With a sigh, nurse Coldheart laid down the book she was trying to read. I don't understand, she thought. Once more she let her eyes take in the cover illustration, where a tan female pegasus was just narrowly escaping the talons of a griffin. What does Rainbow Dash see in this? Peh. I wish the next part of Violet Rose would come out already.
She slowly took a sip from the cup on her right and looked, for a change, at the nearby grandfather clock. Just a while ago its chimes announced one hour after midnight. She disliked night duty. Not because of her job, but because she sometimes had a feeling that the patients were just trying to make fun of her. Mr. Fuzzy, for example. He was calling for her every hour, because he thought somepony was trying to steal his slippers. She didn't even have anything to calm him easily with, because he never brought slippers with him in the first place.
Her thoughts, drifting from the idea that she could buy him a few pairs, so that she could enjoy some quiet for the rest of her week, gradually changed into thoughts that doctor Stable was already finished with his night rounds and she might get away with resting her eyes a little...
That was when the buzzer rang.
Coldheard put on an annoyed face and turned to the panel with lights that represented individual rooms. In one of the rooms, there was a pony who wished for her attention. She was surprised when the light that signified room twelve remained dim. "Atleast it's not slippers again," she sighed and looked around the rest of the lights. And there it was. Room...
"Room number three? But... That's..."
Nurse Coldheart slowly opened the door. She expexcted the room to be shrouded in darkness. That's why she narrowed her eyes when the lamp light hit her. She still recognized the caged bed and the silhouette of the mare sitting on it.
"Good morning."
The nurse was known for rarely losing her cool. But to hear speech from a patient that only barked since they got her into the hospital, that was too much for her. She didn't even begin to wonder why somepony would call the middle of Luna's time 'morning'. She absentmindedly kicked herself, to make sure it wasn't a dream.
"Good morning?" answered the nurse uncertainly, when even the second kick didn't wake her. "Erm... You... You can speak?"
In the time her eyes accustomed to the light in the room. She could look closely at the caged mare. Her blue fur was still disheveled, but less than when she went to look how she is doing last time. The same could be told about her gray mane. When Coldheart checked on her in the evening, every strand of hair pointed into a different direction. They looked a bit less wild now, as if somepony tried to tame them with only her own two hooves.
"Yes, I can. I have to apologize. It's going to sound weird, but I can explain everything."
Coldheart gave the patient a critical glare. The same fur color, mane color, the same cutie mark. A screw. No mix-up. "I would like that very much. You can begin by telling me who you are."
"Of course. My name is Hiding Screw and I worked as the carpenter's assistant until the half of the last month," the blue mare started explaining.
That's consistent with what her friends said when they brought her in, the nurse thought.
"Mostly his inventory keeper," the imprisoned mare continued, "that's also what my mark represents. Even in a disorganized room, I can find every last thing, down to the last screw."
"Right. So what happened that you ended up here?"
"Do you know Lyra Heartstrings? She's a unicorn with strange ideas and an unhealthy interest in humankinds. At least I think that's what she calls them. I'm not really sure about the plural."
Coldheart nodded. She passed by Lyra a few times. Her style of sitting was easy to notice. She alone imagined Lyra would show up in the hospital when her spine gives in.
Hiding Screw continued: "She believes she's an incarnation of one of those creatures. I tried to convince her that she's just making herself believe things from an obscure fairy tale and that other ponies can lie to themselves in a similar manner. There was a lot of hot blood between us that evening. It ended in a bet. If I could convincingly act as a dog for a month, she's going to think about it. And by today's midnight the month ended."
Nurse Coldheart stared at Hiding Screw with a look of disbelief. "So... To sum it up. You let yourself be persuaded into acting like a dog. All that running around, barking and... other undignified acts were deliberate. All our attempts to calm you down and take care of you were only because of a bet."
"As I said, it sounds weird. But I'm fine. Thank you very much for how you treated me. The Ponyville clinic gives health care a great name. But I wish to return to my own bed now. If you could please let me-"
"No," the patient was interrupted by a strong answer from the nurse, who was just turning around to the door.
"Excuse me? Nurse?"
Coldheart took one last glace back before closing the door with the words: "You'll stay right where you belong."
As nurse Coldheart returned to the front desk, the buzzer and light of room 3 was active again.
"She certainly doesn't give up," she mumbled and disconnected the offending line of the noisy apparatus. "I'll let the doc handle her in the morning."
She couldn't quite wrap her head around the whole case. Even the famous Canterlot psychiatrist, dr. Gray Matter, was stumped about the change of Screw's mental state. He called it his greatest case, making up so many theories from a lingering effect of Discord's magic up to her getting bitten by a timberwolf. Well, he's going to have to re-file her as an altogether different case. Perhaps he'll get called a fraud for missing something obvious, the nurse smirked, channeling her dislike of the Canterlot doctor.
As the nurse once again dozed off, the event when Hidden Screw was brought to the hospital once again played before her eyes...
Celestia has just risen the sun that morning. It was a sign for nurse Coldheart that her shift will be over soon. In just half an hour, maybe even less if her colleague, nurse Sweetheart, felt eager, she would be on her way to bed. Perhaps she would be able to greet her husband on the way as well.
Gradually, she realized the quiet was being disturbed by barking. Who the hay walks their dog so close to here? Must be somepony new. They probably don't know that this is a pony hospital, and the vet clinic is in the northern part of Ponyville. It wouldn't be the first time this happened.
Finally, the door opened, and the source of the commotion revealed itself. It was a shocker for the nurse to see a gray-maned blue mare, dirty and disheveled, growling and barking at two other mares and a stallion that were unsuccessfully trying to pin her down. The nurse recognized Bon-Bon and Caramel. She wasn't sure about the crazy screw-marked or the orange carrot-marked one, but she did see them around town a couple times.
Bon-Bon shouted: "Help! Nurse! We have a deranged pony on our hooves!"
That was enough to snap the nurse out of her stupor. She raced to the supplies room to get a dose of sedatives.
As she returned, she saw the opposite door open, and a very alarmed nurse Sweetheart calling: "Please! Could you keep it down? The patients need their rest!"
The blue mare had once again managed to escape the efforts her captors made and stood right next to the newcomer, sniffing around her, until finally giving her a lick on the face. She them proceeded to sit down next to the pink nurse, happily wagging her tail. "Well, she certainly is friendly," finally concluded the nurse.
"Yeah, real friendly," answered the orange-colored mare. The nurses then noticed that she had bite marks on her foreleg.
"What in the name of all alicorns is happening anyway?" Coldheart asked with a syringe of sedative ready in her mouth, in case the dog-pony resumed her wild behavior. Then again, she wasn't quite sure if she would be able to apply it, with the agility the mare seemed to posses.
"I'm not sure. I've never seen Hidden Screw in such a state. Or anypony for that matter," Caramel admitted, while taking up a spot near the front door, should the now named mare attempt escape.
"Yeah. I don't think Silver Hammer is such a bad employer to make her go nuts. She hasn't even mentioned anything bad about her home and always seemed happy."
"And then suddenly, when I went to water the flowers, I saw her in the park, making Fluttershy uncomfortable. I just had to take her here," Bon-Bon agreed with the others, as she caught her breath.
The nurses pondered the answers. "You've done good, but we're not exactly ready to handle cases of this caliber."
"There must be something you can do!" the bitten mare interjected.
"Well, we can keep her sedated, but it's not healthy in the long run!" Sweetheart pondered, "Don't you have any place you can keep her?"
"In her current state? Why do you think we went through all this trouble to get her here?"
Sweetheart turned to her colleague: "What about the foal beds? We have a couple special caged beds for hyperactive foals."
"The keyword is 'Foals'. They won't be much effective for containing a grown mare at the peak of her strength," Coldheart countered.
"Well, yeah, but what else can we do? The padded rooms were eaten by parasprites and we still lack the budget for their restoration!"
Nurse Coldheart's brain worked out a quick solution. "We'll have to make do with what we have. Here," she passed the sedative to the other nurse, "keep an eye on them. I'll go clear out a room and perhaps throw some pillows in it. Number three is the closest free one, right?"
Through the conversation, with nopony trying to get near her, the patient seemed to calm down. That was only until her pursuers realized that she shifted her attention to a nearby plant and started raising her hind leg.
Coldheart returned to an image of near apocalypse. The exit was still blocked by the stallion, trying to look brave, but knowing that if the dog-pony tried to make a run for it, she would be able to trample him without breaking a sweat. The mare, however, didn't make an attempt and kept her game of reverse tag on the inside. Neither of the three other mares were able to catch her, and as the reception wasn't designed for such activities, overturned tables, plants, inclined pictures and broken glass decorated the room. Even worse, Bon-Bon looked kind of woozy, which was understandable, given the sedative syringe planted right above her cutie-mark.
"I'm not even gonna ask."
Hidden Screw stopped running when the others did. Then she slowly went near nurse Sweetheart, pounced, licked her again and backed off, playfully wagging her tail.
Bon-Bon fell down, knocked out, next to the orange mare. "Ugh. She's seriously out of it. We almost got ourselves hurt, but it's all just a game to that pony."
"That's it!" the pink nurse shouted in an epiphany, "is there anything we can use for a stick?"
"Seriously? You want to play with her now? It is spreading?" Caramel frightfully asked.
"Don't you see? We can lure her into the prepared room if she wants to play fetch."
She immediately grabbed the first thing she saw with the desired shape. Then she dangled it a little to get the blue mare's attention. Nurse Coldheart gasped, as the object soared through the air, back behind the reception desk, and as the mare sprinted after it.
Nurse Sweetheart followed. The other ponies heard a few calls of "Good girl" and "Fetch". Soon, these were followed by a door slam and the click of a lock. Then the nurse returned: "I told you it would work."
"That was my favourite pen," finally said the other nurse.
The yellow nurse snapped out of her nap. Once again, the room buzzer was going wild, only this time, it was room number 12.
We really need to get those padded rooms back soon. All the ponies in this hospital are crazy!
