Doctor Mario

Getting a degree in medicine was expensive. So were the thousands of deaths that had plagued the Mushroom Kingdom.

Getting the degree had been a fancy at the time. Oh yes, he had been a doctor before, but back then, all being a doctor had involved was flipping pills down someone's gullet, lining them up perfectly in order to heal the patient. As it turned out, medicine, real medicine, the type of medicine practiced in countries not ruled by a monarch, was complicated, expensive, and not treated as a game where one succeeded or failed depending on their ability to combine pills with geometry. So expensive in fact, that it was only thanks to all the gold coins he'd collected over the years that he'd been able to go to the New Donk City of Medicine and be certified as a doctor. A proud day, that expanded his CV by one profession, in addition to carpenter, plumber, racecar driver, tennis player, soccer player, golf player, hotel owner, party game developer, pilot, submarine captain, and...well, suffice to say, it was a long CV, and almost none of it mattered now. What mattered now, to Doctor Mario (certified, thank you very much), was that this virus had claimed thousands of lives in the Mushroom Kingdom, and unless they flattened the curve, would claim thousands more.

Right now, standing over the body of the toad who'd passed away, Doctor Mario wasn't so sure if that was doable.

He knew he should be used to that by now. The number of goombas, koopas, piranha plants, and everything else he'd stomped on (or in some cases, incinerated) over the years? They should have inured him to death by now. Maybe becoming a proper doctor had changed him. Maybe it was in-group bias. Maybe it was the knowledge that the Mushroom Kingdom really had no idea how to do anything, like, at all, and that he and his brother were the only actual competent people here. Oh yes, the kingdom could put on tennis tournaments, and racing tournaments, and throw spectacular parties and festivals, but its infrastructure was medieval, it had no standing army (hence why he was always entrusted with saving its ruler, because there wasn't a single person who was capable of doing so otherwise), and Peach was...well, he didn't want to say. But he could think, and reflect. Reflect on her comments that one day, the virus would just up and disappear. That it could be removed by ingesting fire flowers, a statement that had led to a lot of fireballs being thrown around last week, but no drop in the infection rate. That in regards to the food shortage, as the toads dropped dead in the fields, that there was no need to worry, that if people were running out of bread, they could always eat cake. She'd gotten it into her head that when Mario addressed the kingdom's scribes, she should just sit aside and be quiet, but it was too little, too late.

Too late for the poor toad on the bed before him now. Sighing, his breath collecting inside the mask he wore, Doctor Mario looked at his watch and said, "time of death, seven-fifty-nine."

The koopas took off their shells and lowered their heads, green, red, and even blue united in mourning. The shy guys, so at home in these conditions since they spent their whole lives wearing masks, wheeled the body out of the operating room. Mario tried not to reflect on the mass grave that hammer brothers (now wielding spades, though retaining their name for some reason) were excavating one kilometre away. How hundreds of bodies from this hospital alone had been buried already. He tried not to think of the boos who hovered above it - once, laughing at the Mushroom Kingdom's misfortune, but now unable to summon any mirth. Even ghosts had limits apparently.

"Doctor Mario, please report to Room 10B," said the intercom.

He didn't want to think of it. He didn't want to acknowledge how, as this virus had ravaged the world, Bowser, tyrant as he was, had done a better job in saving his people than Peach had. He didn't want to think about how many bodies would fill that hole in the ground by the time this was over. He didn't want to think how, when it was over, the world would go back to business as usual, propagating the same conditions that had allowed the virus to rise in the first place.

"Doctor Mario, please report to Room 10B," the intercom repeated.

He didn't want to think that all his years of jumping, flipping, bouncing, and everything else, had amounted to nothing. That as horrible as things were, that he'd saved more lives as a doctor than all his prior work combined.

"Doctor Mario, please report to Room 10B," came the voice.

He looked at the koopas around him, and reflected how while his pride bid him not say it, his heart and mind still knew the truth. That for all his heroics, none of them could compare to what he'd seen over the last few months. Of people, from koopas, to shy guys, and even toads, putting their lives on the line to help others in this trying time. That the world would forget what they'd done before the virus, what they'd done doing it, and once things returned to normal, once he'd returned to his routine of rescuing an impotent ruler from her own incompetence time and time again, that the world would forget the true heroes. Those who'd given everything, from their time to their lives, and in some places of the kingdom, attacked for it.

"Doctor Mario, please report to Room 10B."

But he'd remember. Even if he was the only one who did, he'd remember them. He'd remember them all. The koopas around him, and everyone else.

"Doctor Mario, please report to Room 10B."

He sighed. "Here we go," he whispered.

He headed out of the room.

And as if in a funeral procession, the koopas followed him.

Update (30/05/20): Corrected typo.