“Again, I’m so, so sorry for the mess, Nurse Redheart,” Rarity apologized. “I insist I pay you extra for the trouble.”

“I appreciate the offer, Rarity, but I really can’t accept,” Redheart said as she mopped up the last of Insano’s blood. “I’ve mopped up far worse than vomit, and I don’t charge extra for just doing my job. Besides, I could be investigated for malpractice if I put a charge like that on the books.”

Rarity sighed. “Very well.” She hummed in thought and brightened as she said, “Instead, I’ll take you to the spa tomorrow, strictly off the record. I won’t take no for an answer.”

Redheart giggled. “Okay, okay, I’ll take some time off and go with you. Can’t resist the demands of a lady such of yourself, can I?”

“No, you can’t,” Rarity said with a smirk and a wink.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes as the nurse blushed and the fashionista giggled. “Insano was right; you two really do need a room,” she commented as she continued to pace back and forth. She winced and added, “If I ever say the words ‘Insano was right’ again, slap me.”

“Tell me why I shouldn’t slap you right now,” Rarity demanded, her face red as she crossed her forelegs over her chest in her seat.

“Oh come on, you were obviously flirting,” Rainbow Dash groaned.

“So? Now that my sexuality is out in the open I am more than comfortable expressing it, unlike some mares I could mention,” Rarity said, closing her eyes and turning up her nose.

“I’m not a filly fooler,” the pegasus growled, shooting Rarity a glare.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself, dear?” Rarity asked coldly through half-lidded eyes.

Dash was about to respond when Applejack cut in. “Ah said that we would discuss who bucked who and who wants to buck who later; now ain’t that time. Ah doubt that Nurse Redheart here wants to hear your petty squabblin’ anyway.”

“Why not? We haven’t got much better to do,” Pinkie said, squirming in her seat.

“I’d like to get it over with, myself,” the recently revived Fluttershy admitted, hiding behind her mane and pressing her hooves shyly together.

“But Twilight is gettin’ patched up right now by Tenderheart,” Applejack pointed out.

“And now that I’m done cleaning, I can take one of you ladies back and get to work,” Redheart interjected as she put the cleaning supplies away. “Who wants to go first?”

“Can I go first?” asked Rainbow Dash. “I can’t even sit down because of all these splinters in my plot.”

Pinkie giggled and Applejack chuckled at her misfortune, both of them earning a glare from the pegasus.

“Follow me, then.” Redheart trotted down the hall, the pegasus following. Rainbow Dash noticed her plot bounced slightly with each step, which prompted her to cover that thought up in the tarp of denial before shoving them in her mental closet, covering the door in chains and placing seven different locks on it.

Dash was snapped out of her totally heterosexual musings when Redheart spoke again. “Right in here, Miss Dash.” The nurse was holding a door to one of the clinic’s rooms open for her.

“Th-thank you,” she stammered as she trotted into the room. She heard the door close behind her.

“This may take a while; you and Applejack took a lot more damage than the other girls,” Redheart said as she set down the bottle of disinfectant goo and took the tweezers in her mouth.

“Heh, well, we fight up close and personal,” she boasted, pretending to look over her hoof and rubbing it on her chest in a stereotypical cool way. “Timber wolves didn’t stand a chance.”

“Still means they did a number on you,” Redheart said around her tweezers. “Now, bend over the exam table; I’ll do you a favor and get those splinters out of your gluteus first.”

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow and let out an articulate, “Huh?”

The nurse giggled and rolled her eyes. “Your plot, Rainbow Dash.”

The pegasus blushed up as she followed her orders, putting her front half on the exam table and presenting her rear to the nurse. “I knew that,” she fibbed.

“Of course you did,” Redheart teased.

Dash was about to give a rebuttal when she felt a stabbing pain in her plot. She gritted her teeth and hissed. “What was that?”

“That was me pulling out one of the splinters,” Redheart said. “The fact that they’re in open wounds makes it hurt that much more, I would guess.”

“Ya think?!” she asked, her voice cracking.

“Wow, I didn’t know that the great Rainbow Dash had such a low pain threshold,” Redheart teased.

The pegasus tensed up and gritted her teeth, determination and pride burning in her eyes. “I can take anything you can throw at me.”

“We’ll see about that,” the nurse chuckled before going once more unto the breach.

Rainbow Dash pressed her hooves into the cloth cover of the exam table and screwed her eyes shut as the pain commenced. Her lips desperately held back yelps when Redheart had to dig in deep for a splinter. She kept her body rigid to avoid kicking out her back hooves out of reflex from all the unwelcome contact back there. There was nothing she could really do about the tears rolling down her cheeks, however.

The pegasus briefly contemplated how pain seemed to turn seconds into hours and minutes into eternities. Perhaps pain was the key to controlling time.

“I think that’s all of them in this area,” the nurse said as she flipped on the sink, washing off the tweezers. “That was the hard part. Now you just relax while I apply the disinfectant to all the wounds I cleared. After that little break, it’s back to extracting splinters.”

Rainbow Dash sighed in relief. “Any break from that torture is fine by me.”

“Torture, huh?” Redheart repeated. “That big blue bottom of yours must be pretty sensitive if that qualified as torture.”

Rainbow Dash’s face burned a bright red. Somewhere, deep within the recesses of her mind, one of the locks on her mental closet clicked open. “Hey, my plot is none of your business!”

“It is my business now that I’m forced to look at it while I’m patching you up,” she retorted.

Rainbow Dash was about to respond, but was interrupted by a shiver up her spine as the nurse poured the cold, thick disinfectant on her flanks. Another lock clicked open. “Forced? What, it’s not good enough for you?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Rainbow Dash, are you seriously offended that I don’t find your wound-covered rump sexy?” Redheart asked, her eyebrows arched in confusion but her lips curved up in amusement.

The pegasus blushed and checked her mental closet. Seeing two locks undone, she promptly snapped them shut and relocked them. “N-no; I was just wondering, is all,” she said, turning back around.

“Uh huh,” the nurse said, her tone beyond incredulous and into you’ve-gotta-do-better-than-that territory. “Well, I’ll say that whenever you do get a coltfriend, he’ll have something very nice to look at every time he watches you leave. Is that good enough?”

“Yeah, sure, thanks,” Dash grunted back, folding her forelegs and resting her head on them. She gasped when she felt two warm hooves on either side of her plot, her wings snapping up at attention. All seven locks snapped open and clattered onto the floor. “Wh-what are you doing?”

“Rubbing the disinfectant in,” Redheart explained. “This stuff isn’t magic; I need to rub it deep into the cuts for it to work properly.”

The pegasus bit her lip as the nurse got to work, rubbing her hooves and the goop over her plot. Not to bite back a moan, of course not. It was… because she was so uncomfortable. Yeah, that was it.

The chains covering her mental closet rapidly rusted away.

“It stings,” she hissed, shifting the weight in her hind legs as the burn of the disinfectant seeped into her wounds.

“The burn means it’s working,” Redheart assured, giving Dash a small, comforting pat on the hip.

The contents of Rainbow Dash’s mental closet started banging on the door.

The pegasus bit into her foreleg and screwed her eyes shut, throwing herself at the closet door and using herself as a barricade. The pounding got louder and louder as the rubbing stung less and felt better. “I am not a filly fooler, I am not a filly fooler, I am not a filly fooler,” she whispered to herself over and over, hoping that repeating something long enough would make it so.

“Wow, you really got tense,” the nurse marveled. “I know I’m not Aloe or Lotus, but my massages can’t be that bad, can they? You need to loosen up, or pulling out the rest of those splinters really will be torture.” The mare’s hooves pressed firmer and more insistently against her patient’s plot and flanks, each rub going slower as she tried to get the knots out of the pegasus’ muscles.

The closet door could hold it no longer. It was blasted off of its hinges, and out poured a torrent of rainbows, cats, velvet gloves, and other mentally constructed euphemisms for desperately wanting to buck another mare until they both screamed so loud they could shatter glass. Rainbow Dash floated along on what used to be the door until she came across the tarp she’d used to cover the thoughts that grew into the gayvalanche that had tumbled out of the closet. She fashioned the tarp into a sail, dubbed her raft the S.S. I Love Vagina, and sailed the seven sexy seas of her mindscape.

The gay panic drowned in a flood of filly foolery, Rainbow Dash shivered and blushed, relaxing on the exam table as the nurse did her work. “Thanks, nurse; that really hits the spot,” she purred.

“The G-spot, or is there another I’m missing?” Redheart purred back.

Rainbow Dash’s face turned so red that Applejack could mistake her for an apple and buck it, and in the non-sexual sense. Unless the cowpony was into that sort of thing. “Wh-what?”

“Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist,” the nurse giggled. “And please, just call me Redheart. We’ve seen each other enough, what with your accidents practicing new stunts and all.”

The pegasus’ blush somewhat subsided. “Yeah, I am in here a lot, aren’t I?”

“Don’t feel ashamed about it; every pegasus needs to crash a few times before they can really fly. In a metaphorical sense, of course,” the nurse assured. A pang of disappointment struck Rainbow Dash as she felt the nurse’s hooves pull away. “That should be enough rubbing for the disinfectant. Ready for round two of tweezer torture?”

Rainbow Dash nodded reflexively, not really registering it or the question. “Um, Redheart?”

“Yes, Rainbow Dash?” she said as she went over to the sink to retrieve the tweezers.

“You’ve been a really awesome nurse for me for years, y’know? And I was wondering if, I don’t know, maybe… I could pay you back with dinner sometime?” she asked as casually as she could manage.

There was a small clinking sound as the nurse picked up her tool. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Um… yes?” she confirmed, cringing a bit.

Redheart simply giggled as she walked over to Rainbow Dash’s side. “I’d love to. I’ll let you know when I have some time off.”

The pegasus sighed in relief. “Trust me, you won’t regret it. I know this radical place on the other side of town, and maybe afterward we could – b-buck!” she yelped when she felt the cold feel of tweezers dig into her side.

“Was that a curse or a serious proposition?” Redheart snickered.

Rainbow Dash gave her a glare through her wildfire of a blush and mumbled, “Just get back to work; we’ll talk about this later.”

“Roger that,” the nurse giggled before digging for another splinter.

“Motherbucker!” Next Chapter: Freudian Avalanche Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 48 Minutes