[DAY ONE]
In any given household, there were always to be a number of accidents and mishaps. Anything ranging from simply forgetting to turn off a garage light to cancelling a favored meeting in order to ensure the stove was turned off, and everything in between. Norman was one of those slightly compulsive types, he liked everything to be in order and organized. Not to an extreme, but enough so that he was comfortable. Little wasteful things bothered him, such as leaving a light on in an abandoned room or someone taking an unnecessarily long shower. But even accidents did not escape him. The one which took him down had been as simple as a misstep in the kitchen on a recently mopped floor. He recalled a sense of loss of balance, and when he next regained a sense of orientation, was laying on his back on a stiff hospital bed, staring at an unnaturally bright ceiling. A slightly bored looking nurse had been checking on him. "Oh, good! You're awake. That's fantastic. Do not overexert yourself, your questions will be answered. How are you feeling?"
"Iffglweff." His mouth was dry, had gone dry during his blackout. How long had he been out? The disorientation had him. There was no remembrance of the fall, but the memory of losing balance, and the discontinuous transition to a hospital bed meant that he had fallen. Opening his mouth wide he unpeeled the tongue from the roof of his mouth, making a dry cluck noise. "Mouf is dry... I'm ppfine, headache." He did have one. Actually he feared he had a headache before he felt any pangs. The laws of causality weren't particularly favored to a skull injury, and they tended to slant in the direction of things impacting otherwise wholesome human tissue in improper ways. He wasn't thinking completely straight, must have been quite quite a knock he recieved. "Wapffer pweapff."
The nurse gently raised her hand. "Be still, Norman. You have quite a formidable concussion. Nothing dangerous, but there was a deal of brain swelling, which has since gone down in the days you've been unconscious." She explained. "Your father found you on the floor, and naturally, was extremely concerned." She obviously didn't know his father that well, he was not an extraordinarily caring man. She extended a plastic cup of water to him, and pressed it to his lips. "Drink, revive yourself."
He drank, or rather sipped, or rather attempted to sip with dignified grace. Regardless, he merely achieved some spillage down his cheeks, his lips and mouth had gone supremely dry. The water dissolved the parchy sensation immediately, though his lips still felt worse for wear. Had they given him some powerful medicine? Brain swelling... that was pretty bad. He didn't feel as bad as he imagined he would feel if he was in that position. Pain killers? Artificially induced coma… did that stuff cause mouth dryness? Maybe he was just a bit dehydrated. "Thank you." He told her and remained as still as he could be. His head hurt, he was in a hospital bed. It was all a serious kink in his routines, but... he felt alright. Definitely he was in control of the situation.
The room was clean and organized, that much was a relief. There was a sense of order here, and the beeping of the machines he was hooked up to was lulling and hypnotic. "I'm just the orderly, I'll inform your regular nurse that you're awake. She'll want to see you. Relax, she'll be with you in a moment. The woman said gently. "Shall I inform your father as well? I believe he stayed overnight in the lounge, though he may have gone home." Yes, that sounded like him. Caring for only so long until boredom set in.
"Yes please." A hospital was fairly ordered. He wasn't obsessive, but it was definitely his favorite environment. Slackers who messed up their apartments didn't make him comfortable. Cleanly pressed trousers and punctuality did. He had learned it from his father, who had learned it from his grandmother, and so on back to the days of old. "He's probably really worried,"
The woman nodded, and left him alone. He was alone for about five minutes with the rhythmic sounds of the machines. He wasn't sure exactly what he expected from his nurse, but it certainly wasn't what he got. The first sign that something was amiss were the footsteps coming down the hall. He couldn't quite place them, but he knew what walking typically sounded like, from a relaxed gait to a full out run. It wasn't like anything he'd heard before. The door opened... and... his immediate thought was that he'd been hit harder on the head than anticipated. What other reason could there be for a brightly colored horse standing in his hospital room? And that was before she even said anything. The dark of the room was lit up by the glow coming by a growth on her head, which levitated his medical charts in front of her eyes. "Lets see here... looks like you've had a bit of a fall recently, Norman. Some minor swelling... I see that's being treated... a few cuts and scrapes, could have been a lot worse." The chart lowered, and she gazed at him with bright blue eyes. "Feeling alright today?"
Norman wasn't panicking. Not yet. It wasn't real that was all. He had been hit very hard on the head. However the pastel colored character was asking him a direct question. She might be the nurse. He had read once of a bicycle rider who after twenty hours broke down and thought his entire team was a group of aliens who were kidnapping him, when they were really taking him to the nearest hotel room. "No, I'm not sure I'm alright." He admitted, hoping he was speaking in his sleep.
The horse was wearing a white hospital coat, a stethoscope around her neck. The coat shifted as she walked, and he was able to see a red hospital cross near her back end on either side. "Well if you were alright, you wouldn't be in a hospital, and I wouldn't be tending to you, silly." She said kindly. "But all things considered, you're doing very well. I want to keep you for a few days for testing, but I think I can have you back home by the end of the week."
A talking pony that had walked straight out of Dreamworks studios animation department. Norman liked animated movies, and although he wasn't obsessed about them, he didn't see obscure stuff in his daily activities. Not like this. Any animation fan with respect for himself would be able to mention five times the number of animated pictures than Norman knew about. So why on Earth was he seeing a pony? "What do I do in case of hallucinations?" They say you know that a hallucination is a hallucination. Normal felt he knew that what he was seeing wasn't what it was. He just wish that he knew, that he knew it.
However, at some point, the hallucinations stopped becoming hallucinations. She stopped at the edge of his bed, and placed her horn against his arm. A strange warmth rushed through him, and the bruises faded from sight, as well as the small cuts he'd sustained had healed over. "I regret I cannot heal you completely, larger injuries still take time and care to recover properly, and I won't risk your health by being impatient." She assured him, leaving him all the more confused. "What sort of hallucinations are you experiencing?" She asked. "If you see continual hallucinations, I may need to run additional scans."
This was turning into a very strange day indeed.