Heart break. A heart that had been through so much that it may never recover. Love can do cruel things to a pony, even to the point where a stallion may not be able to go on until his heart gets fixed.
Feather Bangs had recently been through a bad run in when not only did the love of his life, Sugar Belle, reject him, but also the three mares that had always followed him around, gushing over his every move. They thought that Feather Bangs was almost this deity who could enchant anypony that he shined his pearly whites to, but once the spell was broken, the thrill of chasing after a pony they could never have lost its interest. This constant heartbreak had left Feather Bangs feeling an actual, physical pain in his heart, and although he may have been exaggerating when he said that it might be broken, he knew that stress was a real threat to a pony’s health.
“Well, Mr. Bangs,” the doctor said, rummaging through his clipboard, “I can’t see anything that points to any cardiac damage, but I think we should do some tests in the morning just to be sure. You just stay here and rest until then, OK?”
“Thanks, Doc,” Feather Bangs replied, resting his hooves behind his head as he laid back onto his hospital bed. “I’m glad to know that I’m in good hooves with you and your… lovely assistants. Ha ha.”
The doctor chuckled, placing his files into a nearby filing cabinet. “Yes, Nurse Redheart will be with you periodically to check up and see how you’re doing. Just let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help.”
“Will do, Doc. You have a good night.” With a bright smile, the doctor turned around and walked out the door, but no sooner had he done so when a white mare with a nurse’s hat and the most gorgeous blue eyes walked into the room, carrying a cart with various supplies. “Mmm mmm MMMM! Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear!”
“I hope that’s not me you’re talking about!” the nurse said with a playful smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry. What I meant to say was angel, but I was afraid that if you knew, you would realize that I’m not worthy to be in your presence. Ha ha.”
Nurse Redheart giggled femininely, carrying her cart with her next to Feather Bangs’s bed. “Don’t worry! It’s not like I’m gonna kick you out of the hospital or anything.”
Feather Bangs chuckled. “Why would I ever want to leave?”
“I dunno, but a lot of ponies are afraid of this next part.” Nurse Redheart then grabbed an elastic band from off the cart and tied it around Feather Bangs’s foreleg, placing it directly over a vein and returning to her cart for more supplies. “You’re not afraid of needles, are you?”
Feather Bangs winced, but seeing the nurse’s bright smile, he wiped his forehead from the sweat that began to trickle down, offering back the widest smile he could possibly muster. “Me? Girl, don’t you know that I’m secretly the toughest stallion in all of Equestria?”
“Oh, really? In that case, I can use the extra thick needle that we normally just save for dying ponies as a last resort!”
“...Hold up. Say what now?”
The nurse giggled loudly, putting down the extra thick needle and instead picking up a normal-sized syringe, eliciting a relaxed breath from the nervous stallion’s mouth. “Got you! You should have seen the look on your face! It’s not like I was actually going to use a horse tranquilizer on you!”
‘Then why did you have it on your cart?’ he wanted to ask, but the last thing he wanted to do was come off as a scaredy cat in front of a mare as beautiful as Nurse Redheart. As the nurse brought the syringe up to his foreleg, he held out his hoof and closed his eyes, waiting for the process to be over, counting backwards from one hundred just to distract himself from--
“Alright! We’re all finished!”
Feather Bangs squinted one eye open, just in case the nurse was joking again and was really just halfway through the injection, but oddly enough, the syringe was already back on the cart. As he opened both of his eyes, he saw Nurse Redheart applying pressure onto a cotton ball where she had made the shot, and quickly realizing the situation, Feather Bangs took over so that she could wrap some gauze around the injected area. ‘That was weird. Did she even take any blood?’
“Is… that all you needed?”
“Yup!” she responded with jubilee. “Now, I’m going to give you some pills and some orange juice. Make sure you take them within the next five minutes.”
“No prob, baby girl.” As Nurse Redheart poured a small cup of orange juice and handed it over to Feather Bangs along with three blue pills, he looked over to Nurse Redheart’s cart, and sure enough, the syringe didn’t have any blood inside. “Did you… not take any blood?”
With one eyebrow raised, she looked back at her cart, then back at Feather Bangs as if a lightbulb had gone off over her head. “Oh! That! No, that’s just an adhesive to help you get to sleep.”
This time it was Feather Bangs’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Then what are these for?”
Nurse Redheart smiled, but this was a little different from any of her previous smiles. “They’re…” Her eyes then looked up at Feather Bangs, her pupils staring straight into his, not blinking as her smile grew wider. “...for your heart...” Feather Bangs shivered. He didn’t know why, but he was starting to get some bad vibes from this mare, like there was something she wasn’t telling him. “Now I have to go run and take care of a patient in another room, so you just drink that orange juice and take those pills in the next five minutes, OK?”
“Yeah. Anything for you, girl.”
As Nurse Redheart pushed her cart out of Feather Bangs’s room, she took one last look back and winked, which at any other time would have made his heart flip, but this time, he just felt uneasiness. Finally, she made it out of the room, but rather than the uneasiness disappearing, he was left with an even worse pain in his stomach, his skin feeling cold and his mind growing lightheaded. With shaking hooves, he reached down for his pills, bringing them up to his mouth until they slipped out of his grasp, falling straight to the floor.
‘Great,’ he thought. ‘Hopefully she comes back in the next five minutes.’
As he sipped the orange juice down his nauseous stomach, he picked the pills from off the dirty floor, placed them in the empty cup and threw them into the garbage can. Hopefully he didn’t even need any heart pills in the first place, mainly just so he wouldn’t have to deal with seeing that nurse any more than he had to. She was a total hottie at first, but there was something about her that rubbed him the wrong w--
…
…
…
*clink, clink!*
‘Ugh… Where am I?’
Feather Bangs didn’t open his eyes, still in the transition between consciousness and unconsciousness, but underneath his eyelids, he could see that everything around him was dark. He was lying in his hospital bed, the lights were all turned off, and even with his eyes closed, he could tell that it had to be some time in the early morning.
‘Did I fall asleep? Man… I never took those pills, did I?’
*clink, clink!*
‘Is somepony there? Probably just that nurse checkin’ up on me or somethin’.’
Feather Bangs didn’t want to open his eyes, mostly hoping that he could just fall back asleep to the dreamland that was calling him, but with his curiosity getting the better of him, he groggily squinted his eyes open. As he predicted, the nurse was right there rummaging through her cart, but when she looked back over at Feather Bangs, her eyes went wide, dropping whatever object she had in her mouth. “What are you doing awake?!” she asked nervously. “Those pills were supposed to knock you out until morning! YOU CAN’T BE AWAKE!”
As soon as Feather Bangs opened his eyes all the way, he immediately squeezed them shut due to a searing pain in his head, but as soon as he lifted his hoof to soothe his head, he felt an even worse pain throbbing in his chest. That’s when he realized that his blanket wasn’t even covering his body anymore, and as soon as he looked down…
“If you scream, I will murder you.”
Feather Bangs literally grabbed hold of his own throat to keep the air from escaping his lungs. He did not doubt for one second that she would legitimately take his life if he didn’t follow her orders, because as soon as he looked down, he saw that his chest was torn open, revealing an open heart surgery that was being performed in his sleep. He could physically see his heart beating faster in his absolute terror, but he kept his hoof on his throat, too afraid that he would scream or cry if he let go too soon. All she had to do to kill him was take her scalpel and make one small incision. It would be that easy.
“Why didn’t those pills knock you out like they were supposed to?”
“I--” Feather Bangs murmured, letting go of his throat, but still shaking in anxiety. “I didn’t--I’m sorry, I--”
“You didn’t take them, did you?”
“I’m sorry! They fell on the floor--and I was gonna ask you for more--I just--I was--WHAT’S GOING OOOONN?!?!”
Nurse Redheart frantically put her hoof over her own mouth to shush him as she hastily looked out Feather Bangs’s hospital room, and after a few moments, she put her hoof to her chest and sighed out a deep breath. “What were you thinking?” she whispered loudly. “You could have given us away!”
“What’s going on?” Feather Bangs asked again, now on the verge of sobbing. “Is this real? Like, is this for real real?”
“That’s your heart, Feather Bangs. I’m trying to fix it for you.”
“Fix it for--Girl, there’s nothin’ wrong with my heart! I just came here as an overreaction!”
The nurse scoffed. “It looks like overreacting is in your nature.” Feather Bangs tried voicing his terror, motioning his hooves around to bring attention to the opening in his chest, but with his emotions riling up again, none of the words he wanted to say ever came. “Will you stop that, already?! You’re going to ruin my experiment!”
“What…? What experiment?”
Nurse Redheart looked out the hospital room one more time to make sure nopony was around, but once the door closed, that freaky smile from earlier creeped back up on her face. “The experiment they never let me do in med school.” Slowly, the nurse made her way onto Feather Bangs’s bed, crawling over top of him, making his heart visibly race before their eyes. “I’m going to see if there are any anatomical properties associated with love.”
“GIRL, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!”
“Oooo, don’t tempt me.” Nurse Redheart then leisurely moved her hoof over to her cart, picking up a long, thin knife and running it across her lips, giggling as she angled it in the direction of the stallion’s open organ. “Life is such an interesting thing, isn’t it? It’s so intricate, yet so delicate. With one small cut, it could all be over just like that. Doesn’t that just put everything into perspective?”
Feather Bangs trembled uncontrollably, doing his best to hold himself still so that he didn’t accidentally nudge the knife into his heart. “OK, OK. Just… What are you trying to do?”
“I just want to learn about what makes your heart different from everypony else’s.” Nurse Red heart giggled, making Feather Bangs tremble even more violently. “I’ve had a fascination for cardiac medicine ever since I was a little filly, and for the longest time, I thought that I was going to be a heart surgeon when I grew up! Then… medical school happened…”
Suddenly, her smile vanished into an angry scowl, which, if possible, was even more terrifying than her expression before. “They said that my experiments were too extreme for them,” she continued. “They said, ‘No, you can’t do that on a living pony!’ What’s the point of even becoming a doctor if you can’t open somepony up and see what’s going on inside? Did I get my cutie mark for nothing?!”
“Whoa! Chill for a second!” Feather Bangs quickly cut her off before her tangent sent her into a frenzy, but after a few deep breaths, she gradually recomposed herself.
“You’re going to make history with me, Feather Bangs. You’re the perfect candidate. A lovesick stallion whose heartbreak is so painful that he actually needed to come to the hospital to get better! You’re just the proof I needed that there’s something inside that’s a physical manifestation of love. Once I finish this experiment, they’ll let me back into medical school for sure! They’ll be sorry they ever got rid of me in the first place!”
“Hold up! They got rid of you?! What did you do?”
Nurse Redheart chuckled, making Feather Bangs’s coat turn nearly as white as hers. “I proved them wrong. They told me that live dissections were impossible, but I made them real.”
Feather Bangs gulped. “If you proved them wrong, then why did they kick you out?”
“Hmmm…” Nurse Redheart put her hoof to her lips as she thought deeply, which Feather Bangs could only assume meant that there was a longer story than what she would give him. “Breach of contract, I guess.”
“Wait… What?”
“It’s so silly, right?! I mean, I know that I’m supposed to get a patient’s permission before I perform any kind of surgery on them, but if they’re unconscious and on the verge of dying anyway, why does it matter whether or not I have their permission? After all, if you had just taken the pills like I had asked you, you never would have found out about this either.”
Feather Bangs flinched, seeing that the nurse’s joyous demeanor had once again turned sour, but before he let her go back to her nonconsensual surgery, he had one more question that he needed to ask. “Did… anypony ever die from your dissections?”
“Well… that’s hard to say… We don’t know if they died from my surgery or from other means. That’s the nice thing about the medical field. You get to see living ponies dance between life and death, and even if you let them die or say it was an accident, you’ll never be punished for it. This is why I especially love cardiac anatomy. The only thing that separates somepony from having a picnic and being buried underground stems from this one, tiny organ.”
Nurse Redheart then eased her knife downward, growing unbearably close to Feather Bangs’s heart, but before she could pierce his organ open, the stallion drove his legs into Nurse Redheart’s stomach, bucking her off of the bed as he made a beeline for the exit. Once he was out of his room, he looked around madly for the way out, finding nothing but a barren maze, not even staff ponies walking through the hallways. He couldn’t stay in that location, though. It would only be a matter of time before that crazy mare pulled herself up and started pursuing him.
“Help! Somepony help!” he shouted, running with three legs as his fourth hoof tried to hold his chest flaps together over his exposed heart. The more he ran, though, the more lost he found himself, still with no exit signs or staff ponies until finally, he found a receptionist asleep at her desk. “Hey! You gotta help me! This crazy mare’s tryin’ to experiment on me back there! Just look at me!” The receptionist, however, did not respond and did not move. “C-can you hear me?”
“She’s not going to wake up.” Feather Bangs quickly whipped himself to the side, seeing Nurse Redheart leisurely making her way towards Feather Bangs. “Unlike you, everypony else in this hospital actually took their medicine like I told them to.”
“LET ME OUT!”
Once Nurse Redheart grew too close for comfort, Feather Bangs shakily moved his hooves backwards, still holding onto his chest like a shield from the twisted hospital worker. “What’s wrong, Feather Bangs? You’re going to help my dream come true. I’m going to be a world famous doctor, and you’re going to be my patient.”
“Get away from me!” Feather Bangs continued to move backwards, throwing hospital supplies onto the floor to block her path, but the nurse continued moving forward, never slowing down as she sidestepped the items on the floor.
“I can give you what you want, Feather Bangs. You want love? If you show the world that I’m not crazy, I’ll love you forever. I’ll be the most faithful wife you could imagine. We can spend every waking moment together. We could raise a family together. All I’m asking is for you to show the world that I’m not crazy, that I can perform all kinds of experiments on ponies, even when they’re alive.”
Before he let her get any closer, however, he turned a corner and began sprinting as fast as he could, letting go of his chest as his heart rate increased to a dangerous pace. Finally, after searching what he thought was every corner of the hospital, he found a pair of double doors with a lighted exit sign on top, signaling his escape. Once he finally reach the doors and began to push, however, he was met with an unbreakable resistance. They were locked, and as far as he could tell, this was the only way out.
“Oh, honeeeyyy!” Feather Bangs turned around in fright, and as his worst fears became a reality, he saw Nurse Redheart approaching, carrying a large syringe in her mouth. “I locked the doors for you! Now, be a good stallion and let’s put you back under. I don’t want you accidentally ruining my vivisection.”
“Please!” The stallion pleaded, falling onto his haunches with tears beginning to pour down his face. “Just let me go!”
Nurse Redheart tilted her head in confusion. “I don’t understand, dear. Do you not want me to fix your heart for you?”
“No! I want you to let me out!!”
“But… what about my dreams? What about your dreams? I thought you wanted a special somepony to heal your broken heart for you, and here I am! Why are you running away from me?”
“Because you’re crazy!”
Nurse Redheart sighed, setting the syringe down onto a nearby counter and approaching Feather Bangs until she could move her hoof down his face, making him involuntarily flinch. “You know, when you first woke up, I was afraid everypony else would wake up too, but it looks like you’re the only one who defied me. Why is that? Have you always hated me?”
“I d-dropped my p-p-pills on the floor and f-fell asleep before I could ask for more.”
“Is that what happened?” Nurse Redheart began to giggle, which only made Feather Bangs even more unsettled. “Honey, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Don’t call me that!”
Feather Bangs then quickly pulled his face away from Nurse Redheart’s hoof, catching her off guard enough to where her lower lip began to tremble in despair. “You’re not going to let me go through with my experiment, are you?”
“No… So p-please… Let me out…”
Almost immediately, the nurse broke down, crying on top of Feather Bangs’s shoulder, and whether out of fear or just his natural tendencies, he patted her on the back and ran his hoof down her mane. “This was my one chance to get back into medical school and become a famous cardiologist!” Feather Bangs wanted to reply, but even if he could get his lips to move, he had no idea what he could possibly tell her. Finally, though, Nurse Redheart rubbed her eyes and sniffled, wiping away any remaining tears on her face. “It’s over for me.”
The stallion’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean?”
“If you won’t help me live my dreams, I have nothing left to live for!”
He had no idea what she was going to do, but by the sounds of it, there was no way this would end well for him. “Hold on a sec! Just calm down!”
“I know what I need to do now.” Nurse Redheart looked into Feather Bangs’s eyes, and in that moment, he knew his life was over. “Before I die, I’m going to find out if there’s any physical manifestation of love in your heart, and then... I’m going to kill us both.”
His heart physically stopped, his lungs grasping for air with his body shaking violently. “Wait! Hold on a second! Please! You don’t have to do this!”
“Yes, I do, Feather Bangs. If you don’t care about my dream enough to support me, then why should I care about you?”
“So you’re going to kill me because I won’t support your crazy dream?!!”
“No, I’m going to kill myself because you won’t support my dream! I’m going to kill you because…” Nurse Redheart trembled as one more tear fell down her cheek. “...because I just want to get that feeling of how fragile life is… just one more time…”
In this moment, Feather Bangs had to make a decision, and whatever decision he made, he needed to make it now. On the one hoof, if he continued to run and look for an escape, he would just keep running in circles until Nurse Redheart eventually cornered him and killed them both, but on the other, he would becoming a living science project for her to literally open his organs while he was wide awake. If he survived, he would need to open up his body to the world whenever she wanted, just so this mare could live out one of her sick fantasies, but that was the kicker. He needed to survive to make that happen, which left only one option.
“I’ll do it!”
Nurse Redheart suddenly stopped crying and pulled her face out of Feather Bangs’s shoulder. “You’ll… what?”
“Let’s live out your dreams. Let’s get married and have a family and make you the most famous doctor in all of Equestria!”
“You… You mean, you’ll go through with the operation?”
Feather Bangs bit his lip, but at least this way, he would get to survive. He would end up getting married to his worst nightmare with his greatest fears becoming a daily reality, but at least this way, he would get to survive.
“Yes. I’ll go through with the operation.”
“Ohhh, thank you thank you thaaaank you!” Nurse Redheart immediately wrapped her hooves around her patient, just barely hovering over his exposed heart. “You have no idea how much this means to me, Feather Bangs! And don’t worry. I promise to make you the happiest husband in all of Equestria!” With her hooves still wrapped around Feather Bangs’s shoulders, she planted a kiss right on his cheek, smiling from ear to ear. “I love you so much!”
With a gulp, Feather Bangs brought his shaking hooves around his new special somepony and gently replied, “I l-love you too, baby girl…”
Author's Note
On the third day of Feather Bangs, Princess Cadence gave to me:
Three blue pills, two surgeries, and a mare who's a little crazy.
