had been when he had arrived.
The doctor had stopped in his tracks upon seeing the sick animal and had stood as if frozen to the ground while Quatre-sama’s loyal fans speedily took care of their favorite little boy’s pride and joy.
“Did ya ever doctor a effelent b’fore?” Wufei asked suspiciously, his ebony eyes analyzing the shocked vet’s face. He took the doctor’s reaction at the sight of Queenie to be from his inexperience with elephants. And he was right.
“Queenie’s real special so we don’t want just enybody t’ doctor her ya know,” added Trowa, who was suspicious as well.
“May we see your credentials?” Treize asked politely.
Melody came to the vet’s rescue by her sudden appearance and told the chibis to stand back so the doctor could examine his “surprise” patient. “Hi. I’m Melody. Thanks so much for coming right away Dr. ah…?”
“Um, ah…Stewart,” the doctor stammered, trying to gather his wits about him in hopes that he wouldn’t look like an idiot.
“I hope they weren’t a bother for you,” Melody said half-apologetically.
“Kids are no trouble for me,” the vet answered good-naturedly. “I’ve got eight grandkids so I’m used to them.”
Rashid made his way through the crowd and took charge of the situation. “We are very concerned about this animal. She is our master’s pet,” Rashid said gravely, nodding his head in Quatre’s direction which further confused the poor man.
“Well, your wife said—“
The doctor was interrupted by the uproarious laughter that followed. When it subsided he heard Duo say, “He’s not our webdaddy. Our webdaddy is John.” Dr. Stewart decided not to ask which of the remaining men was Melody’s husband for fear of making another unintentional comic blunder. So he decided that asking about the patient’s condition would be a safe thing to talk about. “So, how long has your elephant been ill?” he asked, thinking that it was probably the strangest question he had ever asked anyone in his long career.
The doctor had addressed his question to Melody but Quatre spoke up because Queenie belonged to him. “Just after we got her home early from school today,” he supplied.
The good doctor’s mouth fell open very unprofessionally. “She was at school?” he managed to inquire.
“We took her to school for Pet Day an’ all the kids LOVED HER!” Quatre answered proudly. “An’ they gave her lotsa treats ‘cause they liked her so much.”
“Yeah, we hadta go home early ‘cause our teacher PASSED OUT COLD when she saw Quatre ridin’ Queenie,"
“Oh, I see.”
“She’s not gonna die, is she?” Quatre asked with a trembling lip and tear-filled big blue eyes.
“No, I don’t think so.” The doctor managed to give a reassuring smile. “What has she eaten today?”
“Her normal diet of hay, vegetables and fruit,” Rashid told him.
“An’ peanuts,” Quatre added. “She LOVES 'em!”
“Oh—an’ soda pop—“
“Soda pop?” queried the doctor. “How can she drink that?”
”Easy,” Duo answered with a grin and an evilly gleeful sparkle in his round blue eyes. “Ya just gotta shake the can up real good and open it and aim it at her mouth!”
The mental picture that Duo’s words created amused the vet but he had one concern. “Was it caffeinated?”
“What’s ‘caffernated’ mean?” Duo wondered.
“Did it have caffeine in it?” the doctor rephrased his question.
Treize stepped in to help. ”What flavor was the beverage in question?”
The little ones all stared at him so Milliardo translated, “He means, “What flavor was the soda pop?’”
“Ohhhh…” the youngest kids responded when they understood what Treize had said.
“It was grape. That’s my fav’rite,” Relena informed him. “Does the grape kind have caffernation?”
The doctor was relieved but tried not to smile because the children might become unhappy if they thought he wasn’t taking them seriously. Being a father and a grandfather, he’d had a lot of practice at that. “No, that kind doesn’t have caffeine in it,” he assured them. “But I don’t think that a can of pop in addition to her normal diet could make her ill.”
“Well, that wasn’t the only thing she ate at school today. She ate cookies an’ cheese curls too,” Heero informed him.
“Oh, an’ member she had popcorn an’ Twinkies an’ two Pop Tarts…” added Wufei.
“An’ corn chips an’ potato chips an’ a paper bag…” Duo put in his two cents worth.
“An’ gran-nola bars an’ fruit bars an’ carmel corns…” added Queenie’s worried little master.
“An’ chocolate an’ a carmeled apple,” Trowa finished. “But without the stick.”
The doctor was relieved to hear that.
“An’ Heero’s fav’rite samwich,” Relena added. “I made it myself!”
“You gave THAT to Queenie?” asked Milliardo with a severe look of disapproval for his little sister.
“That’s inhuman!” Duo exclaimed, horrified.
"’Inhumane’," corrected Treize, heartily agreeing with the word Duo had chosen, even if he didn’t pronounce it correctly.
“That ‘splains ev’rythin’!” Wufei stated positively, glaring accusingly at the "worst cook in the fam'ly."
“What’s it ‘splain?” asked a puzzled Heero. “There’s nuthin’ wrong with it!”
“What is in that sandwich?” the vet warily ventured.
“Just the reg’lar peanut butter an’ grape jelly an’ cheese an’ a slice a raw onion is all,” Relena answered confidently. “That couldn’t a hurt her.”
The doctor grimaced slightly and said, “Well, it sounds to me as if this elephant has a big tummy ache from all of those snack foods.”
“An’ Heero’s samwich. That musta been what did it,” Wufei added confidently; no one protested that but Relena.
“It’s never gave Heero a tummy ache!” Relena insisted stubbornly, hands on hips.
“Then there’s probly somethin’ wrong with Heero’s stummick,” Wufei shot back. “There would be after eatin’ all them samwiches you make for him.”
Heero used his smoldering glare on the other boys. “Omae--uh, never mind,” he said, abruptly abandoning issuing his threat when he heard Melody say his name in her “Do-you-want-to-have-your-mouth-washed-out-with-soap?” tone of voice. He also tried his best to stop glaring—partly because he knew he wasn’t supposed to look at people like that but mostly because Melody was there watching him. It was difficult for him to change his expression when he was angry but he could tell that Melody appreciated his effort.
“It’s probably a combination of many things that caused her stomach ache,” the doctor said diplomatically.
“SEE,” Relena directed her comment at the accusing boys but they remained unconvinced. “You shouldn’t a judge a samwich by its cover!”
"I need to get some equipment from my car," Doctor Stewart said to the crowd of concerned people.
“We’ll help ya!” several of the chibis volunteered but the doctor declined; he was used to kids but not to six of them that were all the same age and SO ENERGETIC! When he returned with a 5 gallon bucket, a sack of something powdery and a hose the chibis started bombarding him with questions again.
“What’s that stuff?” Trowa wondered.
“It’s like Pepto-Bismol for cows,” the doctor answered as he was trying to calculate approximately how much medication would be needed to be effective for a baby elephant. “I’ll need some water.”
Trowa ran off to get the garden hose.
“But she’s a effelent, not a cow!” Duo objected.
“Can’t ya give her some effelent medicine ‘stead?” Quatre timidly asked.
“Don’t’cha got none a that?” Heero queried.
“Queenie is a female elephant and the females are referred to as ‘cows’ so it's perfectly acceptable,” Treize assured his fellow chibis. Even though his comment was irrelevant it sounded good and the chibis no longer doubted that this doctor had treated elephants before. Now they were confident that Queenie was in capable hands.
The chibis took turns “helpfully” stirring the medicine in the bucket with very little bickering--which was a near-miracle--because they were chattering nonstop. In their enthusiasm they sometimes stirred too wildly, causing the doctor’s remedy to occasionally splash outside of its container. The ones who weren’t actively stirring the contents of the bucket were guessing which of the white drops of “Pepto-Bismol for cows” would be faster as it flowed in tiny rivulets down the sides of the container and soaked into the grass.
The normally-laid-back-but-beginning-to-become-frazzled vet rummaged around in his black bag while his mind wandered to happy thoughts about retirement. He finally produced a huge syringe with a very long needle.
Screams of terror were heard from the six youngest chibis as they ran away; they were all afraid of needles and none of them could bear to watch the doctor give Queenie a shot. Milliardo took his turn at stirring the bucket since he and Treize were the only chibis left.
“What’s that for?” Melody asked.
“Nothing,” the doctor winked as he watched the chibis scatter in all directions. “But it works every time.”
~Standard disclaimer~ The author does not claim ownership of Gundam Wing nor any of its characters, including the adorable chibis. >_< Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise, Sotsu Agency and TV Asahi.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR! webmommie@gmail.com
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