Chapter Text
Nurse Joy of Ecruteak was young, but she had seen many things in her life. After she graduated from med school, she apprenticed under her mother to learn the crafts of her trade. Nurse Joy was a job that not only required medical knowledge to treat both unfortunate trainers and their pokémon, but also a grasp on various fields of knowledge such as outdoor survival and the like. Nurse Joys were a prominent figure in the societal hierarchy since every major city and town had a pokémon center and they were basically a trademark of the job.
Heck, some Nurse Joys even learned pokémon battle tactics despite their oath to never have any pokémon of their own except Chansey, using those tactics in exhibition matches with rental pokemon.
So she learned at the tutelage of her mother. She learned how to calm down worried trainers, how to deescalate arguments in the center, how to take care of hapless trainers after a tiring day or week. She learned, and soon she was ready to take over the center.
Being a Nurse Joy was hard but rewarding. The feeling she got from seeing joyful trainers reunite with their partners lit her up inside and gave her incentive to stay on her job, despite the long hours she sometimes had to work as the face of the pokémon center.
In her long tenure, she'd seen some weird things. One time, a Lucario who’d accidentally inhaled some burning weed came in. He’d been as high as a kite, laying on his back and pawing at the air with a dopey grin on his muzzle. Another time, a man came in with a wild Weepinbell gnawing on his…well, let's just say it had been an awkward situation.
Her weirdness tolerance was off the scales, and that's why when a boy entered the pokémon center with a banged up Pikachu in his arms, she thought nothing of it.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed at the electric rodent that the boy put down on her desk, tired and covered in scratches but the trainer and the pokémon had the same grin on their faces. Pikachu hadn't fainted, which meant the rodent had won whatever fight they picked. Her Chansey waddled over with a worried look on her face and started to use Heal Pulse on the pokemon.
She looked up at the trainer, belatedly recognizing him from the last Indigo conference, “Hey, aren't you Ash Ketchum?”
The boy looked surprised, but recovered with a bright grin, “Sure am! You recognized me?”
“Well, hard not to when your face is plastered on every television screen these days, mister champion.” she said dryly as she cleaned up some of the deeper cuts on Pikachu.
“Hey!” the boy objected, blushing, “Lance is the champion! I just won the conference!”
“Alright, don't get your undies in a twist,” she winced as Chansey's Heal Pulse once again swept through the mouse’ body despite already having been under it thrice. “Sheesh, what did you guys fight, kid? He's all banged up.”
“Oh, it was Ho-Oh!” the boy said brightly.
Nurse Joy's train of thought halted, crashed, and flew off the track to hit a skyscraper that then proceeded to be knocked down as well.
“I'm sorry, I must've heard that wrong. Did you say Ho-Oh?” she said slowly.
“Yeah, it was a hard fight, but Pikachu scrapped out a win by using Thunder at just the right time. I told you all the practice would eventually pay off!” the boy addressed his pokemon, beaming.
Nurse Joy wondered whether it'd be prudent to bang her customer's head on the table, or to bang her own head on the table.
“You met Ho-Oh, The Storm's End, a pokémon so rare and powerful it's said to be a minor deity, rumored to have mythical abilities of resurrection, and your solution was to throw a mouse at it?” she was aware her voice sounded distinctly high-pitched but she couldn't quite bring herself to care.
“Why? What's wrong with it? We won, didn't we?” The boy and his pokemon both looked at her, confused. “I mean, if Pikachu hadn't- wait miss why are you banging your head on the table, miss stop, MISS-”