The cool and steady hum of the aged yet well maintained metal lights is the first thing I notice as my awareness returns. I know this sound, I’ve known it for most of my life. Hearing it can only mean I’m back in that place again, that room with the sterile white walls and grey tiled floor. Where the ceiling is an aged alabaster, riddled with wrinkles and cracks that take up more space with each visit. The room with the metal framed bed with odd machines adorned with strange lights and symbols on them. I know once I open my eyes wires will be attached to my forelimbs via adhesive patches or needles, connecting back to those machines. Sometimes I have wires attached to my scalp, ignoring my mane, with little diodes glued into place. The machine closest to my right side will be the heart monitor, and near it shall sit a vase filled with flowers of some sort. Never the same type, yet always fresh as if just picked from the fields. Beside it will be a book just out of reach, and an emergency alert button within reach with which to call the nurse.
A chair shall be directly across from me as it always is, with another to my right, and the bed next to mine will be empty this time. I can tell for only one set of machines is beeping, clicking, and whirring in tune to my internal workings. The wall to my left will have a picture on it, that of a group of beings in white medical uniforms and a strange anteater like creature beside a young female patient. It’s a strange photo, though not as strange as the one above my head, the one that remains a dark grey abstract that begins to take on a life of its own if I stare at it too much. Though I know it’s there I try not to think about it, it’s better that way.
Surrounding the bed, which is coated in clean white linen sheets and a distinctive light blue and grey blanket that no doubt has been drawn up to my mid section fully covering my tail; is a curtain as white as the first snow with some strange shapes repeated in a pattern upon it. One is like that of two farming scythes in bright red back to back, shear edge pointed out. Another is a spiral within a spiral, almost like a cone shell from the beaches by Lilly’s Landing outside of Manehatten, it is a pale green in color like algae tossed up from a storm. The other three are ones I recognize easily, a moon and sun with a star, the colors of the Princesses of Equestria. The final icon is one I’ve never quite understood, it’s an infinity symbol made of two snakes, wrapped around a bar. The top of the bar has what looks like a book on it, it is silver grey in color. These icons are repeated in a pattern on the white curtain, like those on the old floral dresses from the turn of the century. Oddly enough it never seems to get worn out or dirty, no matter how often I end up here.
Which is far more often than most wind up in places like this.
It’s so often that I don’t even need to open my eyes to know what this place looks like.
I finally tire of merely imagining the room around me, including the metal doors that lead out of the room. Doors I never remember entering or leaving through, though the nurse comes and goes through the gateway that I have never passed beyond at least once a visit. Doctors rarely enter, at least not while I am conscious. Though I know they are around, I hear them in the hallway beyond as they go about their tasks. Clipboards in their grasp they run to and from destinations, sometimes accompanied by the sound of rattling wheels and distressing chatter. Sometimes they merely walk by, oblivious to my presence within this room perhaps.
Before I open my eyes, I imagine the final part of the room. The grand bay window that overlooks the most pristine field and forested woods beyond that I have ever seen. The only mar in the landscape is a small road leading away from the building, and the sign indicating it’s nature. Or it’s presumed one.
Slowly, with great effort for it gets harder to do so each time I arrive here, I open my eyelids. Crumbs of sleep dust and salt break their hold on my lids as they open to gaze upon exactly what I knew would be present. This room, this place, wherever it is never changes as most hospitals do. It’s been a puzzle to me for some time now, but not one I am too curious about. At least not at this moment. After all I’ve been to this room so often, it’s like a second home to me. Though the ceiling has a few more cracks, it is otherwise exactly the same. With one exception.
As if on queue, as I open my eyes with a mind still groggy from sleep the metal door opens, creaking slightly on hinges that seem to never be oiled. In walks a mare, her lavender fur and cream white mane and tail changed slightly with time yet her vibrant red eyes are still as lively as when I first met her here back when she was a mere intern. Now a nurse, complete with nurses cap and a uniform that hides her cutie mark and covers her hooves, she has changed but not as much as one would expect. She has filled out some, and is taller than she was so long ago, but she is without a doubt the same mare I have known for so very long. Her eyes light up as she notices me, recognition flashing across her face alongside the usual concern. As she trots over to my side, clipboard in hoof and medical kit strapped to her back, she sighs while a caring smile overtakes her muzzle.
“Now what brings you back here this time Fair Tides? I hope not another fall.” Her voice carries a bit of laughter as she speaks that second sentence in her melodious tone, one that is like the songbird of a secluded vale from a different time.
I respond, though my voice has gotten deeper since the time we first met back when I was but a colt, it is not yet the grizzled wizened timbre of an old stallion. “I am afraid I am not quite sure Nurse Azure Lily, one moment I was crossing the street in between Mareston Way and Fetlock Park, when a loud clattering noise coming from my left, the next thing I know I hear the familiar sounds of this place. Then as I opened my eyes you arrived, as always.” I try to add a bit of extra emphasis on the last sentence, after all I can’t have Azure thinking I don’t recognize her. Not that she would forget me anyway, she never has.
Shaking her head she flips through her clipboard and sighs with a light smile of exasperation and care combined on her face. Her curly mane stays perfectly in place, I have often wondered how she manages that.
“What are we going to do with you? At this rate you will have spent most of your life here, instead of outside in the world living it to the fullest. You need to be more careful with your safety and your life Fair.” I hear the usual soft notes in her voice, the care and compassion, but they are tinged with something new I have never heard in her voice before. Worry, distress on my behalf, but why I do not know.
I begin chuckling a bit to try to ease the tension in the air. Tossing my head so my autumn leaf orange mane falls to the side and reveals my golden eyes that contrast against my ocean blue coat, eyes I use to look directly into hers as I respond.
“But if I did that I would never get to see you Azure, we have known each other so long and yet I have never seen you outside of this room. It’s as if all you do is work, I wish I could meet you outside these walls. I know the work of a nurse is demanding, but you must leave this place on occasion.”
Azure Lily partially closes her eyes, but does not break eye contact. Taking a deep breath she replies softly, “This hospital never rests, the nurses never stop, we must save lives around the clock and not tarry on such thoughts. We must get patients through the transition room as fast as we are able, lest they meet the same end as a dark forgotten fable.”
I know this saying, she has said it many times before. The last part has always confused me but I get the gist of it. She works long hours and the hospital has an on site dormitory, it has to given its remote location. As she stares into my eyes through her red eyes painted in dark purple eyeshadow, I sense something from her. It is something I cannot quite grasp, yet each time I return to this room it gets stronger. It unnerves me, and in the end I break eye contact and glance out the window at the blissful scenery below.
“So what happened to me Azure?” I ask as my eyes take in the iconic scenery outside beyond the glass barrier held in the window frame.
Her voice carries towards my ears as I feel myself begin to slip into unexpected slumber. Strange, it is rare I begin to fall asleep so soon after waking in this room.
“A carriage hit you as it careened around the corner, multiple fractures and severe internal bleeding. You are lucky to be alive Fair. The fates and luck must still be on your side.” Azure’s voice reads off the incident report and my condition.
She is right I am lucky, though that is not abnormal for me, not by a long shot.
I laugh, yawning as I do so. As usual I can only stay awake so long while in this room, though normally that time is quite a bit longer than it is today. It’s strange in a way, yet considering what tends to precede my arrival here it is not surprising. It’s always some accident, some event that ends in me in danger or severely harmed in some way. This room is always the first place I wake up in, though I never stay fully awake within it for long. Yet ever since my earliest visit, she has always been here when I wake. Not always alone, but always here. It’s comforting to know that her familiar face will always be here when I wake within the sterile walls, cracking ceiling, and in truth abnormally pristine room marred by just that one flaw.
“They have seemed to favor me ever since I was a colt haven’t they?” I respond tiredly, turning my gaze from the scene outside to the lovely nurse beside my bed.
She nods, her caring smile still alight on her face though the worry has transitioned to her eyes. “Yes,” she replies softly, almost a whisper of a voice coming from her lips “they have favored you greatly for so very long.”
She pauses, a distinctly hesitant pause that coupled with her worry filled eyes brings forth an emotion I cannot recognize in my sleep addled mind. “Yet,” she continues, concern filling her voice, “I must remind you not to tempt the fates or lady luck Fair Tides. They will not favor you forever, a day will come when that favor and luck will run out.”
Half lost as I fall into the welcoming and alluring embrace of sleep I smile, my eyes closed yet I sense her presence still lingers by my side. My voice seems distant even to myself, as it tends to be when one is falling into a dream. Yet I hear myself as I utter my familiar yet forever honest question to her. “Will you be here when that day comes Azure?” The deep timbre of my voice has lightened so that I once more sound like a colt to my sleep encompassed mind.
As I fade into the realm of rest her voice echoes into my ears, her breath on my cheek tickling my skin, the smell of her like that perfect pristine vale of old entering my nostrils as I disappear into the realm of resting. “Of course Fair Tides, I promise you when that time comes, I will be waiting here for you.”
I feel my muzzle express a small smile, and a final word escapes my lips before I fall fully into slumber. “Good.”
When I wake up I am in a different room, the walls are a light pastel blue color and the matching ceiling has no cracks. The picture are of sweets and flowers, the bed is made of modern wood and the linens are purple and blue. The window is small, and outside is the bustling city of Manehatten; the city where I had arrived for a small trade deal for my company yet almost lost my life to a carriage accident. I’m not sure how I know I almost died, but I feel inside myself as always that this is true.
The room is small, much smaller than the one I had been in prior. The door is made of wood, and the metal knob turns as a nurse enters with a cart filled with medications, bandages, and other medical supplies. Upon seeing me awake, her face takes on an expression I have seen so very often before after leaving that place with the white walls where Azure works and waits.
Relief, joy, and something else I can never identify flash across the nurse’s face. She rushes over to take my vitals, give me some painkillers, and change my bandages that I hadn’t noticed before. She goes on about how lucky I am to be alive, how it’s a miracle I’m not dead what with how horrible my condition had been. Apparently I had been out for a week, and the doctors were worried I wouldn’t make it. But I pulled through regardless, overjoyed she phones the doctors over the private room line. Her excitement amuses me, I never can understand how nurses get so worked up over this. After all, I have survived far worse.
After she hangs up the phone, the nurse stays in the room and we chat, as always happens. It’s as if the nurses want to make sure I stay conscious, so I don’t die or something equally silly. I’ve never understood their insistence on doing this, but I’ve long since learned it’s easier to just go along with it.
This nurse, a rather plump chartreuse colored mare with a bright pink and peach duo toned mane and tail with matching two tone eyes; is apparently named Caring Grace. Her cutie mark is visible, it is a pair of wings coming out of a peach shaped like a heart. And as she chatters on about random things and her life, presumably waiting for the doctor to arrive, I respond as expected and as I have practiced for years. She smiles, giggles, and congratulates me on my miraculous recovery; though to me it’s just one of many others I’ve experienced.
And as we wait for the doctor to arrive, passing time with idle chatter and casual conversation I can’t help but let my mind wander to thoughts about that place. That room in a hospital that surely they must have teleported me in from, where the scenery outside is pristine and within waits a mare I’ve known for most of my life. A nurse with alabaster cream colored hair and a light lavender coat and red eyes, whose kind and caring voice isn’t something that is used for idle chatter but genuine conversation. Whose scent is like that of an ancient pristine vale, and whose voice is like a songbird borne from such a place to a sterile environment where despite its hours of work it retains its inner music and harmony.
I know better than to ask the nurse about that place, they never tell me the truth on the matter. They insist it doesn’t exist, that I was only ever in whatever hospital that’s isn’t that place I wake up in every time something like this recent incident happens. They insist Nurse Azure Lily doesn’t exist, or if she does she isn’t in their records. But I know that place, and that beautiful caring and kind mare are real. Just as I know that the next time something happens that endangers my life, I’ll end up there again. And Azure will be there waiting.
Just as she has for most of my life, and just as she will until my luck runs out in the end and the fates abandon their favor in me.
Or perhaps before that happens, I will find that place and take her away from that sterile place with the perfect view beyond the window. Bring her home with me, and then who knows what may happen.
But first I need to find that place, wherever it is, and to do that I need to do some research. That is the other reason I came to Manehatten after all, to find clues about that place. The central archives are where I will start after my release from the hospital, somewhere within that vast amount of knowledge a clue must exist. A clue to the location of Fates Hospital, and with it the whereabouts of the mare who has been there in that sterile place I see every time I wake after an accident I survive by luck and the favor of fates.
A place that I know exists, even if the doctors and nurses insist it doesn’t.
A place I will find, no matter how long it takes.
Though the fates favor will not last forever I shall use all my luck to find it, that room, that mare, that room of transition in the place known as Fates Hospital.
Author's Note
So this is the story that snapped me out of my writing funk.
It is, if you haven’t noticed, a medical related story with an unusual twist. I hope to turn this into a full series at some point, but for now I will let you speculate on where Fair Tides woke up, and what the transitory room and Fates Hospital, as well as Azure Lily are.
The mystery tag may be changed later, but it does have mystery to it doesn’t it? One I hope to expand on at a later date.
Also try to catch all the shoutouts in the story if you can.
Glen Gorewood
