A few months later
“Come on miss Dash. It’s time for your exercise.” Nurse Redheart said, looking into Rainbow Dash’s room. Rainbow groaned and reached for the two crutches beside her bed. She stood up slowly, using the crutches for support. Wobbling a little she began moving towards the door, Nurse Redheart standing outside patiently.
“Ah miss Dash, are you ready to proceed?” She asked as Rainbow Dash stepped out into the plain white hallway. “You got it doc, but umm what are we doing today?” Dash replied, looking a little confused. They began walking down the hallway together.
“Well seeing as you’ve been here for a few months now, and you have been getting better. We decided to put you on an exercise regime to hopefully speed the recovery up, but sadly... We can’t risk doing anything with your wings at the moment, I’m sorry.”
“Oh... Well at least I get to do something. It get’s kinda boring sitting in bed all day.” Rainbow replied, but trying to hide a smile as she said her lie. She was thinking back to the Daring Do book currently hiding under her pillow.
Both of them continued their walk in silence at a slow pace due to Rainbow’s condition. The hospital was surprisingly quiet, she expected the halls to be filled with noise, but all she could see was white and the lights above her. She tried looking into the wards beside her, but they were all covered with curtains blocking sight inside.
“Here we are miss Dash. If you wouldn’t mind stepping inside please,” Redheart said while holding another white door open. The pegasus nodded and hopped inside, Nurse Redheart put a leaflet on the door before shutting it behind her that read ‘Occupied’.
Rainbow looked around the room, she could see weights, bars standing side by side, and multiple exercise machines. “So would you like to have me supervise your workout, or would you rather do this alone?”
Rainbow Dash turned to face the nurse. “I’d rather do this alone, I have something i need to prove...” Dash said with a look of determination on her face. The nurse nodded, but left with confused face.
Rainbow turned away from the door to hear it shut behind her. ‘Okay... Time to do this.’ Rainbow thought while moving towards two dumbbells that lay on the floor beside a seat. She took a seat and reached for one of the dumbbells. It weighed heavier than she thought it would, but regardless she began lifting it up and down slowly with her right hoof.
She was only a minute into it and already she had begun to sweat and could feel herself weakening. She decided to put the dumbbell down and move onto something else. She laid her eyes on the bars standing side by side. She assumed it was to get exercise her back legs, you had to hold onto the bars with her two front hooves while trying to walk on her back ones. She equipped her crutches once more and made her way towards them, a little slower than normal due to the dumbbells taking their toll on her.
She reached the bars, dropped the crutches and leaned her hooves against the metal. Slightly shaking because the support wasn’t good as the crutches. She gulped and starting moving forward on back hooves slowly, concentrating very hard and trying to keep a steady pace.
Rainbow could feel her muscles start to strain, sweat was running down her face and her eyes were scrunched together in pain. She was determined to make it to the end, she was nearly there, ignoring the pain, but eventually the inevitable happened.
Her grip slipped and she fell to the floor with a loud crash and she landed on her back. She screamed loudly and turned to her front, trying to relieve the pressure on her wings. The mare tried to stifle her scream so nopony would find her, but in her attempts to be more quiet she drew tears.
She lay on the floor, shaking and quietly screaming in pain. ‘Am I really this weak!? Is this what I’ve become!? I was the number one flier in all of Equestria, now look at me!’ Rainbow thought, now curling up into a little ball on the floor. Twitching from the state she was in.
‘Why can’t things just go back to the way things were... I’d give anything for that... In the end... Did I make the right decision, was it really worth it?’ Rainbow stopped crying and laid perfectly still, shocked by the thought she just had. ‘What?... How could I even think such a thing, of course it was! Of course Scootaloo was worth it... Right?”
“Ah, miss dash is everything alright i heard a noi-MISS DASH ARE YOU ALRIGHT”, Nurse redheart quickly moved to rainbow’s side when she saw her spread out on the floor.
“Y-yea, I’m fine just slipped, and lost my balance thats all.” said rainbow as she slowly started to stand up, trying to hide the pain she was still feeling coursing through her back.
“Right, well I think that should be enough for today we don’t want you to make your injuries any worse than they currently are,” replied Nurse Redheart as she helped her to her hooves and started to lead her back to her room, ”Besides you seem to have a visitor today as well.”
“Huh, really who is it?” Rainbow quickly perked up at the thought of someone coming to visit her,’It’s probably pinkie coming by to tell me about another one of the parties she’s thrown.’ she thought as they made their way through the white hallways and got closer to her room.
They soon made it back to Rainbow’s room, and after Nurse Redheart had made sure she was comfortable she started making her way to the door and before she left she said “ I’ll tell your visitor that they can come in, and see you now.”
Rainbow decided that this was the best time if any to continue on the Daring Do book while she waited for her visitor to come. After about 10 mins rainbow heard the sound of somepony in the hallway, followed by the sound of knocking on the door.
“Come in”
“Hey, Rainbow how’ve you been?” asked Twilight as she walked in.
“Oh, you know just sitting here, dying of boredom like the last time I was here.” Replied the pegasus with a hint of sarcasm.
“Oh, please unlike last time you didn’t have a huge selection of books to keep you entertained.” Countered twilight with a smile.
“Haha, real funny twi, but I’m nowhere near being as much of an egghead as you are, I prefer to read stuff thats actually entertaining, unlike you who likes to read about how equestria was founded and boring stuff like that.” Responded rainbow
“Hey, that stuff is actually very interesting. We could learn a lot from how equestria was founded and governed, and speaking about reading. Have you finished the last Daring Do book I lent you so i can bring you the next one?”
“Nearly, I’ve got about two chapters to go and I should have them finished by tonight. I still can’t get over how Daring Do managed to escape from the temple while clutching the Alicorn Amulet. I swear that pony has some amazing moves on her.”
“Ah yes. The Alicorn Amulet chapter, if you enjoyed that then you’ll love the next book!”
Rainbow covered her ears with her hoofs and started shouting “LA LA LA LA LA, NO SPOILERS!” While shaking her head. Twilight simply sighed and stopped Rainbow’s movements with her magic. “Dash, don’t move so fast, you’ll hurt yourself,” Twilight said.
“Alright, I have to leave. Princess Celestia wants me to study for a test in the morning, sorry this visit didn’t last longer, but I think Pinkie is coming to visit you tomorrow.” She said as was trotting towards the door. The both exchanged farewells once more and then Twilight took her leave.
Not long after the purple mare had left another took her place. Nurse Redheart entered the room and cleared her throat to catch the attention of a tired Rainbow Dash. “Nurse? Ugh, what’s up? Please tell me it’s not another test today.” Said Dash, groaning into her hooves.
“Sorry, but it is. Come on time to move Miss Dash. Today we’re going to take more scans of your bone structure in our X-ray machine to we can see how well your bones have been healing.” Redheart said in monotone expression like she has said those words a million times. Rainbow Dash groaned as she slowly climbed out of her bed, and grabbed the walking stick next to her bed.
“Once, you're ready to go tell me, and we can continue to the radiology room to perform the x-rays.”
“Kay, just give me a sec nurse.” replied Rainbow as she finally managed to get the crutches onto her front legs.
“Okay, then follow me then.” said Nurse Redheart as she made her way in the opposite direction from where they went last time.
After a while of being led down the hallway Rainbow got tired of the uncomfortable silence, “So where exactly is this X-ray room?” the anxiety clear in her voice.
“It’s not far we just need to go a bit further down to the patient elevator since you can’t go up or down stairs with your injuries. We’ll then take the elevator up to the 3rd floor where all the specialized testing rooms are.” replied Nurse Redheart not even looking back at Rainbow throughout their whole walk.
“Ok, here we are.” She said as they arrived at a metal grate that was about the size of two doorways side by side. Next to it there was a small metal panel with an up or down arrow on it. Nurse Redheart pressed the up arrow, and after a couple seconds Rainbow heard the sound of something moving behind the metal grate, there was a small ding followed by the grate opening to show a small area that could probably hold about four or five ponies.
“After you Miss Dash.” Said Nurse Redheart as she nudged Rainbow into the small area. After they were both in nurse redheart pressed the third button on another panel on the inside. After this the door closed and then Rainbow suddenly felt the elevator start moving upwards startling her a bit.
There was another ding and then the doors opened to show a hallway with a bunch of doors with different symbols on them. Nurse RedHeart led her to a door that had the picture of two bones crossed in an X.
She opened the door and to reveal a room with a bed in the center. Above the bed was a giant machine that looked like a camera. There was also a window that showed another room and a door that seemed to lead to it. From the window she could see a bunch of computers and control panels.
“Ok, then if you’ll please lie down on the bed, the doctor will be here momentarily.” Nurse Redheart told Rainbow as she walked into the room behind the window. Rainbow lay down on the x-ray table and stared up to the machine hanging above her. She stayed perfectly still, continuing to stare at it until the doors behind her swung open.
“Ah, Miss Dash, is it?” Asked a stallion unicorn, he had a dark coat, with slightly gray hair. He looked rather old with bags around his blue eyes. Rainbow Dash nodded without looking at him.
“So are you ready then? Please stay perfectly still.” Rainbow Dash tensed up as she heard the machine come to life.
******
“Okay, thank you for that. We’ll have your scans to you in the next few days for the meantime you’re welcome to rest in your room.” The doctor said with a small smile on his face. Rainbow sat up on the table and sighed. ‘Well... That was boring.’ she thought while grabbing her crutches. She smiled at the Doctor and left the room, while he went into the back room.
“Excuse me, Nurse, but do you have the scans we just took, I’d like to take a look at them.” He said to Nurse Redheart who was standing over a white table looking at some pictures on the table. “I do... You may wanna look at these right away.” She said with a blank facial expression.
The Doctor lifted up one of the scans and begin to examine it. Suddenly his facial expression changed to nothing and the light his eyes gone. “For Celestia’s sake... Damn it.”