//------------------------------// // Family time // Story: The Mercy of Screwball // by Professor Coruptus //------------------------------// Zecora accompanied Redheart back to the break room and gingerly helped her onto the old worn out couch inside. “I may prepare for you a healing balm,” the zebra said as the battered mare lowered herself onto the couch and gave a small hiss of pain. “It shall sooth your pain, and your shaking calm.” “I’ll be fine,” the Head Nurse replied, trying to find a position on the hard cushions that was only ‘uncomfortable’ rather than ‘painful.’ “You just get back to work on that cure. Although, before you go, could you fetch me a couple of icepacks from the freezer over there?” The alchemist nodded her head and retrieved several cold-bags from the fridge before laying them gently over the nurse’s beaten body. “Thank you,” Redheart replied, adjusting the bags so that they covered the right areas. “I must thank you again for saving my skin,” Zecora said heading for the door. “I’ll ask you not be disturbed, so you may rest here within.” The ivory mare nodded and almost as soon as the door had closed, leaving her alone in the small room, she begrudgingly pulled off her nurse’s cap and rested her head on the stiff arm of the couch. Loath though she was to admit it, especially while Ponyville was still in a time of crisis, but she was completely wiped out. She had been on duty for close to ten hours straight, and she had just wrapped up her extended shift by having a wrestling match with a mutated monster that hit like a bucking steam shovel. It was a good thing she loved her job, because it certainly wasn’t worth the twelve bits an hour she was currently making. As she toyed with the notion of asking for a raise once this latest crisis was behind them, the sound of a door opening caught her attention. Before she could speak to politely tell whoever it was that she actually wanted her rest this time, the door slid open and a mint green horn poked inside the room; quickly followed by a similarly colored face. “Wow, Seri, what happened to you?” Lyra asked, stepping inside and closing the door. “Just another patient who didn’t want to take his medicine,” the earth pony replied with a wiry smile. “I’ll be fine. Though I thought Zecora said she was going to keep everypony out so I could rest?” “She probably was,” Lyra said, sitting down on one of the cushions by the table. “But I overheard her telling the other nurses to leave you alone, so I figured I should make sure you actually were taking a break this time. Especially since you promised us you were going to have one about an hour ago,” she added, giving her cousin a disapproving look. “I believe I said I would think about it, if I got my best nurse back to cover for me,” Redheart corrected, returning the unicorn’s look with a stern glare of her own. “And I still haven’t seen any sign of her yet.” “Yeah, well, I don’t think she’d want to see you like this, Seri,” Lyra replied, gesturing to the numerous cold bags covering the other mare’s legs and back. Redheart looked away from the mint colored pony and frowned. The room fell quite, save for the rhythmic ticking of the mounted clock above them. “Seri… Serenity,” Lyra said, breaking the silence and using the earth pony’s full name when her cousin refused to look at her. “This has been really getting to you. I’ve never seen you obsess about anypony else like this except me.” “I’ve never obsessed over you Lyra,” Redheart said, finally looking over at her cousin to glare at her. “And if you’re referring to that time you got lost in Whitetail Woods when I was six, I was only upset because I thought my parents were going to ground me for loosing you.” The unicorn looked back with an affectionate but incredulous smile. “You cried the whole time I was gone, and when the rangers finally brought me back you latched onto my neck and wouldn’t stop apologizing until we went to bed, and even then you wouldn’t let go of me.” Redheart’s cheeks flushed scarlet and she turned away again. “How would you remember,” she mumbled, “you were only five.” “My point is,” the lyricist continued, still smiling, “that you only act this way over ponies you really care about. And… well… If there’s anything you want to… tell me, I’m all ears.” The earth pony blinked and looked back at her cousin, her brow furrowed with confusion. “Huh?” “Well I’m just saying,” Lyra continued, doing her best to appear innocent and innocuous. “Nopony really had a problem with it when Bon Bon and I started dating. So there’s really no reason for you to…” The mint colored musician let her words trail off as she looked meaningfully at the cold pack covered mare on the couch in front of her. It took a minute of confused and prompting looks being exchanged between the two before Redheart caught onto to what her cousin was implying. “Oh, no!” she replied sitting up quickly and instantly regretting doing so. Hissing, Redheart gently eased herself back down and continued. “No, Mercy and I aren’t… We aren’t like that. She… she isn’t even into mares, I don’t think.” “So… you haven’t even told her how you feel?” Lyra asked, using her magic to readjust the injured pony’s ice packs. “It’s not like that!” Redheart insisted. “I… She’s like… Do you remember my old blanket? The white one with my mom’s cutie mark on the front?” The unicorn nodded. “The heart and blue cross, right? How could I forget it, you took that thing everywhere with you till you were like ten. I teased you about it all the time.” “Yeah well, it’s a little like that with me and Mercy,” Redheart admitted, looking down at her hooves uncomfortably. “When I first transferred to Ponyville Medical, the whole place was a mess. My boss just called me into the office one day and offered me the position as Head Nurse out here, said it was in a quiet little town not far from Canterlot, and that I’d only have a small staff to worry about, a perfect opportunity for a promising young mare like myself to gain some ‘hoofs on leadership experience,” the earth pony quoted, rolling her eyes at the words. “Nopony bothered to tell me that Ponyville was right on the edge of the bucking Everfree, or that Medical Center was horribly understaffed because nopony else was crazy enough to work out here.” “Well you certainly fit the ‘crazy’ requirement,” Lyra quipped. Redheart just laughed. “I must of,” she admitted proudly. “After only five months here I was ready to settle down and extend my contract for another ten years.” “Yeah, I remember. You invited me down here for the weekend so you could throw a proper house warming party for yourself.” “Hey, it was Pinkie Pie who threw the party, not me,” the Head Nurse corrected her. “And you met somepony pretty special at that party if I remember correctly.” The musician smiled at the memory. “Pinkie did the organizing, I got talked into doing the music, and Bon Bon did the catering…” The mint colored mare gave a pleasant sigh before adding. “You know I was still finding bits of dried chocolate in my mane for a week after that night?” Both mares shared a laugh before Redheart continued. “Yeah well, a great as Pinkie ‘accidently’ catapulting the contents of the buffet table onto my visiting cousin while she practiced her lyre was, you almost didn’t meet Bon Bon that night.” The lyricist looked at her curiously. “Believe it or not, four months and two weeks after coming to Ponyville, I was one bad day away from tearing up my contract and moving back in with you in Canterlot.” “You’re kidding me,” Lyra replied, completely floored. “You gotta be! When I first came here you kept smiling like you had won the lottery or something.” “I in a way I did, actually. We were so drastically understaffed those first few months that I had to work myself to the bone just to keep this place up and running. Everypony did, but when I became Head Nurse I also became health care manager, accountant, pharmacist, chief of staff, and I still had help treat the patients during the bi monthly crises that kept popping up. During my first week alone I had to rebalance our budget, take a full inventory on or medical supplies, and help pull the splinters out the poor ponies who had been victims of timber wolf attacks. And it only got worse from there!” “So what happened to make you change your mind?” Lyra asked, settling down in her cushion for what she hoped would be a good story. “Mercy happened,” Redheart replied, her eyes growing a bit wistful. “I was on my last legs, and Celestia sent her to me like an angle of… well, you know.” There was an awkward silence between the two mares and then, “And I thought Bon Bon was a hopeless romantic,” Lyra said under her breath. Redheart blushed again. “I know it sounds like a cheesy line, but that’s really what happened!” the Head Nurse protested. The musician just rolled her eyes skeptically. “I’m serious,” Redheart repeated. “Look, when I started at Ponyville Medical we were incredibly understaffed. The first thing I did was start sending letters to the chairponys in Canterlot asking for more nurses and a few actual doctors, but all I got back was the same reply, ‘we’re sorry, we cannot process your request at this time. Please try again in a few weeks.” “Sounds like they were stonewalling you,” the unicorn observed, well aware of how the Canterlot bureaucracy worked. The ivory mare nodded in agreement. “After four months of getting the same reply I figured I was never going to get anything else. So I decided to just go right over their pointy little heads, no offence. I sent a letter explaining my predicament right to Princess Celestia herself.” “You’re kidding,” Lyra said, again completely floored by her cousin’s admission. The earth pony only smiled proudly. “Nope. Sent it right to the top and brought the hammer down on those overweight pencil pushers so fast they nearly flew the ‘position open’ letters out themselves.” The unicorn shook her head slowly. “I’m just amazed it actually got through. I hear they try to filter the Princess’s mail as much as possible before it reaches the palace.” “Yeah well, the mailmare I sent the letter with made sure to deliver it right to the Princess’s hooves. Even if she nearly crashed through a few palace windows to do so…” “I can only guess who delivered it then,” Lyra commented, rolling her eyes. “Hey, I’ve made sure that she and little Dinky have free checkups and covered medical expenses as long as I’m here. It’s the least I could do after she went to such lengths to save the Medical Center.” “I guess,” the unicorn admitted, “but that still doesn’t explain how you’re best nurse is like an old blanket. Unless she’s been keeping you warm on those long night shifts.” She added, smiling suggestively. Redheart just blushed again. “I already told you we aren’t like that,” she repeated quietly. “But I’m getting to that.” “Oh?” The lyricist asked, looking surprised but pleased. Her cousin blushed harder. “Not that! The ‘like a blanket’ thing!” “Oh…” The unicorn deflated slightly, but after a moment motioned for the earth pony to continue. “… Well anyway, after I sent the letter to the Princess I was assured that the ponies we needed would be sent our way soon, and to hold tight until they arrived. But even with the words coming almost straight from the Princess herself, I still almost lost it when the Mossmane epidemic broke out. Almost everypony in town had gotten hit with the stuff practically overnight, and I just didn’t have enough hoof power to deal with it. We even had to requisition the Spa along with Lotus and Aloe to treat them all before anypony got seriously ill. I was at my wits end, I had only gotten an hour of sleep at most before the break out and they had to call me back in, and our antifungal supplies were running low so we had no room for any mistakes. “Then… she arrived. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sight then when Mercy first stepped into our lobby. She was practically strait out of medical school, but I was so happy to finally be getting some help I didn’t care if she was green or not. Well, she wasn’t literally green. All the other ponies in the lobby were green, she was just inexperienced.” “I get it, I get it,” Lyra said, waving her hoof impatiently. “So what happened next?” “Honestly? I nearly cried with joy. She was the absolute perfect assistant. She was a little freaked out by the kind of stuff we dealt with during the first month or so of course, though really who’s actually ready for Ponyville when they first move here, but she learned amazingly fast. I only had to show her how to do something once, and she could remember it perfectly months later. I swear that pony has a photographic memory or something because she can recall the smallest detail about anything she’s ever seen or heard with absolute clarity. She’s memorized everything from complicated medical procedures to how I like my coffee in the mornings with just one lesson. “As soon as she came into my life, things became a thousand times easier. She could balance an account book faster than any Marestreet stock broker in Manehattan, take inventory with just a glance, and as if she wasn’t wonderful enough, she made for the greatest friend I could ask for in this crazy town.” “Present company not included of course,” Lyra added with a smirk. Redheart shot her a mock angry look before continuing. “After a while the rest of the current staff started to show up as well. None of them could hold a candle to Mercy though. I’m still called the Head Nurse, but almost every pony acknowledges that I’m really still the chief of staff and everything else around here, except a few of those stuck up stallions from Manehattan. Still, everypony knows that when its crisis time I’m the one who’s in charge, and if I’m not around, they listen to Mercy.” “So how is she like your moldy old blanket?” the unicorn repeated, causing the pride that had been building in her cousin’s posture to suddenly take a massive nosedive. Redheart looked somewhat abashed and rubbed her neck with her hoof before answering. “Well… you know how I used to carry my blanket around with me wherever I went? And how I would get really cranky and antsy if I didn’t have it because it was in the wash or something? Well… Mercy’s kind of like my new blanket. I’ve come to depend on her so much that when she’s not around I… I have a have to really force myself to do my job or I just fall to pieces. I start feeling really anxious and worried, like everything’s spiraling out of control and I can’t do anything to stop it. It’s not like I need her to be right there next to me all the time, but I just need to know that she’s there for me, you know? “I’ve always scheduled us to be on shift together for at least a few hours, and even if we’re not she’s just seems to show up when I need her, on the clock or off. This is the first time we’ve… I’ve been in a crisis and she hasn’t been with me. I’ve been doing my best to focus on what everypony needs me to do, but having her just missing like this with no clue to what’s happened to her, I…” The ivory mare trailed off helplessly as the worry and anxiety she had been suppressing again found its way to the surface. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this…” “Seri…” Lyra said softly, getting up so that she could sit next to the frazzled mare. The earth pony leaned into her and was quickly gathered up in the forelegs of her younger cousin. Lyra tried to her best to be gentle as she rubbed the other mares back, and Redheart was quick to return the embrace and bury her face in the unicorn’s shoulder, crying quietly. “I just want her back…” the earth pony sniffed. She had no idea that what remained of the pony she was thinking about, was watching her from the window at that very moment, or that it was literally looking daggers at the embracing pair within.