There's a nurse whose job is to come into the room once every hour or so and make everypony here more miserable. I've seen him five times now. Each time he opens the special no-ponies-allowed door my head snaps towards him before my brain even catches up to it, and I'm dimly aware that the other waiting ponies do the same thing, but mostly I'm focused on the nurse's face. I search, with a growing sense of futility, for an expression upon it. Anything. Any sign of certainty. I wouldn't mind if he came through the door crying his eyes out, screaming, "she's dead! Oh gods, oh gods she's dead!" I honestly think I'd prefer that to his relentlessly vacant eyes, his flatline mouth. Like clockwork, he scans the room, makes the barest of eye contact with each of us, mutters something like, "no news yet, folks, hang in there," and leaves.
Last time was slightly different. Last time he reminded us that there's a coffee machine on the floor below us. I didn't see anything in his eyes, but I became aware of the dark lines forming beneath them.
There's a couple sitting in the corner, by the pot plant, who do not talk to me or to each other. I think we're too pre-occupied by our own internal monologues to say anything to each other. They came in not long ago, huddled together. There are saddlebags at their feet, the kind with way too many pockets. I imagine they were camping in the outskirts of town, and something happened. Not a good something. There were probably lots of very good somethings happening to them consecutively and they would've thought that everything was good, this is a good world where somethings are to be relished and celebrated, and then one little bad something sneaks its way into the procession right as they're getting comfortable, and now they're here, with me, waiting, in this entirely somethingless room.
At one point it occurred to me how many great somethings must be happening outside of this room. I tried to zoom out and put things into a bizarre and probably unhelpful perspective: I am Here; going ten, twenty metres in one direction, we hit Cirrus St, and ponies downing late-night drinks and desserts in its quaint bars and modern cafés; jump again, we're in a block of residences, there are families sleeping soundly, and foals staying up past their bedtimes reading under their blankets by flickering candlelight, and couples wrapping hooves around each other and loving each other thoroughly and carelessly. And I am Here; and going ten, twenty metres in the opposite direction, there is sickness, and uncertainty, and broken bones, and doctors doing the Best They Can.
Is there an official body that can measure the Best that doctors Can do? Is there a universal standard?
I haven't told the girls. I don't want them to worry a second longer than they have to. I imagined them getting to the Cloudsdale Flats in the dead of night, and I'd have to fly down and cast a cloud-walking spell for them, and I am in no state to be casting complex spells… No, they can all get a good night's sleep tonight. I'll bear the brunt of the worrying. I'm not trying to martyr myself or anything - I'm prepared for it, more than anypony else. This is my specialty.
Ah. I was wrong. The nurse's job is not to make everypony miserable. It's to make me miserable. He makes his sixth entrance and doesn't even look at me. He walks straight over to the camper couple. They exchange quiet words that I can't distinguish from each other, but I can hear the hope coming through in the tone of their voices. When this is all over, I will try to remember to be happy for them. The nurse leads them out another door, towards the eastern wing. He meets my presumably frantic gaze as he passes me, and shakes his head, almost imperceptibly.
Useless as he's been so far, I'm thankful for his routine. It's a metric, a subdivision: imagine waiting for however many hours the surgery took, in silence, indefinite!; no, when I sit in that waiting room I'm waiting for his next little checkpoint, no more than an hour each time. It's a lot more manageable.
I get a coffee from the machine downstairs. In truth, I have always loved hospitals - sanctums of science, a place of learning and healing, of cause and effect. Hospitals remind us that everything is an equation; we are all sums. I used to walk through their sterile white corridors and feel reassured by that. Right now I feel like most ponies feel about hospitals. The lights are dimmed at night and everything looks like an old photograph of itself. Nopony I pass in the halls, patient or staff, is smiling.
When was the last time I told her I loved her? I've been asking myself for the last… I don't even know. I'm so busy asking the question I won't even let myself answer it. I think it's safe to assume it was pretty recently but my brain isn't allocating any resources to memory recall and it's mistaking that for failure to recall and now I can't hold back this guilt, this completely unnecessary guilt. I told her before the run-through, right? I kissed her and I said something and she smiled and said "duh" and flew over to the rest of the Wonderbolts… I walk up one too many flights of stairs and end up in the pediatrics ward. It's eerily quiet. The walls are decorated with flowers and smiles and childish pleasantries, but the low lighting drains the smiles of their warmth, and the flowers seem to wilt under the weight of darkness. I go back downstairs.
She's not going to die. Formal diagnoses aside - as they stretchered her in, she came back to consciousness for long enough to tell the doctors how lucky they were to be treating the Rainbow Dash before the no-ponies-allowed door swung shut behind them. There's no way Death would challenge such unabashed chutzpah. I'm not worried about the dying. I'm worried about the waiting. I'm worried about the visitation hours, and the weeks turning into months, and the smile slowly slipping from her lips, and the damage that weeks and months may not fix.
I jolt upright in my seat, blinking. Eugh. I'm starting to lose my sense of history. There's a wall of fog between this exact moment and the rest of my life. How long have I been sitting here? How long ago did I ask that? I need more coffee. No, I don't. I need sleep. I need to tell her I love her and sleep for a week.
An interval of time passes (probably). The nurse makes his xth appearance, and he looks right at me and says, "Ms Sparkle" with the most practiced, expressionless timbre. I stand and give a little nod. "Ms Dash is awake. The doctors are still with her for the moment but you should be able to see her soon. She, uh." He hesitates - this is the first sign of life I've seen out of him. "She would like to tell you, 'don't worry about me… egghead,'" he finishes slowly, pursing his lips.
Of course she would. "And what do the doctors say?"
His mouth returns to its equilibrium. "Just a little longer, Ms Sparkle," he recites, retreating through his special door.
Fluttershy tried teaching me to meditate once. We trekked out to one of her favourite picnic spots, a clearing to the west of Ponyville where there was nothing but bronzed grass and a gentle Spring wind, and lay down on a rug and closed our eyes. "Think about the wind," she whispered. "Feel it blowing over you. Try to forget everything else. Um, except my voice, I mean. OK? Pinpoint somewhere - let's start with your hooves. Focus on the wind blowing over your hooves. Try to forget the rest of your body for now…" And so on, and on and on. Naturally, I started thinking about pressure systems, then atmospheric composition, then particle pedesis, and soon I had forgotten all about Fluttershy. My mind buzzed with ideas and questions - I came so very close to running back to the library and just leaving her there, breathing lightly, smiling absently at nothing.
I'm not going to disappoint myself by trying again now. I keep waiting. I think about the physics of the accident - her top speed (estimated), the angle of incidence, the trajectory of debris - I think about how much worse it could have been. I think about Rainbow Dash. I think about how stupid she is, and how incredible, and brave. I think about how much I love her; I try to find a great way to quantify it. Something poetic but also very immediate. I think about how, when they finally let me see her, I'm going to walk into that room and tell her, Rainbow Dash, I love you so much I—
"Ms Sparkle," an unfamiliar voice says. The nurse is back, but there's a doctor by his side whose expression, I perceive, is one of reserved self-satisfaction. "The operation was a success. Rainbow Dash is going to be just fine."
I've waited this long, I can wait a moment longer. "What does fine mean, exactly?"
The doctor clears his throat. "It means that she's in no position to fly any day soon, of course. We ceased the internal bleeding but she still has three broken bones and a good deal more stitches. She'll need bedrest, and plenty of it. I'll have her under observation here for maybe four weeks, and it'll take at least another four to heal proper - but, if she takes it easy, there'll be no lasting damage. Ms Dash will be on her wings again in time for the new year."
I'll need to process all this properly after my week of sleeping, but for now, I smile and say thank you, and can I see her now?
He takes me to a small private room at the end of the eastern wing, and I see her for the first time in I-don't-even-know-any-more hours. Her broken foreleg is held up in a stirrup, her whole body is bruised and haphazardly bandaged, her mane is a disaster. And still it takes all of my resolve not to smother her with kisses. Love is weird.
I call her name gently, and she tilts her head ever so slowly towards me. Her eyes are kind of unfocused but I can see that she recognises me. "Still here," she mumbles. I'm not sure which of us she's talking about.
I nuzzle her forehead, carefully, avoiding the bandages. "Hey," I whisper, "I love you, Rainbow. I love you so much I—" and I choke up. Damnit all, I choke up right at the finish line.
Rainbow closes her eyes. "So much…?" she croaks. I laugh as I blink back my tears, and I stroke her mane and softly shhh her as she drifts off into painkiller sleep. She can wait to hear the rest of it.