When you receive a positive result you always have to take an extra test just to be completely sure. Perhaps somepony from the laboratory had unintentionally switched the blood samples with somepony else's, or maybe some other mistake had happened with it. Sadly, things like these never happen. Because the doctors are too skilled to make such mistakes.
In order to get the answer not told by mail, like the last time, I had to show up at the hospital on Wednesday at 9:20 AM. Most of the week I had blocked it off, desperately trying to ignore the crushing burden on my fragile heart with a fake smile I gave to my friends and loved ones, but the closer I came to Wednesday morning, the harder it became for me to ignore it, I was hoping for a negative result even though I knew that it was naive.
I'd got some sleeping pills, because the time before I fall asleep was the worst. When you just lie there in bed all alone and can’t do anything besides waiting for sleep to claim you, when your thoughts fly uncontrollably and your mind wanders to the questions you tried to scare away the whole day.
On Wednesday morning I woke up at 8 AM. I turned on the TV to see the morning news, but I wasn't really paying any attention to it since I was very nervous. My heart thought that I was out running, it pounded at least just as much, a lot more than it should have done. I took a shower, put on a scarf, I left the home and headed to the doctor.
As I entered the hospital, I noticed my doctor talking to another patient. I took an unimportant magazine, flipped through it mindlessly, not even trying to read it. I could only think of the test which would most certainly be positive again, although my naivety wanted something different.
The doctor bid his patient farewell, he didn't look at me. He trotted into his office and closed the door behind him. I could hear him wash his hoofs inside. He opened the door leading into his office and called my name. I was the only patient left in the waiting room. I arose from the chair and trotted into his office, my body shaking a little while I tried to tell myself that it's naive to hope. I sat down on the chair at the opposite side of his desk and looked at him unemotionally. He looked up and smiled.
“Fluttershy, I have some good news for you!” The doctor said.
I started to shake all over and I could barely hold myself up. I felt like I was about to faint, but I managed to stammer out a “What?”
“Your second test is back, and it’s negative! It shows no signs of infection at all.”
“No, what?” I felt tears welling up in my eyes, my chest starting to hurt, the unpleasant sense of a limb being fallen asleep. I put one of my forelegs to my neck. “But how?”
“The five varieties, we talked about last time, are all negative in this test. Still, we've got to take one more test now to ensure that this test is safe. In the laboratory, they have an assumption of what had happened.” He then gave me a long technical explanation about a machine that had not been properly cleaned before my blood was tested – I barely heard half of it, I stopped crying, thinking back on what the last week had brought me of pain. I hated hospitals. I hated the doctor for having done this to me in the first place. Yet, I loved the doctor for giving me this new message. I'm not infected! – was all I could think about.
“But how... uh, how safe is this then? Can I...” The tears came forth again, it didn't help any to try to stop them. The doctor put his hoof on my shoulder, I tried to stand up, but my legs apparently hadn’t gotten the message. I fell down, hitting my head on the edge of the table. Now I was lying on the floor and I wondered how I ended up there.
“Be careful now, so you don't beat yourself up again.” The doctor said as he helped me getting back up on the chair. I put a hoof to my head. “It's quite certain that it was a mistake in the laboratory, but we have to take a new blood sample and run another test on it to provide the final result. Can you do it now?”
“Yes... yes, I can.” I got my tears under control and he took another blood sample, and after half an hour, when I wasn't any longer dizzy from the hit, I took my leave with the doctor. In a week I’ll go there again to get my final answers – again. We also talked about getting me a psychologist to help me sitting through it, but that hardly seemed necessary anymore.
It was hard to think of something specific, and yet my thoughts wandered to a young stallion that I'd met at the market some days before I had received my former positive result. Maybe now I stood a change with him.
But more importantly, now I didn't have to make my parents cry. I trotted outside with my scarf and noticed that there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. The sun was shining! I didn't have to feel bad or guilty, I didn't have to be ashamed anymore. I could go to work again and take care of all my animal friends. I could go out with all of my friends again and dance all night long without having to worry about being sick. I could throw out my sleeping pills as I wouldn't be needing them anymore. Never before in my life had I ever been so happy, so utterly happy. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, the other ponies stared at me when I bounced happily past them like Pinkie Pie, but I don't care. I had never been and probably will never again in my life experience such joy, such happiness, to be so relieved and so completely free as I was right then and there. I kept yelling “Yay!” Each time so loudly that I would have made Rainbow Dash proud, until my voice braked like a nervous teenager. I looked up towards Celestia's sun, I smiled, I laughed, but then suddenly a cloud glided in front of the sun and took its warmth away from me.
My alarm clock rings. The clock is 8 AM. Back in reality. I have to go to the doctor at 9:20 AM, because I've AIDS.
The End
