The changeling and the medic

I turned away from the dungeon and began walking back up into the main part of the castle, going over the events of the past few hours in my head. My hooves were covered in blood, and my coat and face had been splashed with it. There would be a greater risk of infection, and likely a psychological effect on any fallen soldiers I tried to help, so I would need to find somewhere to get cleaned up before I got back to doing my job. When planning a castle's defensive design the utilities - toilets, washrooms, etc - are often overlooked, as are the needs of anypony other than the defending guards, which meant that there weren't any particularly convenient places for a medic to retreat back to quickly to wash up during a battle. As canterlot castle was primarily a palace rather than a defensive structure many compromises had been made. It was frustrating, but I spotted a restroom down the hallway that I had entered leaving the dungeon, so I went over to it to get cleaned up. The soap wouldn't be as effective as getting properly cleaned up, but my job was to do emergency life-saving on the front line, where the battle and injuries sustained in it were more of an immediate risk than infection. Dealing with that was the job of the surgeons back at the hospital.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Standing, huddled in the corner between the wall and one of the stalls were a blue mare and her foal, who was holding onto her waist. I assumed they must have been hiding from the battle. I was about to ask if they were ok when the colt asked me "is the battle over?".

"No, but I think it will be soon."

The colt's eyes widened slightly. He was obviously scared - understandable given the situation.

"Are we going to die?"

I was a little surprised by the question.

"Er... Well... No. We're winning the battle, so probably not. I don't know if it's safe for you to leave here yet"

The colt smiled slightly, having been reassured. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I looked at the mare - she was a pegasus, and her coat and mane were navy blue, her mane being slightly darker than her coat. I looked at the colt - he was a unicorn, with a light grey coat, and scruffy pale yellow hair with a wide band of blue and red in it.

A grey unicorn colt with stripy yellow, blue and red hair, and a blue pegasus mare with a darker blue mane. They were the two ponies that the changeling had taken the form of.

"What?" The mare retorted, obviously annoyed that I was staring at her and her child.

I didn't really know how to explain myself, and I didn't really see all that much point in doing it, so I just shook my head, said "never mind", and turned to wash my hooves. It was probably that the changeling had just seen these two running away from the battle.

I turned on the water and squirted soap onto my hooves. It might have been that these two had just been spotted by the changeling, but was it possible that they WERE changelings? I didn't have any way of knowing, at least not unless they revealed themselves by morphing or attacking me. I decided not to say or do anything that would either freak out a pony or prompt a changeling to blow my head off and just be cautious. I was on edge, listening and looking over at them in the mirror in front of me. If they moved, I could react.

I washed my hooves (front and back), my face, and the cut on my chest from the spear, then ran out of the room as quickly as possible and closed the door behind me. I had a lot of questions, but I wasn't sure if knowing the answers would result in death, so I decided to at least postpone any enquiries as to who these two ponies were.

My mind focused back onto my job, and I walked in the general direction of the sound of battle. It was muffled behind several walls, but I could still hear faint screams and explosions coming from the north side of the castle, so I cantered towards them. It didn't take me long to find some injured soldiers. As I neared the battle I saw a large white stallion sitting on a bench in one of the hallways, with two concerned friends beside him. His left hind leg was obviously broken, with a large amount of blood pouring out of it, and he had deep cuts down his flank and foreleg.

I never enjoyed seeing ponies in pain, but at this point I was relieved to be able to get back to work. I felt a little guilty, being glad that things like this happened so that I had a job to do, but worrying about the ethics of my motivations were less important than saving lives, so I got on with it.

I applied a tourniquet just below the stallion's knee to stop the bleeding and set about bandaging up the worst cuts elsewhere on his body, then turned to the broken bone. I set it as straight as I could and took out a leg splint - a compromise between having to carry a large and heavy stretcher around on the battlefield and leaving limbs in a state where they would be likely to become more damaged by movement of broken bones - and wrapped it around the broken limb. The stallion grimaced, then relaxed and smiled weakly once his leg had been secured. I sent the two other soldiers back the the battle and picked the injured stallion up, making sure to support his leg and hold it steady, and flew him down the hallways towards the small military hospital built into the castle.

We arrived a minute or so later, and I saw that the entry room was completely overflowing. The hospital had only 20 beds and 10 doctors and wasn't built to handle a full scale invasion of canterlot, being intended for treating soldiers injured in accidents and minor skirmishes. There were at least 30 injured soldiers waiting outside, some having walked here themselves, some having been dragged back by other soldiers, and some accompanied by other medics who were doing their best to help them - there was no point in going back to the battle to bring more casualties back if we couldn't treat the ones we had here already. A lot of the injured had just been laid down directly on the floor outside. I wondered if I'd have a better chance of helping my patient if I went to the main cantlerlot hospital, but if I did that it would be likely we'd both be attacked and killed by changelings on the way. I decided to join the other medics in trying to do as much as we could to help the ponies here.

I lay the stallion down on a wooden bench a short way down the corridor from the other ponies. He was further from the hospital, but at least he wouldn't have to lie on the floor. I landed along side him and looked to see if there was anything I could to do help him further.

At that point a short yellow unicorn stepped out of the hospital, holding a clipboard and pen in a field of magic. His coat was very strange - it was so bright it was almost luminous, and his mane was the exact same colour. He stepped into the midst of the mass of fallen troops and began checking them, writing things on his clipboard as he went. Two treated patients followed him out, one with a missing foreleg (being helped along by a medic) and the other with a heavily bandaged eye and torso. He waved two more patients to go in, and they did so, accompanied by more medics. He looked like he was about to turn back, but I waved to him to indicate that I had a patient he hadn't checked, and he trotted over to me.

He seemed strangely happy given the situation, but it was reassuring that he was being (or was at least trying to appear to be) optimistic.

"So. What's this one?" He asked.

"Broken leg, lost some blood, tourniquet. He'll probably lose it if it doesn't get seen to in the next few minutes. Some relatively minor cuts too."

I hadn't wanted to waste time elaborating, given how short for time we all were. The yellow stallion made a couple of notes on his clipboard, then turned and hurried back to the door, skipping over one of the ponies on the way. I turned to my patient, not really sure if there was anything more I could do. I had gauze, bandages, scissors, tongs, a scalpel, more fabric for use in slings and tourniquets, a portable fire extinguisher, a defibrillator, a neck brace and more leg braces, none of which were any use to me. I had more anaesthetic, but no clean needle for it since I'd used it on the changeling.

While I was considering if there was actually any point in me being there at all the yellow stallion returned, carrying a box and distributing different medical equipment to the medics with his magic as he walked towards me. When he'd finished with everyone else he gave me a bottle of antiseptic, a needle and a short reel of suture. I wasn't keen on stitching up injuries - it was part of the reason I became a front line medic rather than a surgeon. It was either this or the stallion losing his leg, so it wasn't a hard decision to make in terms of what I should do, but in terms of what I could physically bring myself to do it was a little more difficult, especially considering that my patient would be concious and that I had little experience of doing it, and no experience on live ponies.

Suffice to say that neither I nor my patient enjoyed it, but after a few minutes I'd unbandaged and cleaned all the injuries and stitched all the small cuts. It wasn't as neat as it could have been, but it would do its job of preventing infection and holding the cuts together. With the area around the broken bone I wasn't really sure what I SHOULD have done - I wasn't going to be able to stitch it because there wasn't enough skin to cover it, and it wouldn't heal properly if it was just covered in bandages. I wasn't trained or qualified to deal with this sort of thing - I wasn't a doctor, I was effectively a glorified nurse who works on a battlefield rather than in a ward. It was likely that the stallion would have to lose his leg anyway, but I really didn't know. I covered it back up in bandages once I'd cleaned it out, hoping it wouldn't bleed too heavily or get infected.

I helped the other medics tend to injured guards for an hour or so, the yellow pony alternating between checking and discharging the casualties and bringing out supplies. The most seriously injured ponies were sent in whenever any left the hospital, but this didn't happen anywhere near as quickly as it should have. When all the beds were full of ponies recovering from surgery the doctors moved outside to join us in trying to help those waiting outside the hospital. We quickly ran out of bandages and antiseptic as more injured ponies kept arriving.

The queue was growing slowly as ponies arrived faster than they could be treated. It took about an hour for a pony to leave, and in that time we'd get 2 or 3 more, but the battle was quieting down and the rate of patients arriving slowed gradually. The invasion had begun at around midday, and it was likely past midnight before the queue began getting shorter again. We'd had to improvise bandages from strips of cloth taken from the clean bedsheets stored in the back of the hospital, which worked well enough, but the antiseptic was a big problem. We did eventually manage to get a solution that was better than nothing in diluted laundry bleach, but a couple of ponies ended up dying from infections anyway.

We didn't know how the battle was going, but it seemed that we had at least driven the changelings away from the castle. What state the rest of Canterlot was in we didn't know until returning soldiers came back to find out how their comrades were doing and told us that the changelings had fled. We stayed until more doctors came from Canterlot's public hospital to take the soldiers who were still injured (including the one I'd brought over) to give them some proper treatment. Those of us who'd been working through the day went back to the barracks.

When we arrived back at the barracks most of us (including myself) just went to bed without saying anything else. We were too exhausted to do anything else. I managed to find enough energy to clean the blood off of myself, but that was about it. Most of us hadn't eaten anything since the morning, but I didn't really care. Sleep was more important. I had a lot to think about, but it could wait until the next morning.