All the Lost Pieces

by Voltage Drop

Chapter 2

My bowl of tomato soup could be most briefly described as nutrition, whether or not it was actual food was questionable. It was warm and may have once had an appealing flavor, but now it tasted like I was drinking a bowl of rust. Downing another spoonful with the assistance of my mom, the sharp and metallic taste was enough that if I was any less hungry I wouldn't be able to stomach it. Next to my soup was a cup of apple juice which suspiciously looked more like a specimen bottle of pee which, again, would be unpalatable were I not starving.

“I'd like some more juice, Mom.”

“Okay.” She picked the cup up and held it to my lips. The sweet flavor helped wash down the metallic edge of the soup. After the drink, Mom asked, “More soup?”

“Yes.” I continued eating with Mom's help.

As I neared finishing, Doctor Apple knocked on the frame of the open door. “Come in,” Mom told her for me. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. You have been expressing interest in being told more about your injury, and I thought you are doing well enough for me to give you the specifics. Also, I will be discussing your fMRI scans later today, so I thought it beneficial if you knew ahead of time what specifically you have been through.”

“I would like that. It's hard not knowing...”

“Are you finished with your breakfast?”

“Mostly, if you can call soup breakfast. Why can't I have some haycon, eggs, and biscuits? I'm starving.”

“Your body has suffered a lot of shock and hasn't been fed these past five days. We are easing you back onto solids so you don't get sick when you finally do get to eat something more substantial. Now, if it is okay, I would like to talk to you about what's happened since you were injured.”

“Can I get more soup?”

“In a little bit, but I want you to give what you just ate some time to settle before you eat anything more, alright?”

“I don't want tomato soup next time.”

“Okay. I'll make sure the nurse knows when you call for food.”

“Thanks. It would be nice...” my thoughts were drifting away from me and it took effort to even form sentences. “I-” Blinking the fog out of my head, I was suddenly brought back to the conversation after drifting off. “I'm sorry, I was talking about something and forgot what it was.”

“It's okay, you are on some very powerful pain medication and you have quite the concussion. I would be surprised if you were thinking clearly.”

“I do feel pretty dull right now.”

“If you would like,” Doctor Apple offered. “I can come back and talk to you about this in a couple hours when you feel more up to it.”

“No, I want to know what you are going to say.”

“Alright. I'll try to explain everything as simple and concisely as I can.” Doctor Apple pulled up a chair and sat in it.

“As you know four and a half days ago, you were rushed into the emergency room with a severe blow to the head. When you were struck, it released the base of your horn and pushed it back into your skull along with some of the surrounding bone. When you were admitted to the emergency room, your brain was already swelling and the surgeon made the judgment call that, in order to save you and help ensure you would not suffer brain damage, a keraectomy would be performed. Your horn was amputated and the bone surrounding it removed to release pressure building in your skull. In total, it ended up being around three square inches of bone which was taken out.”

“What!?” I startled and my hoof flew to my forehead which was heavily wrapped in bandages, “You removed part of my skull!?”

“Temporarily. It will be put back once the swelling has gone down.”

“Put back? What do you mean? Where is it?”

“In you,” she replied flatly, then pointed to my abdomen. “The bandages on your abdomen are covering where the swatch of bone is. During surgery, as each piece was removed to release pressure, they were placed inside your abdominal cavity. There your body will nourish the bone and keep it alive and healthy. Once it is time for it to be replaced, we will take it out and put it back where it belongs where it will begin to heal naturally.”

“Are you saying that I don't have anything between my brain and the outside world?” My mind tingled to think that I was missing part of my skull as well as my horn. “The swelling will go down soon, Right? You will put it back in in a few days, won't you?”

“You are right on the first point, mostly. There is little more than skin and bandage covering your brain, but it will be at least three months before your brain heals enough to replace the bone.”

“I have a hole in my head and y-” my voice hitched. “Y-your saying it will be there for several months?”

Doctor Apple stoically nodded. “I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly.” She adjusted her white doctor's coat. “But, technically, that is correct. You will need to wear a special protective helmet to keep from hurting yourself, but you will still need to be especially careful that you don't accidentally jam something where it might hurt you.”

My hoof had blindly wandered to my bandaged forehead until I touched it, causing a noticeable twinge of pain. Can I feel the edge of my skull? I grimly pondered if I could poke my brain through the bandages and skin, but I knew better than to try. Celestia knows that I didn't want to find out.

“It would be best if you refrained from touching it, for the time being,” Doctor Apple said as if knowing my thoughts, gently grabbed my hoof and pulled it away from my head.

“Oh... right,” I replied dumbly, letting my foreleg flop to my side. “I wasn't really thinking.”

“You'll be fitted for a protective helmet once you've healed up a bit and will be able to wear it. When that time comes, you will be expected to keep it on at all times except when sleeping and washing your hair.”

I couldn't deny the logic, but even with protection of my forehead paramount, I was not enthusiastic about wearing something on my head all hours of the day. In the very least, though, it might help me hide my missing horn. Celestia, what do I even look like now? I imagined I looked quite miserable, but as it was, I hadn't seen my reflection yet. Frankly, I couldn't even imagine what I looked like without my horn. And that begged a question I had been fretting over...

“Doctor... what about my horn? Where is it?” It made me sick to think that it had been thrown into a hazardous material bin and then incinerated while I was in a coma.

“It is in cold storage. In most cases, we hold onto the tissue for a number of weeks as reference should any complications come up in the patient's recovery.”

“What will you do with it once that time is passed?”

“It will be disposed of in a sterile manner.”

“How?”

“Cremation with other byproducts of the hospital.”

“No.” My stomach pulled tight and hollow. “I don't want that. I-I want it separate from all the other-” It was too much to think about my horn being incinerated with countless soiled bandages, dirty blood vials, and bits of flesh from other ponies and the the ash, My Ash, intermingling with the ash of others and being thrown away like garbage.

“It isn't all that common for the hospital to release anything from the storage faci-”

“No,” I interrupted as forcefully as my weak body would allow. “It's my horn, it's part of me. I don't want it mixing with anyone else.”

“It will take a lot of paperwork to do that.”

“I don't care. I want it back!” Even being heavily medicated, my head had begun to throb
again.

“And what would you do with it?”

“I-I guess have it cremated... or something like that. This is so sudden, I don't know what I want to do with it, but I know I don't want it to be thrown away so heartlessly.”

“It's not heartless. However, the hospital considers it a hazard that needs to be taken care of, just like used bandages or a pair of tonsils that have been removed.”

“But it's not bandages or tonsils. My horn, my magic, was everything to me. Without it I don't know what to do with myself. Just letting it get burned up like that with everything else... it feels so cheep... it's devaluing...”

“We aren't saying you or your magic is worth any less.”

“When a pony dies, they have a funeral and are buried or at least cremated individually, but certainly they aren't burred or cremated together en-mass. It's disrespectful. I know my situation is different, but it is the same too.”

Doctor Apple was silent for a few moments to consider my words, then came to my bedside and pressed the nurse call button. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to help,” she answered. “I'm not the one saying 'no' to you. It's the hospital's policy to be reluctant on releasing tissue to patients, but if it were my choice I would let you have it.” A few moments later a nurse was at the door and Doctor Apple addressed her, “This patient's horn was removed recently. Please have storage and biohazard mark her horn to be kept for an extended period and do not have it destroyed without my prior authorization,”

“I will take care of it.”

The nurse turned and was about to leave before Doctor Apple added as an afterthought, “Also, for this patient's next meal, please make sure she is not given tomato soup.”

“Okay.” The nurse nodded and left.

She turned back to me, “I will try my best on this, but this isn't a normal request. It may take me some time to fish out the correct paperwork for this - if I can find it at all that is.”

“Please... don't let me lose my horn.”

“I can only promise that I will try my best.”

“Thank you.”

Doctor Apple nodded, “For what it is worth, you are welcome. Now there are some other things I want to talk about.” From here, Doctor Apple delved into the semantics of my injury and how to tend my wounds. I was not to let my forelegs rest on my abdomen where I had been cut open to have bits of my skull put in. The same went for my head – I and everyone else was to refrain from touching anywhere except my face and the backside of my neck. I had a small fracture running from my forehead to my temple but more worryingly was the concern that I had a contusion to my frontal lobe, the same place where I had severe hemorrhaging when I was first brought into the emergency room. The wraps around my head would be changed at least once a day to check my stitching, and I could expect at least one CT scan in the coming day to check for any hemorrhaging or hematomas that might be forming.

“Excuse me,” a nurse interrupted as he poked his head in the room pushing a cart. “It's time for your medicine. I hope I'm not disturbing you, doctor.”

Doctor Apple shook her head. “No. I was just finishing up with Castor.” Turning to me and giving a soft smile, she added, “You've been through a lot and there unfortunately will be more pain to come. However, you've been incredibly fortunate and are through the worst of it. Just stay strong a little bit longer and things will get a lot better.”

I managed a faint smile back to her.

“Thank you doctor,” my mom said as the doctor left.

“It's why I'm here,” she replied and walked out the door.

The nurse, meanwhile, wordlessly pushed his cart to the foot of my bed and, after referring to a sheet on a clipboard, stooped down and reached into a cabinet underneath the cart. He came up with four paper cups, setting them on my bed table and pouring water from a pitcher into one of them. “You have six pills to take: these two are Anaprix, an anti-inflammatory, these two are Laudanum, your pain suppressors, these two are your antibiotics.” As each cup of medicine was named, it was pushed in my direction leaving three cups with colorful pills resembling a foal's game with candy.

Even though I was on a morphine drip, I had been in an increasing amount of pain since I had first awakened so the first cup I reached for was the cup of painkillers. My hoof trembled as I grabbed for the cup and only managed to accidentally knock it over and spill the pills out on the table. With a pained expression, I looked over to Mom and she gave me a knowing look as she leaned over, put the pills back into the cup, and held it to my lips. I let the pills roll onto my tongue and then swallowed them with a mouthful of water when Mom got the other cup to my lips. I did the same with the other pills while the nurse washed his hooves and pulled out a roll of gauze and bandaging from under the cart.

“I'm going to give you fresh dressings,” he said then picked up a pair of specialized scissors in his teeth and started cutting at the bandages wrapped around my head. The bandages were not tight per say, but they were firmly wrapped and my head hurt with the slight change in pressure as they came off. “I'm going to remove the gauze pad over your stitches now. I can see a little bit of blood through it, meaning there might be some dried fluids adhering the bandage to your head. If that is the case, it may hurt as I remove the gauze.”

I took a moment to ready myself, “Okay, go ahead.”

The nurse took his cue and, with gloved hooves, began pulling at the edge of the gauze. At first, it pulled away with ease, sending out the strong smell of ointments and causing little discomfort. Suddenly, about the time the gauze was a quarter of the way off, my head erupted into a fiery pain as my breathing hitched.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Just-keep-going,” I said quickly through grit teeth. Closing my eyes as the nurse continued peeling off the bandages, I tried to lose myself in a spellcasting meditation I often used to hone my focus. My breathing was becoming labored and ragged as cool air poured upon my naked forehead, stinging it like acid. Opening my cringing eyes, I saw the nurse pulling away the bloody gauze and, mercifully, I passed out.

The next thing I remember is Mom squeezing my hoof and saying, “Castor, Castor! It's over now, are you okay?”

I mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Castor?”

“W-w-wha.” My lower jaw trembled “What happened?” My cheeks, like the rest of my body, were unpleasantly warm.

“You fainted,” the nurse said flatly, turning from the monitors. “The bandages came off without too much trouble, but you are extremely sensitive. I am sorry that hurt so much.”

My head sunk back into the pillow. “Let's not do that again.”

“It was, necessary... given that the bandages were old. We did not change them yesterday because we did not want to add undue stress during a critical juncture of your recovery. That gave time for some of the seeping fluids to coagulate and stick causing the discomfort. The wound has since stopped seeping fluids, meaning so long as the gauze is changed daily, this will not happen again.”

I groaned, “I feel terrible. Can I go to sleep now?”

“I am finished, it's okay go ahead and do that.” I didn't protest and let my eyes fall shut. Instantly, I drifted off. What felt like moments later, the pangs of hunger awakened me and I saw by the clock on the wall that it was around 9:30. I noticed Mom was gone. Must have gotten up to get something to eat.

Addled with morphine and other pain suppressors, I lay in bed and stared blankly at the wall across from me, thinking of nothing in particular until boredom finally needled me to look about the room. My eyes couldn't help but linger upon the other patient in the room where a nurse had come in earlier, about 8:00, opened her privacy curtain, rolled her onto her right side such that she was facing in my direction, then left. This roommate had been present through the drama of my emergence from the coma as well as everything else since yesterday when I awoke, yet I had forgotten entirely that she was there. Watching her, it was as if she was in a deep, dreamless slumber. She was blemishless – if she had been injured when she came in, then she had been unconscious long enough to have healed entirely. It may have saved her some pain, but my heart went out for her, wondering if she would ever awaken.

I wanted to cry again. I could have easily been like her, then I remembered I had been like her until yesterday. The thought, the fear it elicited, the seeping mortality it imbued, they were too much and I had to distract myself with something.

I'm hungry. Where's some food? Yes, the immediate problem of hunger would be a nice distraction. The remnants of my tomato soup from earlier, now dreadfully cold, sat beside the half filled cup of apple juice on a tray atop the table next to my bed. I wanted more to eat, yet the food was mockingly just out of reach as I could just barely touch the edge of the tray without being able to pull it closer to me. Laying how I was, there was nothing I could do to reach it, but it would be a simple matter if I could just manage to sit upright.

I leaned my head forward off the pillow and tried to anchor my sense of balance using my vision. 'Down' wasn't pointing in the correct direction and was instead wobbling, making sitting upright difficult, yet I managed to reach the tray and pull it across the table where I could pick it up and set it on my lap. I laid myself back down, eased my head into the pillow, and stared into the ceiling for a few seconds while I bizarrely felt like I was falling upwards.

With my bed not reclined like it was, bringing anything to my mouth would have been difficult normally, let alone considering the state I was in. Reaching down on the side of the bed, I began searching for the control leavers. I nearly slid out twice while I reached my hoof under the bed's edge and groped about, but eventually, I found one and I nearly splattered soup all across the place when my hind legs unexpectedly shot up and tilted the tray onto my lap. Tartarus claim me, this would be so much easier if I had my magic. I pulled another leaver which rapidly inclined the bed's back to a higher angle and nearly launched me face first into my soup.

Somehow through the chaos, the bowl remained unspilled and I leaned back onto the inclined bed to get accustomed to how off-balance I felt before I tried feeding myself. Gravity lurched from side to side like I was drunk, but that very well could have been from copious amounts of opiate painkillers playing games with my mind. This, however, was not to stop me from getting my food; I was to be a grown mare feeding herself.

---

“Castor? What happened in here?” Mom asked, voice incredulous.

“I tried to get myself something to eat,” I said with as little explaining as I could manage.

“Then why is the bowl all the way over here by the door?” Mom tapped the overturned tableware with the tip of her hoof.

“When I was taking my first sip, I threw up and spilled my soup and apple juice all over myself. I got angry and threw it across the room.”

“Castor! You are an adult!” You should know to behave better than this.” She motioned to the bowl.

“I know.” If I had not thrown my soiled blanket on the floor, I would have been hiding my face in it. “I've just been having a very, very bad day.”

“That doesn't matter!”

“I know.” I tried to push myself as deeply into the pillow as possible as if it would suffocate my embarrassment.

“And I was only gone for twenty minutes. How long did it take you to make this mess?”

I groaned and facehoofed, “I think maybe, five or ten?”

Mom sighed, rubbed the back of her neck then pointed at the mess, “I... I really don't know what to say about this.”

Pulling the pillow from behind my head and pressing it over my face in humiliation, I groaned again. “I know.”

---

The generic hospital clock read a little past one thirty when Doctor Apple came into my room to give a report on the fMRI scans. I had been twitching with nervous energy ever since that previous night's scan, and jumped like I had been stung by a bee when the door to the room clicked as Doctor Apple walked in.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

I feigned a smile back as my eyes followed the contents of her bag as she placed them on a table next to a backlit whiteboard. Soon, several black and white images of my head were clipped upon the viewer.

“First, I want to say to you, Castor, that things are very promising,” she said then pointed to one of the images. “Right here, we can see that your frontal lobe is fully intact and functioning, as shown by the bloodflow in the region.” She illustrated at several brightly colored blotches. “This is despite the trauma to the posterior region, your praecantor cortex, which was directly connected to your horn. Speaking of-” Doctor Apple pulled two more scans from the envelope. “Here, I have a scan of your brain while you were stepping through the motions of using telekinesis, and here is a scan of a healthy unicorn casting a similar spell.” Doctor Apple pinned the two upon the board. “I know that this entire event has been devastating to you, but I think that you may at least like to see this.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“As you can see, the scans share semblances. Basically, what they say is that the regions of your praecantor cortex which are undamaged are still working properly.”

“What does that mean?”

Doctor Apple turned from the white board. “Unicorns, when they have had their praecantor cortex damaged or removed, will lose their magical aura and die within a few weeks unless they have more energy given to them. Essentially, they starve without daily medical intervention and the solution is like feeding someone without a digestive system using an IV. Not very healthy or successful. You, however, are still able to make your own magic, so that is not a problem. In all likelihood, you will still be able to properly regulate your natural energy levels, which means you won't have to worry about the complications associated with artificially infusing you with an aura.”

“I... I don't know what to say. I guess I am glad that it isn't any worse than it could have been. I just don't feel any better now that you've told me this.” In truth, I didn't know what to feel. Mortality, fear, thankfulness, anger, joy, depression, they all swirled within me like blotches of dye suspended in water, mixing together until they produced an appalling black sludge. I had been hoping to hear that I would regain use of my magic, but I suppose I should have known better than to hope for that.

“I know this is difficult to take in, but this is excellent news,” Doctor Apple said. To me, though, this was anything but 'great'; it was fate taunting me.

“Tell me, what happened to my horn? If my brain is so okay, why did you amputate my horn?”

“Ah yes.” Doctor Apple reached to the manila envelope, half sliding out two CT images on which I saw my head and fractured horn, but she hesitated a moment before pushing them back in. “When you were brought into the emergency room, your horn was broken off at the middle and its base was pushed back into your praecantor cortex. As you were rushed into the surgery room, you suffered a severe seizure because your damaged horn was rapidly depleting your magical reserve and was arcing into your brain. We performed an emergency CT scan to evaluate the damage we would be trying to fix and the immediately took you into surgery to have the horn removed because it was continually causing you to suffer violent seizures. If we had delayed any longer, then you most likely would not be sitting here right now.”

“'Most likely' you say?” I stated.

“Yes,” Doctor Apple replied flatly.

“So you are saying there was a chance my horn could have been saved?”

“Castor, I cannot stress how slim those chances were. It was a risk not worth taking. As it was, the surgeons barely managed to stifle the hemorrhaging you were suffering.”

Laying my ears back, I crossed my front legs. “Maybe you should have asked my opinion of the operation before you went and wantonly lobotomized me.”

“You were unconscious, and if we had delayed even a few minutes, then you probably would not have survived.”

“Probably this, probably that! You know, maybe I would rather be dead than be like this!” I propped myself forward with a front leg and pointed at the doctor. “Would you rather be alive with your eyes plucked and all your legs cut off or just be dead and have it all over with? Because that's what I am experiencing right now!”

“That is not a valid analo-”

“Don't tell me that you can understand my loss! You're an earth pony! You've never seen and felt what I have, so you can't possibly imagine how empty this has left me!”

I huffed, thinking about the other patient in the room, half envying her because at least in her slumber, she was resigned to blissful oblivion and free from pain.

Doctor Apple took a reserved sigh and stoically closed her eyes. “I can see that this did not go as I had hoped. I believe it would be best if we all took a couple of hours to cool down before we say anything else.” She began collecting the scans off of the viewer.

“Don't turn away from me! I'm not done talking!” I yelled.

Standing from his seat, Dad scowled at me and stepped to where I lay. “Castor, calm down. Doctor Apple is partially responsible for saving your life and you are attacking her.”

“Don't admonish me.” I rolled my eyes. “I know that you and Mom had to sign papers to let them mutilate me like this! So go home and cut the wings off the wings of a pegasus or something. Just Buck Off!” To this day, I still regret those words, but at the time of their utterance, I am ashamed to say that I did not regret them half as much as I should have.

“Castor Star!” Dad's voice thrummed fiercely. “That is NO way to act and I Will Not Tolerate Such!”

My dad had yelled at me only a few times in my life, all of which when I was much younger and genuinely deserved it because I was acting up. I wilted under the yell, suddenly feeling like an irresponsible child. Ears laying back on my head, I began crying again. “I'm sorry, I'm just so overwhelmed. I need some time alone...”

Mom, visibly shaken, stood and wordlessly pulled at Dad's elbow, motioning for him to leave the room with her. He shook his head 'no' and turned back to me. “I think we need to have a long talk, Castor.”

Reminded of times years ago when I had gotten into serious trouble, I had thought I would never hear my father say those terrible words again. Meeting Dad's intense gaze, I felt like a foal in the principal's office at school as I sheepishly broke eye contact with him.

“I don't know what has gotten into you, Castor, but the way you just spoke to everyone in this room is inexcusable!” I only flattened my ears harder and turned my head farther away from Dad. “Castor, Look at me when I am talking to you!”

I begrudgingly rolled my head back to meet my dad's eyes. “Am I a foal now?” I asked, voice cracking as my throat burned with anger.

“I don't know. Maybe you are, because you certainly aren't acting like the daughter I and your mother raised.” My eyes trailed away from my dad's stern visage. “Look,” he said, reaching out and gently sliding a foreleg behind me. “I know that you are feeling worse than you ever could have imagined before this happened, but lashing out at those trying to help you is Not the thing to do.” His voice was stern. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Do you actually believe what you said? Do you think that your mother and I would have let these doctors amputate if we did not believe with every fiber of our being that it was the better of two terrible choices?”

“...” Could I really think death would be better than this?

“Castor, answer me.”

“I was thinking... and the answer is no. I know that you would only choose what you think is best for me... but I am angry...” I looked deeply into Dad's eyes. “I am so angry that this has happened to me. I can't imagine... just can't imagine what I am going to do with myself now. The only thing I was good at was magic, it's my special talent. Without it... I wish I had never woken up. Dad, what am I going to do?”

“You are going to keep living, and you are going to never, Ever, say anything about wishing you had never woken up to your mother.” His voice was stone cold, almost deadly. “Those are dangerous thoughts, and I don't want you even thinking about it because it-”

His voice cracked, and he turned away as tears filled his eyes. A moment passed, he wiped his eyes, then continued, his voice filled with emotion. “It would break our hearts if you were to do anything to yourself after we got you back. We were so afraid you would end up like the other mare in here: she's been out for six months, her family's given up on her, and I know we wouldn't have the strength to-” His voice hitched again. Taking a deep breath, Dad steadied himself for a moment and continued in a much more controlled manner. “Castor, where there's life, there's hope, and where there's hope, we must fight with all our might. Stop underselling the miracle Faust gave us all when you woke up yesterday, and please don't ever prefer death over life.

“I know that you are good at many things, even if you can't see them right now. But this anger, this fear, gives you no excuse to say what you just said. Talking about how you would rather be dead – you scared me, and you scared your mother, and you hurt us both very deeply. I hope that you don't actually believe we would have approved the keraectomy unless it was the last possible option.

“As it was...” Dad sighed, “We didn't even know about it until the procedure was already finished, and we signed the papers afterwards to show our consent once we were certain there were no other paths the hospital could have taken. You owe Doctor Apple and us a sincere apology.”

Closing my eyes, I groaned, “I know...”

“Good,” Dad gently acknowledged, then began speaking in a much more soothing tone, “And I hope you know that I only say this because I only want the best for you. Who we are – who you are: that is defined by how you act in your most difficult moments. Sure it's easy to be a good pony when things are going your way. But when our lives fall apart around us, that is when it is most important to be firm and persevere despite the obstacles that affront us, because that is when our true character shows.” Dad sighed and shook his head. “Whether or not you want to accept what happened, these next few months will be some of the most important of your life, and these few weeks that you are first coping with you loss: you will always remember how you acted.” Dad gave a gentle smile and looked deeply into my eyes. “Because you will always remember these few days, I don't want you to look back weeks, months, years from now and regret things you said and did. But more importantly, I want you to be alive to remember these things. No talk of death, Okay?”

I nodded in reply, clumsily wiping away the tears in in my eyes. “Okay.” my voice cracked.

Alright,” Dad replied and he hugged me close. A few moments passed and he eased out of the hug. “Do you still want some time to yourself?”

“Yeah Dad. I think I need to sort some things out in my head.”

“Alright,” he replied and began to turn away.

“Dad?”

“Yes?” they answered.

“Thanks... for being patient with me.”

Dad, for several seconds, continued to look at me with raised eyebrows as he expected me to continue, but I could not yet bring myself to say 'I'm sorry' as I think he had expected me to say. He turned away and left. Doctor Apple, not wanting to get involved, and Mom, shaken by my outburst, had already exited the room, so I was then alone discluding the comatose mare.

I closed my eyes and sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day as my head and chest swarmed with emotions. It was nearly too much to process – the anger, hopelessness, and the sorrow. The pain throbbing in my skull helped little in sorting through the jumble of emotions swelling inside of me, but that did not stop me from spending time trying to figure out how I should feel and act given my circumstances.

At some point, I turned my attention to an apple, a remnant of my mother's lunch sitting on the table next to me. It glimmered pristenely across from me, its red hue a shining beacon of color in the otherwise sterile room. Some odd trait emanating from its unblemished surface annoyed me to anger; it was like an idealistic companion grinning at me like an idiot.

Yes. It's happy, complete, existence annoyed me.

Grabbing it, I took a sizable bite of its glossy red surface and savored the defiant knowledge that Doctor Apple would not approve of me eating solids yet, but I relished even more the simple act of bringing a once whole object into a state of brokenness. It was an utterly eccentric line of thought, I knew as much, but if I was too weak to vent my anger by punching a pillow, I would have to settle for more obscure methods of alleviation.

I took another bite of the apple, this time driven to do so out of pure hunger. It was the first solid food I had eaten since I had awakened and soup broth could only go so far to cure the gnawing hunger in my stomach. If I hadn't dropped it a few bites later, I would have completely devoured it down to the core.

“This hospital sure has a thing for apples,” I thought to myself. Apples, apple sauce, doctors named Apple, apple juice which looked like pee... speaking of which, I suddenly realized I needed to do just that and quite badly too.

I looked at the door to the bathroom and groaned at the thought of the impossible journey that lay between me and it, yet I certainly was NOT going to use the bedpan again. The last time I had needed to go, I had at least been given the dignity of having a nurse help instead of Mom, but it was still a humiliating experience.

Sitting up in bed, I immediately felt nauseous, but I convinced myself the dizziness was not as bad as it had been earlier. I tested my fortitude for a minute before sliding out of bed, taking as much caution as if I were repelling down the side of a cliff using a rope and no harness. On the ground, I sat on my haunches for a few minutes, nearly tipping over several times before I felt like I could even try standing. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I heard Dad's voice admonishing that I should get back in bed, but the disgust towards using a bedpan urged me to ignore good sense.

Summoning my fortitude, I put weight onto my front legs and tried to get my hind legs under me. My sense of balance, though, had other plans and I fell flat on my side, narrowly keeping my head from striking the ground. I grunted and decided it would be better to crawl to the bathroom. Flopping onto my side multiple times, crawling had proven to be absurdly more difficult than I had expected it to be.

Once I had reached the door, I instinctively tried to reach out with my magic to grab the handle, sending a hot spike of pain through my skull. “Shi-” I bit my tongue, cradling my head for the moments the pain lasted, then felt completely stupid for having tried to use magic. Reaching up to the knob, I was like a little foal struggling to reach a cookie jar as I clumsily fumbled it several times before rotating it enough to open the door.

Entering through and swinging the door shut behind me, my head buzzed with a strange warm numbness I had come to understand to be an aftereffect of any of my attempts to use magic, but at least this served a reminder to me to physically switch the control to the crystal lamp in the room. There were two bars on the wall next to the toilet where I could steady myself – for this I was glad. After several failed attempts, I managed to prop myself upon the toilet and somehow do my business without making a mess, though I catastrophically fell to the ground when I was finished. The wind slightly knocked out of me and my chest sore, I thanked my good fortune to have again narrowly managed to keep my head safe and un-jostled during the fall.

I was, however, suddenly more disoriented than before. The door was more stubborn to open this time and I knew I was not going to be able to reach up far enough to turn the light off.

It was somehow an even greater struggle to crawl back to my bed than it had been to crawl away from it. The world now reeled side to side as if I were spinning on some ride at an amusement park and keeping balance, even on flat ground, was about as easy as standing on polished ice. Ending up on my side more times than I recount, my sense of orientation had completely abandoned me. Where I once had been able to sit up on my haunches, I could now only lay on my side. By account of my senses, I might as well have been hanging upside down.

Laying there, defeated for the moment, my body was cold with hopelessness, though the marble tile floor was also quite chilling to the touch. I had actually believed I could make the trip to the bathroom and back without anyone finding out, but I couldn't even do that anymore. “How hard should it be to go take a wiz?” I griped to myself, feeling completely useless.

Above me, the mattress hung like a cliff and I was a drunken climber with no gear. Sitting on my haunches, I wobbled side to side as I sat, waiting for a sense of balance to return, all the while fearing that someone might walk into the room at any moment and find me out of bed. I regained enough stability to make an attempt to climb back in, and I sat both of my front legs on the edge of the mattress to balance myself as I stood. Slowly, I put my rear hooves to the ground and began to put my weight on them until I was shakily standing. A throw of false motion took me off balance and nearly sent me falling to my side yet another time, but I managed to catch myself and hold balance. Bringing one of my rear hooves up to the metal frame of the bed, I carefully transferred my weight onto it as I pushed myself up.

Suddenly, the whole world tipped to its side and I felt like gravity was pulling me backwards off the bed. I struggled to find something to keep from falling, but the loose sheets offered no reprise as I tipped backwards and fell on my back. This time, my head was not sparred from striking the ground.

My vision flashed from black to white as motes of light danced in my vision. If pain could be likened to heat, then a solar flare engulfed my head as I gripped it and curled into the fetal position, loudly crying out in pain.

“Castor!” Mom yelled in fear, rushing into the room after some delay and coming to my side. “Castor! What happened!?!”

I was in too much pain to reply and only moaned. Several seconds later, Nurse Cross was at the door to the room. “Mrs. Star! What is going on in here?”

“I, I think my daughter fell out of bed. Is that what happened Castor?”

I nodded my head and was instantly overwhelmed with more pain and motionsickness.

Coming over to me, Nurse Cross stepped between me and Mom. “Ma'am, I must ask that you please step away from her.” Reluctantly, Mom complied as Nurse Cross addressed me, “Castor, can you hear me?”

“Ye-es.” My reply was ragged with pain.

“When you fell out of bed, did you hit your head?”

“Yes.”

Nurse Cross' face turned somber. “I will be right back with help,” she said to us and, without waiting for a reply, bolted from the room. At the time, I did not know this, but I was later informed that I had started bleeding profusely from where my horn had been removed.

Shortly, two other nurses were in the room along with Nurse Cross and they ordered my parents to leave after assuring them everything was okay. I was promptly placed back onto the bed and then relocated to another room where my condition was evaluated. As a relief to everyone involved, I remained conscious through the translocation and, by the time my state of being had been diagnosed, I was feeling reasonably well – 'reasonably well' of course being defined to mean feeling like my forehead had been impaled. It was determined the bleeding was superficial and I hadn't suffered any injury too severe, though they did have to change the bloodied bandages on my head where the impact had agitated my injury.

The whole unpleasant event lasted an hour and a half, so it was that long before I, on my wheeled bed, was pushed back to the room where I was staying. Inside, my parents were waiting and I could tell by their expressions that they were most certainly not happy. Once the bed was wheeled and locked into place, Mom and Dad rose from where they sat while the nurses all exited; though, Doctor Apple remained in the room.

“Castor, are you okay?” Mom asked.

“Yeah... I'm fine. My head hurts like Tartarus though.” I put a hoof up to my temple and rubbed it.

“I am glad you are okay.” Her gaze hardened. “I want you to be truthful to me, Castor, what were you doing when you fell out of bed?”

“You should listen to your mother, Castor,” Dad sternly said.

I could feel my ears flatten against my head as I avoided eye contact. “I... was trying to adjust the leavers that raise and lower the back of the bed.”

Mom gave me a withering look while Dad coolly added, “Are you sure Castor? Maybe that fall shook your memories a bit.”

“I... no...” I sighed, “I got up to use the bathroom... and I fell trying to get back in bed.”

“We know,” Mom stated. “The light wasn't on when we left, and the toilet wasn't flushed when we investigated.”

This was one of those times that I would have died of embarrassment such a thing were possible.

“I can't stress how stupid that was of you,” my dad admonished. “By Celestia, you are being the most stubborn mare I know, and I am ashamed that you didn't listen to a single thing, not a single thing, that I said to you earlier.”

“I just... I hate using the bedpan.”

“That is what it's there for. You may think it is demeaning, but there is nothing wrong with using it. Getting out of bed like this, on the other hoof, was very immature and dangerous!”

“I don't think I need to explain to you how brain surgery can be complicated by blunt trauma to the head,” Doctor Apple said after several seconds of silence. Her voice was devoid of the warm Southern charm which typically graces her tones and, instead, was replaced by hard, clean spoken Equestrian with no detectable accent or warmth. “You are very smart, from what I have gathered, but if I have to lay it out to you, then I will. Understand that for the next two or three weeks, you must avoid worsening your condition by doing things like this because you are in a very delicate state of recovery. Ignoring your concussion which you most certainly have made more severe, there are several blood vessels in your brain which have been very meticulously closed off so they will not bleed out and cause hemorrhaging. By their very nature, they are delicate and are prone to rupture when subjected to a sharp impact like the one you just suffered. It is none of my business if you refuse to listen to your parents' advice, but you are obligated to listen to and obey what I say, and if you refuse, I can have you forcibly restrained for your own benefit. If you still refuse to listen, I can and Will have you thrown out of this hospital so I can treat patients who actually want to get better? Do you understand me?”

I nodded sheepishly.

“Good. As of now, you will be under twenty-four hour surveillance among your friends, parents, and the nurses to ensure you don't pull another stunt like that.” Doctor Apple said nothing more, turned, and left.

“I think she summed up everything I wanted to say,” Mom said dryly. “It seems as if we can't trust you to act like an adult, Castor, so we will treat you like a foal if that is what you so desire.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, eyes downcast.

Dad frowned. “Oh, you'd better be, Castor. You'd better be.”

Comments

[FTR2017]

This is quite a human thing for someone who suffered a big loss in functionality - to try and do something to prove to yourself that you're not as useless as you think you are.

Sadly, though, we can be very stubborn to accept help.

This story (Yeah, even the future chapters I've read as a lurker) give a very unique perspective that not many authors are able to successfully portray.

I congratulate you on the skill shown in this tale. Please don't forget us readers. :)