Twilight Sparkle, M.D.

Ponyville Hospital, Day 7, noon

I know absolutely nothing about parasprite bites.

In the middle of the moment, when Redheart would’ve talked up a storm about how incompetent I was, I figured the best way out would be to fake it. Now, as I page through book after book and dread the onslaught of patients, I realize the flaws in my thinking.

“Come on, come on, where is it?” I ask out loud, even though my fellow doctors could probably hear me from the other room. “I could’ve sworn there was a chapter on magical pathogens somewhere…”

Okay, I do have some area of expertise when it comes to these sorts of things, but it was never a situation I anticipated in Canterlot. And believe me, I anticipate everything. I always took the best notes in my rare ailments classes, but we only spent, what, a day on parasprites, if even that? As fast as they might reproduce, they’re still an endangered species in most of Equestria.

But, as I often found myself saying these days—not in Ponyville.

Eventually, I give up looking through my limited bookshelf and cut straight to the point. I know plenty about parasprites, and plenty about insect bites, so I run the facts in my head while I eat what little lunch I was able to pick up. While these sorts of bites can cause allergic reactions in the most severe cases, it’s incredibly rare for such a thing to happen, and parasprites—to my knowledge, at least—aren’t poisonous. Normally, they just cause your typical itching and pain symptoms—yet neither of these line up with the urgency Redheart had in her voice when she told me about it.

Sure, she could’ve just as easily have been pulling my leg, but I still insist that I saw another side to her just now. Not that I’m letting my guard any around her, or letting her know I think this way, but something tells me that even somepony as annoying as her wouldn’t lie about this.

So right now, things could go in either one of two ways: it could be a town-wide pandemic with relatively mild symptoms, or parasprites could be far more dangerous than I could’ve imagined. If you’ve known me long enough, you probably know which theory I’m willing to take.

However, both happen to be thrown out of the water when I see Cheerilee, the first patient to come in with these symptoms. Seeing the job title on her paperwork is enough to alert me to the issue—if bug bites are enough to keep a schoolteacher out of the system, everything has to be far worse than I thought.

I practically take one deep breath after another as she comes through the door, covered in multicolored spots the likes of which I’ve never seen before. And then, only moments later, she faints on the waiting room floor.

Twilight Sparkle, M.D.

Ponyville Hospital, Day 7, afternoon

Dr. Twilight Sparkle doesn’t make mistakes. Dr. Twilight Sparkle doesn’t make mistakes. Everything I do happens for a reason, and I always come back at the end. Dr. Twilight Sparkle doesn’t make mistakes.

When I was a filly, I didn’t have the kinds of coping skills I do now. When Redheart asked me why I hide my emotions, it’s all because of situations like this, ones that I thought could never happen again. Everypony I knew would laugh whenever I freaked out, had one of my little “Twilight Explosions.” It was adorable then.

When your doctor is watching you with bated breath as you show up with something so rare that she doesn’t even know how to handle it, barely keeping herself from hyperventilating, it is not adorable. It’s something that I’ve spent years and loads upon loads of bits crushing into a barely recognizable dust, along with anything else that could keep me from being the most efficient doctor possible. Doctors, after all, do not cry unless somepony dies, and after a while, even that grows numb.

I bite down every last feeling of despair, fear, and everything else I’ve been trained to tune out while scanning the patient’s vital signs. Nothing appears to be wrong with her heart rate, and other than the fact that her comatose body is lying right in front of me, there’s no other indication that she’s in severe condition. That, at least, rules out some of the worst possibilities.

The pockmarks all over her, on the other hoof, are another matter entirely. For them to have spread so quickly, she had to have been in closer contact with parasprites than anypony else in Ponyville. As I’ve waited on her, I’ve had to shuffle back and forth between other bite victims, and yet nopony seems to be showing any signs other than an itch that, in the nearby apple farmer’s words, “smarts like burrs on a jackrabbit.”

As I pace towards the waiting room and back into the examining area, I can distinctly hear Rarity lecturing the panicked public on the benefits of clear hoof polish as an itching remedy.

For the love of all things holy, I have never felt so relieved to see somepony think they can do my job by listing off a bunch of old pony’s tales. All we need is Fluttershy going on about detox treatments, and maybe they won’t notice my utter incompetence.

I pick up a book on entomology from the hospital library, figuring maybe it’d have more information about parasprite infections, or that maybe finding a book on such an obscure topic would be fate. By the time I go back to Cheerilee’s room, she’s only just barely beginning to wake up, and I can feel an invisible stopwatch over my head. I flip to the book’s index as quickly as I can, and just like that, the answer hits me between the eyes.

With most cases in the medical world, things are aptly named and categorized based on their most prevalent traits. Thankfully, while the parasprite happens to be a rarity in innumerable ways, it certainly isn’t one in this case.

Or, in less eloquent words: para-sprite. Para-site. Duh.

I moan, realizing that getting annoyed at the endless punning of the world is, at least, one step above a panic attack. To make things even more surprising, it turns out that the necessary treatment for parasprite bites is only slightly different than the normal parasite regimen, and by that, I mean it that it takes twice as many pills to cure. Apparently, even with their strange and disgusting reproductive habits, larval parasprites still lay eggs, which burrow into the skin like an odd combination of ticks and head lice.

As a smile creeps onto my lips, I remember that there’s a reason why ponies say doctors have low disgust thresholds.

Before I get too far into thought, though, Cheerilee begins to wake up again, at which point I prepare to put the mask back on. Never let the patient know your weaknesses. Give them the best show possible, with the best results.

And the most important thing I ever learned in medical school: be sure to get the facts as quickly as possible, especially when something doesn’t add up.

“I’ll tell it to you straight,” I say just before she responds. “Your symptoms don’t line up with anypony else’s. To my knowledge, nopony’s reached your level of severity. How long have you had these bites?”

Cheerilee just stares off into space, as if she barely comprehends the question. Her eyes are glazed and green like somepony under a changeling’s spell, though I realize the irony of comparing one insect creature to another only after I complete the thought.

“I wish I could give you some,” she drawls, “but I already ate all of them on my lunch break.”

She glances at a red box sticking out of her saddlebag, about the same size as a typical movie theater snack. In huge print, the label reads, “Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.”

Well, at least she doesn’t have low blood sugar, I tell myself as I try to get through her delirious ramblings.

“What kind of teacher am I, really? I always tell my students to bring enough treats for everypony, and here I am…”

Finally taking in her surroundings, her eyes widen, and she trails off. She has barely enough strength to scratch her head in confusion, which exceeds my expectations considering how much blood the parasite parasprites must’ve sucked out of her.

“How long have I been in here, doc?” she asks. “Will I have to stay the night?”

“Hopefully not. You’re just a bit anemic from the parasprite bites.”

Trying to be as sympathetic as possible against my better instinct, I add, “It might not seem that minor to you, but sometimes, stress can cause the problem to escalate. From what I know of working with foals, that was probably what did you in. And from what we know, your bites aren’t contagious, so you can pick up some iron supplements and antiparasitics from Fluttershy whenever you’re comfortable. So, how long have you been like this?”

Once again, her head stretches up to the sky, or at least as far as her hospital pillow would allow her. Cheerilee places a hoof to her chin in thought, wincing when she realized it was an infected area.

“A couple of days, I’d say,” she replies. “Most of the parasprites were gone by the time I got it.”

Once again, just when this case seems to be making sense, another wrench is thrown into the whole thing. If Cheerilee’s condition matches up with a parasprite infestation, and no other parasites can replicate the symptoms, how could she have gotten it once they’d left? Without thinking, I find myself replicating her gesture, and I realize I probably look like a mocking foal.

Before I can even ask, though, for once all the facts fall straight into my lap. I barely have to press my patient before she admits everything to me, even though a fearful look crosses her face for the slightest of seconds.

“I had all the right safeguards in place, honest,” she begins. “It’s just that some were still left in my house, and I thought it’d be the perfect opportunity. We’re doing an insect unit in my class, and I figured the students would appreciate something rarer.”

“And you don’t think they’d seen enough parasprites these past few days?”

She just smiles in response to my out-of-place remark. While I figure she’s used to hearing ponies mouth off, it still strikes me as more than a little odd.

However, I shake the thought off and tell myself that’s not important. The Ponyville schoolhouse could be ground zero for a second wave of parasprite attacks, and parasprite infections. One could just as easily educate themselves with mosquitoes, or brown recluses, or even deadly scorpions. Why stop at parasprites when you could practically decimate Ponyville’s entire foal population with a single bug?

It takes a few seconds before I notice that I actually said all that out loud, and that Cheerilee is surprisingly not in tears.

“I figured I’d get a lecture like that from you,” she says. “That’s why it took so long for me to get my flank over here. For what it’s worth, though, I have had an exterminator stop by, and I received the brunt of the bites when the parasprites escaped their enclosure. You won’t find anypony else at the school with these things.”

Even as she lectures me in her own way, her voice never goes above a teasing tone, and considering how much time I’ve spent around ponies like Redheart, part of me actually appreciates that. Granted, she still released parasprites into one of Ponyville’s most cherished public institutions, but the way she took all those bites for her students proves she isn’t a complete moron.

Or, at least, that she hasn’t lost sight of her real profession like I have. I realize that maybe that’s what Celestia meant when she sent me here: that in order to succeed, I have to see my patients as more than just ponies below me. That I have to ask myself when I stopped caring and get myself back to that point.

I sure know I wouldn’t take a swarm of parasprites for this town, but maybe I’ll get there someday. Against all my training, somehow I soak in this sappy, sentimental feeling as I treat Cheerilee on autopilot. Next thing I know, I’ll be saying that a certain somepony isn’t as bad as I’ve made her out to be.

It takes an hour, maybe two, for me to reprogram myself into thinking this sort of idea is idiotic to the extreme. But it only takes a few moments, just when Cheerilee is about to check out, for me to reach that uncertain state again. That state where I don’t know who I am, or what I’ve worked for, or if I was ever right in the first place.

Cheerilee notices the parasitology book right as she leaves, and yet she isn’t as judgmental as I thought she’d be. She doesn’t think anything of it, and instead starts skimming through for ideas on treatments—or, knowing her, lesson plans.

After she skims through it for a few seconds, I notice her snagging on a single page: the first one, which shouldn’t have anything written on it. Before I open my mouth to respond, though, Cheerilee hands me a tiny note, giggling like a filly before giving it one last look. I recognize the slip of paper instantly as one of the items from Fluttershy’s gift basket and read it with intense dread.

Twilight Sparkle,

This is from my personal collection. I figured you might need it. Remember, never be afraid to ask for help! <3

Doctor Scarlet Redheart

Numerous thoughts race through my head, from Redheart signing the note with an uncharacteristic heart to sheer shock at how she was able to get the book there so quickly in the first place. And yet somehow, one reigns supreme among them all.

Is everypony in this town trying to get us together?!

Author's Notes:

Either that letter is planted, or Redheart's had a change of heart?! Either way, it's sure to be a great part next time.

Every great medical show has to have an episode where someone randomly faints and they're rushing to recover them in time. My apologies to Jack of a Few Trades for making it Cheerilee.