Chapter 5
I’ve never been a fan of hospitals. But after the day I’d had yesterday, and the... nightmare last night, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are dreadfully horrible places. The machinations of some evil and twisted physician who believed that anypony stupid enough to get sick should suffer even more. Like insult to injury for the truly injured.
Waking up for real this time, I noticed it was rather close to dawn. Close enough that some slightly less reasonable ponies would be up by this hour, but far enough away that the sun had not risen yet.
Sitting awake in a room that just tried to fold me into myself for an hour or two before anypony else even walked past my door was nerve-wracking, to say the least. Eventually, I did notice that I was, in fact, attached to a heart monitor. I assumed it was because I’d shown a propensity to lose consciousness at regular intervals throughout the day lately. So I couldn’t exactly blame them for wanting to make sure I didn’t suddenly develop a predisposition to, you know, stopping breathing.
The next couple of hours dragged on with paranoia-filled slowness. At least, the first thirty minutes did. After that I was just kind of bored. I realized a few minutes after waking up that my heart had been pounding rather hard, so I assume the large surge of adrenaline from my nightmare was doing its damnedest to keep me awake. But once the paranoia and adrenaline wore off, I kind of just lay there boringly conscious. I think it was a combination of having been basically kickstarted first thing in the morning, and a nagging apprehension against falling asleep again.
If this is what my nightmares were going to be like from here on out, I might want to talk to the doctor about sleeping pills.
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The first sign of other ponies even existing in this building came a few hours after I’d brown bored and was actually starting to fall asleep again. The doctor from yesterday poked his muzzle into the room, and, seeing as how I was awake, trotted in to have a few words with me.
“Good morning, Roseluck. Any trouble sleeping?” Tch. Of course he’d ask me that first thing.
“You mean aside from the debilitating nightmares and waking up at O Dark Thirty with enough adrenaline to power a small cart of schoolchildren? Yes,” I said flatly, giving him an unamused look.
He raised an eyebrow and made a few notes. “Well, since you seem to be in such a chipper mood, I’ll spare you the standard questions of what your dreams were about. But given that you seem to be rational, if a bit snarky, you probably won’t need therapy anytime soon.
Don’t count on that, I thought to myself.
“But I will be prescribing something to help you sleep. An herbal remedy developed by a local of ours, a Miss Zecora. I don’t want to throw anything pharmaceutical at you until we’ve done some tests, but getting adequate sleep is rather important. Especially given the results of some of your tests.” He must have seen the look of absolute alarm on my face, because he quickly added, “Oh, no, not like that! It’s just that you came back with some rather high levels of adrenaline, and the tissue in your throat seems a bit damaged. I merely meant to say that taking things easy for now, and letting your voice and your adrenal glands take a break might do you some good.”
I heaved a sigh and felt quite a bit of stress simply fall away. “Good grief, don’t do that. Right, yeah, herbal teas. I can do that,” I agreed. Then I had a thought. “Um, you said Zecora put this together?”
“Mm-hmm,” the doc said absentmindedly, as he filled out some more paperwork on a clipboard in front of him. I could barely see him past the thing.
“Is there any chance I could talk to her? I had some questions about some... abstract subjects I’d... read about recently. I thought about talking to Princess Twilight, but last I saw her she wasn’t exactly in peak condition.
The doc looked up from his board. “And she’s not getting any better, it seems. I haven’t been treating her myself, but she seems to be the worse for wear every day. Her friends are, understandably, fiercely worried about her. But to answer your question, yes. I can certainly see about contacting Zecora for you. Unless of course you’d like to march through the Everfree to see her on your own time.”
Buck that. Buck all of that. “Uh, no thanks. I’d appreciate the referral.”
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A little while after the doctor checked in, they took my blood again, and ran a couple of tests. I ended up leaving with a prescription for that herbal tea and a long, drawn out doctor’s note that basically said “sleep it off”.
Something told me that was the exact opposite of what I should do. So instead, I decided to see if it was possible to visit Miss Sparkle before I headed home again.
Finding the psych ward always seems to be both the easiest and hardest thing to do. You know exactly where it is, but given the nature of the patients, there are only a finite number of ways you can actually get there. You know, aside from being crazy.
I asked around, and was able to get as far as a security checkpoint before a royal guard stopped me. “I’m sorry, miss, but we’re not allowed to permit unauthorized ponies past this point. Just family members, staff, and essential ponies. Do you have a family member in this wing?”
Not having a legitimate excuse, or even a really good fake one, I said, “No. I just wanted to check on the princess. i was there yesterday morning when she... started having issues.”
The stallion looked at me with an expression of sad gratitude. “We appreciate your concern for the princess, and will let her know that you dropped-”
“Roseluck!” said a familiar voice behind the guard. I glanced past him, even as he turned around to see who it was. Applejack came trotting up the hall to meet us, and said to the guard, “It’s ok. We need to have a word with her anyway.”
The officer gave me a wary look, but given that I was apparently getting an escort from one of the Elements, he deemed me worthy to pass. “Just don’t go into the Princess’s room, alright?” he said.
Applejack gave him her assurances that I wouldn’t, and led me to a small waiting room near where a larger crowd of guards, and some of Twilight’s friends, were hanging out. We sat at opposite ends of a table, and Applejack wasted no time getting to the point. “Listen, do you have any idea what’s goin’ on? I know you ran off with Derpy-”
“Ditzy,” I said firmly.
“-right, Ditzy. Sorry. But anyways, you two ran off together after Twilight... well, after yesterday mornin’, and we don’t have any idea what happened. All of us have been tryin’ to talk to Der-Ditzy after the fact, but between her job and her kid and us trying to help Twilight out in our own ways, we haven’t had the time to get a straight answer. Can ya help a mare out, here?” she pleaded.
I gave her a piteous look. “Applejack, the sad truth is I don’t know much more than you do, and I actually sat down and talked with Ditzy about it. I’m still trying to make sense of what’s going on. But there’s a couple things I do know, or have been able to figure out,” I added, after seeing AJ’s crestfallen look. She raised her eyes to me again.
“Yeah?”
“Well, the first thing is that this isn’t Ditzy’s fault. It’s... something else. Buck me if I know what, but that mare isn’t the cause of it. More like a really involved bystander. After that, all I know is that it seems to be... spreading? I guess is the word?” she gave me a confused, and distinctly worried, look. I explained, in general terms, some of the... events of the last couple of days. “They sent me home telling me to sleep it off and drink some tea, but I’m kind of afraid to. I’m going to talk to Zecora later. The doc is going to ask her to come up so I can have a word with her.”
Applejack nodded. “That don’t seem like too awful an idea, to be honest.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say without being redundant or cliche, so I took a second to glance around the room. I traded glances with some of Twilight’s friends in the crowd around her door, and noticed something.
“Hey, where’s Pinkie Pie?”
Applejack shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning. Nopony has. I’m startin’ to think-”
“Excuse me, miss?” said a guard that neither of us had noticed walk up to the table. We both gave a bit of a jump, myself more than AJ, and turned to him.
“What’s up?” Applejack asked.
“Twilight Sparkle has some visitors, and they say they need to speak to everypony,” he explained, and stepped aside so we could see who he was talking about.
“Pinkie Pie!” Applejack yelped in surprise.
“Zecora?!” I asked, rather confused.
The zebra nodded at us, but before she could get a rhyme in edgewise, Pinkie said, it what was probably the calmest voice I’d ever heard her use, “We need to talk.”
Great.