Returning with the requested water, Bold carefully levitated it to her lips and tilted it slightly, allowing her to drink. After a few sips, Chrysalis sighed. “Thank... you,” she said arduously, and then laid her head back and closed her eyes.
With sheepish realization, Bold gave her a pillow for her head. “I’m going to get some more supplies tomorrow,” he thought out loud, “And perhaps some food. Can you eat food?”
She made no response.
Bold waited for a few minutes to make sure she was, indeed, asleep, and then resignedly curled up in the ransacked remnants of his bed, blanketless and with only a single pillow to lie on.
Needless to say, sleep was not something he accomplished much of that night.
-----
He was raised from his uneasy slumber by an incredibly strange noise—a rattle mixed with a hum. Wondering what was causing that noise, he checked first the sheets over the hole in his apartment. Then, he looked over to Chrysalis.
Her eyes were closed—not the relaxed close of sleep, but rather the clenched eyelids of somepony in pain—and with every exhalation, that noise repeated. It didn’t sound healthy.
“Are you alright?” he asked, concerned.
The changeling breathed in once more, and then unsteadily asked, “What... do you... think?” She shuddered slightly, clenching her teeth.
Quickly, Bold opened the door to the bathroom, and unlocked his medicine cabinet. Rifling through its full shelves, he hastily grabbed two containers, setting them on the counter. He returned to the cabinet, picking up a few more bottles and scrutinizing them carefully, turning them around and around in the light. He studied the labels carefully, though their words had long since been burned into his memory.
For a moment, he traced the words with a hoof, but thinking better of it, he threw them unceremoniously back onto the shelf, and slammed the doors closed. Pausing, he reopened them, searched around in the back of the cabinet, and withdrew a small syringe.
Returning with a glass of water and the two bottles, he poured one from the second. “This is an antibiotic pill,” he said, holding it up. “I’m afraid it’s quite likely that you get infected with all those cuts, and so it would be best if you took one or two of these a day.”
She made no response when he paused, so he forged onwards. “This,” he said, holding the syringe aloft, “is morphine. I don’t have very much of it, and I’m not sure if I can get any more, but it’ll certainly help with the pain.” He halted, waiting for a response.
After an awkward minute of silence, Chrysalis opened her eyes and shivered, “Get... on... with it,” and closed her eyes again.
Taken aback, Bold levitated the pill and the water over to her mouth, where she unenthusiastically swallowed it whole. Then, simply making his best guess as to blood vessels, he gingerly lodged the syringe in her neck and depressed the plunger.
Obviously, he had guessed right, for within seconds, she let out a groan of relief and loosened, her breath steadying and no longer having that disquieting death rattle.
Having dealt with one issue, Bold noticed that the sheet she was wrapped in seemed mostly clean, though a few greenish blood spots did mar its surface. With care, he removed the makeshift bandage and began to once again study his patient.
Though the bleeding had stopped and most of the cuts had scabbed over, her legs, and now that he looked closer, her wing joints, were badly broken. Before she could move or heal any further, the legs had to be splinted and the wing joints set right so that they didn’t heal wrong.
He explained this to her, but the only response was “Mmmmm,” a noise that could have meant anything. Assuming consent, he proceeded.
Though he searched, there wasn’t a spare board in his house, meaning that his supply of splinting materials was limited to two broomsticks—only enough for one leg. He wasted a few more minutes by double-checking, but was finally forced to admit he’d have to improvise.
Muttering under his breath, he removed his headboard and hoofboard and tore them into thirds with rather more force than was necessary. Viciously, his remaining sheet was torn into strips and cast to one corner.
The changeling was in a morphine-induced haze, breathing peacefully and staring at nothing in particular, and Bold regretted what he would have to do. Slowly, he felt along her shattered legs, mapping the multiple breaks that would have to be straightened.
Then, he took hold of one hoof and pulled just a little bit. She grunted, but otherwise didn’t seem to notice. She definitely noticed when he popped the first break straight, though.
Even morphine couldn’t sufficiently dilute the agonized messages her legs were sending her, and her breathing once more grew harsh and ragged as break after break was pushed back to its rightful position. After one leg had been finished, she coughed a few times and gritted her teeth as Bold placed the two broomsticks on either side of her leg, wrapped sheets tightly around the whole apparatus, and started in on the next one.
With every bulge he pushed into place, Bold winced at the increasingly manifested distress his activities were causing. After only two legs, her breath came in shuddering gasps and her coughs began to sound wet.
By the conclusion of his third splint, the rest of her body was twitching in anguish. Impelled by this, Bold began to mutter under his breath, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” in a chant of sorts as his grisly work continued. When he was finished, it was clear morphine wasn’t doing much to dull the pain anymore.
Retrieving a third item from the medicine cabinet, he shook out two small pills before administering them. He knew that the combination of the two medicines should alleviate most of the pain and make her completely insensible to the world, with the only side effect a migraine the day after.
Then, he slowly began to cast healing spells, mending each break he found individually. It was exhausting work, and he couldn’t frame more than six, which was barely halfway down one leg.
However, the combined medicines and the mending of a few breaks seemed to do the trick. Chrysalis was once more off in a drug-induced dreamland, and would be for some hours. He was out of morphine, though, and he wasn’t proficient enough with healing to fix the damage before it wore off.
He’d have to get some more supplies, of considerable strength, from somewhere.
Which meant he’d have to visit Poppy—an extremely unwelcome prospect.
-----
As Bold finished cinching his saddlebags tight, he glanced over at Chrysalis, who was still staring vacantly into space. Quietly, he shut the bedroom door, and then shut and locked his apartment door, before sneaking a furtive gaze down the stairwell. Seeing nopony present, he quickly clattered down the steps to the ground floor, where he eased open the back door (It was supposed to be alarmed, but it had been broken even before he disabled it) and slipped outside.
Trotting down the alley, he looked both ways, before turning right towards the subway station. However, three blocks short, he crossed the street, and took a road south. Old townhouses crowded both sides of the road, but these townhouses, unlike those on his own street, did not have the feel of an old stallion easing into death, proud in his previous majesty despite his current sad state.
These had the feel of a wreck of a pony refusing to die.
Even at this hour, when most ponies should be rushing to work, nopony else walked the streets. The city was silent, with only the rushing of wind down the roads breaking the quiet.
Bold’s eyes darted from left to right in constant vigilance as he loped down the street, not quite fast enough to be a gallop, but faster than a trot. He whipped his head around at a crunch emanating from an alleyway, but it was only a cat digging for food among the trash bags strewn on its surface.
After some time, he began to see fewer boarded-up windows, and a handful of others going to and fro around their business outside. In the middle of this small pocket of better living was a small, unassuming shop. It was brightly painted and cheerfully decorated, out of place among the old, dull buildings surrounding it. The sign above it read, “Poppy’s Medicine Shop,” and a smaller sign beneath it stated ‘this shop is an accredited pharmacy.’
With a few deep breaths, Bold pushed open the door and entered the belly of the beast.