Through the Doors

Chapter 2: Peeking Through the Cracks

Pinkie Pie was onto me on day one. She didn’t believe that I was at Ponyville to “see the sights”. I’m pretty sure she was the first pony to see through my façade, especially after the first day Nurse Redheart ran some tests on me.

Pinkie was one of the best friends I could’ve asked for. She’s always there to cheer somepony up or make them happy in general. I wish I could return the favor; instead I’ve only made her sadder and sadder. Even though I only knew her for only about eleven days, she’s one of the best friends I could ever ask for.

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I squinted at the bush behind me. I sworn I saw something in there or at least something jump into it at last minute. I pondered the idea of going over to the bush and inspecting it for a bit, eventually giving into my curiosity.

The bush was strangely empty. I would’ve sworn I seen something jump into it.

It must have been nothing. I walked a few hooves away and I heard rustling behind me. What the…? I wandered back to the bust to search it again, but, like before, I found absolutely nothing except what somepony would normally find in a bush.

Giving the bush a weary glance back, I continued towards the hospital.

I wonder what these tests are going to consist of. Probably just to make sure of where the tumor is and the position of the cranial nerves. I opened the hospital’s doors and approached the front desk.

“I’m here for a test of some type.”

“Are you the ten o’clock? Uh, are you Mr. Kolton Vortac?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

The mare at the desk wrote a few things down on a piece of paper. “Please take a seat in the waiting room and I’ll get Nurse Redheart.”

I did as the mare instructed me to do. The waiting room only had one other inside of it. I couldn’t figure out who the other pony exactly was, mainly because of the large, brown trench coat they wore. They also had a hat and some weird glasses on, but I could barely see those since they had an upside down newspaper in front of their face.

I approach the strange pony. “Uh, are you‒”

“Mr. Kolton Vortac, please come with us,” the voice of the mare who was at the front desk called out.

I whipped around and saw her and Nurse Redheart, both had a serious expression. I hurried over to them.

“Follow me,” Nurse Redheart told me walking towards the back of the hospital.

I, of course, followed her. “What is the test gonna be?”

“It’s going to be an MRI.”

I slowly blinked. “A what?”

“Magnetic resonance imaging,” she clarified.

“...What?”

Nurse Redheart sighed. “We put you in a tube and x-ray your brain.”

“Oh… how is it a test?”

“That’s not the test. I’m going to be giving you a vision test, a hearing test and a blood test.”

“What’s with all the tests?”

“Since your tumor is crushing your cranial nerves, we have to test you to see how much damage they have done.”

We continue into a large and, of course, white room. It had various medical equipment inside of it. The one that stood out the most was the large tube that I would be using for the MRI. I also noticed an eye chart on a wall, but, other than that, everything else was a mystery to me.

“We’re going to start with the MRI. Please lay on your stomach on that.” Nurse Redheart pointed a hoof at a big, white table-thing that looked like it connected to the tube.

“Uh, okay.” I slowly climb onto the white slab and lay on it. I jumped in surprise at how cold the slab was. “Cold!” I nearly shout out.

“Yes, it’s going to be cold. You’ll get used to it.”

I lay my stomach back down onto it and bear through the cold.

“Please tuck your wings in, lay your head down and close your eyes.”

I followed her instructions, and the slab began to move into the machine. Things beeped and buzzed around me and above me and I saw flashes of light. Soon, the noise died down and the slab began to slide back out.

I opened my eyes and all I could see was white for a few seconds.

“Are you okay?” I heard Nurse Redheart ask me.

I rapidly blinked. “I think so.”

“Okay, onto the hearing test.” Nurse Redheart moved over to a pair of headphones. “Here, put these on.”

I fumbled around for a minute, trying to get them over my ears, but, eventually it worked. The headphones let me barely hear anything outside of them. I couldn’t even hear Nurse Redheart the first time she spoke, so I lifted one speaker off of my ear.

“Now, I’d like you to clap your hooves whenever you hear a sound play. Got it?”

“Yeah.” A long beep played and I clapped my hooves together. The sound kept getting fainter and fainter, soon going to nothing at all. Even though the sound had disappeared, Nurse Redheart kept giving me weird looks. She wrote a few things down and then mouthed something, so I took the headphones off.

“Okay, moving onto the vision test. Put one hoof over your left eye and tell me what each row says until you can’t read them anymore.”

I nodded my head. With both eyes I could only get down to about the middle row, which was weird. Especially since I used to always get a lot farther than just the middle row.

She scribbled something down onto the same piece of paper she wrote on earlier. “Please sit over there and I will commence with the blood test.”

I plopped onto the ground and she came over, holding a needle in one hoof and a glove on the other. She began to feel around for a nerve on one of my forelegs and eventually moved onto the other one. After a few seconds of feeling around she found one and started rubbing something on it.

The needle inched closer and eventually was stuck into my foreleg. I winced at the pain. It took about thirty seconds to draw all of the blood out that was needed to be taken out. Oddly enough, the needle hurt more going out than going in.

“Okay. Please take this to the receptionist and you’ll be free to go.” Nurse Redheart gave me a piece of paper.

“All right. When should I come back?”

“In about six days. By then we’ll need to make sure of a few things before the surgery.”

“All right. See you then.” I turned and dizzily walked away. I would’ve sworn I heard her sigh at something before I left. Did she sigh? It was probably nothing except my imagination playing tricks on me, like it did this morning.

“Here you go,” I say to the receptionist, giving her the paper.

“Thank you, I hope you have a nice day.”

“You too.” I stumbled out of the waiting room and onto the street.

I sauntered the rest of the way back to my hotel and crashed on the bed. “Dang, that blood test took a lot out of me…” I closed my eyes and fell into sleep.

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A bright light glowed through my eyelids. Slowly, I opened my eyes to a lamp that was above me and directed straight at my face.

“Ah, turn off the light,” I said in discomfort. That’s when I realized that I was sitting up in my bed. “What the…?”

“I see that you’re awake,” a high pitched voice said seriously.

“Uh, what?” That’s when I saw her. It was that mare who threw me a party two nights before and with her was a small lizard with a little hat one that said ‘security’ on it. “P-Pinkie Pie? What are you doing?”

She leaned in real close and looked me straight in the eye. “Getting some answers.”

"Answers for what?"

"You've been hiding something. I know it!"  The pink pony leaned in slowly, causing me to shift back until my spine was pressed against the bed frame.  Her blue eyes were narrowed with intensity, and snout scrunched up.  A serious of rapid, slightly angry breaths bombarded my face.

At that point, I wasn't sure if I should have been scared for my life or not.

“It says it all over you face.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I honestly said.

“You came to Ponyville to‒” she made air quotations with her hooves, “‒‘see the sights’? Yeah right.”

Oh, she wants to know why I’m here. “I-I’m telling the truth. That’s why I came to Ponyville to... see its sights.”

“Then why were you in the hospital for over an hour today?”

“Uh, I was visiting a friend.” Please don’t ask more… please don’t ask more.

“If you were visiting a friend, then why did you walk out of the hospital all woozy?” Pinkie stumbled around; acting like she was dizzy.

“Uh…” My mind was blank.

“You don’t have an answer for that one, do you? So what were you really doing there today?” Her face moved closer to mine.

I give up. If she’s this persistent to know the truth, I might as well tell her. My head lowered. “I was there for some tests.”

Her face backed away from mine and, from seemingly nowhere, she pulled up a bunch of papers. Most of which had big letters in red on them. “Like this kind of test?”

“Uh… where did you… never mind. And, no, not that type of test.”

“Then what type?”

“I was there for tests on  my hearing, vision and blood.”

“Why’d you have to take all of those?”

“I’m going into a surgery next week. It’s a, uh, it’s a big one.”

Pinkie paused. “What’s it for?”

“Well, I have this tumor on my brain, and‒” I take a deep breath in and exhaled “‒it’s killing me. The surgery is the only chance of survival I have, and it’s a slim one.”

I looked back up at Pinkie. She had backed away and her mouth hung wide open. I could see water forming in her eyes. We just sat there in silence, she was taking it all in and I… well, I just observed.

A tear trickled down her cheek, which was followed by another and another until she was crying at full force.

“There’s no need to cry. You’re not the one going into the surgery and you don’t know me very well.”

She sniffed. “Y-yes there is. A new friend of mine is in a bad situation.”

Did she just consider me as a friend? “Who is?”

“It’s you.”

“M-me? But you’ve only just met me.”

“You’re a new one, but you’re still my friend.”

Never before had I made a friend so quickly. “T-thank you.”

She wiped her face of tears, but more came down in their place. “For what?”

“For being a friend, even though you know basically nothing about me and for remaining one even though that I’ve lied to you.”

She gave me a hug. “It’s no problem. Everypony needs a friend, don’t they?”

“Yeah. Yeah they do.” I smiled. Ponyville was turning out for the better. And with Pinkie as a friend, it was becoming better by the second.