Love Deluxe

by InkStone

The Remains

It was a quiet day at St. Amor Memorial Hospital. Too quiet.

Hospitals are, by nature, chaotic affairs, the type of industry that would leave Discord sobbing and running for the exit while wondering what he did to deserve this punishment. A quiet day in a hospital was the calm before the storm, a portent of doom that put Nurse Snowdrop on edge as she went about her duties. This did not go unnoticed by those around her: patients were tense as she did her rounds, the other nurses gave her questioning glances as she passed, and at least one doctor had asked if she needed to take the rest of the day off. Naturally, she refused, but she begrudgingly took the supervisor's recommendation that she end her rounds early and mare the nurse's station for a while.

Even as she lazily checked off different boxes on the useless paperwork, Snowdrop couldn't stop the swiveling of her ears as they searched for trouble. Every cough, every groan, every out-of-place beeping had her looking around for the source, only to realize that it was some routine non-issue. She knew how ridiculous she must look, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was about to go wrong.

"Oi, what's with the long face?" It was Ice Lily, another nurse who started at St. Amor around the same time as her. She and Snowdrop became fast friends, the latter's more reserved, cautious energy tempering the former's extroverted nature.

Snowdrop huffed, almost blowing a few sheets of paper off the table. She scrambled to put them back in place with a flash of magic, blushing as Ice Lily chuckled. "Oh, laugh it up, Lily. And to answer your question," Snowdrop's ear flicked in the direction of somepony clearing their throat, "I've just got a bad feeling about today."

"Oh yeah?" Ice Lily raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're getting all superstitious on me."

Now it was Snowdrop's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Lily, we live in a world where thousand-year-old prophecies come true on a weekly basis. If anything, I'm being... stitious."

"I don't think that's a word."

"Well, I just made it one," Snowdrop huffed, turning her gaze back to the paperwork. The letters were swimming across the page at this point, notes about this patient or that patient's care all swirling together. A sigh breezed through her muzzle. "I don't know, I just don't trust quiet days."

"The more you think about it, the more you're gonna jinx it ~" Ice Lily called in a sing-song voice as she trotted away to continue her rounds. Snowdrop rolled her eyes, semi-amused, and once again tried to make sense of notes and recommendations done in hoof-writing that a kindergarten teacher would have trouble understanding. Did doctors take classes on how to write in the most unintelligible way possible?

As the day wore on and the sun began to paint the firmament in rosy hues, Snowdrop felt the tension in her body slowly disappate. Nothing bad happened today, no flood of patients or world-ending disasters, nopony coding or random grease fires in the kitchen (they really needed to fire Rusty Spoon). Ice Lily was right; she was being supersti-

Bang!

Dear Celestia, give me the strength...

The front door of the hospital was slammed open with enough force to crack the wall behind it, a feat that Snowdrop would consider impressive in other circumstances. A mare rushed up to the nurse's station, her breaths coming in heavy and labored, her eyes bloodshot, and her mane frazzled, looking for all intents and purposes like she was being chased by Cerberus himself, come to drag her to the deepest layer of Tartarus. With the impassive face mastered by those who have to work with ponies in crisis, Snowdrop addressed the mare.

"How can I help you, ma'am?" Snowdrop was scanning the mare with a professional eye. No visible wounds or blood, that was a good sign. She didn't seem to be physically sick on a preliminary examination, though that conclusion could easily change. Perhaps it was a mental health case? Even with the magic of the Crystal Heart keeping the Empire warm year-round, the desolation of the North could still weigh on a pony... not to mention disappearing from the face of Equus for one thousand years and dealing with multiple crises back-to-back. Unsurprisingly, the Crystal Empire had a per-capita measure of mental illness second only to Ponyville.

"I-I s-she," the mare was struggling to get words out in between her gulps of air. Realizing her deficiency, the mare turned to her side and presented Snowdrop with her problem.

A half-dead thestral filly sprawled across her back.

There was a half-dead filly on her back.

What the fuck.

"We've got a code blue over here! Someone grab a gurney!" Snowdrop yelled in the direction of other medical ponies as she took the filly from the mare's back. The poor dear looked horrific: her lips were blue as a corpse; the area around her muzzle was covered with spittle and flecks of vomit; her appendages hung limp as a cheap ragdoll; and there was no luster or shine in her half-lidded eyes. If it weren't for the shaking, barely audible breaths she took, Snowdrop would have thought she was holding a recently deceased body.

A group of nurses rushed forward with a gurney and Snowdrop placed the filly down, absent-mindedly brushing her two-toned gray mane. The nurses hurried toward the back, a doctor shouting orders and commands, quickly passing through the double doors that led into the deeper annals of the hospital. Snowdrop was left alone to deal with the mare, who seemed rather flustered by the speed at which events progressed.

"Hey, why don't we sit down?" Snowdrop guided the mare over to a row of uncomfortable plastic seats. The mare settled into one of them, staring down at the floor with wide eyes that were still searching for answers. "Do you need something to drink?" The mare nodded. Snowdrop grabbed her a cup of lukewarm water from the cooler in the corner of the waiting room. As she was over there, she took a deep breath, steadying herself to ask some uncomfortable questions. The mare gratefully accepted the water from her and gulped it down like a pony who had spent months roaming the desert. "Now, Miss...."

"Rosewood."

"Rosewood. I'm just going to have to ask you a few questions." She levitated over a pen and clipboard. "Is that okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Rosewood ran a hoof through her brownish-red locks. "I'm not sure how much help I can be though. I don't know who she is."

That caught Snowdrop's attention. "She's not yours?" Now that she thought about it, it was unlikely that a crystal unicorn mare with a magenta coat would be the mother of a gray-coated thestral, though perhaps the filly took after her father.

"No, I-I found her," Rosewood looked like she was about to vomit. "She was... I heard groaning in an alleyway when I was coming home from work, a-and I found her just laying there. I-I thought she was going to die when I was running over here." Her eyes spoke of a deep, primal fear. "Is she going to be okay?"

Snowdrop kept a professional face, but inside, she was wincing. It was always awkward when you were asked if a recently admitted patient would be alright. Speaking realistically, the situation could go anywhere at this point. The filly could make a full recovery; alternatively, she could die within the next hour. But ponies didn't like realistic, especially when it came to matters of life or death, and so it was usually a safer bet to be vague. "She's getting the help that she needs."

Rosewood took a few deep breaths in through her nose before nodding. "Yeah. I guess we just have to see what happens."

"Mmhmm," Snowdrop hummed. "Now, I need to ask a few more questions, if that's alright."

Snowdrop gathered as much information as she could from Rosewood, all the while trying to ignore the question that pecked at her brain like an annoying little bird. But it was hard to ignore one major detail: thestrals did not typically live in the Crystal Empire due to the light reflecting off the crystals bothering their sensitive eyes; in fact, Snowdrop had never seen a thestral in the Crystal Empire except for the Night Guard when Princess Luna visited.

So why was there a nearly dead thestral in the other room who displayed all the signs of being drugged?

Comments

[danemo]

Ooh...thestral