Check my journals if you're confused about what this is!

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Large Dose's schedule always opened up after breakfast - the morning duties of bathing, cleaning, and herding all her assigned patients to the cafeteria was no small task, so the short reprieve offered by them eating (or at least trying to) was welcome indeed. It allowed her time to scoot behind the food counter to prepare her own drink, occasionally casting her eyes up over the glass to check up on them. Were she in a different wing of the hospital, the high security wing, the mere act of leaving a patient's side would get her flank kicked to the street if something happened. But here, she didn't need to hover as much. While they certainly needed care, they weren't dangers to themselves or others. At least not purposefully - a black eye or cut wasn't unheard of when wrangling a panic attack to the floor.

Taking a deep sip of her coffee - black - the purple mare let her eyes graze over her patients. Breakfast was an opportunity to socialize, uninterrupted by the sturdy, padded walls of a cell, nor the equally sturdy eyes of a therapist, group counselor, or, like her, a nurse. Large Dose personally preferred the term 'caretaker' for her position. It was less medical than she had anticipated, though she was hardly complaining. Finding a job (not some lousy unpaid internship!) in the medical field, straight out of Canterlot university, had been a godsend. Now she had experience under her belt and more patience than a saint.

A large crash had interrupted her train of thought. A plate crashing to the floor, oats and milk splattering across the tile. Poor fella - though their assigned nurse soon scurried over, assuring and cooing into the panicked unicorns ear, defusing situation nicely. Dose took it as a sign to return to her own patients. Carefully capping her coffee, her horn ignited into a familiar blue flow, gently levitating it above her head as she returned to the main floor, eyes dancing about the hall for any of hers that needed help. She hated to interrupt her patients unless she needed to.


"Miss Dose?" A meek, bashful little whinny from behind, accompanied by a gentle tug to her white tail. A smile tickled at her muzzle. She knew the voice quite well.

"Yes, Baby Powder?" She responds brightly, turning to face the stallion. One of her first patients, he was quite the sight indeed. "Do you need a change?" She had to stifle a giggle as he squeaked, turned to the goofy bulge in the back of his medical gown, and turned back.

"I think I'm dry!" Knowing him, there was about a fifty-fifty chance that he was soggy back there, but that could wait for later. "I, um, was just wondering, if you could feed me?"

He hopefully whinnied, pink tail flickering about behind him. It was always so hard to say no.


"Baby, we both know Doctor Medulla doesn't want me doing that anymore, as much fun as it is." The way his smile drooped was both endearing and heartbreaking. "It's for your own good, Baby. If you ever want to get back out into the real world, then you have to become a bit more independent. Out there, there isn't nurses to change you, or feed you, or tuck you in." Her hooves gently tuck his mane behind his ears.

"But that pony over there is getting fed!" He weakly rebuts, gesturing his hoof down the hall. Dose didn't even need to look.

"Skyfall can't feed herself, you know that. I'm sure if she could, she would be jumping at the chance to be a big girl and feed herself!" A playful little pat on his tush. "And so should you! You wanna be a big boy, don't you?" A hopeful little beam at the fully grown stallion as he scuffs his hooves on the floor.

"...no?"

Sigh. "Well, that's okay too." With long-term patients like the childish stallion, one had to take victories when they could. Dose couldn't save every patient. Nor was it her job to. She was to simply make sure they were fed, bathed, happy, and followed the schedule in a timely manner. But that didn't mean she couldn't try to help where she could. "Here... if I get your bib from the confiscation drawer, do you promise to eat your food all by yourself, like a big boy?" She gently pets over one of his wings, soothing down the ruffled feathers. "Please?"

It was his turn to sigh, scuffing his hoof at the tile. "If you really want, I, I guess, Nurse Dose."