The first thing I remember is blinding light in my eyes and a headache so intense that I thought my head was being crushed. Groaning, my body was stiff and ached as I swatted weakly at the space above my face and attempted to roll away from the light.
My eyes flitted open and darted frantically about the room to take in its contents consisting of sterile white walls, nondescript furniture, drab blinds, and an opened privacy curtain. I was in my bedroom... no, something wasn't right. Things were, different. Across the room, I saw another bed in which someone lay unconscious, though my delirium, I half dreamed, half hallucinated that I was looking down upon myself from outside as I looked at the other patient. Where am I? My head throbbed with pain as I racked my memory for the answers.
I lay motionless, not understanding my surroundings for a long time, then drifted off again. In what felt like seconds, the sun had moved to a different spot and no longer shone on me. I felt like time had passed, but I couldn't explain why. Where am I? I hazily thought, half remembering having thought those words several times before.
There was the smell of harsh chemicals. I knew that smell. It was from... I couldn't remember, but I knew that smell.
I felt dull in the head -nebulous- as if I were half lucid in a fever dream. Am I sick? The thought crossed my mind more in feeling than in words. I was weak and tired, so it made sense, but something else was off. I hurt and felt delirious, or was I? Wasn't my mind as clear as it always was?
No, I don't... I'm not... thinking straight. Consistent thought eluded me, but I was clear enough to realize something was wrong. So, sleepy, I felt my eyelids begin to droop. Tired... just a little... sleep. My eyes closed, yet, before I fully drifted away, I startled awake with a single thought, I don't know where I am.
I opened my eyes again and looked at the whitewashed wall across from me and rolled my head to the side, only to have my entire skull erupt with pain with the slightest movement. I sucked in a ragged breath and groaned as the hurting subsided. With the breath came a familiar scent which summoned images of sick and hurt ponies.
I'm in a hospital. That made sense. Hospitals were for hurt ponies and I was hurting.
But who am I? My mind clouded, it took a moment for a name to come. I'm, Castor Star, I blearily thought as through the haze, fighting desperately against the overwhelming urge to fall asleep.
Slowly I came to remember other things about myself: my date of birth, a favorite childhood memory, the faces of my family and friends. But why was I here? I recalled every last memory my mind could grasp, but my most recent recollection was sitting with my friends having a picnic in a meadow, then the very next thing I could remember was awakening here a few minutes ago.
Using my magical senses, clairvoyance as they are called, I tried to see my surrounding room, yet I felt blindfolded because I could see nothing. My headache worsened immediately after trying, and I regretted attempting to do anything; though, the pain seemed to awaken me a little more from my stupor.
I must be hurt badly, I concluded after some difficulty. What's happened to me? Looking around for a nurse or doctor that could tell me, each time I moved my head, the world tipped on its side and I was struck with intense dizziness and even more pain.
I sighed and let the back of my head press firmly into the pillow, mulling over the feeling of bandages wrapped around my head. Feeling sick from my reeling balance and disturbed to be lying there thinking about what injuries I might have, I shifted my attention to the machinery on my left which hummed and beeped quietly to record my pulse. I wasn't quite sure how long I spent motionless watching the glowing crystals and the magical displays they controlled, but the entire mechanism made me feel very mortal – something I was not too fond to contemplate upon.
As my faculties returned, I recalled that these systems are usually linked to a monitor in the nurses' station to give them a live feed of the patients. Lifting the sheets and looking down my body, I saw a strip of thick bandages wrapped around my diaphragm and stomach. On my chest I saw pads with wires glued to square swatches of shaved skin. Somewhere on or near the bed, I supposed, there was a little button to call a nurse, but, keeping in mind that I felt like vomiting last time I tilted my head in the slightest, I didn't feel like looking for it.
Focusing on the electrodes adhered to my chest, I tried to magically pull them off only to find my headache worsened to the point of living agony. My vision began to tingle with the subtle pulses of black and white that forewarned of a terrible migraine as spots quickly started dancing in front of my eyes. Grunting, I was forced to stop the spell. In response, most of the discomfort subsided, but some remained.
Perturbed that I couldn't focus my magic, I was also concerned that I could not really sense the wires or even the large magical device next to me. There typically isn't that much detectable magical output for machines like the monitor, but being this close I should have easily gotten the impression that there was magic in it. In fact, the impression I had gotten earlier from clairvoyance was the same: it felt as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over my magical senses, blinding them like how a burlap bag over one's head blinds their sight. There was just... nothing.
I reached out with a hoof and plucked the pads off my chest by the wires and the machinery began screeching irritatingly, which only agitated my hangover like state. It was at that moment I reconsidered how good my idea was, especially because the high pitched tone was very obnoxious.
Shorty, two nurses rushed, glancing over to me in bed where my shaky hoof held up the wires. “Cou-” my weak voice cracked and I coughed to clear it. “Couldn't find the button to call you.”
Did I really sound as feeble as I thought I just did?
“The button's right over here if you need it,” the nurse informed softly and pointed to the foreleg-rest of the bed where a bright red square button with a white cross resided. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got kicked in the head. What happened to me?”
“I am going to check your vitals first and ask you a few questions.” The nurse looked over to a clipboard which was on the wall next to my bed. “Doctor Apple will inform you of your circumstances when she gets here.”
“Okay.” I stared blankly at the drab, white wall in front of me. It was decorated with the occasional health poster, plastered up as if only an afterthought when someone noticed there was literally nothing else on that particular wall. The closest one seemed, in my opinion, to be a typical, disappointingly layman's description of the sneezing process and how to contain germs. But all that was only my opinion as I squinted to read the incomprehensibly blurred text with my nearsighted vision.
There was a series of truesight spells that I commonly used to enhance my natural clairvoyance and, as I could see absolutely nothing with my magical senses, I closed my eyes to begin forming a spell to hopefully brighten my senses up a bit. Typically, when casting a spell such as this particular truesight spell, the ten components slot together like blocks in a puzzle cube. Laying in the hospital bed, I suddenly found myself in extraordinary discomfort the moment I attempted to form the first of the ten 'puzzle blocks'. I jerked back from the pain and immediately stopped forming the block, causing the pain to subside almost as quickly.
I was... alarmed, but because the pain wasn't persistent, I thought that maybe, just maybe I had malformed the building block, so I tried again with another.
The same thing happened, except the pain I had caused hung around longer.
Frustrated and now sustaining an even greater headache, I watched the nurse out of the corner of my eye. Her name tag read Cross. I giggled, finding it a fitting name that played well into the stereotype of nurses with terrible bedside manners.
Nurse Cross turned a dial, picked up a pen in her mouth, and scribbled something on a clipboard mounted on the vital monitor. She turned the dial another increment to show the last thirty minutes, and I began to drift off as she scribbled more messy writing onto the clipboard. When I was well along the way to being asleep, she turned to me and nudged my shoulder. “Castor, do you feel like answering a few questions?”
“Wha? Where... where am I?”
“You're in the hospital, Castor.”
“Oh... what happened to me?”
“You had a bad head injury and have been in a coma,” she answered, then picked up the clipboard. “Now I'm going to ask some questions. You try to remember as best you can and tell me the answeres.” She looked down to her clipboard and checked a box with every answer I gave. "What is your name?”
“Castor Star.”
“Place and Date of birth?”
“Canterlot. May 5th, 990.”
“Who are Gazing Star and Meniscus and what is your relation to them?”
“They are my parents and I am their daughter.”
“Where did you attend school?”
“Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.”
“What do you do for a living now?”
“I work as a spellwrite and composer at the Canterlot Institute of Magic.”
“What is today's date?”
“It's... it is... I don't know. How long have I been unconscious?”
“Just tell the last day you remember being awake.”
I strained for a few moments. “I think... it was in May?”
“Okay.” Nurse Cross put the clipboard on the table next to my bed while I, motion sick and in much pain, stared blankly at the ceiling wishing I would just puke already and feel better. “What happened to me?”
“Castor,” Nurse Cross replied. “You got kicked in the head and... there was significant damage.”
My stomach hollowed. “W-what? H-h-how much damage?”
“It was very significant.”
“How significant?”
Nurse Cross shook her head, “The doctor will be in shortly to tell you.”
“Please, tell me what happened.”
“The doctor is just a few minutes away. You will have to wait until she arrives.”
“I don't want...” I tapered off, being too tired and miserable to do fight her anymore, “Okay.”
Thinking about what had happened to me, my skin crawled with a cold, sick feeling and my heart fluttered. It was in the following minutes while I unavailingly tried to ignore this and the crippling pain in my head that an olive green Pegasus, eyes sleepless with bags underneath them, stepped into the room carrying a tray holding enough filled coffee cups to cause lifelong insomnia. We made eye contact at roughly the same time and he froze for a split second before hastily setting the tray onto a table and rushing to my side.
“You're awake!” Cloud Mason exclaimed.
“Yeah... This headache is kinda making me wish I wasn't...” I weakly rubbed the temple of my head. “Can't seem to use magic for some reason...”
The expression on my friend's face flushed through several stages, going from confusion to concern to a very remorseful look that made me go cold. “You don't know yet, do you?”
“Know what?” I asked, my voice cracking with fear. “Mason, what don't I know?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek and looked away from me. “I need to go tell your parents that you are awake. They should be the ones to tell you.”
“Tell me what? Cloud Mason!” I yelled as loudly as my weak body and throbbing head could muster. My friend's short tail disappeared through the door and he was gone, leaving me alone with Nurse Cross.
I choked on the taste of bile as I clamped my jaw shut against the rising fear in my chest. Mason acted strangely, like he was tiphooving around something so blatantly obvious that I should have already figured it out. The way he looked at me – it made me go cold to think about.
A sob escaped my tightly clenched jaw as tears rolled down my cheek. What's wrong with me? Thoughts running away from me, so many 'what ifs' flashed through my mind in the next few minutes that by the time Doctor Apple walked in, I was a nervous wreck.
“Hello Castor,” a mellow voice said as its owner, a cream colored mare, walked into the room. “I'm Doctor Apple. I've been helping to take care of you these past few days.”
“H-hello.” I fortified myself as much as I could while I looked over to the mare who had just entered the room.
“You have been in a coma for about four days now, but you've made it past the worst of it and I am certain you are only going to get better from here.” The mare, redheaded and with a gentle southern draw, smiled down at me as she spoke the end of her last sentence, but she paused and her face changed to a somber expression. “I saw your parents coming down the hall behind me, Castor, and I am afraid that there are some very unfortunate things we must tell you.”
I swallowed a lump that was working up my throat and, my mouth dry, I responded with a quiet, “Oh.” Within only a few seconds, my mother and father tensely entered and pushed passed the doctor.
“Castor, I am so glad you are okay!” my mother, named Meniscus but known as Minscy, exclaimed leaning across me and gently embracing me in a hug while my father, Gazing Star, gently put his hoof atop mine. I simply lay mute in too much shock to respond properly to what was happening.
“We were so worried... I... I just couldn't think straight.” Dad choked up, leaning in and hugging me after Mom had let go.
I looked from my Dad, Mom, to Doctor Apple, “What happened to me? I... I don't remember...”
Mom and Dad turned to Doctor Apple who closed her eyes and nodded back to them. Turning to me, she in a factual tone said, “You were struck forcefully in the head when one of your friends slipped while trying to buck a tree you were sitting next to. By all accounts, it seems as if you were trying to stop him from doing it before you had gotten out of the way. He kicked but missed the tree,” Doctor Apple looked me dead in the eyes, “The kick landed squarely on your forehead, shattering your skull and giving you a severe concussion. Furthermore, he impaled his leg on your horn and-”
There was a deathly pause, “Castor, there is no easy way to say this, so I will be blunt. Your horn was partially torn free from the surrounding tissue. There was no way to save it.”
The words knocked the wind out of me as if I had been thrown to the ground by a griffon. Eyes wide in terror, I reached up and groped clumsily for my horn which was no longer on my head. Passing over bandages and shaved mane, the once familiar protrusion was gone – simply gone.
There is no way this is real, my mind buzzed in terror.
This was impossible.
Outright impossible!
It must be a nightmare, I concluded as my heart pounded in my ears. This can't happen to me! Yet as I stared wide eyed at nothing, the reality was inescapable. Adrenaline coursing through my veins, I frantically tried to prop myself into a sitting position as I laid a hoof across my chest and began to hyperventilate. I felt a hoof on my shoulder and, looking at Doctor Apple, I saw her mouth move and was dimly aware that she was saying something, but the words were indecipherable as my lungs uncontrollably gulped air and my eyes flitted about the room looking for an escape from this unimaginable nightmare.
“B-b-but.. but it isn't... I mean...” I stammered.
“Shhh... shhhh.” Mom tried to calm me, leaning in and gently rubbing my back. “It's okay. It's okay.” Dad embraced us both as my mind reeled madly.
Eyes tearless, mind racing, I was too shocked to cry, though that would come shortly. “I-I-I'm not able to use magic?”
“No.” Doctor Apple shook her head. “And there is nothing known to modern medicine which will ever be able to change that.”
I swallowed despite my mouth being dry. Mom leaned in, kissed my cheek, and gently stroked that of my hair which had not been shaved off in surgery. “It's okay dear, it's okay.”
“I know how much magic means to you, but you are very smart. I know you can find other things that will mean just as much,” Dad said, but how could he think such a thing? Magic was my life! Magic was Everything I knew!
Doctor Apple took this moment to step away and start writing on the same clipboard Nurse Cross had been using. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of one of my friends, Ivy, staring in from the door frame at me. She looked little better than my parents: eyes droopy, hair frazzled and unkempt, creating an altogether ragged appearance about her. “Ivy...” I called to her weakly.
Mom heard me, turned to the door, and waved my friend in. “She's awake.”
Ivy, hearing this, briskly entered the room and hesitantly asked, “How is she doing?”
Mom gave her a sad look while I, independent of the exchange, moaned, “T-this isn't real... it can't be real,”
“It is real, Castor.” Dad gently squeezed my hoof. “I'm so sorry, but it is.”
No. It isn't, it can't. I'm dreaming.
“I was there when it happened, I was so scared for you.” My friend shuddered as she came to the bedside. “I could have never in my worst nightmare have imagined seeing you like that. But I am so glad that you are awake and okay.”
Seeing the pain in my friend's eyes, then that in my parent's expressions, reality began to dawn upon me. “I'm not okay... am I?” The burning in my throat worsened as I spoke those words; I was on the verge of crying harder than I had ever cried before.
“You're awake and talking to us. That's more than we had just a few minutes ago, and I'm so thankful to see life in you again.” Mom squeezed my hoof.
Doctor Apple stepped behind Ivy and motioned for her to move aside so she could move to my bedside. “You are injured very badly, but you have made it past the worst parts. Though you have a long recovery ahead of you, it is very doable and I can assure you that you will recover.” As she spoke those words, my hoof returned to my forehead for confirmation that I had lost my horn, though I almost could not bring myself to feel it again. It felt so wrong when my hoof passed through where my horn should be and I very gently patted the bandages on my head.
“I am sorry, but it's gone, Castor.” Doctor Apple gently reached out and pulled my hoof away. “You don't need to be touching the wound; it hasn't healed yet.”
“I-I've lost my horn.” My eyes became blurred from tears as my injury was becoming progressively realized and the numbness of the sudden shock began to fade away. I looked in desperation to Doctor Apple. “Horns grow! It'll grow back, won't it!?!”
She stoically shook her head 'no'.
But, that means... “M-m-my magic?”
Another stoic shake of the head.
A broken sob escaped my mouth as tears came rolling down my cheeks in torrents. Within moments, the sobbing became overwhelming as I broke into a full cry. Dimly, I could hear the words of comfort of my parents and Ivy, but the only firm connection to the world outside of my broken wailing was the comfort of my mother's foreleg wrapped around my shoulders.
As I cried, my head throbbed violently because not even the slightest snivel managed to escape my mouth without irritating my injury. I whimpered with each tear while my mom continued to stroke my hair whispering to me that everything was okay.
But I knew it wasn't going to be okay. I had lost everything I had spent my life working towards.
What good is a mage who can't cast magic? The thought elicited an especially strong wail to break from my mouth. I felt Mom's foreleg hug me a little bit harder. “Oh Castor. My dear sweet Castor.”
I cried for a long, long time, during which Doctor Apple and the nurse had stepped from the room. Mom, Dad, Ivy, and Cloud Mason remained behind at my bedside. Mom and Dad were next to me the entire time, crying with me, while Ivy and Mason sat awkwardly in some chairs in the room, both looking utterly despondent.
“I j-j-just can't believe it. I can't use magic... I can't use magic...” I repeated aimlessly through my tears periodically as some new wave of disbelief washed over me. Mom brushed the tears from my cheek with her handkerchief as they rolled as a torrent from my eyes. At one point, I flinched and moaned as a wave of pain from my head overwhelmed me.
“Are you okay, dear?” Dad asked.
“It hurts... It hurts so much.”
“I know Castor.” He put his hoof on mine and squeezed it gently. “I'm so sorry.”
“It's my head... It hurts so much that I can't think straight.”
He exchanged a worried glance with Mom, she nodded, and he in response pushed the nurse call button. Moments later, a nurse was at the door.
“Castor's head is in a lot of physical pain. Is there anything you can do to help her?”
The nurse walked over and looked at my IV stand, checked a clipboard, then turned a dial.
“I've upped your morphine drip. It was set low because you were unconscious and did not need it.
Within moments, the pain began to dull as the cold liquid swirled about in my veins and I felt the it flow its way to my heart. A certain lackadaisical euphoria began to glow in my chest and spread to my extremities as the pain subsided and my focus began to blur. I could feel myself losing consciousness, but through the artificial bliss could not fully recall what was happening.
Sometime immediately after, I blacked out.
My stomach growled and my hoof went to my belly to rub the spot where an intense hunger was declaring it was time to eat. My eyes, dry and crusted shut from tears, protested when I tried to open them, the underside of my eyelids sticking like sandpaper to my eyes underneath. I felt utterly decrepit and run down, which at least meant I was better than earlier. The pain in my head remained, dull and throbbing as it was, but it was manageable even though I had little to distract myself with as I stared blankly through the room's window at the gray world outside the hospital window.
A broken sigh escaped my lips as my heart sank deeper, Why is this happening to me? I groaned to myself, half remembering a happy dream where I had awakened in my own bed to find myself whole and well. Running my hoof up to touch the empty space where my horn once was, I felt my gut go hollow as my head continued to throb. The back of my throat burned raw with grief yet, despite how much I wanted to cry, I could not get the tears to come.
A friendly touch reached out and stroked my back. “Hey,” A voice gently called. Begrudged to move, I lay on my side to avoid provoking my injury to further pain.
“Hi,” my faint voice replied.
I heard Ivy's chair scrape on the floor and a moment later I saw her, a cambridge blue earth pony with a dark carmine mane with streaks of seashell pink, rounding the bed to sit on the side I was facing.
“I... I'm sorry I...” Using a foreleg, I wiped away a tear rolling down my face. “Sorry I worried you...”
“Don't be,” she replied.
I managed a faint smile, but the expression faded as my mind was drawn back to my condition, “I keep thinking this is a nightmare... but it isn't. I'm scared...”
“I'm here, Castor, and I'm scared with you. I know you'll get through this.”
I strained to sit up in bed and hug Ivy, but I was too weak and the pain was too great, so I settled for propping myself up on my side and reaching with my free foreleg. Ivy leaned in and hugged me back. We embraced for several blissful moments until my head started hurting worse and forced me to let go, but as we parted, I looked into her eyes and saw them to be tear filled and bloodshot. She sniffled slightly. “I can't imagine what you are going through, but I'm here for you...”
It was touching, seeing her moved so deeply on my behalf. Something about seeing her sadness tickled my own sadness and my eyes began to water again, so I latched onto her and we both cried together for a long time.
At some point, my stomach growled loudly, prompting Ivy to laugh say, “You sound like you're hungry.” Her laugh was forced and slightly unnatural, but I appreciated that she was trying to lighten the mood.
“I guess I haven't eaten since... how long has it been since...”
“Since... the injury?”
I nodded.
“Four days.”
Four days, I thought to myself, it doesn't seem that long. The pain and dizziness I was experiencing made me wish I had been out for two weeks as so to give my body time to mend itself. I supposed the wish was selfish, understanding the pain my loved ones were experiencing as they waited for me to awaken, but with the life changes I was facing, wasn't it okay to be a little selfish? I managed a small, sad smile in the corner of a cheek, “Something to eat sounds nice.”
“Will you be okay while I go ask the doctors to get you something?”
“Yeah...”
“Alright,” Ivy said, giving my hoof one last gentle squeeze. “I'll be back in a few minutes, hopefully.”
After watching my friend slip out of view from the room, I tried to adjust my position in the bed so that my reeling senses would hopefully stop giving me butterflies in the stomach. At the corners of my hearing, I heard Ivy mention to a nurse that I was awake and hungry. My parents must have been nearby, as I heard Dad ask Ivy to repeat herself and the following tapping of his hooves as he walked towards the room.
“Hi,” I said staring at the ceiling, not daring to roll my head to look at him and Mom as I had found an angle to hold my head at that would offer some respite from the dizziness. From the corner of my eye, I could see Dad walking towards me, yet I was no less surprised when he embraced me. We were close, yes - we got along very well – but the last time he had hugged me so affectionately was years ago when I was a foal. There was a firm, securing comfort in his hug that I had forgotten and I stopped him as he began to pull away. “Don't let go...” Dad listened and we embraced a little bit longer.
I didn't feel good, but I felt better.
Doctor Apple was standing behind Dad, coming into view as we let go of our hug. “I'm glad you are awake, Castor. How are you feeling.”
“I'm cried out for the moment.” I sniffed and lightly wiped my nose on the sheet.
“I have been talking with your family about running a fMRI on you just to be sure everything is okay, but since you are over twenty one and conscious, I need your oral consent to proceed.”
“Okay.”
“Very good. Your parents have already filled out the paperwork which you will need to sign sometime in the future. Your scan is scheduled for eight tonight.”
“Can I have something to eat? I'm very hungry”
“I know, Ivy already told us and Nurse Cross has sent for a tray of food for you. Your body has been under a lot of stress these past few days, and I want to ease you back into eating normally.”
“Yeah,” I hazily agreed.
In a few minutes, a tray with a thin broth, cream of celery to be specific, was brought into the room. Several times, I tried to sit up to eat more easily, only to feel like I was freefalling. Even if I could have sat upright, I couldn't hold a spoon with my shaking hooves, so any hopes of feeding myself were shattered. With the bed inclined at a slight angle so I could lay with my head propped up on a pillow, it took me well over fifteen minutes to adjust to my new position and stop feeling motion sick. By that point the soup had grown cold, but I didn't care.
Mom set herself in the chair next to the bed, picking up the spoon with her magic then, after looking thoughtful for a moment, let go telekinetically and held the spoon at the end of her hoof with the weak magical grip all races of ponies share. Ladling the broth into the spoon and bringing it towards my mouth, Mom stopped when she saw I was blushing profusely.
“Mom?” I asked, seeing her concern.
“Yes dear?”
Feeling embarrassed, I looked away, “Is it okay if Ivy feeds me instead? I don't... I mean, it's just that I feel... kind of like a sick foal... It isn't anything you are doing... it's just having a parent-”
“I understand,” Mom said. “Don't worry.” She exchanged a glance with Ivy, gave a nod, and they exchanged places.
I managed to eat a fair portion of the broth, but turned it away with a quarter remaining when I became dizzy again. Doctor Apple and Nurse Cross had long since left, but a young stallion came in and took the bowl and tray away a little later. It was six thirty by then, and I urged everyone that they needn't stay the night with me. Ivy insisted that she stay, though after some persuasion she and Cloud Mason agreed to go home, get a good night's rest, and come back tomorrow to visit for a while. Mom insisted on staying the night, urging Dad to go home to rest up for work the next day.
Shortly after they all had said their goodbyes, two nurses entered the room and told my parents that they were going to have to leave the room while I was prepped for the fMRI. Giving them my assurances, I insisted to them that I would be fine for however long the scan would take.
Watching from the corner of my eye as everyone vacated the room, I was given a small paper cup with two capsules containing antibiotics and reflexively tried to reach out with my magic to grab it. I swore aloud when a hot spike of pain being shot through my skull where my horn once was.
“Are you okay?” one of the nurses asked, hearing me curse and seeing me wince.
“It hurts when I try to use magic,” I moaned. Reaching out a quivering hoof, I then added, “I don't think I can pick the cup up without dropping it.”
“Let me help.” The nurse picked up the cup for me, held it to my lips, and tilted it back, letting the pills roll into my open mouth. She did the same with the cup of water and I managed to swallow the pills down without choking.
Meanwhile, the other nurse had made quick work of unhooking the electrodes on my chest so I could be pushed down the hall to the lab where the fMRI, or flashed Magical Radiation Imprint, machine was.
Such a scan, designed to give a full image of the inside of a target's brain, is performed by setting a pony in front of set of thin, rectangular crystals stacked into the shape of a cube whereupon, the thaumaturgical shadow of the brain belonging to the scanned pony is imprinted in real time into the crystalline lattice of the cube by sending powerful flashes of a specific type of magical energy through the pony's brain and into the crystalline sensor. By this method, a full 3-d scan of the brain is mapped into the thin slices of crystal which then can be taken and viewed individually as a cross section representing anywhere from a few second's to a few minute's worth of images of the pony's brain. By inserting a thin obsidian rod into a specially crafted hole, the time stamp can be changed by varying how deeply the rod is inserted so that moving images of brain activity marked by discrete time units can be observed.
All fascinating, but if it wasn't a slap to the face that I could have been sleeping at that time, then the fact that the entire contraption was powered by unicorn magic was. I felt visceral envy towards the lab coat clad operator of the machine the instant the doors to the room were pushed open and I could see the unicorn sitting at his console, magically holding a cup of coffee and taking notes on a clipboard all while initializing the machine with a constant focus spell he was focusing onto a receiver node.
After being moved next to the machine, I was gently lifted off the bed and lowered onto the sliding table of the fMRI machine. As parts of my neck and head were loosely restrained, my thoughts again fell upon the morbidity of my situation. Each new experience: first waking up, learning what I had lost, seeing the hurt expression on my loved ones' faces, and now being scanned, added a new layer of surreality to what was happening.
“Alright, now try not to move while the scan is running or we might have to do another,” one of the nurses, all of which I had been largely ignoring until this point, reminded me. Being moved around, no matter how gently, had been worsening my headache increasingly, and even through my head rested gently in the padded restraints, it throbbed fiercely.
“Everything is ready,” the other nurse said to the operating technicians then turned to me. “We are going to push you back into the chamber, then we are going to ask you some questions. Please remember that we need you to be absolutely still for the scan to be readable.”
Only half lucid, the only thing I cared about was getting back into a stationary bed where I could fall asleep. If I was capable of speaking without incurring more pain, I would have said, “Just get this over with.” Instead, I said nothing.
After the bed was pushed into the chamber designed to block stray magical energies, the technician pushed a button which lowered a large array of finely tuned magic emitting diodes, or MEDs, into the opening I had just been slid through, sealing me into the chamber. A few moments later, they lit up and cast their energy down the length of the cylinder and illuminated my body.
“Let's get started.” A voice, disembodied by a ventriloquism spell, crackled with static in front of my face. “I am going to ask you a series of simple questions, and I want you to answer as best you can.”
“Mmhm.” I really didn't feel like talking.
“What was that?”
“Mkay.”
“Alright, what is your name?”
“Castor Star.” I grit my teeth slightly.
“Where do you live?”
“Southeast Canterlot.”
“Where specifically?”
“822, Stellar Summit Road.”
He proceeded to ask several more questions, most about my family and friends.
“We're moving onto the logic part now. If I have five oranges and three apples, how many oranges do I have?”
“Five.”
“What is four plus nine minus three?”
I hesitated a moment. “Eleven.”
Several more questions, similar to those, were asked and we were done with that line of checking. “Okayyy...” the technician chewed on the word as he read the next part of the itinerary, “Do you see the small compartment in front of your face?”
“Yes,” I replied, looking at the delicate metal doors skillfully crafted into the wall of the cylinder above my face.
“I am going to open it up, and there will be pictures inside. Please tell me what you see.”
The panel flipped open by an actuator and behind was a laminated photograph. “I see a tree.” The image slid away and behind it was another that I identified. The process continued for about ten more pictures, then the hatch closed.
“Very good,” the technician said. “Now, I am going to ask you to channel some magic into a telekinesis spell as if you were casting it. Don't use much energy – less than a quarter you would use to lift a cup or something else small. Pull on the little red sphere you are about to see.” The panel flipped open again, this time containing a red stress ball. “Try to give it a gentle squeeze for five seconds and then let go.”
I was hesitant. “Do I have to do this? It hurts when I use magic.”
“Use as little as possible.” The technician's voice crackled back after a few seconds of silence. “But we need this scan to see where that magic goes so we can be sure it is not building up inside your body.”
I wasn't even sure if I could even control how much magic I used: when I tried picking up the paper cup earlier, it stung like I had horribly overcharged a spell and nearly fried myself. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Yes,” he replied immediately. “It is really important that we do this. If it turns out you are dissipating too little or too much magic, then you risk suffering severe brain damage within the course of just a few weeks.”
I had been strong up until this point. I really had. There had been times I had felt like crying over my loss as I was being pushed down the hallway. I had remained under control as I watched ponies pass by, hollow husks that I felt them to be without my clairvoyance. I even managed to keep a straight face as I was asked to step through a spell, knowing well that I might never cast one again. Frankly, though, I had been too tired and worn out to be pushed to the threshold of crying, but I finally was forced beyond that point.
Over the gentle magical hiss of the ventriloquism spell, I could hear the nervous voice of the technician dropping in and out, “...what am I supposed to do? ...no... why are you telling me to say something?... I know I'm the only one right now who can talk to her using this spell, but do you really want me to talk her though this?”
There was a hiss of static as the spell was altered to originate from a different source. “Castor.” a much more confident said. “Castor, I know this is traumatic for you, and I am so sorry that you have to be going through this, but the chances of us finding anything bad are slim. We would likely already know about anything life threatening, but we are doing this scan to be safe.”
I kept crying.
“Okay,” the new voice said. “Do you want to come out of the chamber for a few minutes to catch your breath?”
About half a minute passed before the bed which I lay upon shifted and slid out of the chamber. I saw the unicorn technician as soon as I was out and could tell that he and I were the only ones in the room at the moment.
“Sorry,” he said to me as he stepped in my direction. “I didn't mean to... uh...” He scratched the back of his head. “I didn't mean to exacerbate the problem.” I attempted to say it was okay, but I couldn't form the words properly. Instead, tears streamed from my eyes; my nose was soon to be a wet mess.
“Here.” The unicorn offered a handkerchief, gripped in his magic, to me and attempted to dab the tears running down my cheek.
My skin crawled having his magic so wantonly shoved into my face. “Please, don't...”
“It's okay, I don't mind if you use my handkerchief. I'd rather it do some good instead of staying folded up in my pocket,” he wiped my nose for me as I tried to push the handkerchief away from my face.
“Lorenz Fields! You dolt!” A nurse, the one who who had been speaking with me in the fMRI chamber, yelled at her colleague as she stamped towards him.
He cringed and laid his ears back. “What? I was offering her my handkerchief.” Fields was pushed aside by the nurse as she gently loosened the restraints holding my head still and then she handed me a wad of tissues.
“Unbuckle her and let this poor mare take care of herself.” She turned to me as I crumpled up a tissue I had already used and dabbed my eyes with a second one. “I'm sorry about him. He means well, but can be real dumb about these things from time to time.” She looked back to him, narrowing her eyes, and murmuring under her voice, “I stepped out for one minute to get her some tissues. Fields, couldn't have gone that short amount of time without screwing up?”
“It's fine.” I wiped my eyes with the last tissue, then blew my nose on it. “I... I'm sorry, I lost control of myself in there.”
“It's alright. We still have some time before the next patient is in for a scan, so you can take a few minutes to gather yourself before we continue.”
Over the next few minutes, I regained a bit of my composure and was ready to be put back in. I wasn't fully collected, but it was enough that I could notice that by this point Lorenz had hidden his face behind the operator's console and was avoiding looking at me. As the bed slid in, we briefly made eye contact.
He hunkered his head behind the indicator panel of his station.
“Can you hear me?” the nurse's disembodied voice asked once I was in.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” The compartment's doors flipped open. “We only need you to cast a small telekinesis spell on the ball, but you need to hold it for a few seconds to make sure we get a good reading. If at any point you think you need to stop, do it. Start when you are ready.”
I hesitated a moment as I stared at the red ball, but I overcame my apprehension and tried to let out a small trickle of magic. The moment I began letting the magic flow, the smell of copper filled my nose and my entire forehead tingled warmly. As for the feeling of the magic itself, I am sure fellow spellcasters are familiar with the feeling severe magic backlash, but for those not experienced with magic, the sensation is a very sickly feeling which can most easily be likened to drinking a mouthful of rotten water that burns horribly as it goes down your throat.
It took a second for the sensation to reach thresholds I was uncomfortable with, but suddenly the pain spiked as if I was pressing a hot iron into my flesh and I immediately dropped the spell. “Is that enough?”
“We won't be able to tell until we've collected the scans and have read them,” the nurse answered over the spell.
It's going to have to be enough. I'm not trying again.
“Okay, we're opening the chamber and are going to take you back to your room.”
As soon as I was out, a second nurse was brought into the room and they both helped me roll back onto the hospital bed. The mere act of moving had left me feeling dizzy to the point of being sick to the stomach, but at least my headache was bad enough to distract me from wanting to vomit on my bed's clean linen. Being pushed down several long hallways and around numerous tight corners did not help the dizziness, but I was unnaturally tired and had begun to slip into sleep as we got to my room. Once I was in there, I incoherently mumbled about wanting another bowl of soup, but was infuriatingly denied any more food for the night since I had 'already eaten dinner'. I was too tired to argue the point and fell asleep; however, for a final insult, a nurse came in and awoke me at two in the morning to give me another round of antibiotics and some painkiller.