Legacy Of A Nose: Part Two

      The door of the room opened and in walked a green Gelert carrying a clipboard.

     “Good afternoon; I am Doctor Telhah. What seems to be your problem?” said the doctor in a jovial manner.

      Sarah turned to me, and I started to relate what had happened over the past few weeks. It took a while as I was sneezing quite a bit. Doctor Telhah took notes on his clipboard as I was talking, sometimes asking me to repeat certain events or clarify something else. He also gave me a box of Neopkins to use. After I had finished he looked up and said, “I think I know what the problem is. May I run a few tests to make sure that I am correct?” he asked.

      “That’s fine,” I said. “Do anything you’d like.”

      Doctor Telhah got up and beckoned to us to follow. I got up, with Sarah right behind me, and walked after the doctor. He led us outside, and over to a small garden full of herbs. “This is the garden where we grow ingredients for our medicines,” he said. Doctor Telhah pointed to a bush of Starflowers in full bloom and said, “Go smell those.”

      “Okay,” I thought to myself. “Is this doctor a little random or what?” But I went over to smell them anyway. I inhaled the scent of Starflower and sighed with the pleasure. Then my nose started to twitch. “Uh oh!” I thought. “Here we go again.”

      “ACHOO!” I sneezed, pulling out a Neopkin just in time. “ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO!” Each sneeze was so powerful that the force of it made me bend over.

      “Bless you,” said Doctor Telhah and made a note on his clipboard. “I think I’m getting closer to figuring out what the problem is. Please come with me.” He started walking purposefully towards Neopia Central. Sarah and I gave each other bemused looks and followed the doctor. We stopped outside the Petpet Shop, where I stifled the urge to sneeze. Doctor Telhah opened the door and I walked in.

      I was greeted by what seemed like a thousand petpets screaming at once. The urge to sneeze grew stronger, but I managed to hold it in. “Go choose a petpet,” said the doctor.

      “Really?” I said, wondering why an almost complete stranger wanted to buy me something.

      “Any one of them,” he answered, pointing to the cages.

      I walked from cage to cage, trying to decide which one I wanted. And then I saw it. Sitting in a cage all by itself was the cutest Doglefox I had ever laid eyes upon. It stared up at me with deep, soulful eyes, begging me to buy it. I opened the cage and picked up the Doglefox. “Aren’t you the cute-” I never got to finish my sentence due to the fact that I suddenly had to sneeze. “Ah, ah, ah,” I tried to stifle it while I placed the Doglefox back into its cage and reached for a Neopkin. “ACHOO!” I sneezed, holding the Neopkin up to my nose. I continued to sneeze for several minutes, barely able to breathe.

      When I finally stopped, my Neopkin was drenched and the doctor was staring at me like I had transformed into Meuka and was about to give him the Sneezles. Then he shook his head and said, “I think I have figured out why you are sneezing so much. Let’s go back to the hospital where we can discuss the problem and what courses of action we may take to cure it.” We followed Doctor Telhah back to the hospital, into the room, where I sat down in a chair.

      Doctor Telhah regarded us, then turned to me and said, “Fhazie, it seems that you have quite a few allergies.”

      “What do you mean?” I said. “If I have allergies, how come this has never happened before?”

      “I think I know the answer to that, but I need to ask you one more question. During the year do you often come down with a case of Pollenitus?”

      “Not really,” I answered truthfully while wiping my nose. “Just around spring and fall.”

      “Now I can answer your questions,” said Doctor Telhah. I was sitting on the edge of my seat, for I couldn’t wait to find out why I was having allergies that I had never had before.

      “What you thought was just Pollenitus is actually a rarer form of it, which is a constant allergy to pollen, not just a seasonal one. It becomes more active when the seasons change and flowers grow, although I’m sure that you sneeze a lot throughout the year.”

      I blushed, thinking of the time that a boy at school had given me flowers. I had sneezed unexpectedly and blown him to the end of the hall at school.

      “The reason that you have been sneezing so much more is that you also have an allergy to fur, hair, and feathers. When you were a green Shoyru, it was never triggered, and I think it was because you didn’t have fur, hair, or feathers, so none of the fur, hair, and feathers around you were bothersome. But now that you are an Eyrie, you have fur and feathers so your nose is constantly bothered.” He paused because I had gone into another sneezing fit, as if to prove his point. When I had stopped he continued. “There are many ways that we could counter-act these allergies. Your owner could buy a morphing potion and morph you back into a Shoyru.” Sarah looked at me, and I knew that that was out of our price range. “Or we could try and make a medicine that would help calm down your allergies.”

      “I think that that would be perfect,” said Sarah.

      “That’s excellent!” said Doctor Telhah. “To counter-act your allergy to pollen, I think a Crater Fruit Elixir should work fine. But instead of drinking it, I want you to drop three drops into your nose every morning. You should also carry some in your backpack just in case. Alleviating the symptoms of your allergy to fur, hair, and feathers will be more difficult. I think that I will combine Neopkins, Magic Cookies, and Fluff Be Gone into a pill or a tablet that you can eat. That should help to get rid of all of this sneezing.” He stopped talking again as I sneezed some more, then handed me a Crater Fruit Elixir and an eye dropper. “Why don’t you use some of this right now?”

      I happily took the potion and dropped three drops into my nose. It tickled and I sneezed. I looked at the doctor.

      “Ah yes, that will happen whenever you put those drops in. It lets you know that everything is working. To make sure that this will help, please sniff this,” he said, handing me a Starflower.

      I cautiously sniffed the flower. Nothing happened. I sniffed it again, to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Still no reaction from my nose. Since the elixir seemed to be working I took a deep inhale of Starflower scent. My nose felt perfectly fine. “Yes!” I cried, because I was so elated. And then I sneezed, and sneezed, and sneezed.

      Doctor Telhah looked at me and said, “My, you have got a powerful nose. Better double that to six drops of the elixir in your nose.”

      I dropped three more drops of Crater Fruit Elixir into my nose, and sneezed. Now that everything was in order, I breathed in the scent of Starflower. I waited for the sneeze, but it never came.

      “Perfect!” cried the doctor. “I have just finished the pills, so try one of them too.”

      I took a pill from the container and ate it. My nose tickled, then itched, then tingled. I prepared for a sneeze, but then all sensation in my nose ceased. It was as if someone had bottled up all the sneezes that were waiting to come out. “It worked!” I shouted. Then, just to make sure, I flicked my tail up by my nose. I wiggled the puff of fur at the end in front of my nose, then sniffed it. All the sneezes that I thought had been locked away suddenly got loose. “ACHOO! ACHOO! ACHOO!” My sneezes knew no bounds, no limits, and seemed to have no end. When they finally halted, I had used up a whole box of Neopkins in a matter of minutes.

      “That was unexpected,” said Doctor Telhah. “I don’t understand why it didn’t work.”

      “I think I have an idea,” piped up Sarah. “Before we came to the hospital, I tried to get Fhazie to use some Fluff Be Gone. She sniffed a little of it and then she couldn’t stop sneezing.”

      Doctor Telhah slapped himself in the face. “Of course!” he said. “Fluff Be Gone contains Fluff Remover, which contains hair. The hair in the Fluff Be Gone made Fhazie sneeze, and because it was inside of Fhazie it stopped the rest of the pill from working. Is there anything else I should know about before remaking the pill?”

      I thought for a minute then said, “It would be great if you could lessen the amount of snot. Because I sneeze so much it seems to get everywhere.”

      “Good point,” said the doctor. “Let me grab some new ingredients and then I will make the new pill.” After saying this, Doctor Telhah exited the room. A few seconds later I heard some bangs, yelps, and other strange sounds. When the doctor came back he had a whole bag full of ingredients. He then proceeded to mix, mash, stir, and combine all of them.

      “Eureka!” shrieked Doctor Telhah. “I have created an anti-allergy pill designed with Fhazie’s nose in mind. I call it Trithuri. Please try one.”

      I took a pill and ate it. Then I sneezed few times, while trying not to gag at the horrible taste. “ACHOO! That taste- ah ah-d terrible ACHOO! I th- ACHOO! - ink ah ah ah I’m ah- going ACHOO! To barf. Ah ah ah!” I only succeeded in stifling my last sneeze. “What did you put into that?”

      Doctor Telhah handed me a new box of Neopkins and said, “I put many different ingredients in, and some of them are things that will irritate your nose, but in the end they will help to alleviate you from your allergies. I put Scented Heart Plant leaves in to clear out your nose from all that snot. The scent is quite strong and it makes one out of three people sneeze. I also put in some Blue Fan Flower petals, which should help to fan away any fur that comes near your nose. I put in some Magic Cookie crumbs and Neopkins because they are supposed to stop you from sneezing. And lastly, each pill has a bit of Starflower in it, so that you know if the pill is starting to wear off. When you start sneezing uncontrollably it means that you need to take a new pill.” I didn’t quite believe him, so I took my tail and waved it in front of my nose. I had a Neopkin ready for what I thought was the inevitable, but the sneeze never came.

      “You’ve cured me!” I yelled while jumping for joy.

      “Why yes, I have,” said Doctor Telhah. I still couldn’t quite believe that I was cured, so I ran around smelling everything in sight. Not even a tickle from my nose. It was true, I was cured!

      * * *

     That same week I went back to Neoschool, happy and healthy as I could be and I got the surprise of my life. Everyone seemed to have come down with a case of D’Achoo or the Sneezles. I was wondering why this had happened when I realized that it was virus season. “Oh no!” I thought to myself. “Just when I think I’m cured the whole school comes down with a virus. Now there’s almost no chance that I won’t get sick!” I shuddered at the thought of a week more of sneezing. I checked my backpack for a box of Neopkins, and was relieved to see that I still had one left. I needn’t have worried, though, for it seemed that because I used so many Neopkins and eaten so many Magic Cookies when I thought I was sick, I had become temporarily immune to those viruses. Who would ever have thought that those allergies that had given me so much trouble would have stopped me from getting sick? Not me, that’s for sure. Just goes to show you that everything has a good side to it.

The End