Cheerilee did not like the little Ponyville medical clinic. She never had, and she never would. It wasn’t that specific location, it was more… medical services in general. While Ponyville’s had been the most personal and caring experience she’d ever had, it still felt too, well, clinical. The white, featureless walls, devoid of anything but anatomical diagrams, that were carefully selected to provide a calm, inoffensive feel to the facility instead felt lifeless, sad, and draining. The filtered lighting that changed the yellowed sunlight into pure white light didn’t feel relaxing, it felt stifling, constricting. The air in the clinic, magically filtered of any potential allergens or bacteria that could harm the patients or cause them the slightest discomfort, was causing the reddish-purple mare discomfort. It tasted bitter, cold. The term manufactured came to her mind. Despite being her bi-annual check-up, Cheerilee wanted out of the clinic and into the open air of the sunny Sunday afternoon as soon as possible. Her eyes wandered across the wall again, finding the clock. The simple, inoffensive clock, with two black hands indicating the hour and minute, and a long, slender, bright red hand moving smoothly in circles, once a minute passing each number. She had been alone in the office for twenty-six minutes, far longer than she had ever been left alone before. Or so she thought, at least, Cheerilee had never made a point of keeping track of the time in the doctor’s office. Not until today, at least. She had arbitrarily glanced at it on the way in, and for some reason, the time had stuck in her mind. Now, twenty-six minutes later, after a blood sample and a brief height and weight check, she began to wonder what was taking so long, why the nurse had not yet re-emerged into the plain white room.
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Nurse Tenderheart’s name was a blessing and a curse. While she was gifted at making her patients feel at home during their stay in the Ponyville clinic, and was considered to be one of the best and most loving mothers in town, having such a tender heart made her exceptionally poor at delivering bad news. Some called it unprofessional, her colleagues called it empathetic. Either way, given the one word printed on the three identical sheets of paper before her, these next few minutes would be unbearable for her or her patient.
Positive.
It wasn’t a bad word, on it’s own, not at all. In fact, it was a good word. It meant things were good, or beneficial. The irony of the word’s use in the medical world was something Nurse Tenderheart would never understand or get over. She dreaded the word, every time she saw it her heart broke. Now, for the third time in fifteen minutes, her heart lay in pieces as she wept onto her desk. She knew the test wasn’t completely accurate, which is why she had run it two more times. Now, given the same result three times over, there was a 98% chance of it being true. It seemed so unrealistic, this disease. It worked fast, had no external symptoms, and seemed to affect ponies at random, regardless of race, age, gender, anything. The idiocy and twisted lines of fate this disease brought did not change the end result, however.
The chubby pink earth mare looked at the papers again, and again, the only difference on them the timestamp, each approximately five minutes later than the last. She hated it, hated those papers, what they did to her, and what they meant for her patient. Some part of her knew the hate was irrational – these papers harbored no ill-will or malcontent against a pony at all, but perhaps that was why. The papers held no emotion. There was no feeling. They conveyed horrible news without a care in the world for how to say it gently, kindly, tenderly. They just said it.
What they said was that Cheerilee Punch, thirty-five years old, female, earth mare, occupation elementary school teacher, had less than seven days left to live.
Neither the first, nor the last, of many tear-stains on the papers appeared as Nurse Tenderheart picked them up and began the longest walk down the shortest hallway she ever remembered.
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The door opened into the office. It opened slowly, Cheerilee noticed, much more slowly than she remembered it, almost as though the pink nurse was trying to decide whether or not to enter the room. She usually opened the door right up, with a smile and a declaration of “Well Miss Cheerilee, everything’s in order, you’re free to go now. Your insurance will cover the fee.”
That was not present today. Nurse Tenderheart squeezed into the room through as narrow an opening in the door as she could fit her pudgy form through, a trembling hoof holding three sheets of tear-stained paper, her makeup blotched and smeared where tears had recently carried it down her face. Her body seized once as she held in a sob. She was still only part way inside the room, refusing to meet her patient’s gaze. Cheerilee craned forward and began to trot across the room, simultaneously terrified and incredibly interested to know what had her nurse so worked up. Before she could cross the cold tiles, however, Nurse Tenderheart dropped the papers and slammed the door behind her, only barely holding back the tears long enough to whisper three words.
“I’m so sorry.”
Even more confused and scared than she had been a moment prior, Cheerilee bent down and picked up the papers and scanned down them. Her eyes locked on one word, the word that had her nurse reduced to a quivering wreck, that one word that was going to do the same to her.
Positive.
There was no sudden anguished cry heard for miles, no insane laughter at the denial of the situation, just immediate and total despair for the teacher. The insensitive documents fell from her hooves as she fell to the cold tile floor. The tears came readily and did not stop for some time, and she wept alone in the office, with no knowledge or care from the outside world aside from the occasional shadow of hooves that appeared on the other side of the door. Nopony interrupted her. She waited until the tears stopped flowing, rising unsteadily and approaching the door. Her hooves feebly attempted to turn the knob, and found herself curiously unable to grip it. Still sniffing, she wiped her eyes with a foreleg and knocked on the door. It was opened seconds later by Nurse Tenderheart, the pink mare’s face cleansed of makeup but not of tears, her trembling lips were evidence enough of that. The other mare guided the teacher to the front door of the clinic and opened it for her, pointedly avoiding her patient’s gaze for the duration of the journey, staring at the ground and covering her eyes with her mane.
“W-will… will you be-be able… to get ho-home alright, ma’am?”
Cheerilee nodded, screwing her eyes shut in an attempt to keep from openly weeping in the streets. Her face scrunched as she forced her mouth to stay closed and inhaled deeply through her nose, before turning and heading towards her home. For the first time in her nine years living in Ponyville, she found herself grateful she lived so close to the clinic.
Cheerilee arrived at home and trudged to the couch, throwing herself upon it and wailing into a pillow. She did not eat dinner that night, and her sister ignored her when she left for the evening and arrived in the morning.