Lightning Dust was not a stupid pony. Anyone who claimed she was could expect to taste their own teeth right after her hoof bashed them in their disrespectful mouth.
She had wits, talent, guile, and most of all the work ethic to cultivate her well-being and keep her skills razor sharp. Just ask Short Fuse or Rolling Thunder, the two closest things she had to friends. They’d back her up on that. Right now though, none of Lightning Dust’s strengths were helping her comprehend the three bolded words on the transcript she had just been presented. For someone as proud as she to be so thoroughly stumped by the Ponish language... it was honestly kind of enraging. Still, no way in Tartarus was Lightning Dust going to let the medical pony see any hint of frustration on her end.
”So if my guess is right Doc,” Lightning Dust said as evenly as she could, “this page doesn’t have a very high final opinion of me.”
Speedy Recovery, the staffer standing across from Lightning Dust, swallowed dryly. She was actually just the wellcare nurse and not a true ‘Doc’, but she wasn’t going to correct the error. Speedy Recovery knew nothing about the pegasus in front of her other than what was in the Psych Evaluation results still tucked between the latter’s primaries.
Actually, that wasn’t quite true; through simple pop culture osmosis, Speedy Recovery knew that this pegasus, this “Lightning Dust,” was a kind of self-employed stunt pony who was adored by some but disliked by many more for her erratic showmareship. And pairing that knowledge with the info on the document made Speedy Recovery feel rather unsafe alone in the checkup room with this imposing athlete. Speedy Recovery was used to working with small foals, not grown mares. And it hadn’t escaped her notice that Lightning Dust was very musclebound for a Pegasus. If she chose to get belligerent, Speedy doubted even her natural Earth Pony strength would be enough to restrain someone so physically fit.
Lightning Dust flittered her wing, turning the report page over and examining the back while Speedy Recovery kept trying to silently reinforce herself with professionalism. She reminded herself that when she skimmed the transcript while carrying it over, it had clearly said Lightning Dust had no history of-
“No history of violence,” Lightning Dust was reading aloud. “No history of depression. No admitted history of suicidal thoughts.” She glanced up at the nervous nurse. “Sounds like praise to me, Doc.”
Of course it does to someone like you, Speedy Recovery thought bitterly. She knew what was coming next, and also knew to let someone with Lightning Dust’s condition go at their own, predictable pace.
“Observable reckless behavior and low empathy levels,” Lightning Dust continued down the page. “Nim... nimf....”
“Nymphomaniacal tendencies,” Speedy Recovery mumbled.
“Oh! A fancy label for “lady-stud,” Lightning Dust declared as she flashed what she thought was a winning smile. All it did was make Speedy Recovery’s skin crawl. The nurse tried hard to not imagine where the athlete could’ve possibly heard such a term outside of a doctor’s office.
“Yeah, so it seems like I got a lot more working for me than against.” Lightning Dust reasoned, flipping the page back over and re-examining the front. Those words. Those three unknown words that made her sharpened instincts prick apprehensively at the base of her ears. Lightning Dust wanted to know what they meant. She wanted to know almost to the point of desperation. But her ego still kept her from asking. Asking would be something a stupid pony did, and Lightning Dust was not a stupid pony.
“Do you want me to elaborate on your diagnosis?” Speedy Recovery ventured in false ignorance. She already knew the answer was yes, but it was best to make the Pegasus feel like she was the one in control of the conversation. The bold, self-important Lightning Dust, reduced to a patient being talked down to? No, never. She needed to think she was an authority who was getting a report from a subordinate.
The farce was demeaning as anything for Speedy Recovery, but she was a professional. She could do this. She could deliver unpleasant news to this potentially unstable pony who was much bigger than she was.
Lightning Dust gave a terse go-ahead nod and Speedy Recovery took a deep breath.
“You have very strong signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” the nurse said, shaky but firm.
Lightning Dust pursed her lips, more to evaluate the curious nervousness of this pony in front of her than the nonsensical words that were just spoken.
“Keep explaining,” Lightning Dust eventually huffed. It wasn’t a request.
“Narcissistic ponies have a clinical need to be adored. They have over-inflated but fragile senses of self-worth, they surround themselves with yes-men to bolster their egos, and...” Speedy Recovery was visibly wincing. “...Narcissists also tend to get hostile whenever their delusions are challenged.”
Lightning Dust’s eyes were on the floor. “You better not be calling me a stupid pony.” she warned.
“I’m not!”
The nurse’s answer had been so quick and insistent that Lightning Dust looked up at her, startled.
“You can see right here your IQ is in the middle of the bell curve,” Speedy Recovery hastily explained, tapping a small graph near the page’s bottom. “This right here means your learning capacity is perfectly normal.”
Lightning Dust began staring daggers at the nurse. “But..?” she goaded.
“But nothing. Intellectually, you’re perfectly healthy. And judging by your build, you’re physically healthy too.”
“I work out.” Lightning Dust confirmed. “And I do crosswords in the paper sometimes. Nose always to the grindstone and all that jazz.”
Talking herself up usually calmed Lightning Dust’s nerves, but right now it was only making her more queasy. She felt like a foal again, back before she’d learned to properly cloudwalk. All the agoraphobic insecurity was back. The kind that came from searching for something solid to hold onto, having not yet learned that your footing needed to adjust to the cloud, not the other way around.
“I believe you take good care of yourself,” Speedy Recovery responded. Compulsively so, she nearly added. “And that’s sort of the issue. Keeping with the grindstone metaphor, if you grind a tool too often and too much, sure it’ll get sharper, but at the same time it gets thinner and flimsier to the point where it’s in danger of snapping.”
Lightning Dust‘s normally firm shoulders started to slump.
“I’m sick, then.”
The nurse shut her eyes and nodded mutely.
Speedy Recovery hated that this was her job now. Hated it so very much. She was a physical therapist, not a mental health counselor. It was there in her name. It was there in her lollipop Cutie Mark she’d gotten from giving out candy to the excited colts and fillies who came to her family’s clinic to get casts taken off.
By the Goddess, if Speedy Recovery had known what kind of ponies she’d be servicing when Princess Twilight had put out that open call for nurses needed in Canterlot, she would never have said yes. But the prestige of an Earth Pony like her working at a real hospital? In the capital city? Speedy Recovery had been the first in this new wing’s employment line. Now here she was on her first day, not offering encouragement to wobbly-limbed children, but puncturing the over-inflated self-esteem of an adult mare twice her size. Speedy Recovery was finding it hard, so very hard, to keep telling herself she was ready for work in a grownup clinic. If this was what adult patient care meant, Speedy Recovery was not cut out for this.
“Um… Doc?” Speedy felt a nudge on her shoulder and reluctantly opened her eyes to look back at Lightning Dust. The Pegasus was ashen-faced. “Doc… tell me how long I have.”
Speedy Recovery blinked uncomprehendingly. “How long?” she echoed.
“For Faust’s sake Doc, give me a guess-timate on how long it’ll be til whatever I got up and offs me!”
Lightning Dust’s breathing was shallow. Her eyes were wild and fearful. Speedy Recovery’s jaw dropped as she suddenly understood the miscommunication.
“Oh, no, Lightning- um, Miss Dust, no. No, you’ve got it all wrong. Narcissism isn’t fatal. Not directly, anyway.”
“Wha-?” Lightning Dust cocked her head. “But… but you looked so upset after you broke the news to me, I thought…” her eyes suddenly narrowed accusingly. “Were you just riling me up for kicks? That’s cruel, Doc.”
Speedy Recovery didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what she could say to that. For better or for worse though, Lightning Dust kept talking.
“I came in today for a routine physical. Your people made me fill out a test instead.” Lightning Dust took a domineering step towards the cowering nurse. “And not even twenty minutes after I turn the dumb thing in, you trot back to tell me I’m sick.”
Another step.
“So I think it’s pretty obvious what your next move is.”
Speedy Recovery could feel the heated huffing coming from Lightning Dust’s nostrils as the athlete bore down on her.
“This is a hospital,” Lightning Dust declared. “And you are a medic.” She pushed her snout into Speedy’s, a primal sign of dominance among ponies. “So fix me.”
Lightning Dust could feel her blood pounding in her ears. She had poured every ounce of authority and bravado she had into her speech, which meant the medical pony had to obey her, right? She had to give Lightning Dust the pill or vaccine or whatever it was that fixed the unpronounceable thing that was wrong with her, because if she didn’t…
If she didn’t…
Lightning Dust didn’t have an ending for that sentence, and that frightened her. She didn’t know what to do. She was standing tall and firm, but on the inside she was small and quivering. Her words had been forceful and strong, but her thoughts were flailing and full of doubt. But why? The yawning emptiness she felt inside of her was nothing new; It’d been there her whole life. But it had never hurt this much before. Could this be the unpronounceable sickness that the wrinkled page under her wing was talking about? It was awful. Indescribably so, and Lightning Dust needed to be free of it. She needed someone - anyone - to make the aching uncertainty go away.
“Narcissism isn’t something that another pony can “fix” for you,” Speedy Recovery finally whimpered, taking a single step backwards.
Lightning Dust stood where she was, devastated.
“Don’t say that, Doc. Please. Don’t tell me I’m sick and then say you can’t help me. I need you, ya hear Doc? I need you.”
“I can’t do this!” Speedy Recovery suddenly shouted as she turned and ran for the door. The door that led back to the waiting room where there were ponies whose damages she understood and there wasn’t this awful anomaly of a Pegasus bearing down on her. Lightning Dust coiled her powerful legs and was on Speedy in an instant of course, tackling and pinning the nurse to the tile floor.
Speedy Recovery braced herself for the blows to start raining down and for Lightning Dust to begin screaming bloody murder like the certified lunatic that she was. But instead of punches, Speedy Recovery felt two grasping wings wrap gingerly around her shoulders. They held her tight like she was one of those stuffed animals the paramedics gave to trauma patients. And then, instead of frenzied yelling, Speedy Recovery heard whispered, jumbled pleading in her ear:
“Don’t leave me alone, Doc. Please, please, please don’t leave me alone with this hole in my soul that I can’t fill myself. I need someone to be with me right now. Stay. Even if you can’t fix me, stay and help me figure out what I’m doing wrong, because I’ve looked and looked and I just can't see it. I know I’m not a stupid pony, but I sure freaking feel like one right now. And even if you’re the one who made me feel this way, I still don't want you to go.”
Speedy Recovery took in the sight of Lightning Dust helplessly clinging to her. And as she did, the three bolded words on the psych results transcript seemed to dissolve, revealing behind them a worn-down Pegasus crushed and distorted by the weight of her own ambitions, her desires, and for the first time in a long time, her doubts. Speedy Recovery saw a patient in need of a doctor. She saw a pony in need of a friend.
In this fully grown mare, she saw an insecure child who needed a wellcare nurse.
“Okay, Lightning Dust.” Speedy Recovery’s voice was raspy, but full of conviction. “I’ll stay. If you let me up, I promise I’ll stay with you.”
Lightning Dust complied with military efficiency, springing to standing position and pulling Speedy Recovery up with her. For a moment, the two of them lingered silently in the empty checkup room, both feeling fatigued.
“So what happens now?” Lightning Dust asked in a strange mix of earnest submission and habitual authority. Speedy Recovery wiped her nose on the back of her hoof before answering.
“What happens is we head out to the waiting room and schedule your first session with a counselor. And maybe... maybe we also get you a lollipop from the mug on the receptionist’s desk. Would, um,... would you like that? Would you want one of those?”
“Whoa, a sucker? For real?” Lightning Dust’s pleased surprise was palpable, since candy wasn’t something a health nut like her sampled very often. “Yes,” she decided. “Yes, I absolutely would.”
“Then lead the way,” Speedy Recovery suggested.
Lightning Dust puffed herself up and pushed open the door to the waiting room. Speedy Recovery glanced one last time at the crumpled test results sheet on the office floor. Then she turned her back on it and began to trot towards the receptionists table, shoulder-to-shoulder with her newest patient.
Author's Note
I like to imagine there’s genuine innocence behind Lightning Dust’s boorish behaviors. She is not a bad pony. Just a shortsighted, self-absorbed one. And we all know the first step towards solving a problem is being made aware you have one.
Can’t wait for Kodiologist to use his Psych doctorate to blow massive holes in my probably inaccurate depiction of clinical narcissism.
Sequel!
ECover to Cover
Fusion spells aren't complicated, but the temporary ponies they yield are. Speed Reader isn't thrilled to be made of the two most high strung ponies in Equestria, but surely she can keep her selves together for a measly half hour, right?
Casketbase77 ·
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