The good Dr. Crazystein chapter 4 (Writer: SqueakyFriend)

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The good Dr. Crazystein, chapter 4

The broken body of Dr. Crazystein

As he stirred, the first thing Dr. Crazystein became aware of was pain. His entire body hurt, a sensation that only got worse as he tried to sit. He slumped back down, slowly opening his eyes.

He saw nothing but metal bars and white walls, a strange smell permeating the air. It was nothing he had ever seen before, nothing he recognized. Where was he?

The last thing he could remember was watching Mr. Hyde, the large fluffy who had crushed his chest, die convulsing and screaming. The thought of the event jostled his thoughts into gear; was he dead? Was this what death was like, pain and a small box with a door made of metal tubes?

But at least he was able to breathe again. That feeling of suffocating and being unable to speak was gone. He reached out to scrape at the metal door, expecting it to swing open, but to his disappointment it didn’t move. He was still hurting too much to leave even if it had, but it was the principle of the matter.

“Hewwo?” he heard a voice from above. “Hewwo! Awe yu a fwuffy? Awe yu awake!?”

Well, that wasn’t really anyone he knew, but it sounded like a filly - probably she had heard the sound of hoof on metal. Dr. Crazystein pushed himself to raise his head and look up, seeing nothing but a hard, grey ceiling and a wisp of … what color was that? He couldn’t tell before it had disappeared again.

“Whewe is dis?” he asked hoarsely, becoming aware of a metallic taste in his mouth as he did. He spat a bit to get it out - blood, he knew the taste of blood too well by now, was this HIS blood? Why? - and then shuddered as he tried to recover his breath. Flecks of dark red stained the padded surface beneath his hooves.

“Dis is huwty pwace!” called the filly above him, and he heard a dull clang as she evidently shoved herself up against the metal door. “Hoomins take Mawy hewe fow huwties, wike shawpy thingies an’ … an’ shawpy pointy thingies!”

Why am I here? ran through Dr. Crazystein’s head, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t have to, as another voice - vaguely familiar - cut in. “Mary, what have I said about bothering the other patients?”

“But! Nyu fwend!” whined the filly. “Nyu fwend! Mawy nee’ befwend nyu fwend!!”

“New friend? What are you talking about?” asked a tall human in a white coat as he walked into view, poking at the filly before he crouched down to Dr. Crazystein’s level. “Oh, if it’s not the little doctor! You’ve finally come to, have you?”

Dr. Crazystein stared breathlessly at the man with wide eyes before calling out. “Vet!”

Vet, the doctor man who had helped tend to his eye all that time ago, laughed. “Hey, you remember me! How do you feel?”

“Nuuu!” whined Mary. “Wan see nyu fwend! Wan! Pweeeeeese! Nu faiw, yu nu be nyu fwend’s onwy fwend!”

Dr. Crazystein made a face and laid his head back down. That shrill voice wasn’t doing him any favors, which Vet seemed to notice as he stood up straight and with a swift action made Mary switch to sobbing, then silence. “Evewything huwts,” he replied now that he was sure he’d be heard. “Body huwts. Chest huwts.”

“Can you breathe?” asked Vet as he crouched back down in front of the cage. “Are your lungs working alright?”

“Yus…” Dr. Crazystein hesitated somewhat. “Thewe’s some bwood? Doctah Cwazystein taste bwood…” Mary gasped from her spot, whispering something about boo-boo juice. What was boo-boo juice? He didn’t really understand.

“That’s normal, thankfully.” The human smiled. “You got pretty badly messed up, we had to do some surgery. You’ll need to be careful not to open up the stitches, okay?”

There was a pause as Dr. Crazystein tried to parse that. Then his head tilted to the side, accompanied by a wince of pain at the sudden move. “What is ‘suwgewy’?”

“Oh, well, surgery is …” Vet trailed off, tapping his chin thoughtfully, but Mary cut in once again.

“Suwgewy is da meanest an’ most awful thing evew! Mawy had to haf suwgewy!”

“Mary, be quiet!” the human protested, then sighed and started fussing with a latch that sat attached to the metal bars. “It’s too early to let you move around, but we can’t talk like this. How about you come to my office, and I’ll show you a bit more science?”

“Yus!” The prospect made Dr. Crazystein light up, despite his poor condition. “Doctah Cwazystein wan go!”

“Mawy wan tawk too! Mawy wub science!” whined Mary in a transparent attempt to be part of the conversation, only growing louder as she went ignored. “Mawy wan come too!” she shouted as Vet opened the good doctor’s box. “WET MAWY COME TOO!”

“Mary!” hissed Vet, standing up straight. There was an audible thump and then crying as the human sighed and reached for Dr. Crazystein, closing his hands around his body and pulling him out. It ached, but no more than what he was already feeling so he managed to stay quiet. As he was repositioned to a more comfortable carry he looked to Mary’s cage, seeing a green and yellow fluffy with a blue cloth tied neatly around her neck. She was rubbing her snout with big tears in her eyes, and as she saw Dr. Crazystein she reached out her hooves for him.

“Huggies?” she asked.

“Nu.”

Vet carried his patient out of the room before Mary could begin to wail about the refusal, and soon the two doctors entered what had to be Vet’s office. Papers were scattered about on a desk, there were models of various items - including a human skeleton, Dr. Crazystein noted and felt proud that he knew what that was - and a big computer was idling on a screensaver of a fluffy repeatedly chasing a ball and falling on its face.

“You know, you were actually really lucky,” Vet said idly as he walked to the table, sitting with an audible thud in a chair that spun a little in response. “If you’d been any other animal, there’s no telling what your wounds would cause. Fluffies are said to break very easily, but they manage bloodloss surprisingly well, did you know that? You rarely ever hear about one bleeding out nowadays. They probably ended up evolving that way to give abusers more fun, or something, I don’t know.”

Dr. Crazystein remained quiet as his little brain didn’t really parse the topic, trying to get comfortable - or at least lessen that constant pain - but failing. Vet noticed his discomfort and changed his grip so that the fluffy was sitting on his haunches instead of on lying his belly. “Ah, sorry, I’m rambling. So, li’l doc, do you know what happened to you?”

“Yus… Mistah Hyde bwoke- bwoke chest,” Dr. Crazystein replied, wincing at the memory. He held his hooves to his chest only to find that his familiar pale blue fluff wasn’t there, and as he tried to look down he found something… white? The fluff on his chest and belly was gone, and something white and cotton-y had replaced it. He abscent-mindedly continued, “Doctah Cwazystein nu cud bweathe… Chest fewt weawwy badwy bwoken.”

“Mr. Hyde, was it?” repeated Vet. “Well, my little Jekyll, you’re right. Look over there.” He motioned to the nearby skeleton. “Just like humans, fluffies have skeletons. They keep our bodies from falling apart.”

“Jekyww? Who’s Jekyww?” asked Dr. Crazystein. Vet chuckled and just patted his head as he continued.

“Well, that on the chest is the ribcage, though maybe you knew that. You see, Mr. Hyde crushed your ribcage into a lot of tiny pieces, and then those pieces dug into your body. Some of them cut into your left lung, something you use to breathe. The only way to get them out was to cut you open.”

The little doctor nodded abscent-mindedly, hugging his hooves to his body. “Dat’s what suwgewy is?” he asked. It explained so much. At least it explained the pain.

“That’s right,” confirmed Vet. “I had to open you up, then remove all the little bone pieces and sew you back together.”

Dr. Crazystein gasped, looking up at Vet with newfound admiration. “Wike Doctah Fwankstein!”

“Frankst-?” The human laughed. “Oh, you mean Frankenstein? Yeah, that was surgery too, in a way. Your belly is lined with stitches now, just like Frankenstein’s Monster.” He traced a line down Dr. Crazystein’s front. “So you can’t move around too much, unless you want them to open back up. Got all that?”

“Doctah Cwazystein undahstand!” chimed the little doctor, raising a hoof. Vet smiled, then turned him around so that they faced each other.

“Well, now that I explained all that to you,” the human said, “how about you explain something to me? Just what was Mr. Hyde doing in your house?”

Dr. Crazystein froze. The one thing he couldn’t explain, not without getting in trouble. His first instinct was to just cry out ‘science’, but what would that explain? His second instinct was to lie, but he was a fluffy and lying didn’t come easy. He couldn’t think of anything at all! As a result, the little doctor mostly just stammered a little and then murmured to himself.

“Come on now, Doctor,” said Vet with an amused smile. “You knew Mr. Hyde’s name, didn’t you? You must have talked to him. Or do you mean he just burst into your room, introduced himself, and then tried to kill you?”

There were a few moments of silence. “… Yus!”

The human raised an eyebrow. “Doctor, why are you lying?” he asked. “I’d expect it from any other fluffy, but not you. I figured you were better than them.”

Dr. Crazystein’s ears lowered, and he found himself tapping his hooves together with an uneasy smile. Oh, so that suggestion had been a trap. He should probably have figured. “Nu wan get in twoubwe…”

“Well, I’d say you already are. I sent your mom back to the house to figure out just what happened, and you know what she found?” Vet paused to let the good doctor reply, but was just met with an awkward silence. “She found a big bottle of rat poison in your saferoom, by your science things. Bleach, too. And a big dead fluffy - she brought him in, you know that? I checked his cause of death while you were passed out.”

“Dat- dat’s mistah Hyde,” murmured Dr. Crazystein. Oh, he did not want to talk about this. Not at all.

“It’s pretty obvious you were up to something strange, li’l doc. As a fellow scientific mind, I really want to know just what that was,” coerced the large human. Dr. Crazystein briefly contemplated his chances of escaping, but a twist of his torso reminded him of how painful falling out of Vet’s lap would be. He’d probably smash open like a water balloon (not that he knew what that was, but the mental image was roughly the same). He had no choice but to tell it as it was.

And so he told Vet everything. About the fuzzy sight in his right eye, about collecting test subjects with the promise of sketties, of the results only ranging between “partially blind” and “death”, and of Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde who was way too big, who knew about the blind fluffies, who very nearly killed him just to get sketties that didn’t exist. Vet listened in silence, only nodding at appropriate times or making little ‘hm’ sounds. “…an’ den, woke up in dat white box.”

“That explains quite a bit,” the human said. “Dr. Crazystein, I’ll be blunt. Don’t do more eye experiments.”

The doctor cringed. “Bu’-! Nu! Wan’ find cuwe fow eye!” he protested desperately. “Am so cwose!”

“There’s been an increase in fluffies running straight into traffic and causing accidents, lately. BLIND fluffies, and I have reason to believe they’re your subjects.” Vet’s expression grew hard. “No deaths, but you’ve ended up hurting a lot of people. Do you understand?”

Dr. Crazystein shrank back. He had done what? It was true that he hadn’t stopped anyone from running away, but … he hadn’t thought about them after that … He’d just thought they’d be fine. Well, not even that, he just hadn’t given it any second thought at all. “Doc-doctah undahstand,” he replied vaguely. “Nu mean to do… dat.”

“And that’s why you have to stop. I won’t tell you to stop doing science entirely, I couldn’t bear to stifle the only scientifically curious fluffy I’ve ever met that way, but you need to find something else to do. If you can do that, then I’ll try to find a cure for your eye on my end, okay?”

The good doctor gasped, looking up at Vet with wide eyes. “Weawwy!? Vet, yu find da eyesie cuwe!?”

“That’s right. But only, ONLY if you don’t do more eye experiments. Alright?”

“O-Otay! Doctah Cwazystein can do dat!” He waved his hooves, trying to stand up and hop down to the floor so he could go home and get started on figuring out what science he COULD do so Vet could start making an eye cure.

As it turned out, doing any of that was difficult when he was still being held. “Calm down there, Jekyll,” warned Vet. “Stitches, remember? Your body’s all broken.”

“Oh… yus… Doctah Cwazystein wemembews.” The little doctor sighed.

“I think that’s enough for now, anyway. Want to go back to your cage?”

Go back to that white box? It sounded tempting enough. All the new information and excitement and uncomfortable topics had taken a toll, and Dr. Crazystein couldn’t help but relish the chance to sleep and wait for his aches to fade away. But then he thought further about it, and a certain detail surfaced. “Nu wan be with Mawy.”

Vet laughed. “Most fluffies would love having a playmate so close,” he said, “but then again, you’re not most fluffies are you?”

“Mawy makes eawsies an’ stitches huwt. Nu wike.”

“Yeah, I understand.” The human grinned. “Well, you’re well-behaved and clever enough. It’s better if I can keep an eye on you anyway, so I’ll bite. You can hang out here in the office.”

And with that, Dr. Crazystein was set down on the desk. “I’ll be right back with the things from your cage, so don’t go and fall to your death while I’m gone,” Vet warned and then he left the room. Dr. Crazystein watched him go, then scooted over to the edge of the desk and looked down. Fall to his death? It didn’t look THAT high. He was sure he could jump down and land just fine, if he wanted to.

He was just a bit too tired to actually try it, and by the time Vet returned he was asleep with his head and a front hoof hanging over the edge.

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11 Likes
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ohhhhhhhh noooo this is gonna be goooood.

ohh lil man dosnt know how close he was to a lota pain