Author's Note

Rewritten 2025-01-19
There's chapter 3 rewritten. At this rate, we might even see a new chapter this decade!

~~oh shit. this story is still alive? my bad.~~

~~I only wrote and published a chapter because Maxie threatened to start writing again, and I can't have him making an update before me.~~

Doctor, Doctor! Give Me the News! (Rewritten)

Ponyville General Hospital was a surprisingly well furnished hospital, or at least surprisingly well furnished relative to the rather tiny town it services. Then again, being located so near to both the Everfree Forest and the shenanigans constantly surrounding the element bearers, it was determined a ‘valuable use of taxes’ to keep the building up to date with the latest technology, training, and staff. After all, less-than-fatal accidents seemed to be an everyday occurrence here.

Yet on this night, the hospital was quiet. There were none of the usual incidents of nails-through-hooves and tree-sap-coverings, in fact not a single pony had even popped their head in all day. Nurse Redheart was the only pony-on-staff that night, the rest of her colleagues having long since left to spend an unexpected day off with their families, hobbies, or mugs of cider down at Pinch’s bar. She of course both blamed and thanked the recently departed Princess for this, it seemed that nobody was in the mood for their normal chaos after such an unexpected tragedy.

The mare stared out from the front desk at the empty lobby and let out a small sigh as she fiddled with the pages underneath her hooves. As nice as it was to see nopony getting hurt, volunteering for the graveyard shift was a regrettable choice. As little as she wanted to be overworked, the excruciating boredom of staring at an empty waiting room for eight hours definitely wasn’t what anyone would consider ‘intellectually stimulating’. “8 years of medschool for this…” She mumbled to herself, glancing up at the clock on the wall before huffing and turning her gaze back to the cheap pulp fiction that sat upon the desk, polished and smooth despite the years of wear and tear. The novel itself seemed to be some sort of country-western romance, definitely not her usual taste, but she needed to be distracted with something and the tome of cheap and mindless words was like a siren’s call in these dreary witching hours. The whole idea of a busy city stallion coming out to the country and falling in love with a mild-mannered rancher mare was a bit uninspired, but anything was better than watching the clock for 5 more hours until her shift ended.

Thankfully, she was spared the fate of wasting her night on cheap fiction and cheaper granola bars by a sound familiar to any hospital staff: arguments, fighting, and denial. It seemed tonight would finally have some sort of entertainment, unwilling as they sound.

“I told you, I feel fine!” Twilight grumbled, struggling against the bonds of rope tying her to all five of her so-called friends. “I just had a nap, and Spike just overreacted!” Each tug of that rope had her hooves digging into the ground, leaving surprisingly deep impressions as she nearly succeeded in beating the tugging strength of all five of her friends and the help of a silent but clearly confused Big Mac.

Applejack huffed and continued yanking on her end of the rope, the tough hemp fibers digging into her shoulder as they fought and struggled for each inch against Twilight’s half-hearted resistance. “And ah’ told ya’, as soon as ya’ve got a clean bill of health, ya can go back home! Ah’m not taking any chances on somethin’ like this! Woo-nelly… when d’ya get this strong, Twily?” The recently deceased alicorn didn’t have a useful response to that, instead just crossing her forelegs and sitting herself down onto the dirt, her flanks joining her hooves in digging an even wider trench through the ground.

Rainbow gasped for breath as her wings flapped in steady but exhausted beats, sweat trailing down from her brow before dripping off her muzzle into the dirt. “I don’t like hospitals either, Twi! But being a Wonderbolts member-“

Rarity cleared her throat, glancing at the pegasus.

Rainbow responded to that glance with a stink eye before correcting herself. “Being a Wonderbolts reserve member taught me that you gotta get yourself checked out when you have an accident! And I dunno about anypony else, but that was one heck of an accident.”

Twilight let out a sigh and finally stopped pulling back, the sudden slack in the rope causing four of her captors to stumble forward into the ground, and a fifth cyan pegasus to ram straight into a tree. Mac was, of course, unaffected by the sudden change in tension, and with a gentle ‘Eenope’ he shook his head and strolled off to the farm. He should have been in bed hours ago, after all.

Twilight stood herself back up with a sigh, dusting the dirt from her butt and hooves as she glared at the rest of the mares. “Alright, but right after this waste of time I’m going back to finish reading that book. I haven’t even figured out what class of magic I have to categorize it under!” She declared, stomping her hoof into the ground dramatically and leaving a rather worrying imprint.

The other five girls only gave her a look of concern before taking a moment to huddle away from her. “Um… we’re not going to let her keep reading that book, right? She did sort of… die last time…” Fluttershy whispered softly, her lip trembling.

Pinkie was fast to respond, her ‘whisper’ louder than Fluttershy’s normal speaking volume. “Yeah, and it was totally made out of somepony’s skin!” She agreed with surprising exuberance, her mane once again as poofy as a poodle. “You can tell by the way it was soft, but cracking around the edges! I think that there was a nostril on the spine, but it was sewn super-duper well! And let me tell you, flayed skin is not easy to work with!”

Rarity only stared at Pinkie for a moment before shaking her head softly and whispering back in response. “I’m… not even going to ask how you’re so experienced in that sort of thing, darling. Regardless, we’ll pretend to agree with her for now, and just hope that by the time she gets home she’ll be tired enough that we can get her straight off to bed. We can confiscate the book once she’s asleep.”

The rest of the ponies nodded in agreement as they broke their huddle, before the farmpony reached out to open the door to the hospital. The other girls moved in unison to stand in a semicircle behind Twilight, probably to make sure she didn’t attempt to escape back to the library for more late-night reading.

As the reluctant Twilight walked through the door, her movements triggered the small dinging tone of a bell, along with drawing the attention of the singular staff member. “Hello! Welcome to Ponyville General Hospital! Are you sick, injured, or dying?” Inquired Nurse Redheart, her body jittery from running on nothing but caffeine for the past 12 hours, as usual.

Rainbow walked in behind Twilight, speaking for the stubborn alicorn. “Uh… dead? Or not dead? It’s complicated.” She muttered, caught slightly off guard by the doctor’s strange greeting. Shaking her head clear of the bemusement, she gave Twilight a little shove forward. “Go on Twilight, talk to the doctor.”

“I swear, you all are just being paranoid hypochondriacs.” Twilight muttered in response, but did indeed begin her way up to the front desk.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” Redheart inquired.

“So everypony keeps telling me.” Twilight replied tiredly.

Pinkie took that moment to pop up beside her dear friend, tutting disapprovingly. “Twilight, you just wasted your chance to say ‘the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated!’ It’s like… the one line everypony has been waiting for you to say! Now you have to fake your death again. We need a redo!” Thankfully, Rarity and Fluttershy were both there to tug the pink pony away, hoping to discourage Twilight from doing any such thing.

Twilight just stared at pinkie incredulously for a few moments before shaking her head and turning her gaze back to the doctor. “Anyways… I’m just here so that we can do a quick little test of my vitals and prove that I’m not dead. Afterwhich, I will go back to reading my books, and these damn ponies who I love and cherish very much, can stop hugging me and crying every few seconds.”

The doctor whose name was Nurse (a fact that has left her estranged to her parents) just blinked at Twilight a few times before shrugging and closing the novel without even bothering to check the page. She’d have time to reread the entire thing again anyways. “Yeah, sure, alright. I had nothing better to do anyway.”

With a quick snatch of her clipboard, she motioned for Twilight to follow her away from her friends and into one of the side rooms, idly chatting as she trotted. “I was the one who did your autopsy, you know. Let me tell you, Princess… seeing you in the Ponyville morgue yesterday was not how I wanted to spend my afternoon. Try not to end up there again, okay?”

Twilight only grunted in response as she followed and sat down on the presented hospital bed. Her posture wasn’t what one would consider ‘welcoming’ or ‘helpful’ even as she followed the doctor’s instructions, just giving glares and grumbling as she folded her forelegs grumpily, but Nurse Redheart was unaffected. There were a lot of stubborn ponies in this town (mostly those of the 'applebucking' variety) and she was well used to patients not being very... well... patient. She just kept up her casual attitude, sitting herself down on a stool adjacent the bed as she began to flip through her clipboard. "Alright, first things first, let’s check your blood pressure."

Doctor Nurse Redheart reached out (and with a surprising amount of a struggle) pulled Twilight’s arm away from her chest before expertly wrapping it in a plastic cuff. A quick flick of a switch had the band slowly inflating ash placing her stethoscope against an artery in Twilight’s leg. After a few moments, she narrowed her eyes and repeated the entire procedure with the other foreleg. "Interesting." She murmured, removing the cuff and placing the stethoscope directly against Twilight's chest.

"Interesting?" Twilight inquired.

"According to my measurements, your blood pressure is... 0 over 0. And your heart rate is 0 beats per minute. Congratulations, Princess. You are dead." Redheart then proceeded to empty a coffee cup into the sink, and began to fill it with a flask of something from a drawer. "And I am too sober to deal with the fact that you're a walking corpse." Drinking on the job wasn’t really recommended in the medical profession, but neither was talking to dead bodies, so Redheart considered it even. Taking a quick swig, she offered the flask to Twilight with a raised eyebrow.

Twilight only blinked owlishly, politely refusing the drink as she lightly placed the frog of her hoof against the inside of her other foreleg, failing to find even the slightest hint of a pulse. “Oh.”

“Oh.” Redheart agreed, taking another long sip.

Explaining that to her friends after the six of them were politely booted out of the clinic was… slightly awkward. The confused, horrified looks on their faces definitely wasn’t making Twilight feel less guilty. They were only disturbed from the ensuing awkward silence by the sound of the hospital doors locking, followed by a hoofwritten sign being slid into the window stating: ‘No Doctors on Duty’.

“...So, ya are dead, then?” Applejack asked, lightly prodding Twilight’s shoulder. “That why yer so darn strong? That… rig her moatus thing?”

“Rigor mortis, dear.” Rarity commented quietly, her expression going rather blank as her mind drifted off to that brand new pail of ice cream she’d be destroying when she got home. Rainbow Dash just coughed awkwardly, scratching the back of her neck.

After a moment of silence, it was surprisingly Fluttershy who spoke up. Not questioning the recent news or development… but a slightly more important issue."Hold on… it wasn’t just Twilight that needed to get checked out. Weren't we supposed to take Spike to the hospital too? You know... for the concussion?"

"Whoops!" Pinkie Pie replied unhelpfully.