The voice on the other end took a long, hesitant pause. "Um, no, that doesn't exactly sound probable,"
"I can't even fathom the concept," Nurse Redheart began, " I mean, as a medical instructor, I know that technically speaking your outside appearance has little to do with your internal anatomy. However, the irony will eat me alive if further tests prove her colorblind positive."
" I'll collapse in my chair and explode in hysteric laughter. The ponies in the lobby will think I need to go to a mental hospital!"
Redheart grinned. " Luckily you'll already be in a hospital."
"Ok, enough with our impractical jokes," The desk mare chirped. "As much as I'd love to purchase a bag of popcorn and watch the show, she's still a patient, and we're still employees. Do you want me to inform her entourage or not?"
"Feel free to inform Miss Twilight. Don't send her up, though, until I confirm this obscurity." Nurse Redheart answered.
Nurse Redheart placed the landline back in its respectable position, and then shifted her attention to Rainbow Dash. By the looks of it, Rainbow had witnessed the entirety of her brief conversation, as her pupils were fixed on the mare's face when she turned around. However, it was not a face of anger, hate, depression, anything emoting negativity. On the contrary, she appeared, well, oblivious. No reaction was painted across her forehead, not a hint of expression. Nurse Redheart was perplexed. However, before she could announce the following test, Rainbow raised her voice.
"What's colorblindness?"
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"WHAT'S COLORBLINDNESS!"
How she didn't know, Nurse Redheart could not comprehend: even if her life depended on it. One of the most basic concepts in the book, one that fillies ten years younger than her understand, yet she hadn't the slightest clue. All hope is lost, she said to herself. This is a lost cause.
"I mean, ahem, I apologize. I only overreacted because it really is a topic you should've learned in your early educational years. Did you not learn this as a filly?"
"Pssh, no," replied Rainbow Dash. "Back in my day, the only thing we studied was why Pegasi have a need for speed! Well, and all the exciting classes necessary for performing the responsibilities of a pegasi; we've got art, weather science, physical education, and animal science. That's about it."
"Right," remembered Redheart. " Cloudsdale's educational committee only updated their educational system five years ago, because they assumed pegasi had no real need to be informed on topics that would not influence their profession in adulthood." A thought quickly entered her cranium. "Wait, did you say art?"
"Um, yeah, did you not hear me the first time around?" Retorted Rainbow angrily.
"I was kinda focused on the fact that you have not a clue what colorblindness is."
"Speaking of which, you haven't answered my question about that!" She said demandingly.
"I'm the doctor, I'll tell you in a second if you can utilize a bit of patience." grunted Redheart. Why am I doing this to myself? she questioned herself. Patients like this made her want to snap her leg off and beat the patient to death with that leg. She took a deep breath. That would be violent she thought. "As I was saying, we were on the topic of art. I mean, it was an art class. In art, they inform you about all the colors consisted in the rainbow, in order for you to excel in illustrating accurate pictures. Clearly, since you are colorblind, the colors that you used were incorrect. I find it impossible to think that your teachers did not sense any possible defect in your sight if your colors were different from that of everybody else."
"Please," argued Rainbow. "At the school I went to, the art class was an easy A. They didn't pay a single molecule of attention on what you drew on your piece of paper; as long as something was there, you got a stamp. Simple as that. At least when you were a filly, that is. Art class seemed to complicate as the years progressed, and it had absolutely nothing to do with colors. You actually had to know how to draw. In that moment, I was like, nope, nope, nope, not doing this, so I dropped out of art and filled up the gap with ISPE for flying. And people wonder how I was this good. I got plenty of practice time to help me advance in skill, obviously."
"Ok, I guess that makes sense, but..."
"But what?"
Nurse Redheart facehoofed. " It's just because, I don't know, YOU ARE A RAINBOW PONY!"
"I know I'm a rainbow pony, Redheart, I'm not an idiot," responded Rainbow. "In fact, despite what your stupid tests say, even if they are 100% proven and have applied to most people, it, well, doesn't mean anything! I know exactly what colors are in my mane.."
"Thank god, for a second I thought I was going to have to take another..."
"THEY ARE THE COLORS OF DARING DO!"
"... I, beg your pardon?"
"Oh, don't be silly, it's clear to me that the colors of our manes are the same," announced Rainbow. "Besides, why else would everybody in Ponyville tell me that I look exactly like the mare on the cover? Our colors are the only thing that I can see that are similar."
"Rainbow, the only difference between you and Daring Do are your colors," objected Nurse Redheart. She rolled her eyes. Without giving it a second thought, he trotted over to a corner lined with an array of complex machinery, consisting of tools of all shapes and sizes unfamiliar to Rainbow. "Now, Miss Rainbow Dash, you need to cooperate with me for the next few minutes. We need to conduct several more tests."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Twilight began to feel impatient. She had been slouched in an uncomfortable seat for near 45 minutes, without receiving any sufficient results, if any. She started to worry. What was taking Rainbow Dash so long? Is there a major issue at play? She wanted to stay calm and controlled, but she couldn't expel her nervous sweating and anxious twisting of her hind legs into tight, flexible knots. She was on the verge of losing it. She needed something, anything to do that would keep her mind off of the situation at hand.
Five minutes passed. The clock on the wall seemed to tick menacingly, louder and louder as it advanced past each inch-sized gap between lines. The sound seemed to pierce her eardrums at a magnified vibration, as if the clock itself was taunting her, saying, "Hey, another minute has passed, one that you will never get back!" There came a time where she almost considered ripping it off the wall, smashing it into pieces as she threw it on the floor. But she was mature. She was calm. She was controlled. At least for a while. She made many attempts to pass the the time; once she went through a stack of magazines without overlooking anything of interest. She re-memorized the Periodic Table of Elements that had been plastered on the wall above the entrance door. No luck. Deciding that her best option was to go home and collect a book to read, she lifted from her seat, and began to amble towards the door. However, she heard a piercing announcement.
"Twilight Sparkle, please come to the front desk. Immediately."
Twilight wasted no time in working her way through the minor crowd , trying to reach the pony at the front desk. She was almost certain that she would receive news regarding Rainbow Dash, as there really wasn't any other relevant explanation. She approached the mare, who was flipping through a wall adorned with medical files. Upon pulling one out, Twilight realized that the corner of the file was labeled with Rainbow Dash's initials.
She spoke up. "Um, I'm guessing this is regarding my friend?"
The mare seated behind the table reflexively turned around, as if she had already rehearsed how she would respond. "Oh, trust me Twilight, if you thought that Rainbow Dash being one of the best fliers in Equestria was ironic when she crashes 24/7, hold on to your hats. The irony has hit a whole new level here." She laughed hysterically, like a mad mare who had an overdose of Pinkie Pie's cupcakes, and was now sugar high. Obviously whatever diagnosis ailed Rainbow was something extremely out-of the-ordinary, but for some reason that didn't seem to matter anymore. She only knew one thing.
That pony needed to be put it a mental hospital if her laughter could break the sound barrier like it just did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Twilight felt a definite feeling of deja-vu as she was re-aquainted with with the bland atmosphere of the hospital hallways. She was accompanied this time by the desk-mare, Tracie was her name, who seemed to have a map of the building taped to the back of her cerebrum. She found an efficient route to room #345 without even second guessing her pathways that she followed, and Twilight could only follow blindly. Sure, she was usually an expert when it came to memorization, but every single hallway was identical to the next; there was no way she could take photographic memory of the buildup of the building.
When the duo arrived at the door, the energy inside Nurse Redheart's office was high in tension. Though Rainbow looked virtually unalarmed, Redheart's nerves were on a high rise. One second she was scribbling down notes at a feverish pace, the next galloping frantically across the room to fax information. Her mind was fully focused on whatever task it was that she was performing, as it took the mare five minutes to notice that Twilight and Tracy had arrived.
Nurse Redheart dropped all of her supplies and made for the door. "Oh, thank celestia you're here! I cannot stand one more second alone in this room with, her."
"What has Rainbow Dash done to you?" Asked Twilight, seeking some sort of answer after all the uncertainty.
"Things you wouldn''t BELIEVE!" she screeched. "She is uncooperative, repulsive, makes awful puns..."
"Oh please, my puns are the bomb.com!" Contradicted Rainbow. "Hey, why was the painter hospitalized?"
"I don't know, why?"
"HE HAD TOO MANY STROKES!"
*ba dum tss*
"..."
"..."
"..."
"No."
"OH COME ON!" She yelled, "CAN'T ANYONE APPRECIATE A GOOD PUN?"
"That was a bad pun, Rainbow, stop trying."
"Ugh, fine."
"On another note," Nurse Redheart broke the silence. "Tracie, I need your help, I cannot take this anyone!"
"Redheart, is there something..."
"Yes, Tracie, something is terribly wrong," She interrupted. " I tested her with everything; I've reviewed her with both Ishihara and Pseudoisochromatic plates, at least five times I have repeated the exercise. I even went to the extent of whipping out our most complex anomaloscope, with no positive results. She can't match colors, she is even deficient in differentiating shades! I didn't want to be the one to make this declaration, but there is no doubt in my mind that Rainbow Dash, is, in fact, colorblind."
At those last words, Twilight's eyeballs became paralyzed, and her hooves went numb. "Wait, WHAT?!" she chirped.
Somehow Nurse Redheart did not expect such a response. "Tracie, I thought you told Twilight this downstairs!" she questioned.
"Don't yell at me!" Tracie deflected. "I was only trying to build up suspense so that this announcement at the climax would be dramatic."
"The cli-what?" rebutted Rainbow Dash, finally throwing her voice into the conversation.
A clear expression of disbelief engulfed Twilight's face. "How do you not know what a climax is, Rainbow Dash? They should've taught you that in school." Criticized Twilight.
"They should've taught her a lot in school, like what colorblindness is." Claimed Nurse Redheart. " But THEY DIDN'T! Cursed Cloudsdale educational systems..."
Her attention quickly shifted from Rainbow Dash to Redheart. "I beg your pardon, I happen to know many collegues from Cloudsdale that were Valevictorians at Celestia's School for Gifted Pegasi."
"Don't start a cat fight, because the educational level of pegasi isn't our number one concern right know," exclaimed Tracie. "What is is the fact that Rainbow Dash here is colorblind. Now, Redheart, you can't just claim that Rainbow Dash has color defects and not explain to me what type. Explain to me what you know or are assuming is her specific type."
"I'm actually not sure, I haven't had a second to make calculations or inferences," responded Nurse Redheart. "However, when her visit first began, she was unable to differentiate the colors of blue and yellow."
"Hmm, that's strange, as far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as being unable to differentiate those two colors.." said Twilight. She immediately buried herself in thought, trying to find an explanation to the perplexing predicament.
All of the sudden, a rambunctious ruckus was heard outside, alongside the ironically steady pulse of hooves pounding against the tile hallway floor. Then, out of nowhere, the sound that seemed distant approached the door at a rapid pace. The sound was suddenly matched with a figure, one that looked way to bright to match the solemn feeling of the situation at hand.
"HEY TWILIGHT!"
It was Pinkie Pie.
The mare scuttled clumsily into the room, tripping over objects that had been placed on the floor as she slowly but spontaneously trampled through them. She wore a white nurses outfit, similar to that of Nurse Redheart's, except it has three inflated balloons replacing the medical symbol on her hat. "Sorry for coming in on such short notice! I couldn't help but overhear from the bottom floor that Twilight was confused about something! When that happens, I simply can't miss out. Once and a lifetime opportunity, if I do say so myself."
"Pinkie Pie, don't you have somewhere to be? Somewhere that you have been assigned at this hour?" Asked Tracie, a look of annoyance characterizing her expression. "You work here to work, not invade our privacy."
"Well, I did have somewhere to be," Pinkie croaked. "I was assigned to room #189, to do a kidney surgery. NO clue how I got that job. I had no idea what I was doing! I just picked up a pointy thingy and took it out. The kidney sure is a weird organ; four chambers, really muscular and sensitive too! It was connected to a bunch of red tubes, I think they were medical tubes, so I cut them off! I figured my job was done, so I've been wandering the hallway for fifteen minutes!"
Everybody in the room suddenly tensed up. "You did, WHAT?" Yelled Nurse Redheart.
"Relax, I gave the patient candy!"
"This is bad," Thought Tracie. She quickly recollected her thoughts. "No matter. We have bigger issues to discuss. Well, stranger ones would fit the term better. You see, Rainbow Dash here is colorblind."
"Well that's certainly ironic."
"Yes, clearly," Twilight answered. A light bulb went off in her head, at the sight of Pinkie's customized attire. "Nurse Redheart," she began, "Pinkie's customized hat has her Cutie mark stitched onto it. For me and you, the colors are obviously blue and yellow. Am I wrong?
"No, not at all," was her response.
"Well," she claimed, "If you say that Rainbow cannot differentiate between those two colors, than I really do need to see for myself." She tore the hat off of Pinkie's wide head, and quickly traveled over to a chair at which Rainbow sat ignorantly. "Rainbow Dash, this image is of Pinkie Pie's cutie mark. You see it most everyday. What colors come to mind?"
Rainbow Dash squinted her eyes in focus and concentration, processing the two colors before her in her mind. What were they? All she saw was a color of blandness and staleness. She shook her head, as if she was overcomplicating things. "I, sincerely don't know."
Twilight's expression flipped to utter misunderstanding. "But, I thought that before you said that these colors looked red when nurse Redheart asked you to identify red objects scattered about the room."
"Well, I don't know, everything pretty much looks the same, so I just assumed by process of elimination that everything I saw was red." Justified Rainbow.
Twilight seemed confused. "That's peculiar," she thought. "I don't know of any equine colorblindness classifications that make a pony unable to differentiate blue from yellow."
"Twilight..." Pinkie smirked, as if Twilight was missing something blaintly obvious.
"Um, am I missing something?"
"Of course you're missing something!" responded Pinkie. "No human colorblindness cannot differentiate between blue and yellow! Since we horses have dichromatic vision, and have two different types of cones, our colorblindness is an entirely different story! Though, it is kinda similar to a human's trichromic vision, you can't compare them silly filly!"
"Right, I'm mixing up my knowledge of human colorblindness with that of ponies," Twilight corrected herself. "Wait..." She thought. "How do you know about human colorblindness? The only way to the human world is through the portal in the crystal empire, and you didn't travel through with me when I had to retrieve my crown!"
"Hehe..... that's confidential information...." Pinkie backed away.
"Pinkie, is there something you want to tell us?" Asked Rainbow Dash.
"Um, uh, I have somewhere to be!" She shouted. "I, uh, have to check up on the patients!" WIthout a second to spare, she sprinted out the door and banged her hooves on the elevator. When it finally arrived on the floor, she quickly slipped into the compartment and feverishly clicked the button labeled #1 until the door finally closed.
"That was... odd," Thought Tracie.
"Well, it's just Pinkie, you get used to it after a while," reassured Rainbow.
Twilight allowed the party to share their experiences with Pinkie while she searched vigorously for Nurse Redheart's notes from the previous hour. She found them scattered on the floor, dirty and tattered from Pinkie's significant entrance. She bent over to pick them up with her teeth, and them brought them over to Redheart's mahogany desk, where she studied the material for five minutes before interrupting her friend's consistent complaints about Pinkie Pie.
"Ok, I've taken a glance at all of Nurse Redheart's notes, and my best guess as far as the yellow-blue color similarity goes is that she is missing cones that reflect yellow/blue color. Since those are the two major cone colonies in equine eyes, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case. however, your notes also depict deficiencies of pretty much all colors present in the spectrum, so there is a possibility that I am missing a figure somewhere."
"Do you think that she has full color blindness of each and every color?" Questioned Nurse Redheart. "It's an assumption I would certainly make."
"I did consider that as a possibility, which led me to my second theory; she has less rods than she should, so shades mesh together enough for her to call them the same color." Explained Twilight.
"I'll take that into consideration," Nurse Redheart seemed to have progressively eased herself out of confusion, finally retaining her professional composure. "I'm going to go ahead and fax our conclusions to both town hall and addresses of dwellings associated with Rainbow Dash. Today has certainly been an odd day for the medical field, and I'm sure they'll want to know. You ponies will be released in a couple minutes. Sorry for the delay."
"No need to apologize."
Somehow, in all the activity, Rainbow Dash grew oblivious to a much-needed question that was lurking on the back of her skull for quite some time now. So many developments had been discovered, yet throughout it she never had a chance to get the question answered after asking it.
"Twilight?"
"Yes, Rainbow?"
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"What's colorblindness?"