Nothing Less Than Nanometres
Not that she’d ever volunteer this information, but upon waking up and seeing she was in the hospital, Fleetfoot’s very first thought was ‘my mum’s gonna kill me’.
She had promised she’d stop being so reckless in displays. And she’d been doing well! No serious injuries in nearly eight months, which was nearly double her previous record. The only difference this time was that usually when she woke up to see the distinct clinical white of a hospital room, she could remember why she was there.
This time, however, there was nothing but a blank, confusing void where the memory should have been.
Fleetfoot considered herself to be many things. A superlative flyer, a heavyweight with liquor, a tough kid who hadn’t forgotten her Fillydelphia roots.
What she had never considered herself, however, was someone who couldn’t deal with pain.
How grateful she was to be alone when, after trying to sit up, the fire in her wing made her immediately emit a sharp, high pitched yelp.
“Oh gosh! Are you okay?!” an unfamiliar voice called out.
Dammit, so much for keeping your dignity intact then.
But, while she was far from a perfect mare, Fleetfoot wasn’t a liar. So she made no attempts to play off what had just happened. Sure she was embarrassed, but her wing hurt.
A lot.
“Yeah I’m okay,” she replied, craning her neck around to get a better look at her bandaged wing, “Just wasn’t expecting that. I’ve had a couple of scrapes in my time but this is… wow.”
She turned around to get a look at the room’s other occupant. Her new companion was a pale yellow mare with a light purple mane. She was smiling widely. Very widely. She looked like one of those ponies who could get up at six in the morning and with energy to spare.
Simply put, she didn’t look like she had much in common with Fleetfoot.
“Say, aren’t doctors and nurses meant to wear like, uniforms or something?”
“Oh? Oh!” she exclaimed, catching up with Fleetfoot’s point, “Oh no! I don’t work here!”
“Right?” Fleetfoot asked, tone questioning, “Then, uh, who are you?”
“Name’s Parasol!” she replied cheerfully, extending a hoof to shake before withdrawing it with a blush, evidently realising Fleetfoot wasn’t really in a position to be moving around much, “I work in the weather factory! Snowflake template management, it’s kind of a boring gig but it keeps the lights on.”
“That’s, uhm, cool? And, so, why are you here?”
Parasol faltered for a moment, seemingly caught off guard by the question. She fidgeted for a moment, every further second of silence playing on Fleetfoot’s nerves.
Please tell me she’s not just some random fan they let in.
“Well, I guess I brought you in.”
Fleetfoot stared blankly at Parasol.
“You know, after your accident?”
Fleetfoot continued to stare.
“Don’t you remember?”
“To be honest? No I don’t,” Fleetfoot sighed, she never got banged up bad enough to lose her memory, “The last thing I remember is doing a display with the ‘Bolts. I don’t even know what went wrong.”
“Oh, it wasn’t during the display,” Parasol interjected, “You were in the stadium alone, actually. I’d had a late shift at work and I saw you in there when I was heading home. You were… you were amazing. It was some of the best flying I’d ever seen… right up until you hit that cloud bank.”
“One of these days I’ll pay more attention to where I’m going. I guess I should be thanking you for getting me here, then.” Fleetfoot replied, chuckling despite the pain it caused, “Yeah, it’s coming back to me now. Sometimes I’ll just hang out after a show and practise. All the crowds tend to go to the meet and greet so I can just… be. You know?”
Parasol nodded enthusiastically, and Fleetfoot smiled. She was a bit intense, but Fleetfoot found herself liking the mare more and more as they talked.
“You looked free up there, in a way I’ve never seen at a Wonderbolts show,” Parasol said, looking off at nothing in particular, “I guess it’s hard to imagine someone like you not wanting to be up there with your teammates.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Fleetfoot replied, carefully shifting her weight so she could face Parasol, “I love the displays, it's just… well, maybe love isn’t the right word. The displays are fine, they’re good! But… after a while… I love flying so much, but doing the same routines day in, day out. It’s easy to forget sometimes that I wanted to join the Wonderbolts to amaze ponies. To show them flying that they couldn’t have imagined before I made it a reality. I guess I miss feeling like that. To me, what I do as a Wonderbolt really doesn’t feel that amazing.”
She looked at Parasol, who had been quiet for the last few moments.
“Oh god I’m sorry. You’ve done enough for me and now I’m treating you like a therapist.”
“No! No I don’t mind!” Parasol cried, though Fleetfoot suspected she’d say as much regardless of how she truly felt, “I understand what you mean. Like, I love working in the weather station. I love the snowflakes. Ponies think that snow just falls but no! We have to use specific types of flakes to make it work and someone has to keep those templates safe. I love my job, just like you. It feels important, and like I’m making a difference.
“But just like you said, at a certain point it’s just… I came to the weather station because I felt like I could make a difference. But after fixing snowflake templates day in, day out for so many years… you just get tired. I guess that’s why I always watched you practise after shows. You looked free, I felt like maybe I could touch a part of that.”
Fleetfoot looked over the mare. Parasol was lightly blushing, and not meeting her eyes. Despite herself, she couldn’t help but find the curious weather-mare quite cute.
Hold on a minute.
“Wait, what do you mean ‘always watched me’? I thought you saw me when you were heading home one night?”
Parasol blanched.
“Oh… no, I just meant that I, uhm. What I meant was…” she trailed off, realisation creeping into her expression as she increasingly seemed to realise there wasn’t any talking her way out of what she’d just admitted.
“So, how long have you been spying on me?” Fleetfoot asked, cocking an eyebrow and looking unimpressed.
“I’ve not been spying!” Parasol whined, cringing at the accusation, “I just… I meant what I said. The first time I saw you up there, you just looked so free. So natural. Like being up there was the only place you’ve ever belonged. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ever look so at peace with the world. Celestia knows I’ve never felt like that myself. So, I’d come back from time to time to see you. Watching you fly… it made me feel better about a lot of stuff.”
Parasol got up from her chair and put on her saddlebags.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Fleetfoot, I’ll let you get some rest,” she said, before making to leave. Fleetfoot didn’t have a chance to speak up before the door opened, startling them both. A mint green mare with a pale pink mane walked in, and smiled when her eyes fell on Fleetfoot.
“Miss Fleetfoot, back in the land of the living at last!” the doctor called out jovially.
“Yeah, just about,” Fleetfoot replied.
“We’ll need to ask you some questions and get a look at your wing. I’ll give you a few moments to come around, and then we can get on with it. Sounds good?”
“Sure doc, sounds good,” she replied. The doctor’s energy was as intense as Parasol’s, but it didn’t feel as infectious. Her eyes scanned the room and found her newly-discovered training admirer trying to slink out of the door without attracting too much attention.
“Oh, and I see you’ve met Parasol!” the doctor said, slinging a forehoof around the reluctant mare and pulling her back towards the bed, “Without her, you might have been waking up to a very different situation today.”
“Yeah, she told me she was the one who got me to the hospital,. ” Fleetfoot replied, still a touch uncomfortable given the recent revelation of just how well Parasol knew her. Still, as the doctor said, without her intervention this could have turned out a lot worse.
“Thank you Parasol, sincerely. I don’t think I said that properly,” Fleetfoot said, meeting the nervous looking mare's eyes. At once, she stopped trying to fidget her way out of the oblivious doctor’s embrace.
“Is that what she said?! She didn’t get you to the hospital. She called the ambulance, but what she did was much more impressive. Far too modest, this one!”
“We don’t have to tell her-” Parasol tried to interject, only to be talked over again.
“I’d better hope she doesn’t try to get a medical licence, or I might be out of a job! Your wing joint was shattered in the accident. Not to get too graphic, but let’s just say your injury was severe enough that you could see right in, and look at the bone. We didn’t even need to do any incisions to see the damage. With a break that bad, I would have recommended amputation.”
Fleetfoot felt the blood drain from her face. Even though she could feel both her wings at her sides, she swiveled around as much as she could to take another look, just to make sure.
“Wait, I don’t understand,” Fleetfoot began, “If Parasol didn’t get me to the hospital, what did she do?”
“She put the bones fragments back together. All those tiny pieces, she got them back in the right places and then wrapped the wing in your sports towel. Thanks to her, all we had to do was glue the bone in the way she’d fixed it. Honestly, I don’t even think I could have done it as well as she did myself.”
“You did all that?” Fleetfoot said to Parasol, voice barely above a whisper. For her part, Parasol simply tried to cover her face with both wings while blushing furiously.
“It’s good that someone has some modesty. If I had fixed a bone like that I don’t think I’d ever shut up about it!” the doctor elected to answer instead with another one of her boisterous laughs, “Now, there’s a lot of healing ahead of you, but thanks to your new friend, you should heal fine. I’ll have some food sent up, and then after that we’ll need to do some further investigation to decide on a physical therapy plan.”
With that, the doctor bid both mares goodbye and headed out of the room, leaving a stunned Fleetfoot and a red-faced Parasol.
“How… how did you do that?” Fleetfoot asked breathily.
“Fixing snowflakes templates is delicate work,” Parasol replied once she’d managed to remove her wings from her face, “They’re too expensive to make more so, I repair them when they get broken. Your wing bone was the same. Something precious in tiny little pieces. I just… I thought I could help.”
The two of them didn’t say anything for a moment, before Parasol spoke up again.
“Anyway, I should go, I’ve bothered you enough.”
“No wait! I shouldn’t have reacted how I did. I just… ugh,” Fleetfoot sighed roughly trying to find the right words, “I was being selfish. Please, don’t leave. I want to… I mean… I just, don’t want you to leave, you know what I mean?”
Parasol smiled for the first time since her accidental revelation. And Fleetfoot couldn’t help but smile too.
“Yeah, I think I do.”
