---- The Final Gifts to a Teacher ----

---- An Apple a Day to Keep the Doctor Away ----

It has been about a week since I’ve been put in this cave of white and sterility, forced to lie in this bed without moving for days on end.  Not that the blank linen isn’t comfortable, just that it leeches all the color from the world.  I can’t stand it here, watching as nothing but nurses and doctors come in and out of the room to check on me or to twiddle one of the many knobs that were stuck onto the devices attached to me.  Yet, with all the time that they’ve all spent “working” on me, none of them can tell me why I hurt so much or even how much longer I have to stay in here.  All they do is fix me with a sad stare and continue on with whatever task that they were performing.

I sit up in the bed, pushing myself against the cruel force of gravity and eventually succeeding.  My room is empty save for a few unoccupied chairs and a vacant couch, all white to match the walls.  I was on the verge of just flopping back into my usual position until a flash of light, a small sparkle outside of my window, caught my attention.  It seemed to call to me from the outside, drawing me to stand and walk towards it.  A sharp pain in my side had soon put an end to any notion of walking, the harsh grip of it throwing me into the mattress carelessly.

“Cheerilee, you can’t get up like that, you could hurt yourself.”  A mare’s scolding voice came from somewhere off to my right.  The wail of pain that had probably come from my mouth must have brought the light-grey pony with a caduceus cutie mark into my room, a concerned look plastered on her face as she gently re-positioned me into a more comfortable position.  “You know you can’t walk around like that whenever you want.”

I just let the words slide over me.  When a phrase or a few words get told to you in the same tone a hundred different times from a handful of different ponies, you either accept it or ignore it.  I wasn’t going to let myself be beaten by whatever was hurting me.  The nurse finally managed to get me back under the covers with my head up against the pillow and backed away, nodding to herself before stepping out of the room.  The few seconds that ticked by seemed to stretch on into ages, taking years upon years to pass over my world.

A coughing fit shatters the silence as it wracks my body with spasms, bringing the spike of red-hot pain once more into my side.  The torture goes on for what seems like hours, gratefully passing faster than the silence that had held the room silently a moment before.  Once they subside, I pull my hoof away from my mouth that I didn’t know I had put there, a jolt of shock passing through me as I look at the red spatter that now decorated the normally-pink appendage.