#endermen lore

[one of my fav scenes to write hehe]

“I'm leaving now. Have fun with the rest of this exam Nightingale. Fair warning, this one throws punches,” Steve snipped with a bitter expression.

Nightingale lifted his intense gaze from his patient`s wounds and his face morphed into something akin of ill masked panic. Steve turned on his heel towards the exit but came to face with a woman knocking at the slightly opened door. He startled at the intrusion.

A drowned nurse with a neat braid and powder blue scrubs presented a sheet of paper to the phantom with a green hand. “Doctor Nightingale, the blood panel came back for this patient.”

The doctor promptly stood and crossed the room. “Steve, stay,” he ordered as he passed the indignant human frozen from almost bumping into a member of the hospital staff.

“Nightingale, are you serious?” Steve murmured to him in frustration.

He placed a hand on Steve`s shoulder and leaned into his ear. “I have an idea but I need you to stay put,” he whispered.

Atticus blinked rapidly. He seemed to be recovering from the shock.

“You took my blood?” Atticus incriminated after recovering from the revelation that he had yet again been violated in the eyes of medicine and the law. He struggled to sit up again with a scowl. He didn’t get very far.

The night doctor accepted the document and scanned the report. “Not the only samples I took. Been checking your blood oxygen content regularly and we took radiographs shortly after you arrived, found a cracked rib, nothing too severe so don’t you worry about that, and then signs of acute pneumonia which is pretty common in endermen experiencing humid climates or rain for the first time. It's nothing we can’t treat. I’ve already started you on oxygen, which you are going back on, by the way.” The doctor pointed at the respiration machine and its face mask. He continued to study the pages.

Atticus seemed…overwhelmed, but Nightingale didn't let this cease his medical jargon rambling.

“We've started you on an antibiotic via IV so your lungs should be free and clear of fluid soon. The antibiotic is called azithromycin and we have you on a pretty hefty dose so don't be alarmed if you start to experience nausea, G.I. upset, loss of appetite, headaches, or dizziness. These are all normal side effects, but just let me know if they happen. This med can be pretty heavy on the body but it's better than going septic so we're gonna cut our losses, yeah?” the doctor rambled at the downed soldier trapped in the confines of his temporary bed.

Atticus looked horrified at the unknown treatments. “What’s a radiograph?”

Nightingale ceased his scrutinizing of the results to address the room once more. He nodded and began to take a more gentle approach to his explanation.

“Right, new to the overworld, I always forget our improvements in modern medicine are a bit more, shall we say advanced? Then the End or Nether. In short, our redstone engineers and leading researchers, I was on the team actually, created an ‘X-Ray’ machine that generates electromagnetic radiation and channels it through the body to create an image. Essentially, it helps us see what’s inside of you without having to cut you open to find out. Just the wonders of devoting research into its practical applications as opposed to a war effort I suppose. And very helpful for your diagnosis might I add,” the doctor spoke animatedly with his hands. He returned his gaze back to the paper to further interpret the findings.

“And you did that to me?” Atticus’ eyes were wide with distress and his mouth hung open. The enderman was panting. He was hyperventilating. Steve recoiled at the pitiful sight. He kinda felt for the guy. Probably because once upon a time he was in the same boat, a terrified patient of Dr. Nightingale’s in an unfamiliar city with an uncertain future.

“Oh relax,” Nightingale dismissed his anxieties with a nonchalant wave of his hand.

He flipped through the pages and scanned the data. He hummed at random intervals. Nightingale clicked his tongue as he traced a finger down the paper to follow each of the levels printed on the page. His finger paused at a number and the clicking ceased. He looked solemn.

“Low CBC,” Nightingale enunciated. He tapped the page with the pen several times. He was stalling.

The doctor looked up at the enderman, making eye contact with the respirator next to his head instead of his eyes. “I had a hunch.”

“And?” Atticus pressed through his unsteady breaths.

“I was debriefed by the proper authorities when you were taken into custody and I was informed I would be treating you,” the doctor began apprehensively, “each account said that one of the enderman, I’m referring to you, by the way, didn’t teleport out of harm's way. Your results indicate cytopenia, low CBC if you will.” Nightingale chose his next words with utmost care.

“An Enderman’s cardiovascular system, unlike other species, contains an extra organ. Their ender pearl is connected to their heart by an extra vein stemming from their superior vena cava.” The doctor pointed a finger at his own chest in a demonstration. “The pearl is responsible for much of the enderman’s hematopoiesis instead of relying on bone marrow. It’s also responsible for an enderman’s ability to teleport via a blood process where the blood cells go through a semipermeable membrane to the outside of their skin, then evaporate, except this happens at light speed. Similar to osmosis in other species with water but in enderman we get something similar with their blood, and this is the fun part, this quick process of moving blood cells from one place to another triggers a quantum reaction.”

Nightingale snapped his fingers. He was getting more excited with each sentence. It was candid that Nightingale was passionate about his work. He loved spilling science lessons into a room and always has. The phantom continued his ramble, “hence, the ability to teleport. With your pearl being damaged, your body is being deprived of blood cells and your cardiovascular system can’t function without that pearl being in tip-top shape. This explains why you’ve been experiencing fatigue, headaches, lightheadedness… But it also explained why you didn’t teleport. You couldn’t.”

Doctor Nightingale pushed his glasses up with his pointer finger then tapped the ballpoint pen onto the stack of papers again. “Science,” he added proudly.