A knock on the door, followed by a voice.
"Fluttershy, darling, are you in there?"
The yellow pegasus, who was giving water to her plants, answered with a muffled voice.
"Yes, what is it?"
Rarity opened the door and walked in.
"You have an appointment with the doctor. If you don't hurry up, you will miss it."
Fluttershy put down the watering can and looked at Rarity.
"A-an appointment? Did I make an appointment with the doctor?"
Rarity nodded. "Yes, you did. You have been complaining about your wing for a long while, I thought to make you a favor and make an appointment with the doctor for you."
Fluttershy's pupils shrunk to the size of pinheads, before quickly going back to normal.
"R-right, right... I wanted to go to the doctor for check my wing..." said Fluttershy "When this appointment will be?"
"At Eleven o' clock. Since it's ten to Eleven, I'd suggest you to go now."
Fluttershy, after sighing, started to slowly walk out of her house with lowered head. Noticing the mood of her yellow friend, Rarity said, "Is something the matter, Fluttershy?"
The yellow pegasus shook the head sadly. "N-nothing, Rarity. D-don't worry," she exited from her cottage, then said "bye."
Rarity, not willingly to force the truth out of Fluttershy, took the answer "Nothing" as good and waved at her.
"Bye Fluttershy."
Ten minutes after, Fluttershy reached the clinic's building and entered in the waiting room of the doctor's office. Fluttershy sat down on one of the red plastic seats of the empty waiting room and hung her head low.
Shortly after that, a squeak was heard and the door opened a little: since Fluttershy was tensed up, she immediately raised her head in startling and looked at the source of the noise. What she saw in front of her eyes made her feel compassion.
The pony that opened the door was a young and emaciated light brown unicorn with dark gray hair, wearing an untied Red Sun military helmet on his head and a white coat that was bigger than him by several sizes.
He said, with a strangely cheerful voice: "Őn felebaràt... a ùrnő Fluttershy."
Fluttershy looked with pity at the unicorn, while him, ignoring Fluttershy's gaze, kept saying with a Hungarian accent.
"U'rnő Fluttershy, come in: the doctor will be here soon."
Fluttershy hopped down the seat and did as instructed.
"Poor pony, he does look in a bad shape," she thought as she stepped into the medic's studio "I hope that he isn't suffering."
The doctor's office, in its entirety, was nothing impressive, having the usual reddish-white walls for the rust of the nails, the typical anatomy charts, the usual boxes of expired or ineffective medicines as decoration, the classic bin containing pieces of paper written with a calligraphy unknown to common mortals a less common plastic bag labeled with the biological hazard symbol hanging on a hook... and pyramids of packages of hypodermic syringes in the corner.
This detail reminded Fluttershy, once again, why she had not visited a doctor in years and self-trained herself to take medically take care of her animals: the apparently frequent use of syringes. She did not know exactly why she never got over her fear of syringes: maybe it was because those instruments were inserted into the flesh, thus violating in a painful way her personal space; maybe because they were sharp, thus resembling branches of trees infamous for claiming the lives of many pegasi; perhaps because they generally contained liquids that kept hurting after getting injected in the flesh; maybe it was just the pain of the moment... no matter the explanation, the syringes scared Fluttershy.
The first thing that the yellow mare thought, when she saw the packs, was to run away with a shriek, but, before she could do that, her rationality reprimanded her.
"Don't run away," said Fluttershy to herself, as she stood up, waiting for the doctor to show up "you are not in danger of anything. Don't be afraid, the doctor doesn't want to really hurt you, and you don't even know if you will have to get a shot. Don't fear."
The mare repeated to herself with a nervous whisper.
"Don't fear... don't fear... sure..."
As soon as Fluttershy said that, she raised her head and saw the doctor coming from a rusted door in the opposite part of the room. The doctor pony, unlike his nurse, had a more threatening look.
Like his Hungarian helper, the doctor was a unicorn and also wore the Red Sun helmet.
And those were the only things he had in common: the doctor was light green and had rust-colored mane, tail and handlebar moustaches, he was sturdy and tall, he wore round glasses and his coat, over to be just a little bit larger than him, was of a suspect pinkish colour as if it was immersed a couple of times in blood and then summarily washed with only water and soap afterwards.
These details upset Fluttershy and made her freeze in place.
The physician went neat Fluttershy, and said with a tone that tried to sound jovial but failed to do so.
"Good morning, Miss Fluttershy. Now, let's get to the point: you came here for a swollen wing, right?"
The tone of voice alone turned the innocent question into something that came out from a disturbed nightmare, reason for why Fluttershy, while she lowered her ears, nodded silently at the doctor, while her heart beat like a drum of a regiment doing forced marches.
The medic seemed to be unaware of his patient's distress, and kept asking "Did you had any incidents of late? Did you overwork yourself? For how long have you been suffering of this pain?": Fluttershy took two good minutes for an answer.
This was the answer of the Yellow mare, disturbed by the pyramid of syringes that kept appearing in her field of vision and the doctor's non-reassuring look
"M-my left w-wing has been hurting f-for a-a-around three d-days, d-doctor... I-I had no i-incid-dents, n-nor I-I have ov-verworked m-myself..."
The doctor laughed, not helping Fluttershy in her predicament.
"Ooohoooh, Miss, calm down, nothing bad is happening to you... as far as I know now. Please, lay on the table, I will see what it is.": Fluttershy obeyed mechanically, fearing an unexpected reaction from the doctor.
The table, which had its padding wrecked and was left as a simple wooden plank, appeared to Fluttershy, now on high alert even harder than it actually was. The medic moved the left wing carefully up and down, and said "Does it hurt if I do that?"
The answer, laconic for the fear, was "No." The doctor gestured to his Hungarian assistant of taking a block notes and write down the annotations, so to make the diagnosis easier: the brown pony took a pencil from a pencil pot, the block notes, and, once everything was in his magical grasp, he asked.
"What shall I write down, elme?"
The pony with rust red mane, while still checking, replied: "The patient does not show signs of pain or spasms, after forced movement of the pteroid muscles."
The assistant wrote down what the doctor was saying, while Fluttershy wondered about what the doctor was saying, but she was too afraid to ask to the doctor, so she resorted to wild mad guessing, that ranged from "It's nothing" to "We must amputate your wing and cauterize the wound RIGHT now!"
For some reasons, the latter seemed more likely to the yellow pegasus, who began to question her wisdom, into accepting Rarity's favor and not cancelling it. But now it was too late, and now Fluttershy had to face the consequences.
While these pessimistic thoughts played in Fluttershy' s mind, the doctor kept manipulating the wing and the surrounding zone in different ways, and the nurse of Hungarian Heritage kept writing down annotations.
After ten long and distressing minutes, the doctor put his green hoof on Fluttershy's shoulder.
The yellow mare let out an "Eeep!" and looked at the doctor with widened eyes and lowered ears.
Once he got the attention of the scared mare, the doctor said.
"Good news, Miss Fluttershy: it's nothing. You can go now. Just re..."
The nurse interrupted the doctor's phrase with a whistle and, when the doctor turned his head, the nurse waved a half-empty folder with the name "Flutter Kofàs Shy," written on it.
"Wait up, elme, ùrnő Fluttershy has missed several injections. I've checked, and we do have everything that's needed: proceed?"
The doctor's eyes slightly shined, at the mention of "missed injections." He said
"Go ahead, Gyla. Take everything that's needed." Then he turned towards his Yellow patient "Miss, I'm afraid will have to stay here a little longer."
Fluttershy froze in fear at those words, and, when she saw Gyla taking five packs of syringes from the pyramid, fear filled her heart, causing her to strongly frown, water her eyes and cower. The second-worst scenario happened.
The rationality, now scattered everywhere in Fluttershy's mind, tried to take control of the word, but anxiety and fear came there first, and made the mare assert.
"I-injection? I-I d-don't n-n-need and i-injection..."
The doctor answered calmly as he levitated a phial containing a light red liquid and a syringe, and filled the latter with the red liquid.
"Oh, you DO need this, as everypony else does, and as the next ones are necessary. In fact, you have skipped precisely five injections."
The doctor started to list the vaccinations against various plagues that Fluttershy had skipped, but the mare was too scared at the thought of receiving five consecutive shots, rather than worry about the illness that she could have contracted in the meanwhile.
She tried another way to change the doctor's mind.
"Ummm... I-I d-don't h-have e-enough m-money f-f-for t-this..."
The medic let the syringe drip a bit, before giving the phial back to Gyla, who put it back in the medicines' refrigerated closet.
"Don't worry about that, your friend has decided to cover all your medical expenses."
Fluttershy felt betrayed by Rarity, as her terror grew stronger and stronger. She resorted to another tactic.
"P-please, I-I d-don't w-wan-nt to g-get a s-shot, p-please..."
"Well, if you wish to get some nasty diseases, that's your choice, but I would advise to get those. Come on, lift your flank in the air."
In a surge of desperate courage, Fluttershy shouted "No!" jumped off the bed and tried to run to the door.
But, when Fluttershy put her hooves on the ground, she found herself unable to move, and, when she looked around her panicky, she saw the reason for why she was pinned on the ground. Namely, Gyla the nurse was pinning her to the floor with his magic.
He was clearly struggling to keep Fluttershy in position, despite the light weight of the yellow pony. He was sweating profusely, creating a puddle of sweat under him; it was possible to see, under his brown fur, the veins stretching to the absurd; his body was shaking, thus causing the helmet to fall on the floor, making a clanking sound when it hit the ground.
At a certain point, Gyla said to the doctor, who was ransacking in the drawers "Elme, köcsönzes! I won't stand for much longer!"
The doctor said nothing, as he took out a bottle of disinfectant, and sprinkled the yellow's mare flank with the liquid. Fluttershy whimpered.
"L-let m-me g-go..."
The medic, once he was done with clearing the flank, put the bottle on the table.
"If you keep struggling like that, this will hurt a lot more than if you remain still," he said, as he levitated the syringe full of the light red liquid near Fluttershy's flank.
Fluttershy was still unable to calm herself, even in front of the suggestion for diminish her pain. What she did was stare in horror at the needle as it got nearer and nearer to her flank, and keep whimpering and lamenting while doing so.
Then, after waiting for what it seemed one hour to Fluttershy, the needle penetrated her flesh, making her scream in pain, cry like a fountain and say nonsensical things. In short, she was clearly suffering.
The doctor ignored his patient's reaction and complaints, and pressed the syringe's piston, thus putting the vaccine in the circulation.
The doctor hastily extracted the needle, causing even more pain to Fluttershy, threw the needle in the hanging plastic bag, and went to fill up another syringe.
Since he was exhausted, Gyla dropped his magical grip on Fluttershy's hooves, but she was too busy into crying and shrieking like a little filly for notice anything.
The doctor, understanding immediately what he had to do, after filling a syringe with an orangish liquid labeled as "Hepatitis B," gave it to his assistant and said.
"Gyla, I will keep her still. Meanwhile, you fill up and give the shots, okay?"
The nurse nodded silently and went to the flank of the Yellow mare.
Desperate, Fluttershy asked with teary eyes and widened eyes "W-why ar-re you doing this to me?" and "I-I don't w-want..."
The nurse, in an attempt to calm down Fluttershy, whispered "It's for your own good."
Fluttershy did not answer, and just stared, a scared expression on her eyes, to Gyla. The latter penetrated with the syringe the flesh quickly, pressed the piston and extracted the needle slowly, in an attempt to cause as less pain as possible.
The doctor was not impressed.
"Gyla, I cannot keep the patient still all day. Would you kindly administer the vaccines faster?"
Gyla exclaimed "Uram!" and, after throwing away the used syringe, he filled two of them with two different liquids, one transparent and the other looking slightly green. Done that, Gyla quickly poke Fluttershy's flank flesh with the first needle, pressed the piston, and then extracted it quickly, before rapidly putting the other syringe in the flank of the still whimpering and crying yellow mare. He repeated the process with the remaining two but with different liquids.
Finally, after all this commotion, Gyla gave the last shot to Fluttershy, and put patches on the entrance spots. Once Gyla was done with that, the medic dropped the magical block.
Realizing that her legs were not blocked anymore, Fluttershy stopped whimpering, and timidly asked if she was free. When she heard an affirmative response, she dashed out of the door into the Waiting Room.
In-between a mother with her foal and another pony, there was Rarity. Fluttershy knew that she could have avoided so much suffering, had she refused Rarity offer, but she could bring herself to say anything to her.
"So, all go..." Rarity stopped herself mid-sentence, when she saw that Fluttershy had a messy mane and ruts of tears around her eyes "Goodness, Fluttershy, what happened? You look terrible!"
With her head lowered Fluttershy said weakly "Nothing, nothing, just some injections."
Rarity noticed the five patches on Fluttershy's flank, and simply stated "I see."
"Well... see you." Said Fluttershy, as she left the clinic in a hurry
Sighing, Rarity entered in the studio with the intent of paying for the visit, and, after seeing that Fluttershy's flank was basically plastered of patches, for the vaccinations. While Gyla wrote down the invoice, a question came instinctively to Rarity, after seeing the sorry state Fluttershy was in after coming out the doctor's office.
"So, did she cry, m'sieur?"
The doctor let out a roaring laugh, before talking with his usual jovial but too loud tone of voice.
"Ma'am, you have no idea! She cried like a three-years old, and acted like one! The only thing that distinguished her from the foals I sometimes deal with were the errors in the pronunciation of the words. In fact, had she remained a little bit, I would have given a Lollipop to her and took a photo of the moment!"
Rarity, after hearing the words said by the doctor, strongly desired to strangle him for the offences sent to her dear friend Fluttershy. But Rarity contained herself, and, after biting her lower lip, took the invoice, gave the amount of bits required, and exited from the clinic without saying goodbye.
