“You weren’t lying, Nurse Tenderheart. Seems the patient has finally joined the land of the living.”

An irritated snort made Spike eye three ponies entering the room. The first two were mares that donned white caps with a red cross stitched on the front, while the third looked like an evil scientist with a neck brace strapped around the stallion’s neck. Spike knew who they really were: nurses and the torture specialist disguised as a doctor. Fillies and colts had told horror stories of this “doctor’s” atrocities using his signature device known as a stethoscope. The ice cold touch of the instrument of death against a pony’s neck was a reality Spike did not want to witness. But he had no choice: he was at the stallion’s mercy, chained to a wall with a harness strapped to him. So if he tried it, Spike could perish.

Yet this was not his only worry. Spike also worried about the nurses. Primarily the blue mare, whose name the doctor dropped rather conveniently. She had entered before, crying out for her comrades to come to her aide. It was—

His train of thought careened to a halt when he saw the mare smiling at him.

“It’s okay, Spike. Doctor Hooves isn’t going to pulverize you with his dog collar.”

The doctor closed his eyes and took off his stethoscope. “You nurses and your jokes about my stethoscopes. No wonder why foals run and hide behind their mothers!” He shook his head and mirrored the blue mare’s expression. “Glad to see you alive again, Spike. We’ve been waiting for this day.”

“We?”

“Well, by we, I mean me and these two nurses. Not sure about the rest of the staff—HEY!”

Spike laughed as Nurse Redheart, the only pony he was personally familiar with, walloped the poor doctor in the noggin. “Stop teasing him and let’s get to work, Doctor!” she said, snarling at him. “We’ve got a lot of sick ponies in today, and I don’t want to remind you about what happened last time we got behind…”

Nurse Tenderheart giggle-snorted. “Ah-ha, remember when Doctor Hooves got his head stuck in one of the bins full of—”

“Don’t remind me,” the doctor said, facepalming. He carefully walked over to a nearby countertop in shame. “I do not need these... painful memories harming my work performance, Nurse Tenderheart.”

Nurse Tenderheart was about to respond, but Nurse Redheart was a snappy, feisty mare, who did not care about her doctor’s shenanigans. “Spike, I’ll let this stallion discuss with you about your diagnosis while Tender and I help get you down from the wall.”

Before Spike could interject, the doctor let out a painful, yet exaggerated moan and turned to Nurse Redheart. “You have wounded me with that sly commentary, Nurse Redheart, but do not worry, I will be the one who will prevail in the end!”

“So much for happy endings,” Redheart said with a hard eye roll.

Spike tried so hard to keep himself in line, but that comment sent him spiraling down a staircase of laughter, with him sliding down until the very end.

“Careful, Spike, you might cough up a lung with the way you’re laughing.”

The dragon calmed to a mere chuckle. “It’s hard when you feel like you’re living in a world full of maniacs.”

“We’ll see about that in your charts…” The doctor peered at the clipboard on the counter. “Well, looks like I may have to give you a full diagnostic review. Your chart is a doozy!”

“That bad?” Spike asked.

“Let’s just say, you’re going to realize a lot about yourself in the next few hours, if you choose to believe it, that is.”

If he chose to believe it? “What do you mean?”

“Well, do you believe you are in the same day or the next day?”

That question made Spike pause for a brief moment. The doctor definitely put him on the spot, but it felt like a no brainer, since he just passed out a few hours ago. The chains were just a byproduct of his nasty sleepingwalking, nothing more. “The next day?”

The doctor tilted his head. “Why do you sound so unsure?”

Spike shrugged. “I guess with how you worded it, it sounds like a trick question.”

The words had just tumbled out of his mouth. And now he couldn’t pick them back up, even if he tried.

And the doctor picked them up, and smirked. “You’re right. Because both would’ve been wrong.” He flipped the page on his clipboard. “It’s been… a month and three days since your arrival.”

“Did you have to g—”

The rest of Nurse Redheart’s quip fell on deaf ears. Spike couldn’t believe it. It had been a month, but it felt like the same day! “How could this…?”

Doctor Hooves frowned. “Well, I was getting to that, but Nurse Redheart wanted to discuss my—”

“Doctor, please. Cut to the chase,” Nurse Tenderheart butted in. “He needs to know.”

He frowned, and looked at the dragon with glassy eyes. “You have this… condition, that very few dragons have that…” He gripped the chart tightly in his hooves, before tossing it in the air. “Drat! This medical language baffles me! Look, you have what’s called draconic standstill, a condition that could be a cross between a coma and a neurotic form of sleepwalking.”

Spike felt the first chain fall flat on the ground, the padlock clicking and clacking against the hospital’s white tile floor. “I-I do?”

Nurse Redheart nodded. “Yes, it’s a condition that only one in thousand dragons have. Only a few dragons have been affected by it, but thanks to Twilight’s quick thinking, we were able to keep you contained during the first week that you were…” She paused, and looked at the doctor, whose glare pierced her, making her wince.

“Red, go get a stretcher. Tenderheart will help get Spike down, while I go over his diagnostics.”

She hung her head low. Her pink mane was in a little bun, which bounced as she nodded and left the room. Now there were only two.

“And make sure that dolt from the lounge gets his flank in here! He’s going to need to haul these chains out so we can prep for the next patient!” He yelled out into the hallway.

“Okay, Doctor Hooves!”

The stallion came back into the room and sighed. “I was going to save that for when you asked about the condition itself, but I guess we’re hitting you a lot harder than I previously intended.” He looked up at Spike and gasped. “Are you okay?”

Spike…

Spike was on a whole different planet. Everything felt so unfocused. What he was told had changed what he thought of himself. A bit neurotic? A bit… more than just an coma? Twilight actually saved him from himself?

His vision was getting blurry, muddled by water of another kind, something he grew akin to when he’d go to bed and fall asleep, tears matting his pillows.

“I…”

Tenderheart and Doctor Hooves shared a concerned glance. They didn’t know how he felt. They just knew that he was hurting. That’s all Spike could guess. That’s all he knew.

He didn’t even know what day it was.

“I get it. I… just don’t know if I want to believe it. That I’m just some screwed up dragon and—”

“That couldn’t be further from the truth, Spike!” Tenderheart interrupted. “You’re a good dragon, the best around even!”

Spike couldn’t shake his head. The chains just rattled, keeping him in place. “I don’t think that’s true. I’m just the only one around, so there’s no competition.”

He closed his eyes. He's the only one. A lonely dragon in Equestria who did not care that he wanted to d—

"Hey, hey... that's not true whatsoever!"

Spike's eyes snapped open. He saw Dr. Hooves standing in front of him, his hooves wrapping around the dragon.

“You’re not a screwed up dragon. You’re just struggling, that’s all.”

Spike slowly opened his mouth, only to be shut up, buttercupped by Doctor Hooves’ hoof. “It’s not negotiable when it’s true, Spike. Besides, even if it wasn’t true, I would’nt have believed it with my own two eyes…. that is, unless you decided to go on a murder spree because you just snapped one day after you caught your favorite mare in all the land with another stallion or something.”

Spike chuckled, albeit painfully. His throat hurt. “I don’t plan on doing stuff like that. I’m not crazy…”

“Glad we agreed on something so far,” Doctor Hooves said, bringing the dragon close once again. “Prepare for a release, Spike.”

“Re—oh!”

The last padlocks let him go, and the chains fell to the ground, raining metal onto the tile floor. Spike was surprised none of that metal caused any cracks on the ground. He could still hear the clicking and clacking of the chains, even after they had fallen. It was like an echo…

He gasped as his body finally fell to the ground too, or, rather, he was placed there. The doctor looked down at him and smiled. “Can you feel your legs?”

Spike raised a brow. “I should be—”

He couldn’t feel them at all. Actually, he couldn’t feel much at all. “—actually, nevermind. I barely feel anything. I think my crotch itches, but that’s all I can really say I ‘feel’ at the moment.”

“TMI, Spike. TMI,” Tenderheart said as she facehooved, while Doctor Hooves stifled a laugh.

“Don’t listen to her, she does not know of our struggle.” The two guys shared a quick hoof-fist bump, before sharing in their laughter.

Spike could feel his own laugh, and he could feel his stomach ‘hurting’ from it all, but it was like he didn’t know if there was an emotion attached to any of it. Maybe there was, and maybe he just didn’t realize it.

And maybe there was something else he was missing.

“So… was that all that there was, Doc?”

Spike watched as his intrigue turned reality. The doctor shook his head. “Well, there’s a lot to go through for it, but to put it in short… you’re—”

Nurse Redheart, with her convenient timing, burst through the door with a stretcher carrying a pink and black unicorn on it. “Sorry I’m late. He’d only come if I put him on the stretcher.”

The trio of two medical professionals and a lone dragon gazed at the two goofballs that entered the room

And the one on the stretcher just had to speak first:

“Draw me like one of your Prench girls, Doctor Hooves!”

Spike was now on a stretcher, being wheeled into his new room. The old one had to be, as the doctor said, reworked, since the chains had to be mounted onto the wall so that Spike wouldn’t move. Apparently, his body was such a mess of genetics. He was one of the few dragons who had a condition, that, if he got under too much stress, could turn his world into one heck of a mess very quickly. He would be stuck living the same day over and over until he woke up. But the kicker, which Redheart at accidentally slip, was that he was sleepwalking during his first couple of weeks, something that made Spike worry the most.

He…

“Well, Spike, you apparently took your bed with you to the Carousel Boutique.”

That alarmed him when the Doctor said that. He thought he was over with Rarity, but apparently his sub-conscious was still attached to her like a glove.

“And… well, that bed was also chained to you, so it was probably a rough time trying to get comfortable.”

Spike also couldn’t believe this. He was not that strong. If he could do that, he would be Big Mac times… two!

But what really kicked his gut was what happened while he was gone.

“Twilight had done what?!”

“We don’t know why but she just… stopped her court since you got here!”

Those words made his blood boil. Twilight had never stopped her world of friendship for anything. How? How could the girls let Twilight do that? Why would Celestia let her do that? Ponies needed her!

He curled his fingers into a fist… or at least tried to. His claw wasn’t used to moving, so it just curled slightly, before twitching in place.

His stretcher, as he had currently claimed, was moseying through the clinic’s many hallways. And by moseying, Spike meant trailblazing.

“Why are we racing down the hallway, Doctor Hooves?”

Doctor Hooves, through his many panting fits, responded in kind, “Because you, Tenderheart, and I are all out of shape, and because I want to get as far away from that dunderhead as possible.”

“Doctor, we’ve been going in circles for the past ten minutes.”

“We… what?!”

The stretcher zoomed forward with Spike on it. The dragon could barely make out any of the confusion that he heard behind him. All he could hear was the voices of shock, outrage, and desperation, probably begging that he wouldn’t die by the sheer high impact violence his death would cause if his stretcher rammed right into a solid brick wall—

“Gotcha!”

Spike stopped, and so did his stretcher. It was now floating in mid-air, something that not many ponies could do, even if they were a really good spellcaster.

And that voice. That voice sounded familiar. Like it was something he had heard yesterday. Just a bit here and there, but it was just… like she was distant for a moment.

“Twi… Twilight?”

Spike just muttered her name without thinking of her. It was automatic, locked in with everything that he had grown to understand. Twilight was his life, and her life was everyone else.

Seemed a bit commonplace of him.

“Spike!”

Purple fur encompassed his vision. He could slightly feel her presence, but none of that comfort that he would get. It was pressure. That’s all it was.

He couldn’t really be happy if he tried.

“H-Hey, T...Twi—”

His vision was no longer painted purple. He could see the light again, and he could see her face. It was… something to behold.

Tears were in her eyes. And her muzzle was all scrunched and twitchy. It was nice to see that she cared. After all, her number one assistant was back.

“I’m so happy you’re alive!” She did a little bunny hop as she spoke, “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” Three more hops this time. She put one left foot with less thump, while her right wiggled just above the tile.

Spike tried to prop himself up to get a better look at Twilight, but his arm just didn’t want to cooperate. So he kept himself down and tried to work a smile on his face. “I’m glad too, both from the fact that I was gone for a month and for the fact that I didn’t die from that brick wall that I imagine is right in front of me.”

Twilight smiled. “It’s about fifteen feet away from you, so you’re fine.”

“Oh,” Spike muttered.

The hospital staff finally caught up to the pair. Twilight set his stretcher down and closed her eyes. “What happened.”

Doctor Hooves’ lungs sounded like they were begging for assistance. “A slight slip-up, that’s all. We apologize for—”

“—nearly killing the closest family member in my life?”

That made Spike want to turn to see the action. All he could see was her face, and nothing that was going on behind him. And boy did she look absolutely furious—both of her brows were twitching, and her horn looked like it was going to explode any second.

“We’re sorry, Princess Twilight Sparkle! It won’t happen again and—”

The magic that was brewing in Twilight’s horn stopped, and her brows no longer twitched. Spike could only watch helplessly as the mare who just claimed that she saw him as ‘the closest family member in her life’ tried to contain her emotions. She let out a brief blow before she closed her eyes. “I just want him to be better, okay? I can’t keep going if he’s not around, because he’s… he’s important to me. I just...” She opened her eyes, as hers face fell hard, tears jetting out from her face and matting her cheeks. “Please don’t let him slip away from me…”

Spike just closed his eyes as the nurses slowly surrounded her.

Maybe when he gets in his room, they’ll tell him what happens next, because if Twilight was like this, he didn’t want to know what everyone else was like.

At least, not yet. He had time, right?

Author's Note

Old School Runescape is a great game.

Help, I'm a slave to being a hardcore ironman bro!