The Waiting Doom II: PinkieCare

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Cake Twins, Mrs. Cake, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Pinkie Pie, Mr. Cake
Length: 13400

Having to wait for the now-healthy twins to be discharged from the hospital has made Pinkie... bored. The adminstration isn't going to like her when she’s bored...

It was just a bad cold. But the Cakes are first-time parents, they panicked, and... well, the twins fully recovered in the Canterlot hospital. Pinkie just didn’t know about any of it until now, because she was on a mission. So to make up for her absence, she’s sending the Cakes home. Pinkie can bring the foals home after they’re discharged. Which should be any minute now.

...or hour...

Well, it’s a big hospital. Maybe she can find something to do.

(While this story is tagged as a sequel, the only thing it shares with the previous one is theme. It can be read as a stand-alone, and no reader knowledge of previous events is required.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Published 2019-11-27 20:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-11-27 20:10:01 UTC

Symptoms Of Having Been Pinkied Include Bright Colors, Jumping At Loud Noises, And Loss Of Profit

She didn’t gallop into the pediatrics ward at full speed, because it was a hospital and for some reason, everypony who’d stopped her in the hallways felt that meant galloping required eight years of specialized schooling. Pinkie had also gotten the impression that student loans were involved, although she wasn’t entirely certain as to just what was being loaned out. Judging by the universal weariness she’d seen in the overnight shift’s interns, she was fairly sure it wasn't anything caffeinated.

Pinkie wasn’t allowed to gallop, and reaching the actual ward meant pronking might wake up a foal who truly needed their rest. She compensated with what worked out to be a high-speed hoof slide across the polished floors, and almost managed to pull out of the tumble just before the end.

Fortunately, a curly tail acted as a degree of both natural shock absorber and silencer. Hitting Mr. Cake’s bench rear-first probably helped too.

The little jolt didn’t wake him up, because he’d had his eyes open for a long time. It just brought him to the point where he temporarily remembered what his eyes were for.

“Pinkie?” Half of the low volume came from a subconscious effort to let his children sleep: the rest was simply from not having the strength for more. “You’re back?” The room’s muted light still made it possible to see relief sluggishly flow across the lantern jaw. “How was the mission —“

“— how are the twins?” Pinkie urgently whispered, just before desperation and frantic apology took over. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, they just dropped us off a few hours ago and when I got home, you weren’t home and Mrs. Cake wasn’t there and the twins, it was too late for them to be at a party or a movie or anywhere that wasn’t really really bad, I was going to start galloping around and knocking on doors until somepony could tell me what was going on, but then I found your note and I went right for the train —“

Which was where oxygen ran out, and she spent a few seconds in frantic gasping for air. Mr. Cake, who had several years’ experience with Pinkie, used the awaited opportunity.

“They’re fine, Pinkie,” he softly reassured her. “See for yourself.”

Slowly, carefully, being as quiet as possible, she picked herself off the floor, with a minor shake of her back realigning slipped saddlebags as it put her visitor’s pass in front of her sternum again. Took the three steps required to bring her up to the pair of tiny cribs, and looked down.

They were sleeping. Pumpkin’s eyes were twitching behind their lids, and Pound matched that a second later because if his sister was dreaming, then his first priority was to join her. There was no crusty discharge to be found around the edges of eyes or nostrils, and their breathing was steady. Forelegs had stretched out towards the crib bars, with each separated twin reaching for the other.

On the opposite side of the bed, Mrs. Cake was poorly curled up on a too-small bench, considerably more disturbed in her rest. Her hind legs were twitching: every so often, a hoof shoved at the thin metal railing which set the left border of her perch, failing to bring it down.

“It was just a really bad cold,” Mr. Cake quietly sighed. “Both of them. Pound started sneezing first, but of course Pumpkin joined him within two hours. But their temperature was so high, we were having trouble getting them to drink enough water, and...” This sigh was deeper. “We panicked. It was the first time they’d been that sick, we wanted them to have the best care and Canterlot just felt like...”

“How long?” Pinkie whispered. There had been no date on the note, although the exact degree of staleness found in hurriedly-abandoned baked goods had allowed her to approximate.

“Four days.” Which was followed by a deep yawn. “They’re... being discharged tomorrow.” Bleary eyes squinted, searching for a clock. “Today? What time is it?”

She glanced around, then looked back at him. “About eleven at night.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Mr. Cake wearily declared. “A doctor is going to examine them, and then they can go home.”

“Why can’t they go home right now?” No more crust meant no more forced drenchings, or at least that was what her grandma had always said. “Anypony can see they’re better!”

“I know,” the tired parent replied. “But the doctor has to make it official. So somepony will come around. Sometime. There’s been... a lot of ‘sometime’. Most of just being here is worry, but everything else is ‘sometime’...”

He yawned again, because a pony who was coming that close to mimicking Pinkie’s speech pattern generally needed an excuse for it and utter exhaustion sufficed. Then his hind legs twitched, and his entire face convulsed.

“Mr. Cake?” Which came from about a hoofwidth away, because he was the one who needed her now and so she’d crossed the distance before he’d seen her move. “What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?”

“Cramp,” he eventually muttered after his tongue had unknotted itself. “Just another cramp.” And then, because he was a natural parent, “Are you okay? Did anything happen on the mission? The others —“

“We’re fine,” Pinkie reassured him, because that was true and she’d already decided the details needed to wait. “Mr. Cake?”

Which got her a tired “What?”

Pinkie smiled. “Go home.”

He blinked a few times, and she made sure to still be there when he stopped. “Pinkie —“

It was fully possible for a whisper to be soft and urgent at the same time. “— I saw the bakery. You left so fast, everything was still in the cases! It’s been closed for four days! Which means you’ve both been here for four days. And I haven’t.” Which wasn’t her fault, she’d had a mission — but the lack of blame didn’t mean an equal lack of guilt. “Go home, Mr. Cake. Both of you. I can stay tonight and I’ll bring them home tomorrow. Sleep in your own bed, because you’re too tired and when you’re too tired, it’s easy to get sick. And when you’re in a hospital, there’s a lot to get sick from. You did everything you could, everything you should. So now it’s my turn.” She managed a smile. The twins were okay and there was something she could do, so that meant there were two things worth smiling about. “Please go home?”

“It’s... probably going to be a while,” he whispered. “Even after Sun is raised, you might have to wait. You’re not good at waiting, not when you don’t know just how long you’re waiting for, and in here —“

“I have a book.” She sometimes brought one along on missions, because there could be long train trips and stakeouts and slow moments when nothing was trying to kill them: this volume had gone untouched because the most recent mission had lacked for all three. And he’d said tomorrow, which currently felt like it meant ‘morning’: she could sleep through most of the wait time. “Let me do this for you?”

He still took some convincing, but he was too tired to form any coherent counter-arguments and that helped. And once she’d won, he also required some assistance to leave his bench. The process then had to be repeated with a half-wakened Mrs. Cake, and Pinkie decided the leg cramps had been produced by a lack of water.

They were her family, all four of them. The adults needed to go home, while the foals just required one last (mostly pointless) examination. But the adopted child had been stuck on a mission, and so Pinkie’s current job was to be here.

Her job was boring.

It was surprisingly hard to sleep, mostly because her bench was (just as surprisingly) constructed with something other than comfort in mind. The dimensions could be carefully measured in every aspect, and every numerical conclusion could be discarded in favor of ‘too’. It was too small, too rough, seemed to have too many metal studs lurking under the too-thin padding and that begged the question of why it had any at all, plus it was also too cold because the metal pulled heat out of her body while she was suffering from a lack of blankets. That part didn’t really qualify for a ‘too,’ which bothered her right up until she nosed the bit of fabric which stuck out between Pumpkin’s bars and learned it was too itchy.

The twins, who had abandoned the irregular rest patterns of the ill for the equally unsteady ones found in foals who still felt sleeping through the night meant everypony else got to miss the fun, woke up every so often. Her presence initially reassured them, and a certain pattern repeated throughout the night. They opened their eyes, giggled, cooed, quickly became upset about their inability to reach each other, and then a near-deadly combination of short attention span and infant memory finally let them (re)discover that each crib had a barred roof: something which made Pumpkin’s corona wink out at the moment any spark touched it, sent Pound’s wings curling back into a rest position, and turned the wailing into a sleep-preventing chorus for a minimum of ten minutes. Pinkie tried to tell them that the enchanted cribs were probably standard equipment for a pediatrics ward, but there was also a good chance that the staff had just learned about the twins in a hurry.

She couldn’t sleep, and so she got up to check on them every time she saw those bright eyes open. The third trip saw her chin nearly crash into the floor as her right foreleg cramped.

Every so often, a nurse would come into the room. The twins would be gently checked on (which would either wake them immediately or gave the foals what they felt was another reason to cry), and then the nurse would leave again.

Pinkie tried to read, but found it difficult to make out words in the dim light. Increasing the illumination meant waking the twins again, and so she simply endured.

Eventually, Sun came up, because it always did except for that one time when it had been significantly late and they’d fixed that, so she felt Sun (and all other parties involved) had learned its lesson and wouldn’t be doing that again. This gave her a certain amount of natural light to work with.

She happily extracted the book from her left saddlebag for the first time since she’d hurriedly tooth-grabbed it on her way for the door, which let her discover she’d spent the last week carrying a title which she’d already read. And there were benefits to having a near-eidetic memory, but when it came to literature, there was also certain problems because once she had every word memorized, it took a really good author to convince Pinkie that a story might not come out exactly the same way. It only took three futile paragraphs before she sensed a total lack of fresh plot twists, and she couldn’t read the thing out loud for the foals because at their age, there was a chance for them to start repeating words at any time and if Pinkie had originally had to head for the dictionary to work out the context on ‘coupling’, she was sure most ponies weren’t going to picture the place on a pony’s back that you got just behind the lumbar vertebrae. (Admittedly, being in a hospital would normally seem to improve those odds, but Pinkie considered herself to be the world’s greatest authority on her own luck.)

The baker fumed for a while, which productively occupied several seconds. Making a thorough examination of the room took about half that time, mostly due to the brightly-rendered animals and flowers which the walls didn’t have. This seemed wrong. Foals were used to spending time in beautifully-painted nurseries and being taken from their homes was jarring enough, especially when they were sick. Having art on the walls — that felt as if it would make things easier for the twins and any patients to come: the fact that it would have also given Pinkie an extra three seconds of distraction was strictly secondary. But they were the same generic dulled white as the hallways: something which, if presented as a test, would have made multiple pool reflections look for voluntary ends.

A nurse came in and fed the twins. Nopony fed Pinkie, which seemed slightly unfair because she’d been awake doing her very important job for — she looked at the clock —

— really?

That doesn’t feel right. It’s not like the clock has any reason to lie because we’ve never met before and the last clock I got angry with me was in Town Hall and that one’s too mean to have any friends, so it hasn’t gone lying about what really happened to its mainspring. Which wouldn’t have done anything for the bouncy castle anyway, so I still don’t know what it was so angry about. So this clock isn’t lying. It’s probably just broken. There’s no way it’s been nine whole hours.

Pinkie nodded to herself, which allowed her neck to cramp.

...no, it couldn’t possibly have been nine whole hours, and so she consulted the next nurse to check on the twins. “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” the unfamiliar nurse said without looking at her.

“They’re being discharged this morning, right? Because they aren’t sick any more, and it’s morning now. Sun says so. You can look out the window if you don’t believe me. Even though you should, because I wouldn’t lie to anypony about something like that. But I’m not sure you should trust the clock —“

“— are you family?”

“I’m their sister,” Pinkie immediately said. “I’m taking them home. Are they being discharged?”

“Doctor will look them over,” the nurse replied (and still didn’t bother with eye contact). “Doctor will be in when Doctor is ready. They can’t leave until Doctor says so.”

“Is the pony’s name Doctor? Because that’s probably why she - he? wound up working as one! That’s lucky, really. Imagine if you were named Doctor and you wound up with a jeweler’s mark! But I guess you could just say you were healing the gems. Of bad fractures. And poor cleavage. Which doesn’t mean what it does with minotaurs, and I had to look that up because I thought the girl ones had gems on their — well, it was kind of awkward. Especially when I asked her about the rubies. Anyway, being named Doctor is probably really really confusing around here because there’s just so many, so if there’s a surname you can tell me, along with when I should expect Doctor to come in —“

“Doctor,” the nurse interrupted as a vein briefly throbbed under the fur of her right temple, “has Doctor’s own hours. Doctor will come in when Doctor is ready. And not before.”

Pinkie, who’d spent significant time delving into Twilight’s interests and so had something beyond the basics, found the latest cramp replaced by a sudden deep itching around the vacuum produced by the lack of definitive article. “So could it be just any doctor, or do they need the Doctor-doctor? Because it’s been four days already, they’re not sick any more, and the thing that’ll really make them feel better is getting to go home —“

The nurse trotted out.

“Well!” Pinkie huffed (which made her ribs cramp, and she didn’t understand that because she’d been drinking and the bench shouldn’t be making her ribs do that). “Rude!” And she settled down to wait, which meant there were more cramps, and she was tired but she wasn’t going to ask for a blanket when they were itchy and she couldn’t sleep on this bench anyway, earth pony endurance could keep her going for a while but sleep always helped and...

She disagreed with the Cakes’ assessment of her capacity for patience. In Pinkie’s opinion, she was very good at waiting: you couldn’t be a baker if you weren’t. A pie which had to stay in the oven for fifty minutes and needed to cool for thirty more after being taken out — opening the door every twenty seconds would ruin it, and constant pokes at the too-hot surface wasn’t going to do the crust any favors. Pinkie was an expert at waiting: it was why Twilight had chosen that final test after the mirror pool had overdone its work. You could tell Pinkie to wait in one place, without moving, for three days, and she would do her best to meet that standard, although having a few books would help and for matters of practicality, that one place should probably be a bathroom.

Fifty minutes, thirty minutes, three days: none of it was ever a problem, although a reliable water supply might eventually be required. Present Pinkie with a finish line, and she would cross it. But when there was no end in sight, nothing quantified, any indefinite duration would begin to feel like it was stretching out to infinity. A letter which would arrive eventually meant checking for the mailmare every five minutes. A store opening sometime could have her pounding forehooves on the door to get the owner’s attention, which had occasionally let her in early if the hole placed in the glass was large enough to fall through. And with nopony telling her when Doctor was guaranteed to arrive...

She felt the side of her right eye twitch, and knew she had to stop it before it got any worse. One nurse hadn’t given her usable information, but there were multiple desks’ worth of them in the larger ward: she’d gone past at least six night-shift ones on her skidding way in. Somepony among the pediatrics Solar staff would have the answer.

Pinkie tried to get up.

Everything cramped.

The nurse who came in while she was still untangling herself thought Pinkie was trying to sleep on the floor, and rudely ordered her not to do that. Pinkie, who’d had more than a night’s worth of the bench, easily recognized the sound of a mare who’d seen multiple justified attempts.

The grouping of desks on the other side of the hallway was called a station and Pinkie quickly decided it was because most of the ponies there were completely stationary. There were nurses moving in and out of rooms, but they were all busy and Pinkie understood that their duties were too important to interrupt. The ones behind the furniture, however, didn’t move much at all. They had a lot of paper on their desks and every so often, one of them would look at a form. Then, just for variety, they might look at it again. A truly dazzling display of personal fun might see them briefly nose one over, and those who spent their time away from work high-diving from clouds displayed equal daring by adding a single splotch of ink. This labor was so incredibly important as to make all of them glare at her with resentment when she politely asked them for a moment away from it, and all she could learn was that Doctor had been assigned, she couldn’t get another Doctor, only Doctor or somepony who was somehow more important than Doctor could discharge the twins (with that emerging in a way which suggested the Princesses didn’t qualify), and Doctor would come along when Doctor was ready. Pinkie found exactly none of it encouraging, although she was slightly impressed that everything had been vocalized without ever saying who (or, given the number of species in Canterlot, what) Doctor was.

She went back into the twins’ room. Her head peeked out five seconds later. Pinkie waited for the curls to stop bouncing, withdrew, repeated the action twenty times, and when the movements of the only summoning spell her grandma knew had officially failed again, decided it had something to do with the local ley lines and once again resolved to learn exactly what those were. (She was hoping it wasn’t going to be as awkward as ‘coupling’, although the pronunciation gave her no comfort.)

Pacing was next. She went up and down the hallway until those at the station told her to stop, probably because she was reminding them that movement was possible. Then she went back into the room and started going around the perimeter over and over. Not being Twilight seemed to prevent her from carving out a groove, but being Pinkie made her recognize that she was approaching her own breaking point, and that occurred simultaneously with the realization that she’d just taken a detour across the ceiling.

I have to get out of here.

She was waiting, when she didn’t know how long she had to wait for, and the clock said she’d been waiting for —

— she looked at it.

Then she looked at it again.

A few seconds were used for calling it a liar and when a check of the gears found it had been smugly proclaiming the truth, a few more were beaten to death under a half-muffled vocal barrage which, if the twins had been awake, would have led to some very interesting vocabulary.

She walked over to their cribs and gently poked a bit of her tail through the bars, repeating the process on each side until the gentle tickling woke them up.

“I’m going out,” she told them, because that was the sort of thing you really had to inform family about. “Maybe I can find a magazine. Or Doctor, whoever he is. If Doctor is a he. Or a she. I’ll take an ‘it’. But I’ll come back every hour or so to check on you, because they can’t send you home without somepony to take you and I’ll tell the nurses that’s what I’m doing, so nopony will worry. But I have to go out now, because if I don’t, there’s going to be screaming. A lot of it. And it would usually all be mine, but I think the station gets upset about anything which might make it have to move.”

The twins looked at her with wide, mostly-blank eyes, and Pinkie decided to see that as acceptance because there were a lot of ways to see it and she wanted to go with the one which worked in her favor. And then she trotted out.

It was a hospital. There had to be something interesting around.

She had a visitor’s pass hung around her neck and as it had been filled out at a rather awkward hour by an attendant who had neither been completely awake or ready for the arrival of a frantic Pinkie, the ink blotches were vague enough that nopony questioned her presence in any hallway. It allowed her to wander, and it also allowed her to become lost.

This was... unusual. Pinkie’s memory wasn’t fully eidetic and in any case, it worked best for things she saw or heard (like the previous night’s directions): she didn’t have the ability to memorize every step and a really good maze could give her problems. (She didn’t like mazes very much. Not any more.) But as long as she was paying attention to where she was going, she could generally backtrack. To have her path becoming confused when Discord wasn’t involved...

So many of the wandering ponies looked lost, and that description applied in too many ways. Other seemed to be moving simply because there was no place they could stop.

She took three more turns through the plain white unmarked hallways, then changed her mind: Discord was involved. However, it only took blundering into a storage closet to make her realize that she was being horribly unfair, because Discord was reformed, had certain standards, and would have at least wanted her to walk into an occupied shower. This meant whoever had laid out the building was both crueler and less creative than Discord, and the horror of that thought got her into the employee cafeteria. It made her realize she was hungry, and that state held up right until the moment she caught scent and sight of the food, which made her stomach apologize for everything before it shut down for the day. Her snout, however, offered to put in some regrettable overtime, perhaps in the hopes that continued exposure to the green bubbling stuff in the warming tray would numb the pain.

Pinkie was vaguely aware that there was a profession called nutritionist: ponies who figured out what was in every foodstuff and so could calculate exactly what was best to feed everypony. The cafeteria begged the question of why they’d been banned from the hospital, along with adding one regarding how long the slow-shuffling interns could live on the stuff. Then she left by going past the till, and that provided the answer: it didn’t matter how long it would take for the substance to kill them, because the impending bankruptcy had called dibs.

There had to be something around which she could both eat and afford, and it was that unreasoning hope which allowed her to blunder into the vending machine.

She stared at it for a few seconds, then poked at the brass trim with a forehoof. (She’d been wandering through a largely-featureless landscape for a while and so some level of mirage seemed mandatory.). The metal clanged.

It was a fairly old specimen and for this particular invention, that was really saying something. Vending machines were simple clockwork: weigh the coins and if the cumulative mass was enough, open the lock on the chosen tiny glass door (one of about seventy along the machine, about a third again over her own height and twice her body length, with little legs holding its bulk about half a hoof-height over the floor) to let the purchasing pony remove the contents. That simplicity meant they’d been around for centuries, although Pinkie was thankful to see that the food mostly dated back to the last decade. That meant she could pick out the few things which were probaly still safe to eat and in the event that she was wrong, she was already in a hospital.

She decided to risk the miniature feedbag of trail mix, carefully removing the required coins from her saddlebags —

— she looked at her money, and carefully examined the machine again.

It’s okay. This one is from 1 A.C: After Change. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have the exact price because I can see the stacks of smaller coins through the glass, right next to the counterweights and the chute. And that little well with the weird ridge inside, next to the dent in the wall, is where the change comes out. Which was awkwardly sized for an adult snout and Pinkie was dreading having to potentially lick her money back. So here goes...

She pressed on the switch built into the desired door, then carefully placed the money into the larger accepting well, watched through the glass as the coins tumbled onto the little scale, were found acceptable, and that made gears turn —

— her chosen door clicked and with careful intent, the lock half-opened, creating a gap exactly three tail strands wide. But it took a moment before she truly spotted that, because she was also busy with watching precision-calibrated weights release two quarter-bit coins from their stack. This allowed them to plummet down the chute, hit the ridge in the well, bounce into the wall, and have the rebound from the dent send them under the machine.

She looked at the well. Then she looked at the door. And because there was no point in repeating either action, she followed that up with standing in place for a while.

Very. Still.

Once her breathing steadied, she remembered that baking required dealing with problems in steps, and so she examined the partially-open door until she determined it would freely move in one direction: to close again. The gap wasn’t large enough for tongue or hoof and while a corona could get in, there was no way to yank the bag out without tearing it and losing the contents. It was also possible for a sufficiently-irritated earth pony to just pull the whole door off, but Pinkie suspected doing so would raise a fuss.

The next question centered around getting her money back, starting with that which had gone under the machine. Pinkie carefully lowered herself to the floor, awkwardly angled her neck, and so found the place where dust bunnies went to die.

It was probably a war. They had this nice place all to themselves, they didn’t have to worry about anything because the gap is too small for a hoof to get through and it’s pretty obvious that nopony’s tried to clean under there for a long time. It’s not a dust bunny warren: it’s a fortress.

And that was when the Gunk Nation attacked.

But it hadn’t been a total massacre, because the survivors on both sides had united their tribes in wedded bliss. This was completely obvious to Pinkie, because the children of that crossbreeding were not only right there, but were never going to leave. Creatures which lived by eating coins weren’t going to walk out on a never-ending food supply.

I can’t get a hoof under there.
I could try to sweep my tail through really fast, knock stuff out, and then spend the next three days being groomed. I’d have to soak it first, though. To get the curls compact enough to fit. Which means a wet tail whipping through gunk and six days of grooming, Plus I’m pretty sure those are tail hairs under there. Not shed ones. Strands which were ripped out at the roots. And a lot of feathers.
Everything’s sort of glued together, so a unicorn might have trouble picking it all apart — no, already had trouble, because there’s a dent in the wall, so this happens to everypony and unicorns couldn’t fix it either.
Nothing is making me stick my tongue in there.

Pinkie thought about it.

“That’s a familiar pose,” a weary voice said from behind her. “I’m very sorry for your loss. However much that was.”

She turned enough (and had her neck cramp again) to see a light blue unicorn stallion in an intern’s uniform. “There should be a warning sign,” Pinkie stated. “Putting it over the dent would be twice as good. Why isn’t there a sign?”

“The hospital director doesn’t like signs,” the intern said. “He told us they distract from the important things. Like medicine.” His shoulders and hips slumped at the same time. “And signs tell you what you’re allowed to do, while no signs means he can keep everypony guessing. But he hates the one in Emergency, because he's not allowed to take that down. Not legally." The mane, which was just as worn out as the pony, took the opportunity to slump first. "And if you’re thinking about shoving it, don’t. It’s bolted to the floor.”

“Can I get a refund from the cafeteria?”

The head shake took a few seconds, with the dark mane trailing exhaustion in its wake. “The vending machines are managed by an outside agency.”

“Oh. So where are they?”

“Outside,” the intern dismally answered. “Let me know if you ever find them. They owe me seven bits.” He wearily sighed. “Sometimes I try to catch them with my corona as they come out. And sometimes I’m tired. Either way, I miss. And with the doors...” He nodded towards the trail mix. “Legends say that a pony with the world’s narrowest tongue tip can jiggle open a stuck one. So if you ever go into the Emergency department and they ask you to stick out your tongue, that’s what they’re looking for.”

“Not coatings. Or discoloration. Or wounds.”

“Well, those too,” the intern admitted. “But they’re almost secondary.”

It could have been a joke. But he looked so tired. She hadn’t seen a single intern who didn’t look tired. Not just physically: emotionally. It was as if they hadn’t laughed in a very long time.

“You said it’s bolted down?”

“Front and back. I have no idea how the back ones got done. Sometimes I feel like somepony just found a vending machine here and built a hospital around it —“

Thoughtfully, “— I need at least two more ponies. Four would be better, but one of them has to be a unicorn, so you should stay. Unless you can find another unicorn to help, but this is about getting your bits back too, so you should really be here for that! And we also need at least one more earth pony. Somepony with broad shoulders and good ears. The ears are extra important, because everypony has to listen really really carefully —“

“— my bits back?” The intern blinked, then swallowed twice: both seemed to have been done solely to make sure the relevant parts were working. “How are you going to do that? Nopony's ever —“

But Pinkie had already lowered herself to the floor again. This time, she was hunting for the thing’s legs.

“— and the bolts are jammed! They’ve been jammed for —“

Legs which ended in broad, flat feet.

Pinkie smiled.

“Righty-tighty,” she singsonged, giving the gunk-bunny hybrids one last lullaby before they died. “Lefty-loosey...”

Two ponies with their bodies pressed against the floor of the machine. One on each side. There was nothing to be done about the back because that was against the wall and Pinkie wasn’t quite ready to take it out just yet, but four with two unicorns watching felt like it would be enough.

“LEFT!”

The earth ponies put their shoulders into it. The machine faintly vibrated.

“BACK!”

The same result.

“AGAIN!”

It shook.

“AGAIN!”

Shuddered. Dropped.

It was only by the thickness of a tail strand, no more — but something couldn’t drop unless it had been raised, and the little crash, added to the sound of items jittering in their little brass-and-glass boxes, woke every weary intern up.

“We’re rotating it!” Pinkie declared. “Loosening the bolts! The machine goes down the same amount every time, but once you two can see and grab the bolts, they won’t! AGAIN!”

Candy fell over. Ancient sandwiches separated back into their components. One popcorn seed tried to be dramatic and completely failed.

“AGAIN! And AGAIN! And —”

The floor under the vending machine’s original placement had been where dust bunnies went to die. In the opinion of the interns, it was also where a number of new diseases might have been born, and so nopony was allowed to approach the uncovered space until after a great amount of disinfectant had been poured over it. It was, in many ways, a pity for medical science, and Pinkie considered that they’d also just destroyed the world’s best hope for advanced mold studies. But under one of the other hooves, any coin collector who was willing to put up with things like discoloration, corrosion, and minor acid damage from that one snack which had aged far past its prime — well, that pony would be looking at the find of a lifetime and, until it could be proven that the disinfectant had worked, should probably consider doing so through a telescope. Pinkie had collected her full refund from the cleanest bits (because some of the coins were so old that some compensation would need to be delivered to the shadowlands), and was still planning on spending significant time at the nearest sink.

“We did it!” one of the unicorns cheered. “We actually pulled it off! I haven’t been this happy since — since...” She glanced down at her badge, which carried vital information like Name, First Date Employed, and Loan Amount Remaining: a minor enchantment had the last total steadily ticking up. “...since then.”

“He’s not going to like it,” the youngest earth pony declared through his grin. “He doesn’t like anything that changes.”

“I don’t care,” the unicorn said — then blinked. “I... really don’t, do I? I don’t care if he doesn’t like it...”

But Pinkie wasn’t really paying full attention to that part. (The words would be remembered when they were needed, and that time was still some ways off.) She was thinking about the reaction.

They were happier. At least one of them hadn’t been happy in a very long time.

This seemed to suggest that she had Things To Do and because it had been about an hour, she carefully made her way back to the twins and verified that no Doctor had appeared before going off to do any of them. After all, she had responsibilities.

She’d wandered off in a different direction, and it had taken her past the gift shop. The central enterprise of the little alcove seemed to be selling nothing anypony wanted for prices few would be willing to pay, although it appeared to have a thriving side traffic in greeting cards. Ponies who needed to buy gifts in hospitals seemed to have a great need for cards which would say things which their voices would normally manage, like Sorry You’re Sick. Pinkie didn’t quite understand that, although she did eventually wind up puzzling out the existence of Enjoy Your Last Day Before The Bill Arrives. She was also rather disappointed in the complete lack of balloons.

However, if you were a pony who knew how to improvise, there was a certain amount of helpful supplies available, and Pinkie carefully gathered everything she could. There didn’t seem to be any reason to leave a tip, but practicality dictated leaving her visitor’s pass behind. Pinkie tended to pay close attention to certain types of pony behavior and so she’d learned that if you moved around a place as if you were in a relative hurry while tossing your head in a way that said you were much too important to be bothered, most ponies would assume you were supposed to be there. Besides, as far as she was concerned, the fact that she was effectively working for the hospital at zero salary didn’t change the fact that she was employed. The lack of badge was really just a minor technicality.

She trotted through endless corridors (mostly identical, and somewhat less so after she passed through them), pausing here and there. There were clearly important things to be done in a hospital, and the fact that Pinkie was now on patrol meant that up until this point, nopony had been doing them.

It wasn’t waiting if you were keeping busy, much less if you were helping. And now that she was out and about, actively looking... there were just so many ponies to help...

Virtually none of the corridors were marked, for a steadily-dropping value of ‘virtually’. But quite a few of the doors had been labeled, and gleaming gold identified the newest one as the Experimental Deuglification Center.

Pinkie read those words a few times, just in case they had any interest in changing. Then she looked at the mirror which had been built into the door (at the average eye level and just above the words Do You Need Our Services?), counted the distortions, and opened the thing.

There were several mares waiting inside, with each curled up on her own horrible bench. None of them would look at any of the others, and there wasn’t a pony there who was willing to look at herself.

There was also a Reception window and just like every other Reception window Pinkie had seen, the pony behind it had much better things to do than listen. Hoof polish didn’t put itself on.

Pinkie started with the mare closest to the door, because that struck her as being the most unusual. Pony fur came in all kinds of shades, but she’d personally never seen somepony whose hue exactly matched the most typical color of pony skin. She supposed there were ways in which it made grooming somewhat easier, although it might take a professional to figure out where to stop —

— no, that wasn’t it. The mare had fur: a very light red. It was just cut so short as to look like nothing more than a full-body blush. This was an impression reinforced by the mare’s posture, which had been fully mortified by her very existence. Even her mark seemed to be receding.

Pinkie approached her with a smile, because the mare badly needed one.

“Why are you here today?”

The mare forced her head up.

“Do you work here?”

“Yes,” Pinkie said, because there was such a thing as a labor of love. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s... my fur,” the mare whispered, and her head dropped onto nearby-bare forelegs. “I’m having it treated.”

Pinkie looked the mare over. This took a while, as the majesty of the perfect snout alone deserved to be fixed in her memory forever.

“Your fur? It’s a little — short...”

“It’s...” The mare’s voice, pushed down by embarrassment, dropped below hearing.

“Sorry?”

The (technically) light red earth pony looked as if she was about to cry.

“...curly,” she whispered.

It took Pinkie a few seconds before she could blink again.

“I know it doesn’t look that way now,” the mare miserably stated. “The curl starts when it grows out more. And you know fur. It always grows out, to the same length every time. You can’t stop it. And full-body shampoos can’t keep it down, there isn’t a potion that works, and spells...” Her entire body slumped. “Nopony cares about a mare with curly fur. Curly manes and tails, those are fine. But to be a mare with curly fur... Nopony wants one. To be seen with one. To — be with one...”

And now the blinking wasn’t stopping.

The mare’s head came up a little.

“So I’m having a treatment done,” she declared. “On the first day this new department is open. I’m going to be one of the first. And then — I’ll have straight fur. And then...” Which was when her head and volume both dropped again. “...maybe somepony will... want me...”

Pinkie carefully regarded the world’s most perfect ears, mostly to make sure they were working.

“What’s the treatment?”

“They shock me,” the mare said. “With lightning. Over and over, without painkillers, until all my muscles go tense. That curls the roots of the fur. Because curly roots, straight fur. And vice-versa. For some reason. But it’s supposed to work. They wouldn’t offer the treatment if it didn’t work. And the waiver is just for my own protection.”

“Um,” Pinkie replied, because a certain amount of work still needed to be done on whatever was going to come after that.

“And they did say I might need to repeat the treatment every few moons,” the mare continued. “Because shocks can wear off.” Longing filled the beautiful eyes. “But it’s straight fur...”

Pinkie listened to the distant echoes of fillyhood bullying, and then put her hoof down.

“Do you know how many mares have curly fur?”

“Hardly any,” the mare whispered. “It shouldn’t be any at all —“

“— right! You’re almost impossible to find! You’re exceptional! Any mare can have straight fur, but you’ve got curls! And ponies see you have something they don’t and they wonder what it’s like to be you, but they don’t want to get their fur curled, so it’s easier to make you feel like you shouldn’t be you! Because you’re prettier than they are, just in a different way! They’re jealous!”

The mare was now staring at her. Pinkie used as it as an opportunity to smile.

“...prettier? But I’m not —”

“You have the best snout I’ve ever seen,” Pinkie stated. “If you like snouts. I’m sure somepony does. And with curly fur... do you know how many ponies are looking for somepony with curly fur?”

“It can’t be many,” the mare protested. “Not when everypony in my town had straight fur!”

It brought up a question. “How many ponies live in your town?”

“Two hundred and four,” the mare replied. “Outside of my family, they’re mostly related. I just came here for the treatment.”

Pinkie took a breath.

“Stay in Canterlot. Or Ponyville. I can show you where to find a really nice home in Ponyville.” Helpfully, “If you moved to Ponyville, you’d also get a party. Do you like parties?”

The mare’s ears went straight up and somehow, the previous perfection was enhanced. “Move? But —“

“You were going to change your fur, to try and change your life,” Pinkie noted. “This saves a step. The one which used lightning. And you can grow your fur out.”

“But I’m — they always said —“

“There are,” the baker firmly stated, “two hundred and three ponies in your town, because you left. There’s about seven thousand in Ponyville. Lots more than that in Canterlot. And all over the continent, there’s ponies looking for somepony with curly fur, because if there’s something a pony has, then somepony else is looking.” She lowered her voice, mostly because this was what she was seeing as the crowner and it wouldn’t do any good for the receptionist to hear her now. “Your very special somepony has been looking for you, just for you, for years. And they don’t know to look for straight fur. Don't let them miss you. Please?”

The mare was staring at her, and Pinkie was used to that: ponies usually stared at her once she really got going. Every mare in the room was staring. But when it came to the light red one... there was something new in her eyes.

A nimble mouth fished around in the right saddlebag, eventually extracting the denuded remnants of a greeting card. Scribbling ensued.

“There,” Pinkie said. “Directions. To the train station from here, and then to the hotel. Show Redroof the card and he’ll give you a discount. Can I see you there tomorrow? Because Ponyville could really use a new printer. With curly fur.”

She waited for the door to close behind the dumbstruck departure, and then trotted up to the next mare.

“So why are you here?”

“It’s... it’s my tail.” The stunned unicorn tilted her head towards the hanging bundle of ill-fitting wrap. “It’s too full, and — all the fashions for the last six seasons have been emphasizing thinner tails. Nopony... I just... don't fit in with the styles. I was thinking about having it docked...”

“Docked,” Pinkie starkly said as her gaze took a number of estimations for what was underneath the fabric.

“Yes.”

“And you think your tail is full.”

“But it is! Fuller than the average —“

Pinkie took a deep, polite, and interrupting breath.

“Let me tell you about my friend Fluttershy.”

Doctor still hadn’t appeared, and that left Pinkie free to do more work. There was just so much that nopony was paying attention to! Just for starters, nopony seemed to be giving any notice to that alarm —

— she paused, dropped her forehooves in order to free them from their current duties (which left a little patch on the floor) and rotated her ears. Was it an alarm? Pinkie automatically associated loud, annoying, mindless, endlessly repetitive noises with two things and since the Flower Trio was in Ponyville, she’d assumed that meant an alarm. But if so, it was a strange one. The one thing she’d seen the staff respond to every time was a true cry for help, and nopony was racing in that direction.

Which meant somepony needed to find out what was going on, because that was gainful labor indeed.

She carefully listened, tracking the sources down a little more with every hoofstep —

“WHOOP!”

Her ears nearly flattened themselves. She forced herself to go on.

“WHOOP! WHOOP!”

Pinkie distantly noted the discovery of the Most Annoying Sound Ever, then wondered if it was possible to get a wax cylinder to record it for Twilight. This was followed by a careful internal evaluation of the exact strength of their friendship, an estimation for the chance of shattering it through actually playing the sound back, and a quick question as to whether there were any weapons treaties she might wind up violating,

“WHOOP!”

The answer to that last seemed to be ‘all of them.’

Eventually, she managed to reach the source, mostly by going where almost everypony else wasn’t. It put her in a hallway just outside an open door, one across from a mostly-evacuated station.

There was a bed in that hallway, something on wheels with a thin mattress and itchy-looking sheets. And in the bed, there was an old pegasus mare with filmy eyes and a flyaway mane which had lost nearly all of its luster. Her wings trembled, and did so without their owner’s consent.

“Hello,” Pinkie gently said.

Something within the room went “WHOOP!”

“Why are you out here?” the baker continued, although she waited until she was sure the echoes weren’t going to double back.

‘Her,” the old mare said.

“WHOOP!”

The pegasus sighed. “It’s... not her fault,” the tired mare (the same age as Pinkie’s grandmother, if only she had still been alive) went on. “She’s got whooping cough.”

The room’s occupant confirmed it. Four times.

“They put me in there last night, with her,” the mare sighed. “And I couldn’t sleep... well, who could? So I asked for a different room, but they said everything is occupied. Or in the wrong department. Or they have to keep it open for emergencies. I asked them to move me, so I could sleep, and... they put me out here.”

“WHOOP!”

“They have to leave the door open so they can monitor her,” the pegasus added.

Pinkie slowly moved around the bed, getting into a position where she could peek through the door. It let her see a sick earth pony, along with putting her in exactly the right position to be half-deafened by the next barrage.

“I’m so tired,” the old pegasus (somepony’s grandma) whispered. “And I don’t hate her. It’s not her fault, being sick. I just want to sleep...”

“There are,” Pinkie quietly said, “empty beds all over the hospital. And there’s all sorts of emergencies. I think this is one.”

The mare simply closed her eyes.

“I’ve been all over,” the baker declared. “I know where there’s empty beds which nopony is going to use. I’ll move you.”

The bed was on wheels. That meant it had to have a harness, and it took only seconds for Pinkie to find and begin unfolding it. The pegasus needed more time than that to react.

“...you can’t,” the old mare softly said. “I wish you could, but they need to know where I am. For paperwork, so they can give me my medications. They need to transfer papers, and I can only be moved by a hospital volunteer...”

It took Pinkie less than three seconds to reach the stations, because she could move all the faster with official need.

“Room Seven, Bed One,” she briskly told the lone remaining station attendant. “Being transferred to Ward Four, Room Six, Bed Two. I need her chart and medication schedule. And write down the change.” Because anypony who’d spent that much time around Twilight automatically presumed there had to be both a chart and paper trail, with every chance that the two were married.

The attendant, whose ears had been fully flattened, needed a second to register any of it.

“Who are you?”

“The volunteer,” Pinkie stated. “Now where’s her papers? This was supposed to be done hours ago!”

The old pegasus fell asleep before they reached the now-much-easier-to-find ward. Pinkie asked for help in transferring her to a more stable bed, and so she remained at rest throughout.

The quick grooming of the mane, however, was done personally. Some things were important.

There were multiple lessons which could come simply from being a Bearer, and not all of them reached a scroll. A number tended to settle in on the subconscious level, unrecognized until the moment instinct crystallized into knowledge and in Pinkie’s current case, immediately surged into action.

It surprised her, really. She hadn’t known that she was now capable of identifying a furious security patrol solely from the sound of their collective hoofsteps, but given how many times the group had wound up with one in close pursuit...

Instinct let her understand exactly what the accelerating stomps meant. Experience sent her through the nearest door before they reached her, because Pinkie’s life contained several incidents where those hooves had been searching for a curly tail to stomp on and while this probably wasn’t about her, simple politeness dictated that she clear the path. (At the very least, she’d made it easier for them to get where they were going, and had done so in at least two ways.) This put her into what turned out to be the hospital’s library, and her time spent with Twilight let her recognize that it was a rather well-organized one. However, that status didn’t do anything to forgive its further status of being utterly boring. Yes, it was obviously important for a hospital to have a comprehensive assemblage of medical texts and journals, but what if a patient wanted to read something on a topic other than The Five Reasons Why You’re Probably Going To Die Here? There seemed to be a distinct lack of material in other categories, which went perfectly with the complete absence of any other categories.

Fortunately, there was nopony at the librarian’s desk, probably because nopony ever removed the books from the hospital and some of the largest compendiums would need to be taken off the shelf via crane. It allowed Pinkie a few minutes of solitude for creative accounting added to the use of some useful pre-stamped envelopes, because you couldn’t spend time in the library without watching Twilight page through new release catalogs.

Pinkie had never truly believed she’d find a true use for having all of the publishers’ addresses memorized, but that was life for you. And when it came to getting a book cart and asking for volunteers to push it around to the patients... that was just what had to be done to make ponies happy! All the things which could make time in the hospital a little easier to deal with, and now somepony was finally doing them! In a way, it was a truly good thing that she was still waiting for Doctor because if not her, who? And if not now, when?

Admittedly, when it came to Doctor’s arrival, that last question was still a problem. She’d gone back to the pediatrics ward over and over, to discover nothing more than Doctor’s continued lack of visit added to the fact that for some reason, the station ponies were becoming rather annoyed about her still wanting to know. They had tried to tell her a few things while acting like she wasn’t capable of understanding any, and that was wrong because Pinkie fully comprehended all of it. She knew doctors were important, even if she wasn’t completely sure about Doctor. She understood that every patient needed time with their physician: that emergencies could arise which put somepony into surgery and of course being there was more important than seeing the twins. She just wanted to know if there was an emergency and if not, about how many patients had to be seen before Doctor reached Pumpkin and Pound. Pinkie simply desired to be informed, and those at the station found that oddly offensive.

She’d thought about that, and decided there were three options for explaining their reaction: they didn’t want to say something wrong and be proven as liars, they didn’t know and refused to admit it, or they had recently consumed the contents of Window Five, Row Three on the vending machine and so had temporarily lost all capacity for social interaction. There were many reasons for Pinkie’s continued inspection of every door she passed, and not among the least was an ongoing search for the Poison Control department —

— her tail twitched. The center curls jerked straight up, and her left hind hoof lifted from the floor. This was, for Pinkie Sense, a rather familiar sequence, and it was also a particularly bad thing to have happen when you were reared up on your back legs while putting in a little more work on the empty hallway.

She picked herself up just in time to have it happen again. And again. And again...

...that’s a lot of birthdays. So either there’s a really big group party going on, or...

Pinkie smiled.

They were all so beautiful.

The last time, she’d been kept out of the ward, at least for the majority of the process. Some time had been spent with Mrs. Cake during the first stages of labor because anypony who was in that much pain really needed a laugh: Pinkie had used her second mother’s multiple death threats against Mr. Cake for having done this to her as inspiration for really funny ways to die, and still felt her other father figure wouldn’t really mind going out in the middle of a giant cherry turnover. And of course she’d spent time pacing in the hallway, because Ponyville’s smaller hospital was still good for pacing, along with seeming to be better than this Canterlot facility at everything else. But the maternity ward had eventually put her out of the way, and when it came to the nursery...

Everypony in this hospital had assumed she was supposed to be there and in this case, they were absolutely right.

There were ten newborn foals. Their genders, species, fur colors — none of that really mattered just yet. The important thing was that twenty fresh eyes were gazing out at the world, trying to understand what they’d been thrust into without warning, permission, or an eviction notice for their previous living quarters. Some of those huge pupils were probably trying to work out ‘understanding’.

Tiny hooves wriggled against the walls of the bassinet, and so discovered that glass existed. (The activity was restricted to forelegs only; the hind had been bound within formless sacks of likely-itchy cloth.) This led to little gasps of surprise, which allowed the further verification of ‘air’. Everything was new and so everything was scary and wonderful at the same time.

They stared, although the plain dull walls didn’t give them much to stare at. They blinked. They tried out mouths and muscles and since it was a few hours too early for their bowels to deliver anything but scentless meconium, absolutely nothing could go wrong.

It was their first day of being alive. Their birthday.

“Hello,” she softly told them.

Ears rotated towards sound, and so the newborns discovered ears could do that.

“It’s special, isn’t it?” she gently asked. (There were parents watching her through the huge glass window at the front of the ward, and she made sure to speak just loudly enough to let them hear what she was saying. She didn’t want them to worry.) “Just being here at all. That’s the most important thing right now, that you made it this far.” Because a lot of foals hadn’t, and that was just part of why a true birthday was something to celebrate — but they didn’t need to know about the first part yet. “And it’s all so strange. That can be scary, when it’s all new and nothing makes sense. And I can’t promise it’ll ever completely go away, because I’m an adult now and I see new things all the time. I’m still trying to figure out how some of them make sense. But there’s usually somepony you can ask for help. They might be your parents. Or your friends. You have parents, because you’re here, and you’ll make friends. That’s the next step. And it’s really important.”

The foals looked at her. Some tried to turn towards each other as hooves instinctively stretched out, longing for contact — but there was too much space between them. And even if there hadn’t been aisles between the bassinets, there was glass.

The first hours of their lives. Separated from their parents: seen, but untouched. Unable to reach each other. Trapped in a dull white room.

On their birthday.

Pinkie took a slow breath, then carefully trotted around every bassinet while reading the charts. Ten perfectly healthy foals, with their parents waiting outside. Behind glass.

“It’s special,” Pinkie quietly decided. “Just being born. But the next part should have a better beginning than this.”

He could not be described as a happy stallion, for nopony had ever seen that emotion manifest upon his features. He was much better-known for things like anger, fury, bellowed declarations of inadequacy regarding everypony who worked for him while somehow never considering that he’d signed off on the hiring for all of them, and the occasional slow-boil simmer which had waves of heat haze rising from his fur. He was also locally famous for his ability to fly into a rage at any given moment and for that, being a pegasus didn’t exactly hurt.

But he was capable of experiencing what a particularly naive pony might try to describe as positive emotions. There was the joy of collecting payments, which often accompanied the total rapture of getting three separate parties to settle up on the same bill. He was intimately familiar with every pleasure associated with stalling, because there were no delays so small that piling up a thousand of them couldn’t add another day of charges to a patient’s tally. Scheduling unnecessary tests had been known to produce feelings which most ponies associated with companionship, not that he would know. And there was an ongoing low-level sensation of joy produced by the knowledge that ponies were mortal and were willing to nose over bits for anything that might postpone it.

He vaguely recognized that there were nations which had fully socialized medicine, and he didn’t understand that because nothing about practicing medicine should ever include having to be social.

Being a pegasus helped him when flying into a rage, but he arguably received the majority of the boost from being an utter jerk. And in both cases, he’d been on the wing for some time. Reports had been coming in from all over the hospital and when it had reached the point where he’d had to try and personally track a few down, he’d found that hallways which only he was supposed to properly understand could now be tracked. It was just one of the signs of just how much was wrong within his personal palace (which ran better than the true one, as he’d made the more sensible decision to have but one pony in charge). The entire experimental department was empty, and that was a place which was supposed to be making money bits over tongue without ever getting things like making ponies better involved. Ponies had been shuffled into actual beds, and where was he supposed to put the rich patients now in the event that several dozen came along at once?

(To be vaguely fair in his approximate direction, it was Canterlot. Galas happened, and columns had to fall somewhere.)

Everything was going wrong, everything, and there was a certain commonality in every story. (Two, really, but he was focused on the physical and refused to think about the fact that so many of those relating the tales had been merrily laughing.) Something pink —

— and there it was.

He hadn’t meant to find it. The bowl-shaped lecture auditorium had simply provided him with what he’d believed to be a fairly secret shortcut, especially as so many staff members avoided the benches when the place wasn’t in use. Every hospital needed multiple areas in which personnel could review recent activity and receive fresh tutoring on recent discoveries in medicine, but he preferred to lecture them. It was why the center stage was, just like the rest of the hospital, his.

As such, the stage’s current occupancy could be said to exceed the maximum by more than three thousand percent. And that was before he accounted for all the dodging he was suddenly doing on the upper levels.

There were foals on the stage, carefully picking their way across a surface for the first time in their lives because ponies could be walking within three minutes of birth and in the interests of his personal peace, it was therefore best to stall that for as long as possible. That was what the sacks were for, and the sacks were gone. There were free-roaming foals wandering all over the stage (which now had a protective barrier of desks set up around the border), examining the wood and each other while being watched by laughing parents, and how could any of that be right? And why were there stuffed toys all over the place? What was the purpose of the decorations? And when it came to the lighting...

He looked at the lighting again, because it gave him something to focus on in the last moment before those below became aware of his presence (although one set of twitching pink ears had received about a minute of warning). It also allowed him to quite literally see red, or at least a sort of sparkling ruby. And then he landed in front of her.

There was almost enough space, and he completely failed to notice the curly tail quickly sweeping an infant to safety.

“Who are you?” was the first hiss. He’d found that hissing was the most effective form of communication, as most ponies instinctively recoiled from snakes.

“I work here,” the pink, slightly overweight earth pony mare said.

He stared at her. Most of his attention had focused on the tenth-bale of pleasant padding which was evenly distributed across her form, because the experimental department had included a new kind of vacuum and she’d reportedly talked everypony out of that too.

“No, you don’t,” was the second hiss. “I know every incompetent working here. You don’t.”

“I’m doing work which has to be done,” emerged as a too-steady reply as the tail’s curls gently stroked the foal’s forehead. “Here. So I work here. Who are you?”

Staring seemed to be inadequate.

“I,” he declared, “am the Director Of Medicine —“

“— oh, nopony cares about that!” the mare falsely decided, waving a dismissive forehoof. “What’s your name?”

His teeth were starting to grind. This was particularly unfortunate because the hospital didn’t have much of a dental department. Dental potions existed in a state where they were reliable, accessible, and fairly cheap: it was tremendously unfair that nothing could be done about that. “Bean Bitterherb!”

She carefully looked him over, pausing on the sickly green of his fur and the twisted weeds which made up his mark.

“Your parents,” she considered, “were very prescient. Or extremely cruel.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, and just about as much caring. “Do you have any idea what you’ve been doing? In my hospital?”

“I think so,” the mare calmly answered. “Especially as I’ve been the one doing it and no matter what anypony says, I usually know exactly what I’m doing. And why. I’m actually really good at why, and Twilight’s helped me with whyfore, but I’m still trying to make sure I don’t pick the wrong times for whence. But I don’t think this is a whence moment. Do you have any experience with whence? Because you look like a pony who hears things. Like ‘whence it came to the time for discharge, nopony would tell her whence that was’ —“ Her snout wrinkled. “— oh, that can’t be right... We should go to your library and check the dictionary. In five days, when it arrives. But I think I’ve waited long enough, so I’d have to come back for that —”

The director wasn’t used to ponies talking, especially when he wanted to talk. It was so much easier to translate from the whimper.

“— why are there balloons in my air?”

She blinked at him. This came across as offensive.

“It’s their birthday,” she explained in what was almost the exact tones used for speaking to a newborn infant, only directed at a somewhat lower level of comprehension. “The very first one. Which is extremely important. So there’s balloons.”

“— where did they all come from? The gift shop doesn’t sell balloons, by my orders —”

He stopped.

He hadn’t wanted to stop. There were so many more things which he’d meant to yell, and even some which needed to be hissed at higher volume. But he’d just become aware of something, and it had cut off the flow of words.

There had been parents on the stage, to go with the foals. Those adults were still there. But they were no longer laughing.

“It takes a very rare pony,” the mare softly noted, “to ask that question. Most don’t. So you are a very rare pony. If you’re a pony at all, which a really really rude mare might start to have some doubts about. But I don’t want to be rude, so let’s just say there’s a birthday, or ten of them, and so there’s balloons. And if that’s not enough for you, then I can live with that.”

They were also a lot closer.

He did his best to look at them without visibly shifting dull white eyes. Three of the unicorns already had their horns lit. One pegasus had sparks clustering around her hooves. The earth ponies were simply closest. And big. Very, very big.

“You nearly landed on my daughter,” the biggest quietly declared, just before her right forehoof put a deep gouge into the wood.

The pink mare raised her left foreleg, and all of the adults held their positions.

“This is a birthday party,” the pink mare said. “Nopony was unhealthy or they would have been isolated from the other foals, plus it would have been on their charts. It’s the first day of their lives and they were spending it behind glass, in sacks, with nopony touching them. This is better. It’s easy to see that, and even easier to do the work. Which I had plenty of time for because I’m waiting for my baby brother and sister to be discharged, still waiting, and I found out you have volunteers in the hospital to do the things nopony else can be bothered with. So I volunteered. Is there anything else you wanted to ask?”

He swallowed.

Security was still looking for the mare, and they weren’t looking here because this was where he usually hissed at them. He was surrounded, outnumbered, and incidentally completely in the right — but that currently seemed to be a distant second priority to another issue.

“You’ve been marking up my walls,” he stated.

“Nopony can find their way around,” the mare calmly explained. “Greeting cards have glitter. So I made trails and put up signs explaining what the colors meant. For example, light blue goes to the family waiting room outside Surgery. Because you have one now, and it’ll have better benches. There’s a sign for finding it, to go with the ones which have the color charts. And that one in Emergency, because the palace says you have to put it up, whether you like it or not. I read that sign —“

“— the floodlights over the stage?”

“I had more glitter. Isn’t it nice in here?”

Starkly, “There’s paintings in the pediatrics ward. And the nursery.”

“They’re not very good ones,” the mare admitted. “I don’t really have a talent for art. But it’s meant for children and foals, so I think being able to draw a bunny about as well as they can could work. And some of the disinfectants you use stain in just the right colors. On walls.”

“You emptied out Deuglification —“

“— there’s a difference,” the mare evenly told him, “between having something real wrong with your body and being a little sick in your heart. But that other part needs healing, so you’re also going to have a Psychiatric section now, because that’s what I wrote on the paperwork. It’ll be where Deuglification was. Oh, and I probably won’t get to say this again, so thank you. Once I found your office, having you sign all your ordering papers in advance made things a lot faster!”

Admittedly, now that he thought about it, having on-site bilking for mental conditions would help his bottom line —

— but that was surprisingly a tertiary priority, because the first thing to do was getting this mare out of his hospital.

Softly, “Why are you here?”

“I’m waiting for the twins to be discharged so I can take them home,” the mare answered. “And I already said that. Weren’t you listening? I could start over —“

“Twins,” he desperately latched onto. “What are their names?”

“Pumpkin and Pound Cake!” Which was followed by what just couldn’t be a genuinely apologetic “Oh, I’m sorry! It would have made things easier for you if I’d said that the first time! No wonder you needed me to repeat it! Anyway, they have to be seen by Doctor, so he — she? — can say they’re healthy, even when everypony already knows they are. And we’re still waiting for Doctor, or somepony with more authority than Doctor. And then we can all go home.”

“Pediatrics?” he asked, which struck him as an interesting way to pronounce ‘salvation’.

“Yes!”

“I’ll go down there with you,” he offered while trying to ignore what seemed to be grinding sounds coming from what passed for his soul, “and I’ll clear them for discharge myself. Would that be acceptable?”

“Yes! Thank you —“

Which was as far as his survival instincts would let him go, and so exhausted, long-unused priorities slumped down for a long rest. It let the dominant part take over again.

Getting her out of his hospital was important. But it seemed he would live, and so now other things were important too.

“— and then you just have to wait on the discharge papers.”

The mare’s still-planted right forehoof slowly pushed down into the stage with increasing force, then rotated. Splinters spread out from the edges of the deepening hole.

“...what?”

“Well,” a lifetime of self-inflicted training said, “we have procedures. They’ll be cleared for discharge. Then there’s paperwork which says they were cleared. Then there’s some forms which are for the actual discharge, plus the ones to be sent down to the orderly, because we need to get an orderly for transport.”

“But I’m taking them home!” the mare suddenly protested. “They’re my responsibility!”

“Oh, you can take them home,” he clarified. “But you are clearly unqualified to take them to the door. That’s what we have orderlies for. But they’ll use a pram. Once the pram requisition forms are registered. In triplicate. Did you say twins? It may take a while to find the one for twins —“

“— all of this,” the mare cut him off, “sounds like it could take a while.”

And possibly enough to put another day into the charges. How close were they to midnight? Oh, it didn’t matter: he’d just adjust the final release time on the forms and charge accordingly. “Everything takes time,” he smoothly hissed. “Oh, and you can’t leave without your bill.” He was really looking forward to the bill.

The mare took a deep, slow breath.

“Does that include a deduction for my salary?”

The earlier word migrated.

“...what?”

“Well,” she brightly, happily said as smoke began to billow from the gouge, “I’ve been working! And even volunteers get paid sometimes. Plus I’ve made lots of helpful suggestions, which some companies offer rewards for. And all of what you said sounds like it’s going to take a very long time, I’m not very good at waiting when I don’t know how long I’m waiting for, and it’s just easier to keep busy! So I’m going to put in some overtime. I’m sure all these nice parents will be happy to provide you with suggestions for things I can do! But while they get started on that, I have to check on the twins. Maybe I’ll even see Doctor there! But if I don’t, I sort of noticed a few details about your — are you choking? Oh, no! Let me see if I can find a doctor! But not Doctor, because that could take too long —“

“— what,” he just barely gasped, “do you want?”

She gently smiled.

“I want to go home.”

Her left foreleg came down. The parents closed in.

“But before that happens,” she added as hot earth pony breath from a defensive mother blasted into his feathers, “we should really talk about the bill.”

Mr. Cake opened the bakery’s front door, and the chill of Moon-lit air wafted in.

“You’re earlier than I thought you’d be,” he admitted. “How are they?”

“Sleeping,” the exhausted mare whispered. “They had a long day. A boring one, too. But they liked the train.” Mr. Cake stepped aside, and she carefully pulled the shoulder-hitched pram through the last few steps needed to return home. “Do you two feel better?”

“Now that we’re all together again,” her second father figure admitted, “yes. Can you tell me about the mission tomorrow? You know we worry.”

“I know. I will.” She freed herself from the hitch. “But right now, I’d like to go to bed. Would you tuck them in?”

He nodded, and she began her weary trot towards the ramp —

— paused.

“Oh,” she tiredly remembered. “This is for you.” Her teeth opened the left saddlebag, then extracted a thick envelope and passed it over.

“The bill,” he sighed. “Right. Might as well get a look at it now.” Insomnia triggered by actual knowledge was marginally better than that produced by well-founded worry. “Here we go...”

She didn’t seem to hear him, or pick up on the sound of the envelope being opened. She just moved forward while he extracted the contents, looked at the first page, searching for a total —

“— Pinkie?”

She slowly turned her head, and he saw the droop in the fur under her eyes. It matched the one in her tail, and contrasted oddly with the lines of stray glitter which the indoor lights had picked up in her coat. They made her look as if she’d been striped with candy.

“Mr. Cake?”

“This isn’t a bill.”

“No. It’s a contract. It says the whole family gets free medical care for the rest of their lives, as long as I never go back there again.”

He stated at her. She yawned.

“But that isn’t legal,” she added. “Because I was in the Emergency department, and I read the government sign. No hospital can turn anypony away when they’re sick. That’s the law. So I’m going to show a copy to the palace, they’ll void the bad part, and then it’s just free medical care. But I also want to see if I can get somepony to read that as paying for it to be done here, because Ponyville’s hospital is a lot better in some ways and that place...” A deeper yawn. “...has a long way to go. Good night. Mr. Cake.”

Pink hooves, one of which was smudged with smoke stains, slowly went up the ramp. And Mr. Cake, who had been through long years of strangeness and so knew some of it had to wait for morning, followed her up and put all of his children to bed.

Author's Note

Written entirely while waiting in a hospital to speak with a doctor, and then while waiting for patient discharge, over the course of two days.

I’m still waiting.