Time was fickle for the stallion in that hospital room. Some days it passed slower than an animal traversing a tar pit and the pain would remind him of every second that passed. Other days moved so quickly, he could have sworn it was yesterday still. And then, in very rare times, a pony would visit, be it a doctor or resident of town, and time would ease by while his pain was forgotten for a few hours.
During one of those visits, the local clocksmith stopped by and left him an odd bird. It seemed like a wind-up toy for foals, but there was a clock face where its stomach would be and it would chirp at the oddest of times. With no way to move, the stallion stared at that construction for hours, contemplating its design and function.
Solving the conundrum of that bird became a constant ritual for him, as it was the only tangible object he could turn his focus towards. His pain still attacked his mind, but it felt surreal more than anything else when he was lost in his thoughts.
Occasionally, medical personnel would stop in to check readouts and his condition and attempt conversation. The stallion never answered their tries, not that he could carry one with the way he felt. Some nights, when staring at the clockwork bird began to bore him, he would attempt speech. His mouth felt like a desert and any sound he made was worse than the bird’s mechanical chirps. He would give up on those nights.
On days that felt particularly easy, he thought of his condition and how he had become so damaged. From what little the doctors had told him, the event that brought him to this point leveled his home and the destruction of his body most likely forced his mind to bury the memories into his subconscious. That didn’t stop him from planning his recovery, and his thoughts ran wild with ideas from magical constructs he could be gifted by the newest princess to using his own knowledge to create a steam-powered core for a metallic limb-like system to replace his missing legs.
He never gained much ground on either avenue, mostly because of his inability to discuss ideas or write down notes and letters. All he could do was stare through that blue-tinted shield and wait for the hospital to decide for him. When he thought about how his fate was tied to someone else’s decision, he quickly turned away from that line of thinking and stared at the bird once more.
The stallion woke up with the sound of tingly chirping. At first he assumed it would stop after the first or second sounding, but it persisted. Curiosity compelled him to turn towards it, but a feeling of malaise worked alongside the pain to tell him not to. Chirping filled the shield again and again as his head began to pound. Sooner or later, he would have to do something about that bird, he decided.
As if the gods themselves heard his thoughts, a nurse chose that time to enter the room. Unlike most of the staff he saw on a daily basis, this one had both the ability and the permission to enter his sterilizing shield, and she heard the racket as soon as she did so.
“My, what a cacophonous bird you are today!” she said over the noise as she hurried over to the only table allowed for gifts inside the bubble. “Now, why are you backwards?”
Her question finally pushed his curiosity beyond his stillness and he turned his head to watch. The clock had somehow worked itself backwards and rose its bottom upwards, somehow proudly showing the winding key to the nurse. He marvelled at the complexity such an action would require from the clockmaker and wondered why he was given such a gift.
The nurse understood the pose as well and picked it up to begin winding it. “What a wonderful little invention this bird is. I wonder if old Springs could make one for me?” she pondered as she wound it and set it back on the table, hushing the object. With a small nod at the newfound silence, she turned towards the stallion. “Well, I best get you ready, then.”
Though he was curious why he was being made ready, his voice was still not ready, and he stayed silent. “Oh, come now, Vapor. Surely, you want to know why I’m doing this,” the nurse said with a huff as she began delicately sliding the blankets off him.
That name, again. The stallion was told his name was Vapor Trail, but it didn’t feel right. Whether it was from him forgetting it, or because he didn’t think that name matched his new condition, he couldn’t be certain. All he could do was accept that he was called Vapor until he could find his identity again. Unfortunately, the medical staff was unaware of how deep his memory loss went and continued to use that name freely.
“Well, Lily will tell you, even if you aren’t going to respond,” she said as she shut off the few machines she could without assistance. “The doctors believe you are well enough to get some of these machines removed and help you learn to move again. If you hope to have that heart of yours be strong enough to support you, we need to get it pumping on its own much stronger than it is now.”
Thoughts of walking again filled him with hope, but it was crushed when he was reminded of his missing limbs as Lily removed the sheet covering his right side. Upon seeing the pained expression on his face, she spoke up again. “Oh, don’t concern yourself with that, dear. Even now, the medical community is finding ways to give ponies their lost limbs back.”
After pulling one last IV out, she was left with nothing else she could do and gave a pitiful look to the stallion. “We’ll think of something. I have to get a few of your doctors in here to take care of the rest, so be patient.” A light touch on his shoulder later, she turned and headed out of the shield, then the door, leaving it open.
It looked like his fate was once again tied to somepony else’s decision, he thought as his eyes studied the wall beyond the door. For once, he let the idea simmer in his mind, not wanting to dwell on the slowly building pain from the loss of his IVs. He wasn’t sure which ones she removed, and that made him feel worse. If she did stop his morphine drip, his pain would get even worse, but if she didn’t, the escalating agony was either in his head or due to the loss of some medication his body had gotten used to.
Or maybe it was the fact that he could see his condition clearly again, he mused, and an odd smile grew on his lips. The idea that he could smile in such a situation turned his mind again to confusion. Perhaps laying in that bed had turned him morbid after all this time.
The sound of gears whirring drew his attention to the small clockwork bird once more. Its brass beak was open as if it would chirp again, but only the sound of the gears came forth, until it got louder. “...Why…” it seemed to ask as the sound slowly dissipated. “Why?”
This time, the sound was more distinct, almost like it really was designed to speak. Then, it truly started to do so. “Did… you… find… why?” it said, using a series of clanks and whirrs to pronounce the syllables. “Can you do, now?”
The stallion furrowed his brow, wondering how it was possible the bird could speak and what it was talking about. Such ingenuity from a clockmaker seemed impossible, and yet here it was… talking.
“Steam.”
The bird went silent. He was silent. In the quiet of the room, he waited for more. None came, and he was lost.
“Mr. Vapor—”
“Gah!” The stallion’s body seized and the first sound he made in the presence of others announced his shock. Whipping his head in the direction of the voice, he found two doctors and Lily looking at him in shock. They spoke to each other in a series of glances before one cleared his throat.
“I believe that was the first conscious sound we’ve heard from you, Mr. Vapor. I admit we were getting worried your voice was lost in the accident as well.” He spoke with authority and had the gait of one who had served in the military as he came up to the bed. “I hope to hear you speak clearly, though we have something more important planned for you today.”
He waved the other two over and they began preparations to remove a few more devices from the stallion. “It’s a big risk we are taking, trying to get you up and off a few of these machines, but you have been in here long enough that we fear risking even more if we leave you be any longer”
Oddly enough to the stallion, their ministrations did not cause much further pain than he was already experiencing. He chalked it up to the healing process finally getting around to that aspect of his condition. They delicately removed stitches and plates from his abdomen while leaving others behind, and the mesh cage around his chest was avoided as much as possible for last.
“We’re going to try letting your heart take the full workload. Stay calm, and don’t move… no matter what happens,” the other doctor, a blue stallion with grey hair, ordered. There was a small amount of sweat building on both doctors that the nurse quickly wiped away without a word, and all of them nodded to another for confirmation. With a quick glance at the stallion, which he answered as a nod, they began.
They shut down the machine attached to his heart first, and he finally felt the beating he didn’t realize he had missed. It was weak, but the doctors seemed confident. After a few seconds, they shut down the auxiliary heart… and waited. His heart beat harder as it accepted the work to which it was tasked and even he started to hope his life could get better. They crimped the tubes running into his chest and stalled again before disconnecting one, then the other.
His body accepted the load. Ten seconds. A minute. Blood pressure was holding steady along with his heart rate. They all sighed in relief as one as everything went well. Feeling joy like he never felt before, the stallion finally tried to speak.
“Th… ank. You.” The words were hard and he had to pause often to continue. A small smile stretched his skin as the doctors and nurse looked down at him with their own.
“That’s what I wanted to hear!” the militaristic one replied. “Glad you could join us. Give us a minute to set you up and we’ll be tearing down the aisles in no time.” As one, they each removed a wire or tube from the stallion. With the biggest grin the stallion had ever seen on her, Lily stepped forward and pressed a button to tilt the bed upwards.
“It’s about time you spoke! My, if you stayed silent any longer, I would have thought myself insane for talking to a mummy!”
A small chuckle echoed between them at the morbid joke to which they could all relate, and the stallion spoke up again. “Sor… ry, Lily.”
“Well, now that we’ve all had a few jokes at our patient’s expense, perhaps we can see if he’s up to trying a few exercises?” the doctor to his right asked, a bit of a smile still on his lips.
“Ready… whe—”
The stallion fell slack and the dreaded sound of a flatline filled the room immediately. “Shit! Lily, get the others,” the military doctor ordered as the two professionals got to work hooking everything back up. As soon as the rest of the team entered the room, they began different attempts at restarting the stallion’s heart and the auxiliary one to reawaken him.
They couldn’t do chest compressions with the cage protecting the heart, so they used a defibrillator with smaller pads to reach in and shock it while starting the mechanical one up. They had to be sure they worked as a pair or it wouldn’t work.
As three doctors forced his heart to start, the rest of the team hurried to reconnect the other components. Then, just as the oxygen pump started up, the heart monitor beeped. Again. Again, this time in sync with the auxiliary. They held steady and the group sighed in defeat.
They all knew what happened and what it meant. The stallion would never be free of the hospital again.