A little too much flexibility...
I’m a nurse, which should tell you a lot about me. I sometimes think I’ve seen everything. Blood, sweat, tears, other bodily fluids I’d rather not mention, life, death, and aftermaths of many failed cooking experiments. But even after all those years I spent working in Ponyville Hospital, life still manages to find ways to surprise me.
It was a warm, Friday night. The full moon was hanging over the hospital. Everything was calm and serene, but I knew that something would happen soon. Friday nights usually bring the most interesting patients, especially when the full moon is involved. It’s like everypony goes insane for a while. Well, it depends of a pony; insanity in some of them means that they eat a sandwich fifteen minutes later than usual, while in others it means a realisation that two bags of apples can spice things up in bedroom (Lyra and Bon Bon still can’t look into my eyes).
Anyway, the night was calm, and I just thought that nothing unusual would happen. I was wrong. Just when I thought that, the universe remembered about me and sent those three.
At first I noticed two low-flying pegasi who were carrying something that looked like a makeshift stretcher, made of a blanket. Then I saw the legs. I shuddered, thinking that they were carrying a victim of some horrible accident. Nopony alive can bend their hooves like that.
Again, I was wrong. They saw me and flew to me, but instead of putting their moaning package on the floor, they remained suspended in the air. I sometimes make medical check-ups of the weather team members, so I recognised them. The one with the mane which some time ago reached an extremely high power level, also known as Cloudchaser, and her more conservative, at least in terms of hairstyle, sister, Flitter.
“We have a problem,” Cloudchaser said. She smelled of alcohol and something I couldn’t exactly recognise, but not too much. I’ve seen drunker ponies in my life. Some of them threw up at me. Joys of being a nurse, you know.
“I see…” I muttered, watching the cream-coloured legs and amaranth and green tail protruding from the blanket. They were really weirdly positioned. As if they weren’t connected to each other. Maybe the rest of the pony was somewhere else? Eww… “So, what happened?” I asked.
“Well…” Flitter looked at her sister unsurely. Cloudchaser shrugged, so she continued, “We had a small party with Blossomforth… And, umm…”
Here we go. Exhibit A: a patient who’s too ashamed of their own stupidity to admit it to the doctor. If you plan a career in healthcare, get used to that.
“We played Twister,” Cloudchaser said, avoiding my gaze. “But it’s hard to win with Blossomforth. She’s just too flexible…”
Oh, I remember. When I first made RTGs of all the members of the weather team, it revealed that due to some freaky genetic mutation, Blossomforth lacks some ribs. Her tissues are also a bit different, and as a result, her colleagues call her a “Bloody Pretzel”. Was that Blossomforth in the blanket? She was moaning and cursing from time to time.
“Did she injure herself?” I asked, looking at the blanket. I couldn’t get why they were so ashamed. Even the most flexible ligaments can snap.
“No…” Flitter muttered. “It was later…”
“I… I proposed Truth or Dare…” Cloudchaser stuttered. “And my idiot sister…”
“Oh, shut up…” Flitter interrupted her. “She could’ve chosen truth…”
Truth or Dare. One of the main plot devices in stories I hear from the patients suffering from ELFIS (Equestria’s Largest Idiot Syndrome). The other popular ones start with “I told him to hold my beer”, “I slipped and sat on this potato”, or “it’s those three fillies’ fault”. Sometimes the truth is too brutal and it ends in a fight, sometimes dares are too daring… It seemed that it was the case.
“So, what exactly happened?” I asked, trying to keep my professional face. Judging by the sounds coming from the blanket, the pony inside was suffering, while her two companions were looking at each other, too perplexed to say a word.
Cloudchaser sighed. “Okay… So, Flitter told Blossomforth to, umm… to bend herself in a way so she could… Umm…”
Flitter flew closer to me. The sudden change of position caused a scream of pain from the blanket. “I asked her if she was able to lick her…” she whispered the last word into my ear.
“To lick her WHAT?” I exclaimed. Sweet Luna on a stick… That was something I’d never seen before.
“Coochie…” Cloudchaser muttered, her face red. “I mean, her… umm… flower…”
I tried to keep a straight face. After all, Blossomforth has flowers as her cutie mark. Maybe it’s not what I think about. “And what happened then?”
“Umm…” Flitter looked at Blossomforth unsurely and said, “She liked it. You see, when we’re drunk, we don’t mind, umm… audience. She decided to, umm… finish what she started.”
“And what happened then?” I asked. On one hoof, I was jealous. On the other, I was happy. Who knows, if I was able to do that, maybe I’d be now in Blossomforth’s place? Knowing my colleagues, I’d have to move to Stalliongrad.
“She kinda twitched when she came…” Flitter replied.
“Well, maybe because she forgot that she was a gusher?” Cloudchaser shook her head. “You’d twitch too if you got such a load on your face…”
“We can check that…” Flitter gave her sister a nasty glare. “Anyway, she kinda stuck…”
“Girls…” I heard a muffled voice from the blanket. “I can hear you, you know? Can you at least put me on the ground?”
Time to act quickly. I gestured them to one of the treatment rooms. “Put her there,” I said. “I guess she’d rather not be seen…”
They flew to the room and put the blanket on the table. The blanket unraveled and I saw Blossomforth. Indeed, she was hopelessly tangled. Her face was buried, for the lack of a better word, somewhere under her tail. I guess lack of ribs greatly helped, though actually, I was surprised that her spine hadn’t snapped. Her hind legs were wrapped around her neck, which was the source of the problem – if she could free them, she’d be able to take her face away from her private bits. Her wings were twitching occasionally, probably because her nervous system was trying to assess what was wrong.
“How did it happen…” I muttered under my breath.
“If you want to see, we videotaped it…” Flitter muttered, producing a video cassette from her saddlebags. Another sign of modern times – if you do something stupid, record it. Who knows, maybe an insurance company would like to see it?
“No, thanks,” I replied. “Maybe you should wait on the corridor?” I asked in a tone suggesting “Get out, now.” “The patient needs some privacy…”
“Privacy, my ass…” Cloudchaser muttered. “We’ve seen her eating herself out. She saw us making out and clopping to it. We have no secrets from each other…”
“I haven’t seen you…” Blossomforth’s voice sounded as if she was at the verge of tears. “My vision is kinda limited here, you know…”
“Still, I may use medical procedures that are quite, umm… not sexy at all…” I said.
“What procedures?” Flitter asked.
I decided to improvise. “I may be forced to put an electrode into her anus to help her loosen her muscles.”
“Kinky,” Cloudchaser muttered.
I sighed. “I mean all the muscles… Including sphincters…”
I heard Blossomforth’s whimper. Good job, Redheart, you just traumatised a patient.
Flitter still didn’t look convinced. “That’s my fetish…” she whispered.
I gave her my don’t-piss-off-the-nurse-if-you-don’t-want-3H-enema kind of look. “Get out,” I said. “You’re stressing the patient.”
“Okay, okay…” Flitter muttered. “Is there any coffee machine here?”
“At the end of the corridor.”
The sisters left the treatment room, leaving me alone with Blossomforth, laying on the table in an absurd position. She looked at me (or rather tried to, since her tail was obscuring the view).
“Excuse me…” she muttered. “C-can you use the smallest electrode you have? My backdoor is kinda tight…”
Backdoor? Geez, what happened to those ponies?
“We don’t use electrodes,” I said. “I just told her that to scare her away…”
Blossomforth tried to nod. “S-so what are you gonna do?”
“First I’ll try to help you out,” I replied. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll call for help. Though I guess you wouldn’t want many ponies to know about that?”
“Mhm…” Blossomforth muttered. I went to the table and patted her mane. Bad move. It was kinda sticky.
“Try to relax…” I said, massaging one of her hind legs gently to warm it up. She’s flexible, but I’ll need all the reserves of her flexibility to pull that off. “Tell me if it hurts…”
“It’s quite nice, actually…” she muttered, blushing.
Hmm, did I just make her horny again? Well, it wouldn’t be the first patient like that. One of my patients, an old stallion, actually came when I was examining his prostate. At first I thought it was some excretion and wanted to test him for syphilis, but then he blushed and started to apologise. Yet another great day at work.
“You okay there?” I asked. She only moaned in reply. I shook my head, deciding that it was time to try to move further. I grabbed her leg. “Okay, Blossomforth… On three… One, two…”
I tried to move her leg from her neck on “two”, but it didn’t help. Her muscles tensed; she screamed and sobbed. “I can’t!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Nurse… but I can’t… It hurts…”
“Shh, it’s okay…” I said, patting her mane again. “I managed to move it for an inch… Few more inches and your leg will be free…”
“I’m not sure if I withstand few more inches…” Blossomforth muttered.
“You have to be strong, Blossomforth,” I replied, massaging her tense muscles. “It’s just few more inches… Few more inches and everything will be great…”
“I’m not sure if I’ll be able to walk after that…” Blossomforth hissed. “Massage feels good. You pulling it not so much…”
Somepony knocked on the door. “Redheart?” I heard Dr. Stable’s voice. “What are you doing there?”
I recalled my conversation with Blossomforth. Shit. “N-nothing!” I shouted. “I have a… umm… delicate patient here. I’ll come to you if I have problems.”
“Okay,” Dr. Stable said. “Tell your marefriend to be a bit more quiet. Somepony may hear something…”
“She’s not my marefriend!”
He chuckled. “I’ve never expected you to be so naughty, Redheart. A one-night stand? At work?”
“Fuck off…” I muttered through gritted teeth.
I have you tell you something about the nurses. You may not believe that, but nurses swear. You know that nice, professional mare whom you’ve just told about you oh-so-terrible cold? The one who listened patiently to the story of your life? Well, just after you left, she probably unleashed a string of curses that put sailors to shame. I guess it’s just a way of letting off steam. We live under constant stress and we’re not even well-paid. We have to listen to hundreds of patients a day while showing that we care about them. Being nice to everyone is draining, so when no one hears us, we speak kinda like angsty teenagers. I’m telling you, whoever invented that saying about swearing like sailors never met nurses after hours.
Actually, the only ponies who are more foul-mouthed are lab workers. But since nopony ever sees them, they can at least swear openly.
Dr. Stable didn’t reply. I guess he listened to me for once and fucked off. I went back to Blossomforth. “Can I try again?” I asked.
Blossomforth sighed. I must tell her not to. If she blows air into her… well, you know where, she may die of air embolism. “If you have to…”
I try to move her leg, but the result is the same again. Cries, swears, and immediate clenching of the muscles, preventing me from moving it any further. We also have another problem.
“C-can we hurry?” Blossomforth asked, blushing. “I drank, like, six cups of cider before I got stuck…”
“So?” I asked.
She shuddered. “I, umm… I need to pee…”
Oh. That. “Feel free to help yourself,” I said. “Half of the town vomited here. It’ll be a nice change for this table…”
“My face is right next to it…” Blossomforth muttered so quietly that I had to lean to her to hear her. “I’d rather not to…”
What the hell is wrong with these ponies? She gave herself a facial and is okay with that, but piss is a no-no? Geez.
“I can’t help you if you don’t cooperate…” I sighed. “Maybe I’ll ask somepony for help?”
Blossomforth nodded quickly. It seemed that she was desperate.
I left the treatment room and trotted to our social room. To my surprise, I saw that most of the other nurses were gathered there, watching something on TV.
“Hey, Redheart!” Snowheart said. “Come and sit here. Somepony left a sex tape next to the coffee machine!”
“Wow…” Tenderheart muttered. “That cream one is gonna eat herself out!”
“Well, that’s why I’m here, actually…” I said, trying desperately not to look at the screen.
“I wish I could do that…” Sweetheart said.
“You’d have to lose a few pounds first,” Tenderheart replied.
“Go and drown yourself in a bedpan…” Sweetheart replied. “You know what? I think I need to excuse myself to the toilet…”
“Eww…” Snowheart winced. “Too much information…”
“It’s better than making you watch me cl–”
“Hey I know those two!” Dr. Stable said, entering the room and looking at the screen. “They’re sisters…”
“Eww…” Tenderheart made a gagging noise.
“Aww…” Sweetheart’s eyes widened. Suddenly, she blushed and moaned, her body twitching. For a while, she panted, turning attention of everypony at her. “What? It sometimes happens to me… Really, I can do that with my imagination only...”
Dr. Stable shook his head. “What’s going on with you today? First I catch Redheart screwing someone in a treatment room, then this…”
I shook my head too, seeing that I wasn’t going to get any help from them. Then, I spotted Nursery Rhyme, sitting in the darkest corner of the social room. From her expression I couldn’t get if she was horrified or she was just touching herself.
“C’mon,” I said to her. “You’ll help me with the patient…”
She stood up quickly and went with me. Not surprising. Nursery Rhyme is, well, Nursery Rhyme.
Do you know the twelve types of medical students? Nursery Rhyme, our intern, is a cross between the Sensitive Soul and the Painfully Enthusiastic. On one hoof, she cries every time a patient dies, gives money to the homeless patients (which they spend on vodka), and frequently visits an oncology ward to talk with the foals. On the other, she gets weirdly excited when we let her do anything, no matter if it’s an injection or a per rectum examination of a one-hundred-year-old.
Oh, and on the top of that, she’s a bit clumsy.
“What happened to the patient?” she asked, walking with me through the corridor.
“Oh, the usual,” I replied. “Friday night, twenty-ish, ELFIS, AOB, CFU, Hasselhoof.”
“Err… what?” Nursery Rhyme asked.
Oh, I forgot that they don’t teach slang in the university. Too bad. Soon after Nursery Rhyme joined our team, she asked me what does “Foals Neigh” mean. Apparently that was what Snowheart was calling her. Nursery Rhyme thought that it had something to do with Cunts & Runts… I mean, Maternity and Paediatrics ward. I just couldn’t tell the poor dear that it meant “Fuck Off And Let Someone Not Extremely Incompetent Get Here”.
“Equestria’s Largest Idiot Syndrome, Alcohol On Board, Completely Fucked Up. And David Hasselhoof is an actor… I guess you’re too young to remember, but he had a really weird shaving accident,” I explained.
Nursery Rhyme nodded. I opened the door of the treatment room and let her go in the first. Her reaction was just as I expected.
“What the hay happened to her?” she asked, looking at Blossomforth, who groaned seeing us.
“Long story,” I replied. “But you’ve seen the movie…”
“I wasn’t watching!” she shouted a bit too quickly; just like a patient with chlamydia who claims that he’d never had sex in his life.
“Nevermind. The thing is, we have to untie her before she makes a mess here,” I said. “However, every move causes pain and I can’t just do that…”
Nursery Rhyme looked at Blossomforth, scrunching her face. Blossomforth shuddered visibly. After all, Nursery is young and looks even younger. Most of the patients have trouble trusting her.
“We may give her pavulon,” Nursery Rhyme muttered. “That’ll loosen the muscles…”
Blossomforth gave me a panicked look.
“Yeah, and if she dies, we can sell her organs,” I deadpanned. “You know, I’d help her myself, but I’m afraid to break something…”
“I’m not,” Nursery Rhyme smirked, licking her lips. I started to admire Blossomforth’s courage – she heard that and didn’t shit herself. “Though maybe it’d be better to call an orthopaedist…”
“Good luck with that,” I replied. “He went on holiday… Also, she wants to be treated discreetly.”
“Oh, bother…” Nursery Rhyme muttered. Seems that we didn’t spoil her yet. “Also, umm… Since the rest of the nurses… watched it…”
“Watched what?!” Blossomforth exclaimed, turning her face to Nursery. I expected the sound of snapping bones, but it didn’t happen. Her hind leg moved few inches from her neck. In fact, it was now on her mane.
I acted quickly, just like a good nurse should. I didn’t wait for Nursery to reply; I grabbed Blossomforth’s leg and pulled it, taking it off her head.
“Aargh!” Blossomforth yelled, when her spine straightened like a bow with a snapped bowstring. “Oh fuck… Fuckity fuck…” She rolled off the table, landing on all four. Her hind legs, wobbly after a few hours in a rather uncomfortable position, gave up. “Sweet fucking Celestia!” She stood up and looked at me, then at Nursery Rhyme. It’d look scary, if she wasn’t making a potty dance at the same time. “What did they watch?”
“Umm…” Nursery Rhyme blushed. “That tape that was lying next to the coffee machine…”
“I’m gonna kill Flitter!” Blossomforth yelled. “Kill her, clone her, fuck her with the biggest strap-on I can find, and kill her again!” She ran out of the treatment room.
I sighed with relief. “Well, my dear Nursery Rhyme, that was a grateful patient… Thanks for distracting her, by the way…”
“If that was a grateful patient…” Nursery Rhyme muttered, looking at the door, “...then how do the ungrateful ones look like?”
“Well, one of those tried to strangle me, but he had a cranio-fecal syndrome…” I said. Seeing that Nursery raised her eyebrows, I added, “He was a shithead. They’re also weird patients, who come here to steal slippers at night, or the ones like that one…” I wrapped one of my hooves around her and made a wide gesture with the other. “You’ll see it yourself. And one day, it all will be yours…”
The door opened and Blossomforth came in, her face bright red. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “My bladder couldn’t hold it any longer and–”
“Tell Nurse Sweetheart to clean it,” I replied. “She’s the fat, pink one. She had fun times today, so it’s time for her to work a bit…”
Blossomforth nodded. “I only wonder about one thing…” she said. "Where are my two so-called friends?”
Just when she said that, I heard the bell ringing. You know, sometimes the universe has the best timing ever. With a sigh, I left the room and trotted to the door, followed by Nursery Rhyme.
Behind it stood Cloudchaser, her expression being something between horror and urge to facehoof. Flitter was lying on the ground next to her, panting heavily.
“What’s going on?” I asked, glaring daggers at them. “By the way, you can take Blossomforth with you…”
“It’s my sister,” Cloudchaser replied. “She thought she could do the same thing as Blossomforth… and she pulled a muscle.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“All of them!” Flitter cried, unable to stand up.
I facehoofed and slowly went to the building to get a stretcher. It was going to be a long night...
Author's Note
While we're at it – I can scratch my head with my foot. But still, my friend is better: he can bend his wrist in such a way he can touch his forearm with his fingernails. It looks really creepy.
