The Ties that Bind

Chapter 19 - You Are Challenged by the Absolute King Leon

Dr. Fennel practically collapsed into her lab with armfuls of bags, alerting her assistants of her clumsy return and pried the bags away from her so she could regain her composure. She sighed heavily with relief, feeling the weight on her shoulders literally being lifted, before turning to her assistants with a cheery grin. "I'm back everyone! I hope things haven't been too hectic without me!"

"Well, there hasn't been much work here since we've been expecting you to come back with new findings. How are your Munna and Musharna doing? Need me to take a look at them?" A young man in a similar white lab coat, asked. His small, messy ponytail bobbed as he walked towards Dr. Fennel and outstretched his hand to accept the Pokeball with the aforementioned Pokemon. He tossed both of them out and examined them carefully with a curious stroke of his stubble and smiled gently at the great condition that both Munna and Musharna were in.

"How are they, Matthew?" Dr. Fennel asked with a hopeful grin.

"They look good to me. Better than last time when they nearly blew up the lab." Matthew chuckled.

"That was one time and I said I was sorry!" Dr. Fennel huffed, walking past him to her office, where she slumped into her chair to go through the gruelling routine of catching up on phone calls and emails.

"Soooo...you didn't find anything, huh?" Matthew chimed in cheekily, sticking his head into her office. Dr. Fennel would have thrown something at him if she wasn't already so exhausted from the trip back. She pouted by the number of voice messages that were left on her phone and pressed the play button to let the phone run through most of the spam messages advertising things like windows and cleaning services.

"Not anything mind-blowing but I learned a few things. I'll talk to you about it later-"

"Hello, Dr. Fennel. This is Dr. Greyson again. I'm calling to remind you that my patient, Juliet, is still interested in speaking with you about recurring nightmares she has been experiencing-"

Oh, right! Dr. Fennel completely forgot about that! She was so preoccupied with preparing for her business trip in Alola that she ended up staying for longer than she had intended due to there being some issues with Ultra Beasts popping up in the region and effectively stopping anyone from travelling in and out of the region. When they were finally dealt with, it took awhile for things to settle and for travel to resume that she had completely forgot about giving this Juliet person a consultation.

As Dr. Fennel reached for the phone to call back the number left at the end of the message, Matthew's hands suddenly shot out to replay the voice message again, his blue eyes wide in disbelief. "S-Sorry. Dr. Fennel but....can you replay this message again?"

"Hm? Do you know Dr. Greyson?" She wondered curiously.

"No, but, I could have sworn she mentioned a patient named 'Juliet'..."

Dr. Fennel raised her eyebrow. "Yes, that's correct. I got a message from this doctor requesting that I give a consultation with her patient but it was before my trip so I couldn't get back to her. Do you know Juliet?"

Matthew swallowed thickly and he bit his lip anxiously. Of course he knew that name. That name had always haunted his thoughts. Not in an overtly bad way but, more out of...sadness. Regret. There was the off-chance that there was another person named Juliet, but something in his gut told him that, no, this was the Juliet he knew. The Juliet that was his younger sister. No, he had no right to call her that. Not after what their parents did, and not after what he didn't do as her older brother. In a way he was...relieved that at the very least she was OK, wherever she was, and he always wanted to see her again, but...she probably wouldn't want to. He had never talked to Dr. Fennel about his personal life in detail to spare her from the grief, but he wasn't shocked by her stare at how emotional he probably looked to her.