//------------------------------//
// Introduction 
// Story: The Completionist 
// by Undead Equestrian Writer 
//------------------------------//

The soft beeping of the EKG machine to my right seems to reverberate throughout my hospital room, my heart's slow melodic pumping registered on the machine. I stare at the ceiling, my violet eyes seeming lifeless as I remain unmoving, tears threatening to roll out of my eyes. My mother and father were asleep in chairs to my left, my mother's head laying on my father's shoulder. As I glanced over at them, I smile softly, a single tear rolling out of my eye as memories flooded my brain.
The 15 years I've spent on Equus were spent constantly going in and out of hospitals, with my parents caring for me constantly despite the strain put upon them. I loved them more than anything in this world for being with me throughout all of the problems I created for them. They helped me keep fighting, my mother taught me how to read and write, while my father helped me with numbers and basic mathematics. I sigh softly, my lower lip quivering as I hold back the tears and sobs. My time has come, and I only had at most a week left to live. The fear of losing my parents and being alone after death scared me more than any monster story I'd heard of.
Yesterday, my doctor delivered the news to me and my parents that I had at most a week to live, this time certain that I was out of time. My parents refuse to believe it, saying that I'll live longer, saying the doctor was wrong like when I was younger, but I could feel it within me. I wouldn't live past the weekend in four days. However, what woke me up this morning, like a beacon in the pitch black night that was my despair, was a small floating message, that seemed affixed to my pupil. It asked me a single question.





Would you like to live beyond a week?





Maybe it was a hallucination brought on by the painkillers I was on or the depression that racked my brain, but a small voice in the back of my mind told me, 'what if?'. I read the question again for the millionth time before I became confident enough in my answer to say it.
"Yes," my voice was rough and coarse, the word coming out no louder than a whisper, like a pony who had been lost in the Zebrican deserts for 80 years with no water to parch their throat. The message vanished into thin air, my mind quickly filling in with despair again at the idea the message was just a hallucination, before quickly receding when the screen reappeared, this time with something I could only describe as a quest, like in that Table Top Game my friends in the schoolhouse used to play. I wonder if they remember me?





Learner of Things
You have four days to live before your heart will stop, however, I can grant you more time. In order to live longer, I request that you learn the basics of equine anatomy, to better understand your body and maybe figure out what plagues your being and find a cure for your ailment that those around you have not found yet. If you can complete this simple task, I will gift you another week to live, but don't fear, I will have more for you to do to continue your lifespan, young one.
I will gift unto you a small boon, that speeds up the rate at which you learn things. That which takes a professional a month to learn, you can learn in days.





Equine Anatomy? Another week to live in exchange for learning the basics of Equine Anatomy? It feels almost too good to be true, but the very thought of being able slightly longer to spend with my parents was something I was willing to pursue. The hospital has a library in it that I could go to and see if they had any textbooks on Equine Anatomy that I could read, but I would need someone to get me the book as I'm unable to walk in my current condition, my legs barely being able to hold a glass of water.
I finally let my thoughts catch up to me, followed by the tiredness that I didn't realize I was feeling. I didn't want to fall asleep, I wanted to stay awake and wait for the nighttime nurse to come in and check on me to ask her to get me the textbook from the library, but I couldn't fight off the exhaustion and closed my eyes, falling into a soft sleep.





Nurse Redheart walked slowly along the hallway, heading for one of the rooms she had to check in on. The patient of which was someone she knew fairly well, as she had been in the hospital longer than she had been out of it. Violet Flare was a beautiful-looking filly, her mane being a vibrant clash of purple and reds, her coat being an almost midnight purple, and her eyes a stunning violet that had an almost preternatural glow to them. However, the past week the child had gotten worse suddenly, leaving the doctor that was assigned to her scrounging for a diagnosis so he could know what to do to help the filly, but so far, the hospital staff had no answer.
She's gone through every form of treatment, from common household treatments to highly expensive full body magic cleanse, which has been known to cure everything that it has been used on, from cancers to degenerative health problems, but Violet's disease just seemed to get worse after the FBMC. Her parents were praying to Celestia and Luna for some form of an answer, to save their baby, while Violet herself seemed to always have a smile on her face. When told the worst news anypony would break down upon hearing, she just smiles softly and says she isn't afraid. Her eyes betray her though, every time terrible news is given, she may smile but her eyes become duller and duller, seemingly her mind being destroyed by the fear and grief of death. Maybe even hatred towards the hospital staff or just life for making her suffer for no reason.
Shaking her head from her thoughts, Redheart quietly opened the door to Violet's room and walked to her bedside quietly. Violet was sleeping softly, maybe able to escape the horror of her life by letting Luna give her sweet dreams and make her happy. Her parents were also asleep, the father was a regional owner of Rarity's Canterlot boutiques, while the mother was a close servant of Luna. Both parents had decent jobs that helped with some of the more expensive treatments, but money was useless if you had no idea what was destroying your child. 
The father was a Unicorn, his light red and orange fur and mane a bright contrast to his wife's dark purple mane and coat, she was an Earth Pony. Violet, like her father, was a Unicorn, but her horn was broken, appearing more like a Changeling's horn than that of a Unicorn. When she was younger, her horn grew but quickly broke when she attempted to cast a simple levitation spell. She never used magic after that, afraid it might fall apart completely.
Nurse Redheart finished checking over the various instruments giving various signals and readings and wrote them down on the chart at the foot of the hospital bed, along with the time. She put the clipboard back and quietly left the room.