Caring

“Oh, ma'am would you mind staying a moment to answer a few questions?” the pharmacy supervisor asked the patient Keto had just helped.

The mare shook her head at the supervisor's request. “Sorry, but my brother's little colt is having his eighth birthday party today, and there's no way I'm going to leave my nephew without a birthday cake, since I'm supposed to be the one bringing it,” she explained.

The supervisor waved a hoof before she replied, “oh no, don't worry, it's all fine. It was just a service and patient consultation review, it's completely voluntary.”

The mare smiled thankfully and turned around to walk out the Pharmacy door, at which Keto Profen, standing some ways back internally gave a massive sigh of relief. The questions were supposed to be review questions about him, given it was six months since he'd started at the Pharmacy and they had to do a thorough review of his patient consultations and services to decide whether or not to keep him on for the long term.

Of course, the concept of being reviewed terrified him, he had been literally feeling his heart rise up his chest to bottom of his throat over and over with every patient the Pharmacy supervisor attempted to question. Even worse, he hadn't been able to allow himself to take any his anxiety medication, given any Benzodiazepine would almost certainly make one sluggish or fatigued to at least some minor extent.

“Well, I'm thinking we might just have to extend your review into tomorrow; it seems like nopony wants to talk today,” his supervisor said to him regretfully.

She came towards and walked passed him, returning to the back office where she usually was. “Sorry,” Keto said as she was heading back. “Oh, don't apologize for everypony's busy lives. Besides, this more than partially my fault; I did pick the day after all, and my luck with happenings and having things go as planned has always been worse than most. I'm just glad I've never had any real mishaps with anypony's medication occur while I've been here,” she insisted, and then finally walked into the office, but she did leave the door open, so as to hear if anypony else came in and spoke with Keto.

Keto Profen was looking over at his own medication at that moment, and in the same he gazed up at the clock for several seconds as well. It was almost five o'clock, and the board over on the wall said his day was over at five-thirty. He knew it took around twenty minutes for the effects of taking Lorazepam to begin to onset: both benefits and side effects. So, since it was so close to the end of his shift he decided he could finally go ahead.

He narrowed his eyes intently and walked back to the employee table behind all of the Pharmaceutical shelves. Just as he reached the table though, the little bell hanging from the front door rang as the door was opened and Keto was made to stop and turn around. Once he had, and began heading back to the counter, he saw that it was actually Lightning Dust who had just entered the Pharmacy, and his face, in turn, brightened with her arrival.

“Hi,” he greeted her with a small smile, the first genuinely happy voice he’d been able to use all day.

“Hey,” she said back as she came up.

Keto slowed down in step just before reaching the counter. His eyes did widen for a second, although they quickly went back to normal. She had actually greeted him back, and not just looked away or gone straight to a demand like she had done her first and second time visiting the Pharmacy. Lightning's look was even revealing of her depression having been reduced by some chunk. She was even flat-lipped, and wholely open-eyed, as opposed to her former low-eyelids, sullen expression from her past two visits.

“Wow, uh, the Venlafaxine's taking a good effect; at least I think I see,” he said.

“Yeah,” she responded, “I'm feeling better. I mean, it's not like I'm the same as I was before . . . I know I'll probably never get like that again. But I don't feel anything like I did right after, or even when I came here the first time.”

Her expression did dim when she alluded to her expulsion from the Wonderbolt Academy, but that wasn't exactly surprising to Keto. He was just flooding with mixture of relief and happiness at how well she seemed to be doing so quickly; it had been a week since her second visit to the Pharmacy when he had raised her dose.

“Uh, so, why did come back in so early?” he asked, only suddenly realizing she should have had another week of medication left.

“We can't raise your dose for another . . . ah-I mean, really I'd just rather prefer to have to get used to the medication itself for another week at the middle dose,” he explained, somewhat.

“Huh? No, it's . . . nothing like that,” she said, trailing off a bit at the end and looking away.

Lightning kept her head turned away for a few seconds, looking down at an angle and biting the inside of her lip, something Keto Profen thought resembled somepony struggling to say or admit something they really don't want to. Though of course, her depression that still remained dampened the clarity of any and every other would-be expression, including this one.

“I'm not really getting any good sleep anymore,” she finally admitted, “it's a lot worse now than when I came in last time.”

“Yeah, th-that's definitely the side effect of the Venlafaxine,” he confirmed for her, as he had suggested last time.

“Wait, were . . . you didn't come here because you wanted to stop taking it, did you?” he asked in a sudden, mild panic.

“No, I was . . .” she began to tell him, though she hesitated again which only ended up allowing him a second or two to calm down from his sudden scare.

She sighed, and then said, “I was gonna ask if you could give me anything: to help me sleep?”

Keto had to take a second to allow his eyes to slightly widen and then return to normal. He hadn't at all been expecting that from her, especially given how she'd reacted to him trying to ask about her sleep last week.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I can. I mean it's directly correlated to your pre-established medicative regimen; we're just trying to alleviate a symptom, not starting another treatment for a different condition altogether,” he explained happily.

“So . . . can you give me something, or do I have to go back my doctor?” she still asked, seeming confused at the particular manner in which he’d spoken.

“Ah-no, th-that's what I was saying, that I can write it. Agh,” he replied, wanting to face-hoof himself but keeping from it, “sorry I started talking like that again. I know it was only for, like, a paragraph or a couple sentences, but, uh . . .”

“It's not any big deal. I'm fine, just . . . please get me the medicine, or . . . sleep stuff; whatever,” she cut him off to say.

“Oh yeah, don't worry, there's more than enough hypnotics I'm familiar with that I can give you,” he promised.

“So . . . that's like your word for sleep pills?” she asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, ah-sorry about that, again. Hypnotics is the word we use, but everypony else just calls them whatever, just like with basically every other drug class,” he answered.

Keto was struck by a thought for a brief few seconds after he'd spoken. The fact that Lightning had even asked that question was enough to show that she was interested in what he'd said for one reason or another, which meant that her depression and her recent memory of being stripped of her opportunity to become a Wonderbolt weren't completely consuming her thoughts anymore, or at least he hoped he could take it as a sign of such.

“You can talk like that if you want to,” she suddenly said back in a snappy voice, “I've never heard some of the words you're using but I think I'm smart enough to at least guess that you're talking about doing giving me something to help me sleep.”

Keto wasn't sure whether it had been just an edgy comment or actual biting anger that had just come from her. Either way, he felt a twist of regret begin to knot itself up in him; another one. He flattened his lip line and pressed his teeth together for a second.

“Yeah, I'll . . . uh, make up my mind,” he promised, laden with momentary guilt.

That time it was Lightning who felt something. It may have been guilt . . . maybe just a tiny speck of it. She didn't exactly know; guilt of all things wasn't exactly the emotion she was most used to feeling. But . . . maybe falling from the highest point she had ever climbed all the way down to lowest level of the depression she had succumbed to had finally left her open to other things.

“Ah-I just need to know some stuff first,” he said, and then asked, “uh, you don't . . . drink, do you?”

Lightning raising her eyebrow at the question was all but reflexive, regardless of the fact she would have done so anyways. “No. I . . . WAS, a top-class athelete. I did everything I could to keep myself in perfect flying condition. There’s no way I’d ever let myself do anything like that,” she answered.

Keto made sure to smile at that answer. He had never really had any liking for the whole concept of drinking, ever since he was colt, even. Though it was something rather rare among ponies in comparison to some of the world’s other races, he was still required to ask, for his patients’ safest.

“So, nothing? Never?” he asked for affirmation one more time, at which she shook her head in response. Her face still showed disgust at the idea even of the accusation, or at least what she would have viewed as one.

“Well good,” he said, “then it's definitely safe for me to let you take mild CNS depressants . . .”

Lightning tried to withold herself, but she couldn't. “L-look,” she starting asking, though somewhat hesitantly, “I know I said I could just figure stuff out, but what are you talking about right now? I'm already depressed.”

That assumption on Lightning’s part shot Keto Profen into another flash-panic. “N-n-no, no, ah-it's a different depressed,” he tried his best to remain clear in explaining, “it's not like that, that's emotional depression that you're thinking about, this is a different . . . uh, version, of the word that means more like stop, or block something.”

Keto suddenly realized that he had been motioning gestures of the process with his hoof, at which he quickly put it back down on the floor and his face turned a light red under his fur. They weren't restricted from holding their hooves above the counter or anything, it was only really something Keto Profen had always just felt out of place doing.

“Ah-I'm sorry,” he began, “for that, uh, misconception, not for speaking with any pharmacological words I used at all though, I guess, since y-you said not to be for that . . .”

He couldn’t avoid a self-aggravated sigh before he went on to explain things, “I'm so much worse than usual today; it's because I'm getting evaluated.”

Were she her old self, pre-wonderbolt-expulsion, Lightning would have spoken some aggressive encouragement, since despite paying attention mainly to herself, she did lend her positive, though often obnoxious enthusiasm to ponies she liked well enough. But, in her present state the thought of what she would have done only crossed her mind and hung at its edge for a moment, but nothing more.

“I'll stop keeping you waiting and go get you something,” he said as he turned around. “I'll make sure it's whatever you can take that'll give you the least amount of trouble,” he promised, looking back over his shoulder at her as he began to head to the shelves.

“Um, you know you can still ask me stuff like you said you were going to. I can get over being mad . . . it's this stupid depression I can't stop,” she made herself say before he was out of range.

Keto felt a deep tug of sympathy at what she said, and the dulling of her voice as she reached the last of it. The fact that she'd basically said she wasn't really angry him also felt a fresh spark of hope for their relationship: Pharmacist-Patient or otherwise.

“Well, there isn't really anything else I need to know,” he said, turning back around, “unless you started another medication at some other pharmacy and haven't told us yet.”

Lightning's slightly puzzled look gave Keto the answer he all but already knew, although she still spoke to his surprise.
“Why would I go anywhere else?” she asked. Keto felt something that been exceptionally rare for all that day: a bolst of uplifting. Had he been doing something THAT RIGHT? She had only come in twice before but she was already strongly suggesting that she preferred coming there?

“Wait . . . you like us that much?” he had to ask.

“Well, yeah . . . you,” she said, much to his shock again. “Nopony else understands, you're the only one that, kind of, understands . . . or cares . . .” she went on, looking down at the ground.

Keto was truly surprised at first, at the mentioning of it specifically being him that she liked, but then that ended up giving way into an awkward sympathy of wanting to contradict her about nopony caring about her, for her own sake. But for a moment he couldn't think of anything to say, until he allowed himself to resort to the obvious. “Well, what about your parents?” Keto asked.

Lightning's expression almost instantly went foul, or at least half as much as Keto guessed it might have been had it been prior to her Wonderbolt Academy expulsion. She kept the expression but turns her head away to the side again, staring almost grudgingly off at the wall.

Keto sighed deeply while he hung his head and covered his face with his wings for a few seconds until he heard Lightning's voice again.

“Yeah, they don't,” she said in such a sure voice.

“Well, ah—“ Keto tried to speak, but really had nowhere verbally to go.

“They don't, but you do, so obviously I'll keep coming here; until . . . I'm done with this, whenever. How long does all this take to get over?” she said and asked quickly, shoving her parents out of the equation.

“Well I . . . what? It's not like an infection,” he began attempting to explain, “ah . . . it lasts however long you keep thinking about everything. I mean, uh-agh . . . uh . . . hold on . . .”

“Ah-I'm sorry, but I CAN'T answer that,” he had to tell her the truth, “it would already be different for every pony to begin with because nopony's brain is the same, and even what you're actually through all depends on what happened to you. Then what you do afterwards is . . . what drives everything else, kind of. It . . . depends,” he finished, just hoping it would be enough for her to understand somewhat.

“Great . . . forever,” she resigned herself in clear misery.

“I'm never gonna just forget what happened!” she protested.

“No, not forget, just . . .” Keto Profen spoke slowly, and to a certain degree desparately, not wanting to mislead her, “when you go on to something else; once you don't just think about all the time anymore. It only goes on for so long as it's all you think about, or what you think about more than anything else.”

“That's probably STILL gonna be forever. There's no way I'll ever be able to stop thinking about it all the time,” Lighting just asserted again.

“ . . . it was my dream . . .” she said, as close to a whimper as she herself was probably capable of coming, and speaking out of pure and utter desponadancy.

Keto Profen was emotionally cracking inside; the way she’d just spoken had jabbed and wrenched into his heart like a crooked shard of glass. He just wanted to help her so badly, but he had never tried to help anypony with something like this before, even outside of healthcare. And even so, he'd only been practicing pharmacy for the past year, and this wasn't like any other problem he'd normally had to help a patient face; it wasn't like a miss-filled prescription, or a worry about the interactions of one drug with another, or any of the just general things he was always asked. Lightning was so sad, and her life for the immediate time period, and for the whole as she saw, was broken. He knew how and what to use to treat illnesses with drugs, and even how, pharmacologically, to at least alleviate some of the depth of her depression as he'd been doing through Venlafaxine or any number of other SSRIs . . . but he didn't know anything about how to fix her life. In fact, he wondered then if anypony really knew anything about fixing ponies' lives.

“I'm sorry I can't help you anymore than I'm trying. Please . . . please believe that I don't want you to feel like this,” he begged.

“I'm just a pharmacist,” he said, looking down on himself, “all I can really do is keep helping you lower the severity of it . . . and try to talk to you and help, but I don't think I'm any good at that.”

“Huh-ugh wait, that's,” Lighting began to respond, confused at first, then feeling guilty and in the end feeling both “. . . agh, not how I meant that to sound, I guess.”

Lightning had intended to say exactly what she had, but she hadn't meant it for the purpose of trying to sadden Keto any further. However . . . caring about her effect on other ponies wasn't something all that common to her, so though she knew what she felt, she just didn't know how to say it.

“Why don't you go get me my hypno-what pills instead of listening anymore to me? You're starting to look pretty bad,” she suggested, allowing herself the realization of just how distressed her intolerableness was making him.

Keto tried to straighten his thoughts out enough to think about what she'd just said, but he was too flustered; that process was starting to break down.

“Just go, listening to me anymore's only gonna make you feel worse,” she insisted glumly.

“Lo-look, and . . . I don't want you to end up feeling something like this too, since you've been really trying to help me so much,” she said right after.

He remained there a few seconds, but finally just let his eyes drift down and turned about to head back into the pharmaceutical shelves. After Keto Profen had gone back, the pharmacy supervisor emerged from her office and eagerly trotted up to the service counter.

“Good afternoon Miss, please pardon my jumping in to talk to you here real fast but I'd just like to ask if you'd be willing and able to stay after for a few minutes and answer some questions about your experience having Keto Profen as your Pharmacist?” she asked Lightning Dust.

Lightning hadn't been expecting her appearance, nor really the appearance of anypony else, so she took a second or two longer than normal to take everything she'd just heard in. One eyebrow went up, but then they both went down, and her eyes unfocused as she thought considerably about it. She would have said no in the past; she didn't care for answering the questions even right then when she'd been asked to. But, the questions or survey or whatever were something alone to her; that she'd didn't care at all about. They were something other than . . . than Keto himself.

She looked out into the rows of shelves and watched him carrying a small bottle over to one of the tables against the side wall. He looked so intent about what he was doing. She felt something even though it wasn't yet strong: she wanted to help him too, after how much he'd tried for her.

“Yeah, fine,” Lightning willingly agreed.

“Oh thankyou so much!” the supervisor said with nearly ecstatic delight, “we've been getting every patient that's in hurry all day today so nopony's been able to wait around and speak a little. I'll come back when your consultation with Keto is done.”

***

Keto only took another couple minutes. Lightning could see him clearly and watched him transfer a number of tiny blue pills from the larger bottle he'd grabbed off the shelves into one of the stereotypical transparent-orange prescription bottles. Then he wrapped a freshly printed label around the prescription bottle, which she knew had her name, whatever what was in the bottle was called, and some other numbers and stuff she didn't really care about. Right after, he took the supply bottle back to its place on the third row of shelves, and then finally came back out to her.

“Here, uh-you just need to sign this,” he said, sliding both her prescription bottle and a sheet of paper with a quill.

“There wasn't anything like this the other times,” she said regarding it before she picked up the quill in her mouth.

“Yeah, that was from your doctor though,” he explained, “and I only raised your dosage. All that it need was just for me fill out some pages of legal paperwork and write up my reasoning for altering your dose. This one I prescribed for you myself, so I have to have you sign this to prove that you were a real patient I gave this to and didn't just write it up for a fake patient and then took it myself.”

Lightning still gave the paper the same look, although she did sign it.

“Take it an hour before you're gonna go to sleep; just one. And just make sure you're not really moving around a whole bunch after you take it,” he instructed her after she slid him back the paper and pulled the bottle over to herself.

“I'm sorry for all the trouble I was today, or might have been . . . or if I wasn't and I'm actually just being really annoying by always thinking I'm screwing something up, then I'm sorry for that too,” he apologized himself in circle again as Lightning looked like she was readying to leave.

“Yeah, it's alright,” she said weakly, though intending to be reassuring.

“I just want to help you, Lightning. I don't want to have to watch you stay in the kind of place you've been in. I've already said I've been somewhere near there myself . . . just different,” he said, then fell into a pause until he was just able to say two more words.

“I care,” he said.

It felt awkward to say, for him. He really did care, but stuff more towards that end wasn't anything he said particularly often. Although, none of his patients were in anywhere near the same kind of despondency as Lightining Dust.

Lightning's face changed after he said that though, almost to the point of brightening up. Her expression returned all the way to being flat, without a hint sadness, although of course there was no hint of anything resembling happiness or joy either. But, it was a lift for her, back up from where she'd been falling back down towards over their conversation.

“Th-thanks . . . really, uh-a lot,” she said, just before they were both jolted.

“Keto!” the pharmacy supervisor called the Pegasus Stallion, drawing his reluctant attention. “You're off!,” she told him, “your shift's up. Sorry you had to do another eight-hour day, Dr Bin Number catching heigh-fever from his vacation to Zebrica's really pressed my hoof on some things,” she apologized to him as she relieved him from his shift.

“It's fine; I'm alright,” he promised, then looked back at Lightning one last time. “. . . Well, goodbye, for now,” he said, “I hope you'll be able to enjoy getting better sleep. You can always still come in if anything's wrong . . .”

Keto eventually had to turn about and walk away to take the day's final inventory. He kept looking over his shoulder though, both at Lightning Dust for the sake of her, and . . . because he knew his supervisor was interviewing her as part of his evaluation.

His face became sour as he went through the shelves, turning so from the shame he felt for thinking so quickly that Lightning of all his patients would say bad things about him after repetitively professing that he was the only pony who cared about or remotely understood what she felt like. He was going to need a whole milligram of Lorazepam after today; Keto knew it. But, since he'd made it this far through an anxious, stressed day again he decided to just finish out the final inventory and wait to take his own medication until he got home.

“So,” the supervisor began questioning Lightning, after Keto was definitively out of the are, “mainly this meant to be a lot more open for you say as much as you want in your own way. We don't really like just asking patients generic questions and just having them tell us either yes or no.”

The supervisor paused and waited, assumedly for Lightning to respond with any questions of her own. But, when she didn't, the supervisor went right ahead and began.

“Sooo, I guess I'll just be really concise about this: how do you like having Dr Profen as your pharmacist?” she asked.

Lightning didn’t really have any idea what she should say, and she was quiet for a few more seconds, but eventually she decided for Keto’s sake to go ahead and put together whatever words came about in her thoughts. “He's pretty good. I mean, I trust what he says, and I do like him a lot. He's . . . been the only pony I've even talked to since the start of all this that's actually even cared, and he kind of understands what I'm going through,” she told the supervisor.

“Oh, really?” she asked with eager hope.

“Yeah,” Lightning went on, “and, he's always super careful about everything cause . . . cause he doesn't want anything to go wrong for me. And he talks to me every time I come in here, since I don't have anypony else to.”

The supervisor's look only grew more and more pleased, and she even repressed her own urge to speak a few words here and there, instead just letting Lighting continue on.

“. . . he's . . . also tried to Really help me,” Lightning said.

“Hm? Um, what do you mean, exactly?” the supervisor asked, confused.

“He's tried a lot to try to get me to think about other stuff,” Lightning explained, “besides just being like this. I gave some little filly an autograph the last time I was in here; it was his idea. But, it really helped make me start to feel better later. He . . . acts weird sometimes, and he's always kind of worried he's not saying stuff right or not trying to help me hard enough, but if he wasn't the way he is . . . I don't what would have happened with me by now.”

***

The supervisor went looking for Keto Profen straight away once she was done with Lightning Dust, and she managed to catch him just as he was posting up the filled-out inventory sheet before he left.

Keto, when he saw her, couldn't help but feel a cold, clenching feeling of dread. Although he calmed himself down internally as best he could once he noticed that she was smiling.

“Keto Profen! I've never had a patient of any of my Pharmacists say so many wonderful things about any one of them before, and for acclamations that positive to be coming from a pony suffering through the kind of depression she's been . . .” she told him, in some kind proud, approving disbelief.

“So . . . e-everything's good, then? I can stay here?” he asked tenatively.

The shock that came over his supervisor's face was greater than any Keto Profen had ever seen, and she found herself barely able to even answer his question. “Y-y-yes! A-and Keto, you have to be able to put at least Some belief in yourself?” she answered.

“Yeah, everypony's always saying that,” he replied, staring off and thinking.

“I basically never had any to begin with,” he told her, and then spoke about Lightning Dust, “but she used to have a lot, in herself, and right now I'm a little more concerned about helping her get hers back.”

“That was something she mentioned, and in all my honesty, Keto Profen, I envy how much you do care. Please, keep being the way you are, at least that part of your way, for all our patients' sakes,” his supervisor begged of him before she headed back towards her office.

“Oh,” she said, quickly spinning around one more time and catching him just before he walked out to go home, “and I think you should know, at least: she seems to think nicely of you.”

Author's Note

Well, here's chapter 3, sorry it took so long; I just finished my Molecular Biology course I was taking this summer (our summer courses are much more condensed than regular-semester courses). But now I have nothing but free time until BronyCon, so don't worry. I'm working on chapter 4 of this right now and chapter 8 of Hurricane Paradigm will also be up soon too (the only reason I've been uploading those so fast is because most of Hurricane Paradigm was already written, as I've been writing it for months).

Yes, the next chapter will take place outside of the Pharmacy, and will also feature some references that will serve as tie-ins to another fic I'll be writing soon about Screw Loose and Doctor Stable.

Any questions just ask in the comments per usual.