//------------------------------//
// When you reach the bottom 
// Story: Stairway to Heaven 
// by Brolkier 
//------------------------------//

Nurse Redheart checked my temperature, just like she'd done every other day. I didn't seem to be getting any worse, but I wasn't getting any better either.

She and the other doctors had been doing their best to try and take care of me, since I had been at the hospital. They would attempt to alleviate me of one symptom one day, only to have another one seemingly come out of nowhere the next. It was a constant battle, and one that I seemed to be losing.

While I still had the ability to move around without much trouble, I would make my way to the top of the staircase on the third floor. There, I would bring my slinky, and play with it on the stairs. On more than one occasion, one of the nurses would catch me, and bring me back to my room, telling me that I needed to stay in bed.

I didn't want to though. I wanted to get out of there and continue living my life, or at least do something fun once in a while. However, as the illness gradually got worse and worse, I began to realize that I wasn't going to have much time to do any of that for long.

All my life, I had been living by the thought that; life was a staircase, and I just needed to take it one step at a time, in order to overcome it. I was able to establish a problem, find a way to solve it, or work with it, and then move on.

This however, wasn't one of those problems.

I had no clue how this illness had started, and nopony could give me any clue as to what it could be. It baffled all the doctors and nurses, and left me feeling helpless. Had I known the cause, or what it was earlier, I would have been able to take the proper steps necessary to handle it, instead of waiting to find an answer.

Come the second week, I had begun to actually lose hope. With nothing seeming to help me feel better, and the symptoms getting worse and worse, I started to wonder if this was going to be it for me.

I knew that my mother was worried sick about me, and that all my friends were wishing that I got well soon. My father on the other hoof, I had no idea if he knew what was going on with me, or if he even cared. All my life, I had just been some face to him, not really meaning much to him, and probably not even mattering to him at all.

I didn't hate him for it though, I couldn't. Despite how he may have treated me, or lack-there-of, he was still my father, and I would always love him. His work just prevented him from spending time with me, and getting to know me. I wouldn't want him to just abandon everything for me. Regardless of how it may have effected him, I knew that he was doing what he enjoyed.

After the yawn I would get from him at the train station, I would see him smile as he rode off into the sunrise. Whenever I was playing on the tracks, he was always working harder than any other pony there. And even though he may have walked off almost every time that we did a family activity together, it was still the fact that he joined us to begin with, that I really appreciated.

A couple of days ago, Nurse Redheart caught me once again, playing with my slinky on the stairs. This time however, she didn't immediately drag me back to my room, but instead sat down with me, and kept me company. She would even go to the bottom of the stairs, and retrieve my slinky for me, just like my mother had done when I was a filly.

Eventually, after sending the slinky down a couple times, Nurse Redheart asked me about it. While she had seen a slinky before, she wasn't really sure what made them fun to play with.

"It's a simple thing. You start from the top of the stairs, and push it down the first step. You watch as it goes from step to step, until it reaches the bottom. Then, you just start all over again from the top." I told her, as I pushed it down the stairs again.

"What about if it doesn't reach the bottom?" She asked.

That was a sentence that had never once crossed my mind before. In all my life, I had never seen my slinky unable to reach the bottom of the stairs. Even more so, I didn't know what could even cause something like that.

I thought about it a little more, and I even began to think about it from my life's perspective. Throughout my life, I never thought about a bad ending to anything, or even being unable to see something through to the end. It was always just; establish the problem, find a solution, or a way to work with it, and then overcome it. There was never a halfway.

All that aside though, I began to realize the truth behind it, and the questions that arose from it. What if it didn't reach the bottom? What if the ending it came to was not one that was supposed to happen? What could cause something like that?

"I...I don't know." I told her.

The slinky once again reached the bottom, and Nurse Redheart helped me retrieve it, before the two of us returned to my room.

/)(\ 	/)(\ 	/)(\ 	/)(\ 	/)(\

While it seemed like forever to me, when I pushed the slinky down the stairs for the last time, the sad reality was, it all happened faster that I would have ever wanted it to.

The slinky had only made it down a few steps, when I collapsed on the stairs. Nurse Redheart reached for me as fast as she could, trying to help me back up, and support me, but it was already too late.

The slinky had stopped, barely halfway down the stairs, and with it, myself as well. I would never get to see it reach the bottom again. Never get to bring it back to the top, only to send it down once more. My life, just like that pile of springs, had stopped moving.

As my beloved slinky had descended it's last flight of stairs, I traveled my own last staircase, ascending up into the unknown, never to reach the bottom again.