A Day in Stalliongrad

A waiting room. You reached the appointment on time. The hospital is less of a hospital and more like a medical super complex, containing medical practices of every kind from the hoof to the neurological. It was a bit hard to navigate, but you eventually found your goal. A charcoal-black earth pony mare sits alongside you, waiting, like you, to be called.

You had to ask multiple ponies to navigate this labyrinthian building. You have announced your presence and are now waiting.

Take a magazin. Don’t make eye contact. Behave and stay silent.

Oh, look a mare. “Hello,” you say. Use your whole name, show her your elegance, “my name is Lost Red Thread.”

“Hi.” She answers abruptly. She looks outside out of the window.

“What’s your name?”

She frowns. You are annoying her.

“Chimney Sweep.”

“That’s a nice name. It’s funny how our names work, isn’t it? Let me guess, you work as chimney sweep.”

“Yes.” She sighs.

“My name is just a cosmic joke. Maybe I can work as a detective, because of the Red Thread thing, and. That’s why I’m here, to get my health attested for my job. Why are you here?”

“Lung cancer.”

In slight confusion you look around, needing to figure why she’s here. You look and see the signs and see the ‘oncology practice’ next to the ‘Work safety and health practice’.

They must be sharing the same waiting room.

“Oh, sorry.” There is crushing silence.

Like a godsend, a call comes from the secretary, “Mister Thread.”

“Oh, that‘s me, good luck with your treatment, Chimney.”

“Thanks,” she responds automatically in a low tone.

The room you are in has an examination bed, that you’re currently sitting on, posters on the wall that show of the inner workings of the body’s different parts, equipment that you don’t even have names for, and a desk with notes and stationery. The hoofwriting on these notes is unreadably bad.

“Móra na maidine duit, so, yer Thread? I’m doctor Four-leaf Clover.”

Incomprehensible.

She likely said ‘hello’.

“Hi, doc.”

The pegasus is carrying a clipboard, with … things written on it – you have no clue. “Let’s get straight to the point. I’ve been asked to give ye a full examination: that means yer going to have a blood pressure, blood test, we’re gonna put you on a treadmill, check yer breathing, rectal exam, –” you stop listening as she continues her long list.

And she continues and doesn’t stop. That is too much for a normal examination.

“Doctor Clover, isn’t that bit excessive?”

“I agree with ye there, mate. But if they ask me for a full examination and want my go, I’m gonna make a full examination. I’m not gonna take any chances. If ye die of a heart attack in a stressful situation, that’d be no good for any of us: for me because I shouldn’t’ve allowed in the first place, the police because they’d’ve bother with the inopportune death of an officer, ‘n you because ye’d be dead.”

Most important state jobs require you to have a fifty percent chance of reaching your pension.

“Couldn’t a unicorn cast like an analyzing spell?”

“Yes, however they only see surface level damages or foreign bodies. If ye got a deformity or tumor, they would be a part of the body. The spells don’t detect ‘em.”

This will take a long time.

Talking would pass the time quicker. Hey, you should ask her for some stories. Doctors always have insane patients.Surely, this mare won’t have cancer.

The doctor takes out a sphygmomanometer. “Doctor Clover, do you have any stories to tell, like any interesting clients.”

“I’m not allowed to share any personal information. Foreleg, please.”

Then anonymize.

You give her your arm; she puts on the apparatus. “You don’t have to tell me their names, just the stories. It would pass the awkward silence. Or like what’s your normal workday.”

She thinks shortly, pumping the sphygmomanometer and then promptly shrugging. “Recently, we had this mare come in. She had the biggest, I mean melon-sized teats, like really large tits, enormous titties, she was almost dragging them on the floor, those gazongas –”

“I get it doc.”

She quickly writes your blood pressure down. “Euhm, yeah, anyway. I love being a doctor. I save lives, save creatures from debilitating diseases, ‘n I think there is nothing better to do with my time. But I have to admit, ” She stands up and takes off the apparatus and walks to the closet to get a syringe. “Eventually ye get to a boring daily rhythm where ye’ve to tell patients not to eat glue ‘n that they should come in before it’s too late because ‘no it won’t fix itself’. I’ve fondle too many balls ‘n tits in my lifetime. Like the mare, she’s the culmination of that. She was lactating without pregnancy because of a hormonal problem.

She didn’t know that. For a reason beyond me, she ignored it until it hurt too much. It’s alright now, we milked her, ‘n let me tell ye, we milked a lot. Not much behind it, she just needs to milk herself once in a while. I don’t blame the patients. They simply don’t know better… sometimes.”

She is lying. She likes ‘em titties.

You barely noticed that she took your blood. She is holding a cup, pointing to a small, curtained area.

“I need ye to piss in this cup.” But she is too invested in her storytelling by now as you go to the curtain. “Let me tell ye, the strangest story I have was whne we had the police come in with a mare. She was fighting and all, so we had to restrain her. It was very clear that she was on something.

Nothing too unusual for us. Those cases happen. Ye make sure they don’t keel over and then ye wait until it flushes out of their system.

We ran the usual test. Ye have to trust me, those tests are trustworthy, we even ran them thrice because it was impossible. She was on everything.”

You give her the pisscup. “What do you mean everything?”

She sees the almost brown liquid. She puts it away. “Ye should drink more water. We need to go to another room.” You two leave the room and walk through the hallway, it’s a long one. “What else should I mean with everything? She took every drug we can test for: heroin, alcohol, THC, literal fluid love, nicotine, meth, fentanyl, salt, bath salt, acepromazine, methylphenidate, paprika, etcetera. We had no idea how she was still alive. But that isn’t the strangest thing. We had her put in a secure room. I have to note, she wasn’t a unicorn or changeling or had anything with her, just an earth pony. If she left the room, let me tell you, we’d have noticed.”

You two reach the room. She puts electrodes on you.

“Sine é.” She says after she’s done, “’n ye can guess what happened next. She disappeared. None of the staff knows what happened, we didn’t get her name, that was a dead-end, it was like she turned into thin air. ‘n that’s it. That’s the whole story. Well, ‘xcept she had strange clothes, making it stranger. Go on the treadmill ‘n put on the mask.”

You do as she tells you, stepping onto the contraption. You breath through a tube.

“When I was a small, wee twit, I haven’t made my doctorate, and when I was just a nurse, pre-revolution, we had a very gruesome case. Now, run as fast as ye can. Take deep breaths.”

You start to run on the treadmill. She pays it half a mind.

“A pegasus entered our hospital. It was turbulent times, accidents happened more frequently, and they were brutal. Well, we didn’t even notice it was a pegasus at first, the wings were gone. That’s how bad it was. Ye could see the muscle tissue in her face ‘n in left foreleg moving. Pretty much everything else on her left and partially her right side had burns, second, third, ‘n fourth degree. That’s enough.”

You slow down, your out of breath, gasping quickly. You could swear you could taste the iron of your blood. Your mouth is a desert.

“Ye should do more sport.”She gives you a side-eye. “The pegasus entered our hospital completely calm, dropping blood on the floor. Calmly, she walked to our secretary ‘n says ‘I need medical attention’. Ye can see the muscles of her eye moving. She literally grinded her left face away, ‘n the friction of the air ‘n ground gave her burns, she was probably in shock.

That moment did burn itself in my brain. Miraculously, she survived, we saved her, somehow.” She takes out a rubber glove and wears it. “We were even able to reattach her wings, we found one on a roof and the other on the street. But she was never able to fly again. Nonetheless, overall, it was a happy end. Better than dead.

Now, turn around.”

Oh no. The clove covers her whole forearm.

The prostate exam.

You need to escape. Jump out of the window, kick her, anything, just to spare you the embarrassment.

“Oh, I still remember these times, they sucked. Today’s a utopia compared to our pre-revolution. Lift your tail.”

She is going to stick her hoof – no worse her whole foreleg – in your ass, and she will talk about politics while doing it. You aren’t even old enough for that.

“Wait, am I not too young for prostate cancer? Shouldn’t another male do it?”

“Yer employer requires all stallions to have been searched for any potential tumors. Also, yer thinking of a misconception only zebras have a potential of getting prostate cancer after fifty. Ponies don’t have that luck. Yer ass has to be searched after your fourties. And do ye want to wait for a male doctor, or just have it behind ye?”

Stay put and do as she tells. Trust the expert.

You lift your tail, and she inserts.

“Anyways, of course, our hospital isn’t perfect. We still have shortages of certain medicines that we had in pre-revolution times because of our isolation from Equestria.”

“Why are you –”

“Ye prefer awkward silence, mate?”

You don’t. “Keep talking.”

“In the ol’ times we were pretty much on a permanent skeleton crew, the hospital CEO wanted to make a profit after all. Almost all problems back then were traced to our lack of personnel. We were constantly stressed. ‘n we couldn’t even fight back. Like what could we’ve done? Strike? If we stop working creatures die.”

You feel violated. She seems to be satisfied with her search of your rectum, pulls out, takes off the clove, and throws it into the bin.

“Yer healthy.” She looks at her notes, “Oh, it’ll do. To the next room, we’re gonna get an x-ray. Have ye heard of this new potion that is going around? decrementum or something like that. I can’t quite remember the name.”

“No.”

“It’s a very regulated potion ‘n per regulation is mixed with other potions, so that it doesn’t kill the drinker. I have no idea how my two patients got that stuff. Not that they’ll ever tell me. Ye know how it is, where there is will there is a way, ‘n where there is horniness there is too much will and too little brain. Enter the chamber, mate, ‘n stand still.”

You enter the radiology chamber. There are hoofs and arrows painted on the floor to direct you. You really could use something to drink right now.

It’s time to get bombarded with radioactivity.

Clover hides behind a bunker-like construction out of lead. It hums, then quickly stops again before you even processed it. Doctor Clover leaves the bunker.

“While this develops, let’s go back.” You two now walk back to the room of origin, “now where was I? Okay, so, this mare enters, looking healthy, however walking a bit weird. She explains her situation. Or better said, she tries to, being embarrassed ‘n unclear what her problem is. She says something about trying to be more experimental ‘n trying things out. We figured it out pretty quickly – there’re too many cases where ponies get dick-shaped things ‘accidentally’ inserted and stuck.

When we figured it out, I tell you, in the medical community we say to this situation ‘this’s bonkers, why did you think this was a good idea?’ As it turns out, they somehow got some of that decrementum stuff. The stuff that shrinks creatures temporarily. She, in attempt to fulfil her fetishy kink, shrank her partner. Her partner is all for it. To put it short, she couldn’t get her partner out, so, we had to do it. The worst is not that, despite the embarrassment, despite the discomfort, despite the unholy amount of surgical crowbarring ‘n lube, when I asked them to not do that again, they said ‘don’t worry, we’ll be more careful next time.’” She ends that with tiredness in her voice.

Laughing at other’s misfortune and weirdness isn’t good. You can’t help but snicker a little.

“Mate, that’s not funny. That’s fecking strange.”

Quickly defending yourself. “Doctor, I don’t see what the problem is. They are adults.”

“Yeah, yeah, if they wouldn’t waste my time.”

You reach her office – you think it’s her office—you have no idea how a hospital operates.

“One last thing.” She opens another locker, pulling out scissors and another cub. Before she even tells you, she pulls out a string og hair from your shoulder region making you flinch. “I’m gonna bring the samples to analysis. Wait here.”

Why do they need your hair?

They already have your bodily fluids. They are going to make you cry for your tears next.

You’re still very much parched. “Do you have something to drink?”

“Yeah, sure.” And she leaves, before quickly coming back “,here.”

You take the glass, and drink it, “thanks for the – strawberry milkshake? It’s, uhm, good.” It is in fact very good.

Why would a hospital have milkshakes?

“Yeah, it is. It’s interesting how the body works, mate, ain’t it?! She did have a strawberry cutie mark.”