Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 13, morning
What would Director Celestia do at a time like this?
I’ve been through just about every set of hoops I can find to figure out how to make everything better for Redheart, admittedly even more than I’ve puzzled how to get out of this town. Right now, however, that fact doesn’t strike me near as much as my utter incompetency. And here I stand, leafing through page after page of the Canterlot hospital bulletin I still receive in the mail and avoiding the sad truth in front of me.
I have no. Bloody. Idea!
It seemed like an excellent plan on paper, ending the rivalry by acting cool and leaving Redheart completely and utterly in my debt. I was even able to stall for all of yesterday by telling her I needed more time to think, but I can’t keep doing this to myself or to her. After realizing there isn’t going to be an interview with Director Celestia in the hospital magazine telling her exactly how she keeps all her doctors on staff, I slam it shut right on the page about her new personal protégé.
Strangely enough, jealousy is on my mind about as much the possibility of me actually liking Redheart is. There’s satisfaction to be found in shoving her face back into the magazine, granted, but it’s pretty empty. Rehearsed, even.
Hope you don’t screw up too much, Dr. Sunset Shimmer. Otherwise, you’ll end up where I am and realize you can only help ponies if they’re about to die.
Just about as soon as I do this, however, the back of the publication gives me a new idea. There’s some fancy mumbo jumbo in there about some new technique or another, but what catches my eye is one thing in particular. This new innovation is all about detecting cases before they can happen, about knowing frequent clients and predicting their behavior.
In one fell swoop, I’ve managed to find my weakness—and Redheart’s strength.
Doctor Twilight Sparkle doesn’t make mistakes. Not this time.
****
Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 13, noon
“Think about it,” I tell Redheart, simultaneously telling myself that I’m only eating lunch with her for the sake of the hospital, “who always shows up here with some issue or another?”
Any shade of the fearful pony she was just a few days ago vanished just about as soon as I told her to meet me in the office. We’re both in between patients, which gives us just enough time to discuss her future and how I can make it brighter than ever. For the most part, she seems eager to face this new challenge, though, knowing her, she’s probably hiding her sadness yet again. Then again, I shouldn’t talk as if I’m any better in that regard.
“Granny Smith, I’d say,” Redheart replies. “I appreciate what she’s done for the town, and I love her cider as much as anypony else does, but she’s sure become a hypochondriac in her old age.”
I file that bit of knowledge into my long-term memory, just in case the elderly Apple matriarch suddenly comes down with some rare disease. Still, I can’t help but facehoof at my coworker for missing the point.
“That’s not what I meant,” I groan before suddenly changing my voice to a more pleasant tone. After all, I am supposed to be getting into Redheart’s good graces and all. “While hypochondria is something we definitely have to be on the lookout for, is there anypony around here that seems to come to the hospital abnormally often?”
Redheart gives a single huff of thought before responding with the last thing I want to hear.
“Rainbow Dash. She’s always here to sell something, but lately, I feel like she’s hanging around for other reasons. Plus, she changes jobs so much that I feel like maybe her body isn’t cut out for that many of them.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Laziness is another. Something that I can’t help but think Dash probably has in spades; either that or utter stupidity. Still, she’s stayed on the tea craze for so long that I’ve almost forgotten that she’s ever done anything else.
All of eleven days. Must be a new record for her.
“Anyway, her visits have really started to peak right when you showed up. I guess I could look into her a bit more and figure out what’s up. It may not be anything medical, but if it means keeping other ponies from getting sick off her schemes, then I’d be all for it.”
The way she says this all-too-casually suggests one of two things to me: that Rainbow Dash has been at this longer than any of us have realized, and that significant casualties have been inflicted in the process. With any hope, she’ll stick to making her subpar tea.
Anyway, I swear that just about as soon as Redheart gets ready to leave the hospital, Rainbow Dash trots right in, accompanied by the same little companion who always stares at her with such adoration. Although Dash herself annoys me to no end, I feel that I can at least live with the foal’s company, seeing as she already seems quite a bit more mature than her maybe-sister, maybe-mother.
(None of this is because I’m soft on foals to the point where I almost became a neonatal nurse. Honest. Even if she does flap her wings enough to remind me of a tiny hummingbird.)
Sure enough, whether by magic or perhaps something more mundane, Redheart actually manages to predict their arrival, and I pray to the stars above that she keeps that ability in future cases.
Rainbow, oddly enough, appears with none of her usual businesspony swagger, even as the filly remains blissfully ignorant of the situation. She doesn’t utter a single word to either of us as she’s guided into the nearest room, not even a “Doc Twilight.” Whatever’s gotten to her has to be the moment of reckoning Redheart mentioned. And now comes the hardest part of my task. I have to let Redheart take them into her office and trust in her with everything I’m going to have.
Yeah. Like I’m going to let that happen.
****
Twilight Sparkle, M.D.
Ponyville Hospital, Day 13, afternoon
Some clarification on that last statement: I may trust her more than most ponies, even after just a few days of really getting to know her, but that’s not saying much. I’m built to trust the patients who come into my life for a few hours, after all. But deep down, I know—anything more than that doesn’t come easy for me. I’m not sure where or when I stopped trusting anypony else, but that’s an issue I can’t fix just yet.
Thankfully for me, this building has terrible insulation, and I’m able to pick up a few bits as I examine my patients. Enough for it not to be considered eavesdropping, at least.
Most of the ponies I have today just require short, simple checkups. For example, one random colt with a propeller hat screams “I need healing” at me for at least five minutes straight without specifying his condition, at which point I push him straight out of the room. One needed a physical for the hoofball team. Yet another followed up with me on their chronic indigestion, which I chalked up to all the pills their past doctors had been prescribing them. (Note to self: I should really figure out whose bright idea it was to prescribe a pony five ibuprofens per day and hand them over to the Crown at once. At least reporting their utter incompetence out of Equestria would take some of the pressure off Redheart.)
Just after I get out of a particularly long and equally infuriating appointment, in which I had to repeatedly lecture a middle-aged stallion about how I can neither treat his erectile dysfunction within a day’s notice nor give him a day’s supply of “performance-enhancing drugs” so he can lie about a particular engagement tonight, Redheart finally comes in and relieves me of my misery.
As it turns out, the insulation might be terrible, but Dash’s voice has been so low the whole time, I haven’t been able to make heads or tails of her. I hate to admit it, but I might actually be kinda worried about her.
“For the love of all things holy,” I yell right when Redheart trots in. “Just tell your goddess-forsaken wife!”
“Um, bedside manner?” Redheart mutters, glaring at me intensely. Or she would be, if I wasn’t so scared by her sudden intrusion that I can barely look at her.
“Oh, sorry. What I meant to say was that, in a stable relationship—“
Redheart facehooves as if preparing for impact, and just about as soon as I say it, the stallion laughs in my face. This town never gives me a chance to forget how much everypony loves puns, does it?
“You know what I meant! Not the ‘stable’ like the place we live, the ‘stable’ like the type of wife who won’t leave you due to a diagnosable medical condition. Which should be obvious!”
The stallion practically laughs all the way out of the hospital, and Redheart cautions me on using that word again. Apparently, all the doctors here have had to buy thesauruses just to avoid making the same mistake I did.
I’m going to have to put a moratorium on any and all words that could be construed as puns, if today’s any indication. Anyway, just after lecturing me, a grave look sweeps onto Redheart’s face, something I haven’t seen since the big scene a few days back.
“The tea factory burnt down when Rainbow Dash was in it,” she explains. “None of the burns were particularly intense, but she didn’t get them treated soon enough, and…”
I challenge myself to recall the last time I saw her enter the waiting room, and come to think of it, most of her body had been covered. Whether out of embarrassment or otherwise, Dash clearly wanted as few ponies as possible to know about her condition. Which, of course, explains why she didn’t want to come to us as soon as possible, but still makes her an absolute idiot.
You see, while most minor burns can be treated at home, ones inflicted by such things as chemicals or an entire damn building being razed to the ground tend to require a bit more care. The fact of the matter is, ponies like Rainbow tend to make mistakes that turn ordinary burns into disasters, and disasters into cataclysms. From the smell she emits all over the hospital, either butter is the newest scent craze in Canterlot, or she fell victim to one of the most dangerous old pony’s tales around. And, judging from the way she managed her business, I severely doubt the former.
From what Redheart’s been able to tell me, the factory was an incredibly makeshift operation constructed out of an abandoned hut, someplace that was already very susceptible to fire otherwise. Turn that place into a factory and tasting area, and any mistakes with that kettle could prove as catastrophic as they did.
“Thankfully, Sugarcube Corner was doing an event the day it burnt down, so only a few ponies showed up,” Redheart explains. “Ms. Dash says she received the brunt of the damage, so most were already treated by the firefighters. Most of her damage will go away on its own, I think, but her wings will take quite a bit of time and surgery to heal.”
I almost didn’t hear it from the fuss my last patient was making, but I do recall hearing Rainbow Dash screaming from the other room for at least a minute straight. While Redheart goes on to explain that only the edges of her wings were damaged, and that they wouldn’t have been as damaged as they were if she hadn’t put butter on the wound, I can hardly imagine what any wing injury would feel like. If she still planned on using that tour guide idea she chatted me up about on my first day here, she wasn’t going to get too far with it.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I finally ask, trying to be as reasonable as possible. “You seem to have everything handled, and if you can sense patients like you did today, there’s no way they’ll fire you.”
Redheart’s eyes go straight to the ground before finally turning to face me. She gestures to Dash’s door, guides me to the peephole. Our patient is clutching her filly companion as hard as she can, crying as if her life was on the line.
“Where am I gonna to find the money?” she whispers. “Oh, stars above, what am I gonna do? I certainly can’t work in this condition…”
She strokes the filly’s wings, holding them like a particularly trusty security blanket. I can only see them for a moment, but they’re deathly small for her age, and even when she flapped them like there was no tomorrow, she still couldn’t lift herself off the ground.
“There’s something bigger going on here,” mutters Redheart. “I asked her about Scootaloo—that filly over there—and Ms. Dash said she’s being treated at the Featherfall Clinic in Cloudsdale. Supposedly, they haven’t been able to make heads or tails of her condition, even though she’s gone to them for years.”
I can’t help but steal another glance at the filly, wondering if things could really be as easy as they seem. Certainly, Cloudsdale doctors would be able to detect this far quicker than I could with today’s advances in wing technology. Right away, though, I can tell that something about Dash’s story isn’t adding up, and for once, it has nothing to do with the mare herself.
“They have to know,” I murmur, almost too low for Redheart to hear. “Even though she can’t fly, she doesn’t show any extreme signs of sickness. I can’t say for sure, since I haven’t looked at her yet, but if I’m right, she probably just has growth hormone deficiency. That has to be something they’ve treated before.”
“I was running tests on her while you were working, and while I did, Ms. Dash told me that she was diagnosed with it six months ago. Exactly the same time she started her schemes, if I recall properly.”
It takes everything I have not to curse as soon as I hear this. Even though she doesn’t say it, Redheart can already feel the gears turning in her mind, just as hers must have done just minutes ago. In any other situation, the idea of Rainbow Dash holding a stable job, or at least some vague facsimile of one, would’ve come as a shock, but it already pales in comparison to the plot unraveling in front of me.
Redheart may very well have found the pet project that’ll anchor her here. I only wish it didn’t have to come with the kinds of repercussions it brought on everypony else.
“She says she won’t be able to afford both her burn treatment and Scootaloo’s hormones,” whispers Redheart, as if the truth wasn’t obvious to me already. “Now, correct me if you’re wrong, but that isn’t how hospitals work where you’re from, is it?”
I solemnly shake my head and launch into an explanation of what she surely already knows. As part of the Crown’s reform plan and as part of our own responsibilities as working ponies, no medical treatment carries a charge in Equestria. That means that anyplace that attempts to do so—even for the relatively complex procedure that goes into transplanting one pony’s growth hormones into consistent daily doses for the other—has no right to exist. And, all too likely, no license to operate.
Hospitals like this were thought to be a thing of the past—a passing scam that faded as quickly as the dew itself. But here they are, right in our backyard, possibly keeping an innocent filly from ever leaving the ground. Or, if worse comes to worse, even earning her cutie mark altogether.
Anypony who would still say I never cared about my patients should stare at me right now and say it to my face.
With a heavy heart, I tell my fellow doctor that she was right about everything. That her suspicions are not unmerited. And then, I go into Dash’s room, leave Redheart to her investigations, and trust that she’ll be able to push through. Because really, it isn’t just about her anymore.
And by trusting that she’ll be able to push through, I mean that I walk towards the filly as if nothing I just heard ever happened. As if just looking at her doesn’t make me want to burst into tears.
Yeah, something's afoot here. Something rotten with Rainbow and Scootaloo. I have an inkling feeling, but I just hope I'm very wrong...
And I have to ask, I don't play Overwatch, so what's the joke?
Also, nice to know Sunset Shimmer's a doc in this universe. She seems like she'd be cut out for the job.
8538944
It's the 'I need healing' bit that Button Mash says. Apparently, people still haven't figured out how to request their healer character for healing, and say it all at once. Which apparently sounds like this:
Also, I can tell you up front that Rainbow isn't using Scootaloo to get growth hormones for herself, if that's what you're thinking. Scootaloo really does have a deficiency/growth issue in this fic, and Rainbow really does care about her. Some things in here really are as innocent as MLP canon is.
8538957
Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. And alleviating my worries about Rainbow and Scootaloo. ...God, you really just became a real Doctor then, didn't you?
I think the biggest challenge we might face as authors is our audience forgetting that ponies are not humans, and therefore anything they might see in a fanfic cannot be reasonably taken as a commentary on the real world.
Um, I don't get it. You say Scootaloo has been going to Featherfall for years, and what they are doing is illegal. One conversation with Dash has revealed what they are doing, so how have they stayed in business this long? Surely one letter from a doctor to Celestia would put an end to them immediately (which I assume is what Twilight is about to do), so what's going on?
I have a feeling I am reading a re-write of House - without the snark and sarcastic behaviors. Pretty good adult drama.
8539040
Who knows? I imagine Featherfall is one of the few places in town (as Cloudsdale appears the same size as Ponyville) and Twilight's looking at this as someone versed in medical law. Cloudsdale ponies might merely assume the medical system is different, or simply not know they're being scammed.
Hope this helps, and I'll try to flesh it out in future parts.
8539048 Well if ignorance is the only reason they're still in business, then I imagine that whoever runs that place (and most of the people working there) are going to prison pretty soon.
8539064
Exactly the point I'm going for here.
8538944
The joke is the fact that people who almost exclusively play the character Genji love to spam that particular voice line while jumping and dashing all over the place and generally making it impossible for a healer to actually heal him. He's a cybernetic ninja type, which means he's extremely mobile and with a small-ish hit box.
This is also a pretty good representation of the meme.
https://youtu.be/TBdNSdVWB6s
Also, found the Genji reference LOL.
Hahahahaha- No. No on so many levels. It's a wonder that pony is still even alive and not burning up from the inside out at this point.
8539430
Actually, when I had chronic migraines, one of the doctors actually prescribed this to me. I only did it for a couple weeks, but I had indigestion just about every day for two years. Hence why I say one of my doctors.
8539435
Odd. I take about that much and I haven't had any significant problems, gastrointestinal or otherwise.
I never thought about this before, but wait a minute... if Celestia is a hospital director in this AU... who's the ruler of Equestria?!
8539435
At least it's short term and not every other day for a few months. Even though my dosage wasn't that much it was still discomforting for going on that long. Sad fact that I could barely work if I didn't take it. At least I'm recovering from it now. Probably a little overreaction on my part considering the different types of medication he takes, his higher than normal body temp.
8539653
That's...something I really haven't figured out yet, unfortunately.
Technically speaking, both sides claim they want people to be able to afford health care.
Not only that, but in a world where Celestia is a Doctor, plus the general "Do good to others" moral of the show, I don't think it's wrong to have them pay for Health Care. I can't imagine Dr. Celestia say, "Sorry kid, you're going to die because you're poor", or "Sorry Scootaloo/Rainbow Dash, you will never be able to fly because you're poor. This is a VERY Doctor & Hospital focused Equestria, so this only makes sense.
Paying for all healthcare is pretty much an American exclusive, in the developed world. In equestria I can perfectly understand it being absolutely covered by the state.
Lo and behold, the wrath of the Sparkle! Ruin shall come to those who abuse the medical system for profit and hurt foals in the process.
By the way, is scoots Rainbow's daughter, sister, niece or kinda adopted just like in the series?
8540282
Scootaloo's relation will come in the next part.
8540097
Just have it be Luna or Fausticorn or something like that, if need be.
8538957
Heal pls.
I mean... our healthcare system is a scam. It's literally a legal racket. There's no grey area or anything. Our system is based on extortion, and not just of goods/valuables, but your very life and well-being. Not to mention insurance companies are just the worst thing in the history of mankind.
A lot of people are fine with it, and for a certain level of expectation, it totally works. Doesn't change the fact that it's literally racketeering.
8540201
Too soon? It's not like I
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Not getting into the RL politics of paying for Healthcare, but I could have swore that a big part of the reason that Applejack wanted to to to the Gala in the show was to pay for a new hip for Granny Smith. I'm not 100% on this as it's been years snice I last saw the ticket master but that seems right so paid healthcare seems to be a thing in the show. Though even then this is a fan fic and thus some degree of AU is in play even before Twilgiht became Doogie Houser MD.
8603239
Echo that. As best I can tell, EQ & the USA are just about the only places that you HAVE TO pay for your medical care. They can't refuse to treat life threatening conditions, but anything more is the patient's responsibility. Dash's condition seems to be life threatening . They would have to treat her. The hospital would turn her over to a Collection Agency & the agency would garnishee her paycheck if necessary. Scootaloo is on her own for treatment. Being crippled for life won't kill you, so no pay = no treatment.
& Yeah, Ticket Master (S1 E3) would seem to indicate that EQ has Republican Health Care
8541031
You'd fit into Ponyville quite nicely, it seems.