//------------------------------// // Episode Six: Clandestine Confessions // Story: Paging Doctor Sparkle! // by Quillamore //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle, M.D. Ponyville Hospital, Day 11, just after midnight Doctors, after all, do not cry unless somepony dies, and after a while, even that grows numb. Those are the words that swirl all around me as I take in more and more of the scene, and as time itself stops.  Every once in a while, I find my head turning towards the window, watching as everything in Ponyville stays the same as ever.  Rainbow Dash is even out on the street again, hawking some new product even though no one will be there to watch.  The entire town, it seems, is putting on a brave front. Everypony except Redheart, the one pony who should know how to do that better than anypony.  And yet, rather than wanting to yell at her or call her out for such a display, I’m transfixed by the sight.  I’m surrounded by happiness, yet all I can hear is tears. I give the comic one last look, realizing how much Redheart looks like the fallen henchmare with her pink mane down, and do something I know I’m going to regret. It’s for the sake of the hospital, I tell myself over and over before approaching the other mare.  Nopony else, and especially not me.  I am not trying to make friends with her, and I most certainly am not attached to her.  She’s the best pony for the job here, and that’s it. After sufficiently fooling myself, I canter towards Redheart, who almost seems to have put herself to sleep with all her crying.  As I whisper softly into her ear, her head jolts straight into my face, and she prepares yet again for her usual act. “Doctor Sparkle,” she mutters, her tears stopping just long enough for her to lecture me, “what in Equestria are you doing in my office?!  I thought even an idiot like you would know that this is a private area, and—ohhh…” Her head flops onto the desk yet again, and judging from the way she’s rubbing her entire face in pain, she’s going through the one thing that keeps me from crying these days.  The next time she tries to face me, she gets disoriented yet again and goes down within seconds.  This continues for at least three more tries until she finally just gives up and glues her body to the desk for good. “Need an aspirin?” I finally ask, banging on the medicine cabinet as if she’ll actually know what I’m doing. “I hate you so much,” she croaks out. Realizing that’s probably the closest thing I’ll get to a ‘yes’ tonight, I unscrew the cap, lift her head up with my magic, and pop the pill straight into her mouth.  I admit, it’s a bit invasive, but I also realize that she’ll probably forget all about it unless I force her to take it.  She sighs and puts her head back onto the desk as soon as I give it to her, and that’s the last I hear of her for a while. Possibly even forever, I tell myself as she refuses to speak.  I’m not sure if it’s because I want to find out why she’s being transferred or something else entirely, but somehow, I can’t help but feel pained by that thought.  That’s why, even though the nerves of the situation press against me and make me acutely aware of how terrible I am at consoling ponies, I’m still compelled to act. “I didn’t mean to snoop,” I finally whisper, “but I heard you crying, and I was worried.” “Not because you wanted to gloat?” Redheart replies, so offended by the statement that she forgets she was giving me the silent treatment moments before. “I didn’t even know you were going to be fired, honest.  To my knowledge, I don’t think anypony else does, either.” After giving the pills a few minutes to settle in her system, Redheart lifts her head off the desk, still feeling a bit woozy even with her signature scowl on her face.  Still, if she’s able to stay mad at me for more than a few seconds, at least that’ll keep her from crying.  Maybe it’ll even take her mind off the grave announcement she just got, even. “Everypony’s gonna know by tomorrow,” she mutters, already turning her head away from me and towards the wall.  “As much as I hate to admit it to you of all ponies, it was inevitable.  I’ve been at the bottom of the list for months.” That fact, above all, shocks me to my core.  Not the fact that she was at the bottom, but rather the idea that the bottom still exists here.  At particularly competitive hospitals, like Canterlot National, doctors were always ranked at the end of the month, and enough time at the bottom could send a pony straight out of the capital.  But, to my knowledge, most smaller towns had eliminated the system, claiming that it was too competitive and scared doctors into stirring drama more often than not.  Being at the top, I never really had too much of an opinion about it, but now, it just strikes me as yet another false promise the hospital ponies gave me before carting me off here. Looking back at the form that’d started tonight’s trouble, I can’t help but wonder if Redheart feels the same way about being transferred to a place she barely knows.  But first, I decide to ask the question that’s puzzled me ever since I got the news. “I still don’t get it.  In a hospital that’s barely scraping by with ten doctors, how can this place afford to lose you?  Better yet, how’d you even get to the bottom in the first place?” As my voice becomes ever more determined, I slowly realize that I may be hitting a nerve in Redheart that she doesn’t necessarily want to face.  I keep expecting her to lash out again or at least act like her usual self, but instead, she bows her head in surrender and turns towards me again. “One at a time, please.  I’m not sure if I can handle any more than that right now.  And besides, that first question has a perfectly obvious answer.  Or are you really that dense?” Even that last sentence seems to lack her usual biting nature, and when she sees that I’m just as confused as ever, she rolls her eyes and stares straight into mine. “You’re worth more than five doctors to them,” she sighs.  “It’s like that whole story where the railroad stallion almost gets beat by a hammering machine.  Compared to you, the hospital would have to fire half its employees to lose efficiency.  Transferring me is just a drop in the bucket.” For a few brief seconds, I wonder why a town fifty miles away from Canterlot has such incomprehensible stories, and I can’t help but think it’s some other way to keep everypony confused about what really happens in Ponyville.  In any case, reference or no reference, her statement is no less perplexing to me.  As much as I may like to pretend I’m better than other doctors, actually hearing it sounds wrong somehow. And, as much as I try to convince her that she’s worth just as much to the hospital as I am, she refuses to believe me.  For good reason, probably—after all these days of playing her rival, of course she wouldn’t be willing to accept anything from me.  Yet even as she shoots every single one of my statements down, I can still see a blank and meaningless look in her eyes. Redheart is no longer playing a role.  It’s almost as if she’s somepony else entirely, barely more than a doll that responds to voice commands.  Thinking back to yesterday, I can’t help but notice that she’d had that face when she yelled at me last, even before she knew the news. It’s only fitting that I do the one thing that’ll break the rivalry more than anything, the one thing that can possibly get to her in that moment and make her real again. “You’re one of the best doctors here,” I finally whisper.  “The best, I daresay.  You keep talking about how I’m worth so much, but you’re so much better than me in so many ways.  All the things that got me sent here, you’ve already figured out for yourself.  You never have any problems with your patients or lose your temper with anyone except me.  You always seem to have the answer for everything, and if I wasn’t so darn stubborn and scared about messing up in front of everypony, I would’ve just asked you how you do it all already!” “I don’t.” The sound is so quiet, so vulnerable that if there had been even one more pony in the room, I wouldn’t have heard it at all.  And even though I was able to hear it, believing it is a whole other story. Tears flow out of Redheart’s blue eyes yet again like a waterfall from a lake.  She shakes her unkempt mane one last time before facing me with the most desperate face I’ve ever seen. “You’re the only one at the hospital who thinks I’m still competent,” she confesses.  “Probably because you haven’t seen me as anything but yet, right?  Everypony who stays longer than you, though…they already know everything.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t even give you the satisfaction of knowing.” She gives off one last deep sigh before she gives me all the answers I’ve been waiting for.  Yet somehow, seeing her now, every last bit of curiosity I have about them vanishes, and I can’t look away from her sorry sight.  I’d almost say it’s worse than any patient I’ve ever seen—and that means I have to care for her in a time like this. That’s the only reason I feel this way, I warn myself one last time before listening to her story.  Don’t get too close, or you’ll regret it. “It was six months ago, before hiring you was even a blink in the director’s eye.  At first, the hospital didn’t want to take a risk on me, since everypony in my family had been nurses, but I did everything I could to prove them wrong.  And it even worked for a while.  Ponies still got confused, called me ‘nurse’ from time to time, but I didn’t mind.  Because once upon a time, I didn’t actually have to hide my feelings.  I never lashed out at anypony, and I was actually happy, believe it or not.” She only pauses to narrow her eyes, almost as if the thing that’d ruined her career could strike at any moment. “Ponyville has a full-time surgeon now, but back then, we did everything we could to find one, even putting ads in other cities.  Even that wasn’t too much of a problem, until two ponies developed heart attacks at exactly the same time.  To this day, nopony knows how such a thing could’ve happened, but more importantly…one of them was a stallion I’d never met, and the other one was my mother.  I never had the best relationship with her, and surgery still isn’t my strongest suit, but I cantered in as fast as I could and told the other doctors to handle the stallion.” “Because you still loved her deep down?” I ask against my better judgement.  Redheart simply shakes her head. “Because I wanted to show her what I could do,” she whispers.  “See, she was always the one who didn’t think I had what it takes to be a doctor, even after I got the job here.  So I thought, if saving her life didn’t convince her, what would?” Just after she shrugs, a solemn pause permeates the room and brings her soon-to-be-lost job back to the forefront.  Even though she’s stopped crying, her nose still brushes the ground, and her head is dangerously close to hitting it as well. “Both patients died that evening.  After losing their longest, most beloved nurse to an inexperienced mistake, Ponyville Hospital finally petitioned Mayor Mare to form a committee to find the surgeon we have now.  More importantly, if the stallion had gotten quicker care, we could have saved him.  As head doctor on that case, I was the one that ended up getting most of the blame, and one of my closest friends even told me I cared more about my family than my patients.  After all that…it was a wonder they kept me as long as they did.” She puts on the bravest face I’ve seen all night, one that’s nevertheless as false as can be.  From the story she tells me, I’m able to fill in the rest of the details—even though that one case couldn’t have been enough for the hospital to dismiss her, it definitely could’ve been enough for her to lose her resolve.  To start making foalish mistakes that would take her to the bottom every time. Before I can say anything else, though, Redheart shocks me yet again. “If I would’ve known they would’ve gotten rid of me so quickly afterwards…I never would’ve gotten into it with you.  I thought you’d come here all this time because you were going to replace me, but considering they were going to do it anyway, it’s pretty pointless.  But hey, at least it gave somepony new for me to prove wrong for a little while.” She wipes the tears off her eyes one last time and begins to gather her things one by one, just like she would on any other night.  And that’s when it occurs to me—she still has a month here and more importantly, she still has me. If I’m able to challenge her so much that she barely thinks about anything else, could that mean I’ve been taking her mind off her mistakes all this time?  If that’s the case, then could I keep pushing her long enough for her to keep her job, her home, everything she’s ever known? It’s a risk I’ve never wanted to take, but somehow, one that I feel obligated to tell her about.  As I expected, the idea barely even registers in her mind, but I get the distinct feeling that it will in a few days.  It has to, if she has any hopes of staying here. Even after ten days of being here, I know I probably won’t stay.  But, seeing how Redheart’s being pushed into the same situation, I can’t help but fight for her.  Just because of the things that bind us close.  Nothing more.  Ten days is too soon to fall in love, so there’s no way. Still, in the moonlight of a cold winter’s night, I can’t help but let her tail cross mine as I walk her back to her house.  The place that, hopefully, will be her home for as long as she lives.