Equal Healthcare For All

Starlight Glimmer stood at her desk, editing her latest flyer to attract more ponies to her town. Propaganda is so difficult to do properly, she thought, but what one pony can do, another can do.

A frenzied knocking at her front door! She closed her roll-top desk and locked it with her spell that magically simulated a three-dimensional key, a trick she'd learned at Celestia's School for locking her diary, then rushed to find out what was wanted of her.

Double Diamond, her loyalest loyalist, was out of breath. "Upsy Daisy was hurt in a rockslide near the cave," he said.

Her face fell. "Oh dear. We should tend to her wounds immediately. Where is she now?"

"It's okay," said DD, "We've taken care of her. First we made sure she wasn't dead, then we brought her into town. Her leg was broken, so we put on a tourniquet and cut it off."

Starlight Glimmer's eyes bulged. "What?"

DD nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! We took turns at sawing and giving her water between screams. We turned up the record player really loud so she could hear it above the noise, so she could think about something else."

Starlight's mind felt like a phonograph stuck in a loop. "And she's still alive?"

"Yeah!" said DD, smiling, "She's resting now, and she's pretty much done crying. What we wanted to ask is how soon we'll start."

"What do you mean, start?" she asked.

"Well," he said, the vacancy sliding over his eyes, "We have a bunch of questions. Like, does it have to be the same leg on all of us?"

"What?"

"And when we start cutting them off, do we have to break them first?"

"What."

"Because it isn't fair that she should suffer the broken leg and then the amputation if we only suffer the amputation."

"Mrrrghng." She ground her teeth together.

Double Diamond continued. "And how soon do we have to start? It's taking her a while to recover, so if we start cutting off legs today, there'll be a bunch of ponies who can't do jobs. Not to mention, there aren't enough beds in the clinic for the whole town. But should we stick to one each day? We worked up a schedule and rolled dice so it would be completely fair. It took us all afternoon. Also, the saw got pretty dull, so we'll need more saws."

Sunlight Glimmer ran out of her house.

She galloped over to the clinic building with DD fast on her heels, and barged in. "Oh no," she cried compassionately, "Upsy Daisy! I just heard!"

Upsy sniffled. "It's okay, Starlight Glimmer, I'm okay now." She pulled back the covers and showed her the bandaged stump. The end was bloody. "Do you want to take a turn bandaging me? The blood isn't stopping completely, but we think it'll take a while to clot. None of us knows for sure." A vacant expression of confusion crossed her pale face.

"I guess," said Starlight, "And I should probably be the next pony to lose a leg, just to be fair. But first, let's get you fixed up." She shoed the rest of the ponies from the clinic, and closed the door.

-- -

She emerged from the clinic with a sad expression on her face. "Gather around, everypony."

When the townsfolk had come together, she continued. "Our poor Upsy Daisy has succumbed to her injuries." Gasps went up from the crowd. "She fought her fate valiantly until the end, but an infection had started to spread, and ultimately, she lost too much blood to survive." She lowered her head, and closed her eyes. "We will miss her."

"We will miss her," intoned the crowd.

"With this incident in mind, I am enacting a new rule. We have one former nurse and two former doctors in town. Their cutie marks will be kept in special jars near the Staff of Sameness. If somepony is injured, I will ask them to give up their equality for the duration of the treatment."

There were murmurs among the crowd.

She shushed them. "A temporary sacrifice of equality must be made to ensure the health quality of care. I know it's a burden on these ponies, but I also know their care for their fellow ponies will see them through. And now, let us prepare for a funeral."

As she listed the steps needed to have a funeral, the ponies paired off to take care of the duties of preparing to bury poor Upsy Daisy.

Starlight Glimmer was careful to exclude an autopsy from the steps to be taken.

--end-