Antiseptic
Diamond was sat on a clinical, no-frills white chair in a clinical, no-frills white hospital hallway and peered over her shoulder through a gap in the curtain around Copper’s bed as the doctors in their clinical, no-frills uniforms tended to her with a sense of silent urgency.
She snapped her head back round again as one of the nurses emerged from the curtain and tried to still her shaking hooves as the mare made her businesslike way over to where she was sat, hoping partly that she hadn’t been caught but mostly that her friend was alright. Copperwing had seemed on the road to recovery when the hospital staff had retrieved her from the front lawn, compared to her state before Diamond had found the inhaler, but all this fuss around the older filly made Diamond nervous.
“Hello, my name is Nurse Snowheart – you were with the young mare we brought in off the green, were you not?”
“Yes, Nurse Snowheart. We were here with her younger sister to see her mother in Ward B.”
“I see… And where is her sister now?”
“She went in ahead of us; she doesn’t know what’s happened: my best guess would be with her mother, Burnished Gilding, in Ward B, but she might be looking for us.”
“Noted. What do you know of Miss Copperwing’s medical history – has anything like this happened before?”
“Nothing I know of; I haven’t known her very long… The most I can guess at, besides something like asthma, would be a phobia of hospitals. I think that’s what set her off: she was already stressed out about her mother being hurt, so if she’s as scared of hospitals as she seemed, it would make sense that being here would make her panic.”
“You haven’t known her long, you say? You must be either very perceptive or very lucky to have brought along her inhaler, then. As you say, a phobia of hospitals, whilst certainly unfortunate given the circumstances, would make a good candidate for a trigger. Now, I want you to tell me, step by step, what happened to put her in this state.”
“Well, I suppose the very start would be when the Royal Guard came to tell Copper and Auburn about their mother, who'd gone with them into the Everfree as part of her work as a Guard reserve. He couldn’t stay long, so all he could tell us was that their mother was injured and in Ward B. Auburn seemed very anxious to go, but Copperwing froze up… I guess she was in shock from the news.”
“Interesting, go on.”
“I offered to come with them to the hospital, and the three of us made our way over from my house in Ponyville Square. Copperwing was still a little out of sorts but she livened up as we went along – Auburn kept listing worse case scenarios and that did a lot to rile Copper up, which can’t have helped. By the time we got here, Copperwing was pretty upset about it all, and when we got near the building itself she stopped dead and said she couldn’t go any further.”
“Well, there’s certainly a build-up of stress there… What happened next?”
“She kept saying that she couldn’t go into the hospital, and about the second time she started crying. Auburn was really impatient to get inside… She said a lot of, uh, mean things to Copper, which only made her worse. Copper started breathing really heavily, and I sent Auburn away so that I could try and calm her down, but she just kept getting worse. I managed to get her to stop for a moment or two, but as soon as she got her breath she used it all up sobbing about hating hospitals and started hyperventilating.”
“Do you think that is where the asthma attack began in force?”
“Yes, I think so: before she was just breathing hard, but after she ran out of breath it was like she couldn’t control her breathing anymore. She couldn’t calm down, and I could see she was trying to… She looked desperate, scared that she was losing control. She kept getting worse no matter what I did so I opened her bag to see if there was anything which could help – it looked like she was having an asthma attack, so I thought there might be an inhaler in there if she was asthmatic.”
“So, you found the inhaler and applied it until her breathing was back under her control, correct?”
“Yes, Nurse… I was looking at her eyes to see if I was giving her too much, but it wasn’t until I was just about to stop anyway that she pushed the inhaler away.... I didn’t want to give her an overdose and make things worse, you know?”
“Well, ordinarily what you gave her would count as an overdose, but it is a very minor threat to her health compared to the asthma attack she was suffering, so you aren’t in any trouble for that. Not that we’d blame you even if the threat was greater: your actions showed great presence of mind and stopped the attack before it would have become genuinely life-threatening.”
“So, uh, how is she?”
“Better than she was when we brought her in by a long way, but we want to keep her in at least overnight to make sure there are no complications. From there, she’ll be confined to bed for at least the next few days and she can’t do anything strenuous for the next month – if it would get her out of breath ordinarily, she can’t do it. She should make a full recovery, but at the moment she’s not very well.”
“Can I… Can I see her?”
“Not right now, young mare… Perhaps later, if she’s breathing well enough, but that won’t be for at least an hour yet. If I were you, I’d tell your parents where you are and what’s happened and come back later if you’re able.”
“Alright.”
*
Auburn slinked sullenly into her mother’s room and shuffled over to the bedside, wings hanging limp at her sides and ears drooping guiltily. Ahead of her lay Burnished Gilding, the mare’s right wing and foreleg wrapped in bandages: she picked her head up off of the pillow, eyes searching the space behind her daughter hopefully, but dropped it back weakly when she saw the subtle shake of Auburn’s head.
“She’s gone, Mum; Diamond, too. It’s… It’s my fault, really: she was freaking out about going into hospital again and I snapped at her… Diamond was trying to calm her down, but I guess it didn’t work if they’re both gone… Must’ve gone back to Diamond’s place.”
“You snapped at her? Auburn, you know as well as I do that your sister gets stressed easily, what made you think shouting would help? I’m not surprised she went back with Diamond; hospitals terrify her - with good reason - and with me hurt and you yelling at her, it’s no wonder if she couldn’t take it.”
“I know… I-I just don’t understand what’s wrong with her – she’s my big sister, she’s supposed to be tougher than me; more mature; but all she does is freak out whenever anything happens that she doesn’t like and worry about stupid things like – like hospitals!”
“Auburn, there is nothing ‘wrong’ with your sister, and if you ever say something like that again, you’ll get more than just a stern talking to. An anxiety attack is not ‘freaking out’, not by a long shot - she can’t control it without pills, and she’s allergic to all of the ones suitable for a filly her age, you know that…"
Gilding frowned even deeper and continued with disappointment laced across her words. "Actually, I say you know that, but it really doesn’t seem like you do – how much else of what we’ve told you have you just ignored?”
Auburn looked outraged, stamping her hoof on the tiled floor in frustration as she spoke; an action which just made Gilding sigh even deeper than before and slowly shake her head. “Mum! I’m not ignoring anything!”
“Aren’t you? You say it’s your fault your sister didn’t come see me, but then you go on a rant about how much you think is wrong with her – if you’ve really taken in what I and your father told you, then how can you say the things you just said?” At her words, her daughter's head drooped once more, ears falling limp and the hoof she'd half-raised in anger drifting back down to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding to Gilding's small pleasure like she meant it, although her mother had no intention of letting her off the hook until she'd dealt with the situation adequately enough that it wouldn't happen again.
“I don’t want apologies, young mare, I want you to listen to me. Copperwing has always been a sensitive filly at heart, and with the way her classmates treated her that developed into something more serious: she has at least one anxiety disorder – the psychologist thinks she might even have two separate ones – and you know as well as I do that there’s no easy fix for that sort of thing. It certainly doesn’t help when her own sister doesn’t understand the way she feels, or makes fun of her phobia because she thinks it’s ‘stupid’. Illogical as it might seem to you, she has very good reasons for being afraid of hospitals, even if what happened to her was a one-in-a-million occurrence.”
Auburn winced again under the redoubled scolding, repeating her earlier apology less because she meant it than because she wanted her mother to stop. “I’m sorry… Why is she scared of hospitals, anyway? You all just say she has a phobia and stop talking about it – what happened that’s so bad you won’t tell me?”
Gilding groaned, lifting her good hoof to meet her face as she realised where this had all spun out of control. “It’s not that we didn’t want to tell you, it’s just that we assumed Copper would tell you herself when she felt the time was right… Not to mention we thought that calling it a phobia would at least clue you in that it was pretty serious, and make you leave it alone until your sister was ready to share the details. If you want, I can tell you now, but if you’d rather you heard it from her directly, I wouldn’t mind seeing you wait for once.”
Her daughter bit her lip, gears whirring in her head, before settling on an answer with uncommon confidence.“I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it now that you’ve made it such a big deal – tell me.”
*
“Young filly?” Diamond’s head turned sharply to face the speaker, “You may see your friend now, but keep it calm in there – last thing we need is another attack, and she really doesn’t have the energy for much right now, so try not to push her too hard.”
“Thank you, miss; I’ll be careful,” Diamond answered, trying not to rush as she re-entered Copperwing’s hospital room and caught her friend’s anxious gaze, the pegasus wordlessly pleading for her to come closer. She made her way as fast as she could manage without breaking into a canter, and smiled kindly at Copperwing, whose muzzle was covered by an oxygen mask, (Diamond assumed it was there as a ‘better-safe-than-sorry’ measure rather than as an absolute necessity, given that the pegasus was breathing well enough for her to be there), and who spoke entire volumes with her wide, fearful eyes, despite her inability to speak the way Diamond could.
Reaching her bedside and seeing the worry in Copper’s eyes, Diamond nervously leaned down and nuzzled her comfortingly, bringing a light flush of pink to both their cheeks and a smile back to her friend’s partially-obscured muzzle. A hoof curled round her to rest on her back, and Diamond took the hint happily, ducking her head down to rest the side of her neck against Copper’s and tucking her forelegs around the pegasus’s barrel: they remained like that for some time, and after a while Copperwing slumped further into her embrace and began quivering lightly, the warm drips hitting the nape of Diamond’s neck confirming that she was crying.
Moving one hoof up to stroke Copper’s mane, Diamond began whispering comforts into her friend’s ear, not in the least bit bothered by the length of their embrace or the damp fur on her neck from Copperwing’s tears and caring only about the wellbeing of the filly in her caring hooves. Eventually, the tears stopped and, after an even longer time in which both fillies savoured the warm, soothing feelings of their physical and emotional closeness, Copperwing withdrew from Diamond’s cradle; her hoof resting for a moment longer on the other’s withers, something mirrored by Diamond’s own hoof remaining entwined in the pegasus’s mane.
In the moment before they released each other completely, the pair’s eyes met and the fillies said much more to each other through that window between souls than they ever could through words, although words came soon after, as they always do.
“Copper…” began Diamond, not really knowing where to start; but having seen all she needed to in the earth filly’s gaze, her friend let out a strangled little chuckle muted by the oxygen mask and croaked:
“…I know…”
Copper smiled, and Diamond could tell that she understood what she’d wanted to say: suddenly obsolete, she abandoned that particular line of conversation in favour of the only other thing on her mind.
“You’ve got a phobia of hospitals, haven’t you?-“ Copper nodded weakly, embarrassment flushing her cheeks, “-It’s okay, we’re all afraid of something or other, and I bet you’ve got a better reason than I do for being scared of what you are.”
Copperwing nodded again, smirking a little in a way reminiscent of her former confident self, and reached over to the bedside table for the small, spiral-bound notepad which lay there and the feather-tipped ring alongside it. She struggled a little in her attempts to slide the feather-ring over her own primaries, before Diamond carefully took the item from her and completed the action for the pegasus, who gave her a grateful smile in return.
Spotting the jar of ink on the table and Copperwing’s sharp glance toward it, Diamond unscrewed the lid and held it out for her carefully, channelling her earth pony magic as best she could so as to avoid spilling it: noticing the swing-out table at the side of the bed, however, she retracted the hoof and instead pulled the table round so that Copper would be able to use it, placing the ink down carefully onto it along with Copper’s notepad.
Her guess that Copper wanted to communicate via more than the monosyllabic, pained words she was currently capable of speaking turned out to be correct, as Copper began using the feather-ring to write in a careful, almost calligraphic way, the ink-soaked tip of the feather acting like a thin, stiff paintbrush. Confusion returned, however, when she realised that her friend was not stopping even after writing a full page’s worth, and she resolved to find out why.
“What are you writing?”
Copper looked up at her, raising an eyebrow meaningfully before returning to her peculiar scrawling, Diamond guessing – correctly – that she was explaining the biggest mystery Diamond had found about her thus far.
“Copper, you don’t have to write about your phobia now: I can wait, and I don’t want you upset just because of my curiosity.” Copperwing shrugged nonchalantly, the residual sadness in her eyes betraying the motion as false, and replied in a voice somewhat clearer than before.
“Want to… Gotta get it off my… uh… chest.”
“You sure about this?”
“…’Fter today, d’you think I’d… uh… do it if I wasn’t?”
“Point taken... Just take a break if it gets to be too much, okay?”
“Mm-hm,” nodded Copperwing, getting right back to work. Pulling a chair in to the edge of the bed, Diamond sat and waited for her to finish, her hoof returning unconsciously to its earlier position wrapped in Copper’s silken mane, soothingly stroking it as the pegasus determinedly wrote.
*
After ten or so minutes, Copperwing leaned back in her bed, slipping the quill-ring off her wingtip and glancing at Diamond, who reluctantly retracted her hoof from behind the pegasus’s head and lifted the notebook carefully from the table, handling it almost religiously as she turned back the pages to find the beginning of Copperwing’s explanation and began to read.
When I was ten, I was probably the least popular filly in my school year, if not the school itself. My first week at school, I’d pissed off some privileged filly and through bribes and lies, she turned all my classmates against me. By the end of that year, I was miserable, and mum took me to a psychologist after I had a breakdown in class. According to him, what they’d done to me had given me something called Social Anxiety Disorder, and I needed to go to the hospital to have some tests done before I could have any pills to treat it.
A week later, three or so days before my appointment, my uncle Pewter Tap died. I was a real state – he was my favourite uncle, and I was still a wreck from school – and I hadn’t recovered much by the time I had to go in for the tests. Everything went fine until we ended up waiting three-quarters of an hour after our appointment was due to start and I needed to use the bathroom. Not being in the best state of mind, I got very, very lost on the way back – so much so that I ended up in the back rooms of the hospital where normal ponies aren’t supposed to go.
I looked around, but I couldn’t find anypony, so I just kept going until I stumbled into what I quickly realised was the hospital morgue – specifically, the morgue where my uncle’s body was being kept whilst they autopsied it – and found when I tried to leave that the door had locked behind me and I needed a keycard to get out. It was dark and cold and stank to high heaven with rotting flesh, and I was locked in. I had my first real panic attack there and then, though at the time I thought that I was having a heart attack, and after that most of what happened is a bit of a blur, to be honest.
I wasn’t thinking straight, that’s for sure, and somehow I managed to trap myself in a storage cabinet with all the horrible, stinking chemicals they use on the dead bodies. Eventually, somepony heard me crying and let me out and took me back to mum, but I was stuck in that dark, chemical-soaked box for four full hours, believing for all the world that I’d had a heart attack and that any moment I was going to drop down dead just like Uncle Pewter.
Another trip to the psychologist told me it was likely that, after what I’d been through, I’d have another anxiety disorder – this one situationally bound to hospitals – although he said it would probably be mild. I don’t need to tell you that that prediction didn’t hold true at all.
So, yeah, that’s all I can think of. Probably just confused you, but at least I tried, right? I just want to say that I’m so glad I met you, Diamond, you’ve been a better friend to me than anypony besides Auburn, and she’s had thirteen years to build a relationship.
I don’t think I would’ve gotten out of that attack without really hurting myself if it hadn’t been for you – if I’m honest, I wasn’t really expecting to make it through that at all – so thank you for... well, saving my life. I don’t know what else to say, so I’m going to stop writing now and let you read this thing, Celestia knows I’ve let it run on long enough.
Setting the pad down with shaking hooves, Diamond met Copperwing’s nervously expectant eyes and smiled sadly at her, tears rolling down her cheeks as she pushed the swing-out table away and pulled her friend into a tight hug and sniffled into the pillow.
“Oh, Copperwing…” she repeated sorrowfully, unable to put her feelings into words; falling silent as Copper completed the reversal of their earlier roles and traced a hoof softly up and down through her mane until her tears fell no more. Eventually, Diamond lifted her head up off of Copper's soft shoulder and they once more broke apart, holding each other’s gaze even as Diamond sat down in an emotional continuation of the embrace. The notepad lay forgotten on the side table, nothing more needing to be put into words, as the pair looked at one another in a subtly different light to before, pondering their new views of each other as if they were the most important things in the world.
The fillies remained together even as the nurses returned to check on Copperwing; the pegasus placing her hoof on Diamond’s pointedly when Snowheart suggested that she leave; and for a while both their collective worries melted away in the warmth of their newfound closeness. An hour passed, then another, time moving differently for the two friends, tangled in their blankets of thought as they were: they didn't mind, as far as they were concerned, everything was going to be fine.
As the sun made its way down the darkening sky on a path to the horizon, Copperwing lay her head on Diamond’s shoulder and burrowed, oxygen mask and all, into the other filly’s mane, closing her eyes and falling asleep with a contented look on her face. Smiling to herself, Diamond ran her hoof once more through Copper’s brassy mane, watching transfixed as the waning sunlight shimmered across her copper-tinged coat and lit her wingtips up a brilliant orange and letting the rhythmic drumbeat of the pegasus’s pulse carry her similarly into the land of dreams.
*****
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Wonderful chapter. It's truly amazing to see how far Diamond has progressed since getting away from Silver Spoon's influence.
That was...it gave me a heavy dose of the feels.
5372037
Thank you! It was a bit of a challenge getting all I wanted across with Copperwing being pretty much mute, so I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed the chapter. Also, thanks for the GIF, seeing it pretty much made my day.
5372064
Are those the good feels, the bad feels, or the I-don't-know-what-to-feel feels?
Regardless, it's great to hear the emotion got through without so much dialogue.
Arr, me hearties, this ship o' friend and feels be sailin', slow and steady...
I was actually kind of expecting Copperwing's phobia of hospitals to be the result of getting hurt somehow in one from a visit. And I don't mean the way it happened. I meant physically hurt due to something going wrong in some kind of procedure.
But then again... that would not only be clichéd, but it would probably have caused more emotional/mental damage than what actually happened.
The ending of the chapter was still very sweet.