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Tashigi woke up from her heavy sedation with a blood-curdling howl. She reached up with her dominant hand to block out the lamp of the operating table because its light burnt her eyes as if someone was stabbing them with hot iron needles. Except it wasn't the light at fault, nor did she have two eyes anymore. In fact, the act of reaching up only brought her mental anguish. She felt her arm, she felt it move but she could not see it. The mental dissonance brought her unimaginable agony. She knocked over two of the doctors currently operating on her as she tried to reach for her missing arm. When she found nothing coming from her right shoulder her banshee-like screaming grew so loud it started tearing at her vocal cords. She had to be injected with enough morphine that could kill a horse just so they could stabilize her and she was kept in that delirious state for about a week. After that she stabilized enough that she wouldn't threaten to gouge out the eyes of anyone who came near her.
Leaning heavily onto her crutch due to the loss of her balance and her weakened state Tashigi shambled into the intensive care wing where she found out her superior was.
"Smoker..."
The vice-admiral was bandaged from head to toe with more tubes going into him than Tashigi could count with her blurry vision.
"Miss. I understand your desire to be here but your presence helps neither of you. I must ask once again that you leave."
"How long does he have to stay like this?"
"Hard to say. We had a lot of trouble performing surgery on him. His logia physiology made it nigh impossible for us to treat him. We managed only with the help of sea-stone but he was losing strength rapidly so we couldn't use it too much. I'm not sure of the full capabilities of his body, if he can dissolve himself into smoke and reconstitute himself that way-"
"He can't. Once the substantial body takes damage it needs to heal like any normal flesh."
"Then... I'm afraid I'm unable to reassure you. Though the vice-admirals condition isn't critical, even if he makes a full recovery it's unlikely that he'll be fit for duty. It'd be a small miracle if he didn't lose the function of everything below his neck."
"Then he's dead."
"No. At least not ye-"
"His work WAS his life you fool!"
Tashigi lets go of her crutch and briefly stumbles before she, with teeth gritting from the pain, straightens herself. She takes out the broken remnants of her sword Shigure and sets the shards down on the nightstand next to his bed.
"Don't worry captain. I'll find a way to fix this."
"Miss, you can't leave that there! It's dangerous!"
"I'm going to come back for him after I make a call to Dr Vegapunk! Anyone who touches my sword while I'm gone will be the next one who'll be placed here! You hear me?!"
"V-VEGAPUNK?!"
"Yeah. The upper brass decided to make Smoker the Hero of Arabasta against his will. Now they're going to pay for a hero's treatment!"
