Roseluck stood in the hospital reception area and tried not to touch anything. Not even the seats.
In theory, she was all for modern medicine, hospitals, and doctors. They saved lives; to her, there was no higher calling. Her brain agreed to this. Her heart, stomach, and bladder did not. They objected to any medic trying to look at them directly, and insisted she keep an eye on all such medics. So long, of course, as the eye itself was not also being examined.
“Ah,” sighed Doc, lounging on his chair with all the ease she didn’t have. “Behold the inner sanctum of science’s greatest triumph. Marvellous, isn’t it?”
“Are we staying long?” moaned Roseluck. Around them, ponies sat and bore unnatural things. Bandaged wings. Neck braces. Most of all, legs in casts; ponies were adapted to long, thin limbs for running, “long and thin” meant “easily broken”, and “easily broken” meant “look out for that stone!”
“Oh, Roseluck, tsk tsk tsk! Here is a place where modern science – modern medicine – saves countless lives.”
Roseluck inched a little way from a mare with a particularly long cast on each left leg. Yes, modern medicine saved lives, but she wished they saved lives without all the needles, the blood, and the unhealthy non-squeamish fascination with pony bodies. Like hers.
The receptionist glanced up and waved at them. Roseluck narrowed her eyes. A wave like that meant nothing good; any medic trying to get chummy was up to something.
Worse, she was still not sure leaving the florist’s was right. They’d left the two girls unsupervised, albeit briefly, which was bad. So she’d left a note, saying: “Gone investigating. If you wake up, please find me and tell me I needn’t bother.” Right now, she believed in the last part.
If they could read it: she’d given her best mouth-writing, but the pen had shaken and the result was a bit curly and hard to read.
Doc had offered to use his hooves at the time. Just like he was now, flicking through one of those hospital brochures: the ones which reminded visitors of all the awful diseases that had yet to hunt them down.
“How can you do that?” she muttered.
“I always try to use my hooves when I can,” said Doc airily. “Mouths are all right, but if we were meant to use them for everything, then we wouldn’t produce so much spittle all the time. No, the future belongs to the hoof.”
“The thing that touches the ground all the time?”
“What?”
Roseluck rolled her eyes. “No, I meant: how can you be so calm?”
“I love it here! Having involved myself in all manner of scientific revolutions, I’ve regularly visited this place. So often, in fact, that the nurses all know me by name. This is a temple of science.”
She quietly shelved the “nurses all know me by name” bit. Feeling her forelimb sting at the memory, Roseluck said, “You’ve never been vaccinated, have you?”
“Nonsense! I love being vaccinated! It’s so fascinating to imagine all those myriad little chemicals piercing the defences of your skin to spread through the complex liquids flowing deep inside you.”
Roseluck’s cheeks bulged urgently.
“And of course, there were all those head injuries I sustained after one too many scientifically designed explosions.”
Hoping he didn’t see, she turned away and pulled a face. Good grief! Anyone who gets skull trauma and comes to this place for help definitely needs their head examined.
Apparently, there were lots of ponies like Doc who saw the world this way. She considered this desire to actually take an interest in medicine to be a failure of ponydom over the animals. At least vets guaranteed their charges didn’t like the idea. Anything else was unnatural.
Again, she willed herself to be calm.
This was not even remotely like sciency thinking. But she was on edge, and teetering further like an amateur ballerina.
Once she’d locked the florist’s up – which was secure, and therefore good – Doc had coaxed her every step of the way to the Ponyville General Hospital. Best to get it over with. They’d gone straight to the reception desk and asked after Mister Greenhooves, which made her feel stupid, since he was almost certainly stuck in his coma.
Then Doc had argued a bit at the receptionist, since they didn’t actually want to visit, but to ask questions, which – as far as the nurses were concerned – constituted a waste of valuable time. Nurse Redheart herself needed to attend to three patients before she had a hope of seeing anyone, and even then only for five minutes and solely because that was her coffee break.
The phrase “waiting list” had seen a lot of usage. It was uncanny; most Ponyvillians had a fantasy in their heads from kindergarten that doctors were Your Best Friend and you went in and got diagnosed and given a magic medicine, and then everything was better and thus ended the Hospital Adventure Of The Day. Thanks to Doc, Roseluck knew the hospital did operate a little like the playbook fantasy version, this being the wonderful land of Equestria and all, but only because the staff broke their backs trying to keep it that way.
But then Roseluck had slammed a hoof down. She’d told them about Daisy, or rather screamed it at them. Not that the receptionist had been visibly impressed under those drooping eyelids, but she’d sent a runner to let Nurse Redheart know, and the message came back that they should wait and that this had better be worth a missed coffee break.
Finally, Nurse Redheart herself bustled in. Such was the mark of a harried nurse that she couldn’t even stand to attention without suggesting a lot of barely repressed bustle lurking under the surface.
“Yes?” she snapped. “What do you want? We’re all busy at the moment.”
Doc hopped off his seat faster than any excited schoolboy could have managed. “Nurse Redheart! An absolute joy to reunite with someone who’s seen my insides!”
“Hello, you,” she replied dully.
Roseluck shrank back. To her, Nurse Redheart had the air of one ready to dismiss anything non-fatal as “all in the mind”, which in her mind full of bustle was a hanging offence.
Also, Roseluck… didn’t like the way Doc spoke to the nurse.
“Alas, my dear Redheart!” he said. “You’ve praised my lungs, you’ve praised my guts, you’ve even had occasion to praise my brains –”
“Sarcastically,” muttered the nurse.
“– but yet have I to hear you praise myself!”
“What do you want, Doc?” Nurse Redheart glared at him. “First minute of five down, you know. I haven’t got a lot of coffee breaks today.”
“It’s about my friend,” said Roseluck just as Doc took a breath. “She’s been sleeping for longer and longer times, and now we can’t wake her up, and I don’t know why. She's been asleep for days now. Doc thinks – We think that she might be like Mister Greenhooves.”
Now Nurse Redheart turned the glare onto her. Then again, to work in a hospital probably demanded an iron constitution. Roseluck wished she had one.
“Only…” Roseluck swallowed. “Only you were the one who looked after him… so, we thought if we asked you a few… questions?”
She really hated that glare. Nurse Redheart looked like the sort of pony who, if she went to the theatre, would glare at the audience as though defying them to find anything in life entertaining.
“Days, you said?” murmured the nurse. “The average pony would barely last three without a drink. You're keeping her fed and watered, then?”
“We did set up a nasogastric tube thing, yeah.”
“Oh, really. Anything else?”
“Well, no, but –”
“Listen, you should consult with a doctor if you want a professional diagnosis. Arrange a home visit, if it worries you that much. What do you really expect me to tell you?”
That the two cases are nothing alike and I’m being jumpy. “That there might be something we should watch out for? Please, she’s my friend. I don’t want this to get worse.”
“I appreciate that, but again: why not talk to a doctor?”
Roseluck shrugged helplessly. A little part of her mind was wondering if the nurse had a point, but then up till now it had let Lily and Doc take the reins. And it really didn’t like the way Doc smiled at this grumpy nurse.
“Come now, Redheart!” he said cheerfully. “Any excuse to see my favourite medically-minded mare in the flesh, eh?”
Roseluck felt a swift, shameful urge to kick him for that.
“Look,” snapped Nurse Redheart. “There’s a small matter of nurse-patient confidentiality here. You seriously expect me to hand over an old stallion’s private details for some half-baked science project? Mister Greenhooves was showing his age, that’s all. He had a few bad dreams and then his body gave up on him. Anything more intimate than that is not on the cards.”
“But –” began Doc.
“What bad dreams?” said Roseluck suddenly.
Nurse Redheart shrugged. “How should I know?”
“Well, how did you know about his bad dreams, then?” Roseluck’s voice rang with triumph, which swiftly died down under the deadly silence.
Eventually, Nurse Redheart cleared her throat. “Your friend Daisy mentioned anything about dreams, did she?”
“Well… not really… no.”
“So what makes you think the two are in any way related? The fact that they’re both gardeners?”
At this, Roseluck bristled. She’d never consider her floral management a religion, but there was awe, and beauty, and wonder in the petals. Right now she frothed in the manner of a true believer who’d stumbled across an infidel peddling a knock-off. Mister Greenhooves had raked leaves and watered flowers, true, but that wasn’t gardening. That was just tidying up until the real gardeners got there.
“No,” she said through tight teeth. “Did Mister Greenhooves mention dreams?”
“Never you mind,” said Nurse Redheart.
“But I do mind,” said Roseluck in a torrent of squeaks. “So Mister Greenhooves didn’t take an interest in travelling far away, did he, or read creepy books about weird plants, did he? Or should I ‘consult a doc’ about that?”
Nurse Redheart’s glare remained in place, but the edges around her eyes softened as though Roseluck’s crime had improved from “capital offence” to “irritating little peccadillo”. On the periphery, Doc glanced from one to the other.
Then the nurse nodded towards a corridor off to the side. “Right. A word, if you please, Miss Roseluck. And you’ve got one minute left, so don't you dare say no. Come here.”
From the reception desk came a nasty chuckle. Roseluck dreaded to think whether or not she'd survive the next few seconds of being chewed out and spat out, and swallowed.
Following Nurse Redheart, Roseluck and the Doc exchanged glances. The corridor was empty, though the beep, moan, and occasional murmuring voice of a staff member reminded them of the rooms on either side.
Bending low and beckoning them closer, Nurse Redheart said, “I’m not going to ask, and I’m not going to speculate. I’m certainly not going to reveal everything; that’s between me and the patient. But if it sets your mind at ease, here’s what to look out for.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” said Roseluck, simultaneously wishing and regretting that she sounded so smug.
“Yes, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” Nurse Redheart’s glare moved a few rungs up the felony ladder. “What I’m about to say is not a breach of confidentiality. And you’re not to spread it around. Do you understand?”
“Then why are we in this empty corridor?” said Doc.
“Because it’s my job to stop sick ponies from getting sicker, and I’d rather play it safe on this one occasion. That means no yakking away in the waiting room where bored ponies can tattle on me for the flimsiest of pretexts, and that, Doc, is because we have this thing called a grey area, which is a bit legally dubious, and the less time I spend arguing with supervisors –”
“Or lawyers,” said Doc helpfully.
“– the better. And I’ve told you about finishing my sentences before, thank you.”
“Well?” said Roseluck, while she tried not to notice how Nurse Redheart sounded like an ex-girlfriend getting catty. If only because Doc did have a bad habit of cutting you off mid –
“What’s the clue?” said Doc.
With her hoof raised in a conspiratorial manner, Nurse Redheart murmured, “I watched over him up until the end. The night before he fell into a coma, our friend Mister Greenhooves spoke in his sleep. Hard to tell from all the excited garbling, but from what I gathered, he thought he was being hunted.”
Roseluck gulped. Was it her, or was the corridor suddenly blowing a draft?
“I didn’t think much of it at the time, since he’d done it before and lots of ponies have nightmares when they’re ill. Only this time it just kept going. Hours went by and he kept garbling. Near the end, he shrieked once or twice, and then settled back down as though nothing had happened.”
No. This couldn’t be true. Nurse Redheart must have picked up Roseluck’s feelings, and was trying to scare her to impress her. Yes, that must be it…
“And then?” Roseluck gulped.
Casually, Nurse Redheart straightened up. “That was it. Come the morning, he was definitely in a coma.”
After waiting for more, Roseluck slumped. “What!? That’s it!?”
“Do I look like Princess Luna to you? I don’t know what was going on inside his head.”
“But there must be more! Was he suffering from depression? What about other ponies?”
“You remember that grey area I mentioned earlier? Well, now you’re leaving that far behind, and I’m afraid you’ve reached the end of my coffee break. Look, I can see you’re upset, and I do sympathize, however I come across right now. But I know you, Flower Girl, so here’s a word of advice; don’t blow this out of proportion. It was a dream. Lots of ponies have them, and however much we’re playing it safe, there’s no way to prove the dream had anything to do with Mister Greenhooves’ coma.”
“Correlation is not causation,” said Doc proudly.
“Yes…” Nurse Redheart barged past him. Over her shoulder, she half-yelled, “You want any more than that, go see a dream specialist. Set your mind at ease. No point running around in a panic over nothing. That is my little gift to you. Savour it.”
She bustled round the corner. They could hear her stamping away.
Roseluck released a breath. At least they hadn’t seen Mister Greenhooves at all, which she’d secretly been dreading. Modern medicine could expand the lifetime wonderfully, provided you didn’t mind spending most of it on a bed attached to a machine. And that was the least Frankensteinian image that she had in her head right now.
“So now what?” she said. “We go?”
Doc beamed at her. “Elementary, my dear Roseluck. We have our next lead! Find a dream specialist!”
“Princess Luna?”
“No! Books! I’ve got a whole collection! The trail grows warmer! Quick! Let us away to the Doc on the Sea of Knowledge!”
“What!?”
“Let’s go to my place,” he translated.
Ah. That sounded more like it. Roseluck stepped forwards to encourage him to start walking.
“I’ve often helped Derpy out at my place, so I’m pretty sure I can help you out at my place too!”
The sentence was a blow. Roseluck reeled for a moment, almost staggering. How could he be so… so flippant about it? Not that she actually, really cared, but to come out with something like that… it was almost as if he knew what he was doing.
“Let’s just get out of here,” growled Roseluck, pushing him towards the reception area and thus to the exit. Someone in the distance coughed violently. “Please?”
Flower Girl, she thought, and her teeth ground together. The way she spoke to me, like I make lists of diseases just to fret over them. I mean, that’s Lily, not me!
Far away, an alarm blared. Hooves thundered down some distant corridor. Beeping flatlined.
Roseluck swallowed. Perhaps Lily was onto something, though…