Beep... Beep... beep....

Well, I thought. This can't be good.

The most disorienting part of regaining consciousness is the realization that you lost it. I consequently spent several seconds taking inventory of my situation. I was awake. I was lying prone on what felt like a hospital gurney, and from the feel of it I was wearing a hospital gown. I could feel wires or tubes snaking up and down my arms and across my chest. The beeping next to my head had to be a heart monitor then. What on Earth or Equestria had happened?

All my limbs seemed intact; I didn't feel any particular pain... no, I rescinded that; my chest ached a bit, and for some reason the pain felt vaguely familiar... like someone had spent some time stubbing a cigarette out on my sternum.

I suddenly realized I was afraid to open my eyes.

My last recollection had been the battle with Mayhem, and the sight of Rainbow Dash with an alicorn horn. Then everything went blank... and now I was lying in a hospital bed, something I was morbidly familiar with from my life on earth and my poor health. I was scared to open my eyes. There was a good chance I was in an Equestrian hospital after some mishap.

There was also a terribly good chance that I was waking up in a hospital on Earth--- either some magical backwash, that the same mysterious wave that had tossed me on the metaphorical beach of Equestria had rolled back out to the cosmic sea and dragged me home... or worse; I had never left Earth at all, and that all my misadventures had just been a dream while I lay here, unconscious...

Bracing myself, I slowly opened my eyes.

Yes, I was in a hospital room. A depressingly familiar layout, as I said. There was an IV running to my arm... and from the labels I surmised was a bit more than saline in it. My heart sank to the floor. I cast about to see if anyone was nearby.

        I cannot begin to describe my elation when I saw my hospital roommate... on the bed right next to me was a little brown colt with a caramel-colored mane, wearing a propeller beanie and a cast on his left foreleg.  He was staring at me with wide, worried eyes. Blessed relief, I was in Equestria.

My elation was diminished somewhat when I realized I could hear him whimpering in pain. "Hello there," I said. He jumped a little-- then winced, tears pooling in his eyes. That broken leg must've hurt like hell. Poor little guy. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," I said quietly. "You okay?" The little fellow nodded, but it was obvious he was fighting back tears. Curse the woobieness; the impulse to jump up and cuddle him like a plush toy was unbelievable. I let him recover his control a bit.

"What's your--" I croaked. I had to pause and lick my lips, trying to get my saliva going.  That meant I'd been out for at least a few hours. There was a pitcher of water on the nightstand; I availed myself of it; the water was as cool and fresh as morning dew. "What's your name?" I asked once the dust in my throat had been cut. "No wait-- let me guess," I said, memory suddenly refreshing. I decided to have a bit of fun. "Button Mash, right? Eight years old--- no, scratch that, twelve by now... loves video games, lives with his mom, dad, and big brother. Goes to school at Ponyville elementary."

His eyes went round and his mouth formed an "o". "How'd you know all that?" He asked. The voice clinched it. It was Button Mash alright.

"Haven't you heard? I'm Arthur Arcturus, the man from beyond. Iiii knooow everythiiiing..." I wiggled my fingers at him, making mystic passes in the air.  I chuckled, then coughed as pain spiked in my chest. Ow. Note to self: don't do that again.

Were it possible, his eyes would have gone even rounder. "Really?"

I shook my head. "Not even close," I said with a wink. "I just know a lot of surprising things. And we... may have a mutual acquaintance." I ignored his puzzled look while I searched for and found the button that raised the head of my bed. "I seem to have been under the weather," I said once I was slightly more vertical. "You wouldn't happen to know what happened to me, would you?"

Button shook his head. "No sir. You were here when they brought me here. The nurse got mad at me cause I was cr... cause I was making a lot of noise. She said I was disturbing you." He looked uncomfortable. "You did sort of wake up a bit. I'm sorry--" Unconsciously he tried to move his front leg again. He yelped and froze, trembling. "Ahh... ahh... ahhh..."

I frowned. "Didn't they give you anything for the pain?" I said. I saw no IV for him.

Button nodded jerkily. "They gave me some stuff with a needle when they put my bones back in--" Back in? I grimaced. Eesh, a compound fracture at least-- "But it.. it still hurts a lot." I could guess as much; I could see streaks in his fur where he'd been crying, and his breathing was unsteady. "I asked the nurse for something, but she never came back. And she gets mad if I bug her..."

      "How long have you been here?" I asked gently.

        He bit his lip and looked at the clock on the far wall. "A-about three hours," he said.

Oy. One of THOSE. And yes they do exist, wretched things; nurses with all the nurturing instinct of a cuttlefish. Universal constant, I suppose. But to be fair, it was his side of the story. I scowled at the intercom, thinking. "Do me a favor, Button? Call her again," I said, pointing at the intercom.

The colt looked fretful. "But..."

"Just do it," I said patiently. "I won't let you get in trouble."

Button took the cable in one hoof with all the enthusiasm of a snake handler on his first day. He pressed the call button. The speaker overhead crackled to life. "What is it, Buttons." The voice was terse and impatient. Ahh, the warmth.

Button hesitated. "P-please, Nurse PrunePicker...My leg hurts an awful lot..."

Nurse PrunePicker?? I mouthed to myself.

Nurse PrunePicker sounded just about as pleasant as her name suggested. "Now Button, I've already told you that we can't just be giving out painkillers willy-nilly, just for some crocodile tears..."

Crocodile tears? The boy was in obvious pain! Every inch he moved broadcasted it.

"And those aspirin we gave you an hour ago should be more than enough."

And I was no doctor, but I knew people who'd had compound fractures. They'd been put on portable morphine drips for the pain. Aspirin?? Nothing but bloody aspirin??

"Now you need to be a brave boy, you don't want your family hearing you were a crybaby, do you...?"

"N-no Nurse PrunePicker," Button said. His chin crumpled a little.

"Now be a good boy and lie down and rest." The intercom cut off with a snap. Button seemed to fold in on himself. His face was so bleak... and I knew from experience that despair made the pain all the worse.

Perhaps it was whatever drugs they gave me with that IV, but I was feeling in the mood to misbehave.

"And now for plan B..." I muttered. My cane was dangling off the bed rail; I grabbed it up. Then I reached over to the monitors next to my bed with the hook, snagged a handful of plugs and yanked them out.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE....

There was frenzied galloping in the hallway, and the next moment I was surrounded by a doctor, two orderlies and a nurse.They all froze in surprise at finding their code blue not only awake, but sitting up and sporting (I hoped) a fairly irate expression.  Before any of them could make a move toward me I planted the foot of my cane square on the doctor's nose.

"That boy," I said as loudly and clearly as I could, "Has a compound fracture of the front left leg. He should be on a damned morphine drip and yet has been given nothing more potent than a couple of aspirin in the past three hours. I would consider it a personal favor if one of you medically inclined individuals would be SO KIND--" here my voice had reached a bellow. I let it immediately drop back to its original quiet conversational level "--as to do your expletive-deleted job and administer some care to him." I smiled sweetly. "I'm sure that won't be a problem, will it Doctor?"

The doctor blinked at me, then looked over at Button. He levitated Button's clipboard over to himself and flipped through it. "He's right. Nurse PrunePicker, this patient was supposed to have been put on a drip hours ago; why isn't he?" He looked indignant. Bravo, doctor; you win my approval.

Nurse PrunePicker (who else would it be with that cutie mark of three plums?) tried to bluster. "I didn't see any note to that effect--"

"I left it at the nurse's station," the doctor said, his irritation visibly growing. "And even if you missed it, you should have thought to ask me for a break this severe. Didn't the patient tell you he was in pain?"

"Well-- I--" the nurse fumbled.

"Go fetch a morphine drip, already! Do I need to draw a picture in crayon?" he barked. Nurse PrunePicker's face scrunched up like she'd sucked a lemon. She started to march out the door, fuming. I knew where THAT might lead; I'd known a few sourpuss nurses who took their boredom or irritation out on their patients. I jabbed her in the rump with my cane. She "Yeep"ed and spun around. Once I had her attention, I gave her one of these:

She huffed loudly and stormed out. The two orderlies sniggered as they continued hooking my monitors back up. Ah, not quite a Pony of the People, was she.

The doctor looked at me, chagrined. "I'm terribly sorry about that..." he said. "We have been a bit overwhelmed. Tons of ponies coming in with all sorts of injuries due to that-- that draconequus' antics..."

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to poor Button, here," I said. "he's the one who was in pain."

The doctor looked guilty, then trotted around the foot of my bed to reach Button. "He's right. I am sorry, Button. I should have checked in on you sooner," he said. "If you can hold on just a few more seconds we'll fix you up with something that'll make you feel lots better. Okay?"

"Okay," Button said shakily. He actually ventured a smile. On an impulse I reached over and petted the little fellow on the withers. He actually calmed down a bit, his shakes lessening. The doctor noticed. "Hm. You seem to have a gift for that," he noted.

I withdrew my hand. "For what?"

"Calming hurt foals down," he said. "When we first brought Button in here, he was still howling in pain. It actually brought you around for a moment--- you rolled over, saw him, and just...reached over, started stroking his back, mumbling something, like it was the most natural thing in the world. It actually helped; He calmed down long enough for us to re-set the bones. Once he was taken care of you just rolled back over and went out like a light." The doctor shook his head and grinned. "Darnedest thing."

Thoughtfully I put my hand back on button's back and continued petting. True enough he relaxed. "It helps," Button admitted. "Your paws feel really weird though.."

"Hands," I said.

Miss PrunePicker returned at that moment with a trolley. She humphed and left. "I think I'll be giving you two a different nurse," the doctor said. "Miss PrunePicker... could use a bit of time off I think. Now, close your eyes, Button, and pretend this is a sharp stick..."

I continued stroking Button's back while the doctor hooked him up with an IV and a pain drip. The drugs worked fast; poor little fellow nodded off the instant the pain was numbed. The stress had wrung him out like an old sock. "Huh, it's therapeutic for you too," one of the orderlies noted. "Your heart rate went down by about a fifth while you were doing that."

"Well, now that he's been taken care of," I said, "I might as well ask how I ended up here myself, Doctor....?"

"Panacea," he said. At my raised eyebrow he added, "My parents were very optimistic about my future. As to how you ended up here-- what do you last recall?"

"Things are a mite fuzzy," I admitted. "I remember Mayhem, the bomb---" here I stopped to shudder. That was far too close..."the explosion, the Wonderbolts rescuing Rainbow Dash, finding out she was now..." holy carp. "How she was now an alicorn too--" I frowned. "Aaand, then things seem to iris out at that point."

The doctor hummed thoughtfully at that. "If you don't mind, I'm going to have some memory tests administered later," he said. "You did bang your head pretty good when you fell down."

For the first time I noticed the bandages on my scalp. I reached up to feel them tenderly. "Can't believe I missed that," I muttered.

The doctor chuckled. "Not surprising, considering the painkillers," he said. "You had a rough time of it sir." He got sober. "When you came in, you were suffering a massive attack of Tachycardia. Heart rate hitting close to 200, disoriented, pain shooting through the arms, neck and chest... sound familiar?"

I nodded grimly. Some five or six years prior, I had suffered an attack just like that. Irregular, rapid heartbeat. supraventricular tachycardia. In my case, it was caused by a deformity in the nerve bundles regulating the beating of my heart. The doctors had done an ablation-- basically, they ran a probe up the major artery in my leg, clear up to my heart, then used the probe to burn out the misfiring nerves. That explained the "Stubbed out cigarette" sensation behind my ribcage. "I'm guessing you did an ablation," I said.

The doctor nodded. "I've heard the description of the process the humans used on you," he said. "Oh don't look so surprised-- your physiology and medical history are subjects of great interest in our medical community. Anyway, that information was mighty useful for us; it let us figure out what was wrong almost immediately. And Unicorn magic let us do the ablation far less invasively." He shook his head soberly.

"I'm sensing some unpleasant news coming," I said carefully.

"I'm just disturbed by what we found in our scans," he said. "You had all sorts of chronic issues, sir. Scar tissue all over your heart was just the beginning. Apnea, cardiac strain, swollen legs, to say nothing of the diverticula we had to clear out of your digestive tract and..."

"Wait." I blinked. "Are you saying you fixed all those things?"

Panacea nodded. "Well of course," he said. "They're all interconnected. The sleep apnea puts a strain on the heart, the heart puts a strain on the arteries and lymph glands, which leads to edema and swelling, and all of the above contribute to digestive problems, obesity due to lack of energy--- " he shrugged. "You were already under the knife for the tachycardia, which, all told, only took a few minutes to correct, so it only made sense to go in and take care of all the corollary---"

Poor fellow. He'd probably never been kissed by a half-bald monkey before.