The Incredibly Embarrassing Parents of Rainbow Dash

by Ponibius

Epilogue- Parents are Magic

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I was blind. I couldn’t see. My heart raced as I shot up and put a hoof to my right eye in a panic. I fumbled at the bandage, trying to tear it off. Had I lost the eye? Were all my dreams over? Just like that? Did my stupid mistakes cost me everything? This wasn’t supposed to happen; it wasn’t supposed to be this way. A pair of hooves tried to gently pushed me back down. I resisted, fighting against the pressure. More hooves pressed against my body and keep me from flailing.

“Dashie, it’s okay!” a familiar voice said. I relaxed and stopped fighting the hooves that were trying to push me back into the bed. My left eye was still trying to blink away the blurriness from waking up. “Just relax, you’re okay. You’re just at the hospital, like you’re supposed to be.”

I sluggishly processed what was going on. I recognized the sterile rooms of the Ponyville Hospital. I’d seen enough of them to recognize them pretty quickly. Had I been in an accident? No. I was here for a reason. Right, the surgery for my eye. My hoof shot to my bad eye by reflex, but somepony kept me from doing so. “Careful,” said another familiar voice.  “You don’t want to injure yourself.”

My good eye finally cleared, and the first ponies I saw were my parents. They looked down at me with concerned smiles. My brain eventually managed to work out something to say. “Awesomom? Cool-Mom?”

Awesomom rubbed my foreleg. “We’re here for you. You’re just waking up from the surgery. You remember?”

“Um, yeah,” I said through the haze. I tried to blink away the blurriness. “How did it go?”

Cool-Mom’s smile became warmer. “The doctors said it went well, but they will have to do tests to see if it actually worked. We sent Pinkie to get the nurse to remove that bandage, so we will see soon enough.” She ran a hoof along my cheek. “You’re being very brave right now, and we love you for that.”

Awesomom kissed me on the forehead. “Yeppers, you're our super-duper, awesomest, radical-cool daughter, and we wouldn't trade you for the world.”

“So I’m going to be able to see again?” I swallowed.

Awesomom and Cool-Mom exchanged a quick glance with one another. “Like I said, we’ll have to wait for the doctors to know for sure.” That wasn’t exactly the answer I wanted to hear. This was my life we were talking about here. If I would be able to join the Wonderbolts. If I would be able to see with my right eye again at all.  

My concern must have shown, because Awesomom started nuzzling me. “It’ll be alright. You have your family and friends here to support you.”

I leaned back back into the bed and closed my good eye. “I know.”

We sat there for a while waiting for someone from the hospital to come. My parents kept assuring me that everything was going to be okay while I lay there waiting. It was nice to have the support of my parents, but I was still nervous. This just mixed two things I hated: waiting and hospitals.

My head snapped towards the door of my room when it opened. Nurse Redheart and Pinkie walked into the room and close the door behind them. Redheart picked up a chart sitting at the end of my bed and looked it over. “How are you feeling, Rainbow Dash?”

I shuffled around on the bed. “Um, okay I guess.”

She nodded and marked something on the chart. “Feeling any pain?”

“No, I’m fine.” I felt my patience wearing thin. “Listen, can we just cut off this bandage and see if I can see? I just wanna know.”

Redheart let out a patient sigh. “Very well. If there isn’t anything immediately wrong, we can skip ahead for now.” She pulled out a pair of scissors. “But I want your full cooperation from now on.”

I crossed my forelegs. “Fine, just get this bandage off of me!”

“Dash, please respect the fine nurse,” Cool-Mom chastised me. “She’s just doing her job.”

I rolled my eye, but decided that shutting up would get me the results I wanted faster. Luckily, Redheart went to work cutting off the bandage. I kept my eye closed as the bandage was slowly removed. Awesomom, Cool-Mom, and Pinkie looked on, with a mixture of hope and fear.

I felt Redheart pull the last of the bandages from my eye. “Now if you’ll slowly open your eye.”

I slowly opened my right eye. I blinked in reaction to the sudden light, my vision blurry. For a long moment, I was worried that there was something wrong with my eye before it finally focused. Everything seemed fine, normal even—better than normal, great! I could actually see clearly out of my right eye again! No stupid blind spot that caused me to crash into things.  

Redheart watched me as I blinked and looked around. “So how does it look?” Everypony in the room focused on me, waiting for my reply.

I put on a big, happy grin. “I can see again, Nurse!” The next thing I knew, I was being buried under a pile of ponies and hugs. Everypony was talking at once and I couldn’t make out what anypony said.

“Okay, everypony off of my patient.” Redheart’s smile didn’t quite fit her serious tone. “I have some quick tests I want to run to make sure everything is alright. There will be some follow-up tests later, but we can get the basics out of the way now.”

I groaned. “Do we have to?” She gave me a glare that brought up a lot of bad memories of where being stubborn over hospital stuff had gotten me. I put my hooves up in surrender. “Okay, okay, fine. Let’s just get all this out of the way.”

Redheart gave a quick, firm nod. “Good. First let’s try the eye chart. And yes, we did get a new one just for you.” I rolled my eyes. Okay, so I had kinda cheated on this test for a few years. No need to rub it in. I bit down on my complaints and did as Nurse Redheart told me while we went through a variety of tests to make sure my eye was alright. With the final test she made another check on her clipboard. “Everything looks good with your eye. We’re going to hold you for a day just to make sure everything is fine, and I’m going to want you to wear an eyepatch for at least a week to help protect the eye from harm and minimize the risk for any complications.”

At least I would get to look like a pirate for a while. That was pretty cool. I looked up at the clock to see how long the stupid tests had taken. I swear, that thing was broken given how slow it moved. “Do I really have to stay at the hospital?” I groaned.

Redheart’s stony frown didn’t suggest she was going to give on this. “Surgery is a serious matter, Dash. We don’t want to risk any complications with your eye, now do we?”

Cool-Mom patted my foreleg. “They just want to hold on to you for a day. It’ll be over before you know it, and then you will be back out and doing your regular thing.” I crossed my forelegs and grumbled, but I decided not to argue about it. It wasn’t going to do me any good.

Pinkie nuzzled me. “Hey, all your friends are waiting outside. You want them to come in? That’ll get rid of that grumpy mood of yours.” She looked up at Redheart. “If that’s okay, that is.”

“Yeah, let them in,” I said. Anything that cut down on my boredom was a good thing.

“It’s fine, Pinkie.” Redheart opened the door leading to the hallway. “We’re still well within visiting hours.” She called out into the hallways, and my friends filed into the room. The hospital bedroom had seemed good-sized. That is, until about a half dozen ponies had been shoved into it, and everypony had to work their way around the bed to keep from being on top of one another.

Scootaloo, on the other hoof, had decided she couldn’t wait any longer and came bounding into the hospital room. “Rainbow Dash!” She narrowly crashing into the wall and jumped up. placing her forehooves on the bed. Words tumbled out of her mouth as she tried to ask every question she could all at once. “Are you okay? Can you see? Will you still be able to do tricks? Join the Wonderbolts? How about—”

I placed a hoof on the squirt’s mouth to stop the barrage of questions. “Whoa there, Squirt. One question at a time there. Ya gotta give even me a little bit of time to answer questions.”

Scootaloo blushed slightly. “Oh, right.”

Applejack gave me a reassuring smile. “So how ya doin’, sugarcube?”

I flashed her a confident grin. “Awesome as always; I can see everything with my right eye again.”

Rarity let out a relieved sigh. “That is wonderful news. We figured everything would be fine, but that didn’t keep us from fretting all the same.” Rarity and I had worked out our little issues where I had wrecked some of her stuff earlier. I’d paid for all the damages, and in the end agreed to try on some of her outfits. Then I cleaned out her gutters, went to the spa with her, and a bunch of other stuff to make her happy. Sometimes keeping a friend is hard.

“It certainly makes me feel better,” Derpy said. “Maybe I’ll finally secure the title of klutziest mare in Ponyville without you crashing into things as often.” She stuck her tongue out at me.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Ha-ha, Derpy. Real funny.”

Dinky hopped off of Derpy’s back and onto my bed. “I’ve been savin’ you a get-better hug aaall day.” She wrapped her forelegs around my chest and smiled up at me. “There. You feel better now?”

I ruffled Dinky’s mane. “Way better. Thanks.”

Sparkler worked her way to me and nuzzled me on the cheek. “I thought you were supposed to be super-fast or something? We've been waiting in the lobby forever.” I noticed the bags under her eyes as she yawned. Guess Sparky had been really worried.

I wrapped my right foreleg around her neck to add her to my hug with Dinky. “Hey, buck up, Sparky. I’m all good now.” She smiled and accepted the hug. It was kinda goofy and probably not really cool for either of us, but it seemed to make Sparky feel better.

“We’re just happy to hear that you’re okay.” Fluttershy said, giving me a hug as soon as Dinky and Sparkler was done. I had the feeling she wanted to hug me sooner, but didn’t want to push anypony out of the way, given she had to ask a few ponies if they would kindly move so she could get closer.

I gently pushed Fluttershy back. “Come on girls, you’re embarrassing me.”

Fluttershy took a step back away from me. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

I resisted the urge to facehoof. “It’s fine, Fluttershy, really. I’m glad you’re all here.”

Twilight levitated a basket filled with flowers, candy, and a couple books over to me. “We got you a care package to keep your spirits up while you get better.” She levitated on the books towards me. “We got you the first couple books of the Young Daring Doo adventure series.”

I grabbed the book and looked over its cover. “Aren’t these a bunch of kids’ books?”

“Yes, but they’re still good books,” Twilight quickly defended. “Just because a book is written for children doesn’t mean an adult can’t enjoy it too. Just try the first book out. You’ll like them, trust me. Besides, you already read through all of the main books.”

That was true. You would think it would take awhile to go through a dozen or so books, but next thing I knew, I had read all the Daring Doo books available. Even the book filled with nothing but short stories. I shrugged and put the book back in the basket. “Eh, sure, I’ll give them a shot once visiting hours are over.” They had gone through the effort of buying me the books to start with. Not to mention the boredom would get to me eventually.

Cloud Kicker carefully put another care-basket on the small stand next to my bed. Have to admit, free stuff was really nice. I guess that was one positive thing to the whole surgery. “Got you a little something from the weather team too.” She gave me a light jab in the shoulder. Nothing that really hurt. Cloudy probably didn’t want to freak out my parents so soon after I got out of surgery. “Turns out that they’re all worried Blossom and I are going to launch some sort of coup with you gone and want you to get better as soon as possible.”

I returned the light punch. “Hey, you tell them I’m going to be back in action in no time flat.”

“Just make sure you’re all better when you do,” Blossomforth said. “Oh! And I have this for you.” She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a rubber duckie and placed it on my bed.

“RadiQuack!” I grabbed my favorite bath toy and hugged it to my face, causing it to let out a long squeak.  “You’re all better!” I was then suddenly very conscious of a whole room of ponies looking at me. There might have been a little bit of chuckling going on. I put RadiQuack down in my lap and played it cool. “I mean, um thanks, Blossomforth. For fixing RadiQuack. I know its just a silly fillyhood toy and stuff...”

Cloud Kicker punched me in the shoulder again. “Oh, just be happy to have your toy back. You’re in the hospital, nopony cares if you look dumb. We’ll only tease you relentlessly about it once you’re out of here.”

I fixed Cloud with my best glare. “I can really feel the love, ya know that?” I smiled as I gave Radiquack another squeeze. “But yeah, thanks, Blossomforth. This means a lot to me.”

Blossomforth snapped off a quick salute. “No problem. Took a bit of doing, but he’s good to go now.”

“Didn’t know you were the type who liked bath toys, RD.” AJ elbowed me gently. “Ah wonder what other things we don’t know about you?”

As if on cue, Cool-Mom pulled out on her albums. “Oh, I know, how about I show you some of Dash’s old photographs? We have quite a few of her playing in the bath. She was so precious, we had to all but pull her out of the bath to get her to stop and go to bed.”

“Mooom!” I probably would have tried to reach out to keep Cool-Mom from opening the album at the base of the bed for everypony to see, but Dinky was standing right between me and the embarrassing photographs.

“You got anything that shows how awesome Rainbow Dash is?” Scootaloo asked, wings buzzing.

Cool-Mom’s response was to pull out yet another album and place it on the bed. “Why yes, I just happened to have brought the album where we keep everything from all the competitions Dash has been to.”

Scootaloo took about a whole two seconds to open that album and start looking for it. “Wow, now this I have to check out.”

Awesomom ruffled my mane with a hoof. “Yes-siree! We’ve been to everything Dash has been in. Races, stunt competitions, athletic events, talent shows, you name it. Well, except for last year’s Best Young Flyers Competition. Rainie and I got super sick eating some way bad tacos once.  Dashie wanted to rush over and stay at the hospital and skip the whole event, but Rainie and I agreed that it was super important to her and demanded she go ahead and compete. Besides, not like Rainie and I were getting far from the nearest toilet in the hospital anyways.”

Yeah, that was true. My parents had been to ... well, everything, now that I thought about it. I’d nearly panicked at the idea of them not coming to the Best Young Flyers. There had been a little bit of performance anxiety on my part as a result. Fluttershy and my other friends were cool and all, but they weren’t my parents. It was comforting to know that no matter how much I might screw up, they would still be there for me. Not that I ever screwed up, usually, but it’s still nice to know they had my back. Awesomom and Cool-Mom had always been there for me, for whatever I needed. Even now when I wasn’t at my best. Especially now.

Okay, so they'd pulled out the photo albums and passed them around and shared every. Last. Goofy. Story. From my fillyhood with my friends. All of them. But really, now that I think about it, it's not too different from me laughing at somepony I've just pranked—it's my way of saying 'check it out, I did this.'

And if that's their way of saying that about me, well ... y'know what? That's okay.