Episode Two: Trouble at the Pharmaromatherapist's
Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 3, early morning
I wish I could say Doctor Redheart’s statement gave me pause, but I honestly hadn’t considered it much until this morning. Whether it was because I’d gotten used to ponies holding grudges over me, or because I thought she was still under the raving lunacy of food poisoning, I have no idea.
In either case, I’m experiencing even greater delays today. It seems that the practice has run out of valuable prescriptive herbs, and as the new doctor, I was the one sent out to get them. Never mind that Redheart’s sickness already has me working for two; I guess workplace hazing is something that transcends city lines. The way I expect it, I’ll be forced into some long chat with the sorts of peppy mares I’ve heard small-town pharmacists can be.
Then I see the sign, and am yet again reminded that nothing in this city is predictable.
Written in a curling script, the name is almost too large to fit onto the wooden marquee. At least, that’s certainly one way I could describe it.
“Pharmaromatherapist?” I mutter to myself, seeing if the name sounds as nonsensical out of my mouth as it does in my head. “That’s not even a word.”
“Who says it has to be?” a voice answers without warning.
It’s barely tiny and soft enough to be considered a whisper, but terrifies nonetheless. As the figure appears from the back of a very well-lit alleyway, I still flinch at the sight of the other pony, who only cringes more in response.
“Oh, did I scare you?” she says in a soft voice. “I’m very sorry about that.”
To be frank, she looks like somepony about to be eaten by a manticore. About the furthest thing from a business owner I’d expect, but I decide to play along. Thinking too much about why she is the way she is, after all, will only delay the delivery I need to make.
“It’s fine,” I reply, trying to seem as genuine as possible. “I just need to pick a few herbs from your clinic. Assuming it’s yours, anyway.”
“It is. But really, I wasn’t expecting anypony from Ponyville Hospital to come today.”
Her pink tail seems to be shaking a little less, but a worried expression still clouds her face. It’s almost the same color as Redheart’s, but with none of the bombastic confidence the other has. Everything about this pony is silky and flowy, beautiful by some standards, but unkempt by medical ones.
I wonder how many times she’s accidentally gotten that mane caught in her herbal mixtures. Probably more than I’d like to know, anyway.
“Why weren’t you?” I ask, trying to abide by Redheart’s rules in the slightest of ways. As much as I hate to admit it, she would likely handle a pony like this far better than I could, as I tend to make clinically shy ponies erupt in tears. Just as this compliment crosses my mind, though, the other mare—Fluttershy, her tag reads—interrupts me with something bound to cancel it out.
“I could’ve sworn somepony just came by yesterday,” she mutters. Giving me yet another sugary sweet glance, she holds out her hoof as though waiting for something.
It takes me a minute to realize, but I happen to be holding the herb list right out in the open. As soon as I figure it out, I hoof it over to her, and her eyes widen as she reads the ingredients.
“Sorry, we just sold those yesterday. I don’t know what happened, but somepony at the hospital must’ve already got them and forgot to tell you.”
Any other pony would’ve seen what was going on here, and I myself realized it an hour or so later. Redheart or no Redheart, my position within Ponyville Hospital is a disputed one, and apparently ponies seem to be going out of their way to prove my incompetence. Nowhere near as cutthroat as the medical rivalries I’ve seen unfold in Canterlot, but still enough to give most ponies a little bit of sting.
But then again, I’m not like most ponies. And that’s something they should’ve seriously considered before getting me into this.
Doctor Twilight Sparkle doesn’t make mistakes, I tell myself one last time as I move closer to the table lined with bottles. Some were glass and filled to the brim with potions, while many were the more modern—and less breakable—foalsafe plastic bottles.
“I guess I’ll have to chew them out about that later,” I mutter at least a little bit jokingly. “For now, I should probably get going—“
Fluttershy’s face peeked out from her selection of bottles, abrupt enough to scare me half to death yet again. Of course, just like the last time, she apologized profusely once she realized what she’d done.
“Wait,” she yelled.
Or, at least, her version of yelling. To anypony else, it was far more of a strict, clipped tone that wouldn’t even get you shushed at a library. She’d also tried to get a firm hold onto my haunches, but was only barely touching them.
“Don’t you want to see the rest of the store? I just opened it a few months ago.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I muttered without thinking. “Not only is this a town with only one plumber, but you haven’t even had a functioning pharmacy for a year?”
With the way the other mare was, I expected her to curl up into a ball at the slightest snarky comment. Instead, though, Fluttershy shook her head so hard her mane looked more like a pink tornado.
“No, no, no. We’ve had a pharmacy for quite some time. But when I became a certified aromatherapist, I thought I’d renovate the place a little. It was a lot of work getting there, but now I can say I’m the first joint herbalist/aromatherapist Equestria has ever known. A pharmaromatherapist, if you will.”
She has a distinct look of pride that betrays the fact that she had intentionally made sure her job title was the hardest thing to say in all Equestria.
“Catchy,” I mutter under my breath.
Fluttershy’s wings suddenly shake with glee, though she still doesn’t feel compelled to lift herself more than a few inches off the ground.
“I know,” she says in her little sing-songy way. “It’ll be a pleasure getting to know you, Doc.”
Before I can correct her on titles, she catapults herself towards a display of fragrances and picks one up to show me. For something that’s meant to be for aromatherapy, it looks surprisingly like a perfume bottle.
“I heard you were having trouble with Doctor Redheart. Rose is her favorite scent.”
“And this is supposed to do…?”
“It’ll cheer her up, of course! Rose oil is great for easing anxiety after a hard day at work, and it even comes with a nice brew of Earl Grey.”
As she prattles on, that last bit raises my eyebrows just a little more.
“You make tea, too?” I question. With the amount of weirdly herb-related specialties this mare has, it really wouldn’t surprise me.
“No, silly. I’m terrible at making tea. But Rainbow Dash is really good at it.”
If there was some tiny part of me that was honestly thinking about buying the rose oil gift basket, it was certainly gone now. I know Dash had said she was going to change jobs, but…
My eyes twitch and every part of my being reels from the sheer unsanitariness of it all. With that, I give Fluttershy a quick wave good-bye and bolt straight out. The phararomatherapist’s bell rings, barely audible, and I can just hear Fluttershy call out as I leave.
“It’s not made out of sewage! I promise!”
From the corner of my eye, I can see her sulking at the table, her snout just barely touching one of the bottles.
“Oh, everypony always does that when I bring up the tea.”
****
Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 3, noon
As much as I’d like to spend the rest of the day foiling Rainbow Dash’s inexplicable plan to get the town sick on tea, it turns out that the pharmaromatherapy clinic has come with other complications. After a strange lull in the amount of patients, somepony finally comes in, and she barely has to say a word before I know what’s wrong. Partially because I’m just that good.
Partially because bits of her fur have been entirely covered by sun rashes.
She’s fretting a lot more than most patients with this problem, her eyes moving from me to her legs and back again.
“Can you help me, doctor?” she practically cries. “I have a fashion show in Canterlot tomorrow, and I simply can’t look like this.”
With the amount of time she’s spent stooped over at her legs, I’d barely noticed that the rashes cover her neck, too. While I don’t quite know how the Canterlot elite feels about ponies with mild sun-related issues, I’ve never seen anypony with a sunburn there. Whether it really is because basic skin functions are looked down upon there, or just some protective sun field the princess sets up around the town, it probably would make her stick out like a sore thumb.
I get the patient’s name—Rarity—from the receptionist, and call her into the closest office. She manages to be dignified about it, but I get the impression that she’s still panicking internally about the splotches on her white fur.
“Sunburns can take up to a week to heal,” I tell her once she’s inside. “Spells don’t work on them, or speed up the process. If it works with the dress code, I’d recommend wearing a scarf or socks to cover them up.”
I was about to ask her if she had the aforementioned clothes items, but from the way her eyes light up, I feel it hardly necessary. The receptionist had told me she was a well-known fashion designer around here, and from the looks of it, she’s probably formulating a new look to meet both requirements.
As she nods to herself about seemingly nothing at all, I continue, “How much time have you spent out in the sun this week?”
Rarity awakes from her fashion-induced reverie and places a hoof on her chin, patting it from one place to another repeatedly.
“Not any more than usual,” she admits. “I do tend to stay in my boutique quite a bit, and I’m usually very careful when it comes to taking care of my skin. I’d say I go out three hours at most, mainly in the morning, and never without sunscreen.”
That, at least, explains why she came to the clinic about a simple sunburn. I haven’t seen very many cases with them myself, but patients do tend to be surprised by the sheer amount of factors that can cause this sort of irritation, and now that the sun portion is safely debunked, I move on to the next major cause.
“Have you been on any new medications?” I question. “Some painkillers and prescription skin creams have been known to increase skin sensitivity.”
Rarity shakes her head again, which is at least preferable to the “you’re a doctor, you should know” response I probably would’ve gotten from certain other citizens had I asked them the same question.
As I lean in closer to inspect the mysterious rashes, I can just detect a faint smell coming off of them. Approaching the rest of her body, I can see that the scent hasn’t spread everywhere; just on the irritated regions.
I won’t pretend to be an aromatherapist, or pharmaromatherapist, or anything of the like, but I at least have some working knowledge of perfumes. There was a huge scent craze in Canterlot a while back, and quite a few ponies ended up in the hospital for it. While that case was largely due to improperly and cheaply manufactured perfumes, it still compelled me to research the subject a bit more.
As it turns out, some scents cause certain adverse reactions based on body composition, and allergies and migraines are just a few. But there are some universal reactions that happen to everypony who comes into contact with the perfume.
“Are those…oranges I smell on the affected areas?” I ask.
“No,” Rarity replies.
My head droops suddenly, figuring I’ve been experiencing some sort of olfactory hallucination that I really ought to get checked. But then her mouth opens again.
“It’s from Fluttershy’s shop. Made from the finest Manehattan citrus ingredients, which makes them not oranges, but…oh-ran-jes!”
Here’s a fact for you: a surprisingly large amount of Equestrian languages use the same word for “orange” as we do. I’d read about it in a book once, but didn’t quite remember it until now. Any other time, I’d have been frustrated with Rarity’s attempts to seem fancy by pronouncing the word in a foreign language, but now, all I feel is the relief of a case solved.
“Where did you apply the scent?” I press her.
“Well, one very famous Prench fashion designer said you should always put perfume where you would like to be kissed. That’s the advice I always follow.”
I give the mare a good stare for a few moments, trying to figure out just what is wrong with that sentence.
“You want to be kissed on the neck?”
The white mare blushes almost instantaneously when I say this.
“I’d say that’s a rather private thing, wouldn’t you?” she replies, almost singing with awkwardness.
“Anyway,” I continue before things manage to make themselves even weirder, “aromatherapy oils are extremely concentrated, far more so than regular perfume. Any effect perfume has on the body, these oils amplify it, which is why they should be used in extremely small doses. While this citrus oil is perfectly fine for you to use at home, orange scent has been known to make ponies photosensitive.”
The minute I realize what I just said in front of a fashion-minded pony, I already regret it.
Don’t go for the pun, I tell myself, don’t go for the pun…
“Oh, but darling,” Rarity answers, striking a fierce and camera-ready pose, “I’m already photo-sensitive!”
She went for the pun.
“I’m sure you are,” I mutter, “but here, ‘photosensitive’ means you’re sensitive to light. Your fur is more likely to sunburn, but as long as you don’t use the oil when you’re about to go in the sun, you should be fine. Orange perfume doesn’t have this effect, so if you’re that deadset on tropical scents, you should buy some in Canterlot tomorrow.”
Once again, Rarity’s eyes light up at the sheer possibilities. I can tell that she’s already done a good deal of perfume shopping and knows exactly which scents to narrow herself down to.
In that moment, I realize I just gave a mare full permission to indulge herself on a shopping spree. It’s not something most doctors do, annoying as it is.
But then again, I’m not most doctors.
You have no idea how many of Rarity's lines were ad-libbed. You just can't plan fabulosity like that, can you? 
Also, as IGYALL readers might have already caught on to, this whole part was basically a way of blaming my usual villains, the Manehattan Oranges, for something that happens in a story they're not even part of. (That and the fact I had to do an entire project on sunscreen for marketing finals.) This is probably the one indication I'll give that they're not in the same universe: if they were, there's no way Rarity would willingly buy Manehattan Orange products.
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8152272
I have no clue. Some of the best jokes in here just randomly happened.
The "photosensitive" one was entirely the result of me writing and then thinking "wait, Rarity wouldn't take this word seriously."
Orange we glad we don't have to deal with these kinds of problems huh? Though I do hope Fluttershy does something about her tea sales pitch or things could go down the drain... now I'm wondering if Sparkle is going to meet the town masseuse because she's going to need some Aloe for all those bad puns she's been getting lately.
Still feeling good about this story.
*dives for cover from the incoming fire* Look out! He's bringing out the big puns!
I find that sometimes the characters start writing, and all I'm doing is typing as fast as I can to keep up.
An interesting story idea you have here.
I demand more twilight snarkle. more DR. Twilight "Cox" Sparkle
8087445 hey buddy i heard you like fresh air. Why dont you go fucking stand outside while I have my cigaret.
and now im going to check out your other fics.
Getting plenty of grump from Twilight, but not really feeling the snark. Assuming you were going for a Dr. House or Dr. Cox vibe, Twilight feels like she falls a bit short of the mark, lacking the comedic edge that made them so enjoyable, even as they insult their patients.
God some people are stupid aren't they. What, a plumber can't make tea now? It's called a shower you dolt. You think Dash comes straight from plumbing work, doesn't wash, and then makes tea!? Twilight, you are the stupidest smart pony there is.
Stuuuupid!
8152908
Keep in mind, she's still something of a Canterlot snob here.
8152940 True, however Fluttershy said everyone thinks that whenever she mentions the tea. So, okay maybe Twilight is a snobby germaphobe but that doesn't explain everyone else.
Rarity demands fabulous words. You will provide them or else!
8153135 everyone knows RD's reputation, it's expected.
I do bet she's a tea lover to rival Celly in this story, though
Actually... I bet she'll get rich when she stops trying and gets Sunbutt to taste her brews
I am definitely enjoying this and I look forward to reading more soon! <3
Well, I was going to start following this, but I see the author either got banned or shut down the account. That means there's no point now. Yet another fanfic bites the dust...
That... is smart. The villains transcends their own reality.
TIP: If you need a good tempo for CPR; play "Stayin' Alive", "Another One Bites The Dust", "Imperial March", or "Row Your Boat". The first is fitting, second is a bad idea, third is the new tempo, and the last keeps you calm. You keep the brain alive by pumping blood to it. Pushing too fast will not do the job.
8158646
1.) Look at my comment below.
2.) Looks alive to me; how can you tell?
8158646
I only got temp-banned, so you're free to read it. It will most definitely continue!
8158971 The author's name was crossed out when I made the comment. Looks like it was just temporary, though.
8169594 Okay, I'll give it a chance, then.
8169594 Temp ban? I won't push it but I'm still curious. What happened?
8152908
Actually, that's from the show Doc Martin. The Doc is a bit miscophobic & often gets zapped with sewage.
Hmm... Fur sunburned? Sounds awkward... Fur might bleach in sun (pointless for Rarity), but it doesn't have the proper inflammatory response mechanism to burn.
Edit for clarification: quote added.
I don't know why that stuck with me and not all the talk of skin later... So, nitpick rescinded, but left because I do like to be reminded when I'm wrong. Sorry.
End edit.
Skin sunburn and white coat making it obvious would make more sense. Or just skin irritation from direct application of something not meant for skin use. Concentrated citrus should do the trick by itself.
Sorry for being nitpicky. It's kinda what I do. Enjoying the premise so far, and the writing is good, though the first person present is unusual and takes a bit of getting used to. See you in a future chapter!
9345436
Pony hair (which is what the coat is called, not fur) is short and close to the skin, similarly to the pelt of a pitbull.