The newborn infant #48P9I43P died on the morning of the second of June, year 1000 at 6:07. He was only three days old at time of expiration. Lately the average life span of a foal, in this bleak time, was mere fifty-six hours.
Mares no longer even named their children at birth.
I examined the small body almost absently, vaguely aware of an anxious and obviously new med intern. However, it was the nurses that were important to me currently. A good team of them stood in a rough half circle around me, and a good half of them themselves had bellies heavy with foal. I knew one of them to be well into her tenth month. Nevertheless, right now none of that mattered to them or me. As a doctor, it was the dead infant in front of me that mattered, nothing else. All of my team was busy, horns a glow beneath hazmat suits meant merely as show, recording the details of both the brief life and death of said foal. All this despite the grief ridden howls of the mother, be they muffled as they were through the walls. Barely of age, this was her first foal, and thus it served as her first dead child.
"Core temperature one hundred-two point three at birth," said a nurse to my left, scrolling through the thermometer readout. Her voice was tinny through the mask of her suit, like a young foal’s toy. Yet another nurse was carefully transcribing these numbers on a pad of yellow paper. "One hundred-one degrees at two days," the first nurse continued. "One hundred-two point five at four o'clock this morning. One hundred- thirteen point oh-one at time of death." In these pale green shadows, they moved softly through the room, each painted a ghastly visage.
"Just let me hold him," cried the grieving mother. Her voice cracked and broke right down the middle. "Please, just let me hold him!"
The nurses all ignored her pained cries. This was the third birth this week, and the third death; it was more important to record the death, to learn from it - to prevent, if not the next one, then the one after that, or the hundredth, or the thousandth. To find a way, somehow, to help even a single foal survive.
"Heart rate?" asked another nurse.
The medical intern, whose job it was to monitor the heart rate did not reply. I looked up and her expression was glazed over in the telltale signs of a young mare caught up in a daydream.
"Heart rate?" asked the nurse again, her voice laced with firmness. It was Nurse Hardy, head nurse of the maternity ward.
With a shake of her pink mane, the intern clears the film from her eyes and appeared to recollect her thoughts in a short span. "Heart rate steady until four this morning, spiking from ninety-two to one hundred- twelve beats per minute. Heart rate at five o'clock was one hundred twenty three. Heart rate at six-oh-six was...sixty-four."
Another wail rose up in the lull.
"My figures confirm," piped up another nurse. Nurse Hardy wrote the numbers down, scowling none the less at the seemingly inattentive intern.
"You need to stay focused," she said gruffly. "There are a lot of medical interns who would give their right eye for your spot here."
She simply gave a meek nod; if a verbal response was given, it was not at an audible level.
I handed off the limp pinto body to a nurse and pulled off my mask. I feel as dead inside as that child is. I have lost track of the number of infantile bodies even in this past month I have examined, all being clean of anything that could pinpoint the disease. The only new thing to show up in the past month has been that particular medical intern. "I think that's all we can learn for now. Get this cleaned up, and prepare to do full blood work." With heavy hooves, I walk over to a plastic chair amidst the sudden flurry of action.
Lately this job has gotten so tedious, dead foal after dead foal. Some days I question my field of choice, when I started at least every one in three, maybe one in five survived. Now? I cannot remember the last time I got to hand off a filly or colt to an overjoyed mother. I peer down at the window in the wall and consider this forgotten mother. Sitting there crying and alone, I have seen it a hundred times and will see it a hundred more. I pull my hooves in as two ponies pass by me, Nurse Hardy herself and alongside her that quiet intern. From what I overheard, it sounds as though the intern is being quizzed over the importance of being here. Rightly so, if that mare didn't shape up I was going to have to consider reassigning her despite her credentials.
"What does the spike in temperature tell us?"
"The virus tipped over the saturation point. It had replicated itself enough to overwhelm her respiratory system, and the heart started overreaching to try to compensate."
I found myself nodding along with Nurse Hardy as she started her next question. "One of these days the researchers will find a pattern in this data and use it to synthesize a cure. The only way they're going to do that is if we...?"
"Track the course of the disease through every foal the best we can, and learn from our mistakes."
"Finding a cure is going to depend on the data in your hooves." Nurse Hardy nodded at the stack of papers nestled neatly under the yellow wings of the intern. "Fail to record it, and this child died for nothing."
With that, Nurse Hardy turned her back on the intern and began to walk away. I watched with curiosity as something chewed away at the intern's mind. She is rather obvious about it with shifting hooves and her habit of lip biting.
"Excuse me, um, that is if you don't mind that is, but if the doctor's done with the body, could the mother hold it? Just for a minute?"
The kid has the brains, but too often I think she lets her heart get in the way. Nurse Hardy threw me a glance over her shoulder and with a slight nod and a shrug of my own shoulders I communicate my answer to her. After all, once the body, the host, is dead, the virus dies out within the hour. It should be safe.
Nurse Hardy waves a hoof at a dun colored nurse, Sandy. "Unwrap the child," said Nurse Hardy. "Her mother is going to hold her."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It had been a rather bittersweet moment watching the two reunite, the tight hug of the mother mixed with the limp form of the corpse. I did not stay long though. I could not stay long. Even if I had wished to watch the emotionally driven pony hug tight the dead baby, I had business elsewhere. With hooves heavy I lift my body made lead by the thoughts of past foals. Foals who hadn't made it. Foals just like this one. But I am unable to dwell on such matters now.
I had an appointment with the Princess of the land.
Author's Note
Just a quickie idea I got today after I started a new book I bought. Hope it turns out fine despite that.
Through many winding and downright pointless halls I walked. When one converts a half finished castle into a hospital for all, the result you get is not something that is productive to arriving promptly to one’s destination. Thusly it was with weary hooves that I reached the grand golden doors that would lead to the Princess’s chambers. When the ponies of long ago had re-purposed the castle, it was still of the belief that it should still remain a symbol of our shining Princess. It was with that mind set that the throne room was built with such grandeur.
Entering the vast and well lit confines did not make my hooves feel relief, however in lieu of such I got the pleasant sensation of both my eyes and mind being refreshed. Here the walls, when compared to the drear grey of the rest of the castle, glowed an pure white and was only interrupted by the fine gilding that line the windows. At the far end, should one let their eyes follow the red pathway laid out for you, sat the throne fine enough to seat Her Highness. I pull in my left leg, dropping into a deep bow as tradition decrees.
"Princess Celestia," I pause, muzzle brushing against cold marble. "You called upon me?"
"Yes, my little pony. You may enter." A lilting voice rings out from the fair throne.
Only the sharp sounds of my hooves fill the echoing hall of the room. Though I have made this same walk a great many times in my years working as a royal physician, this hall always piques my curiosity. Either side you look to is ceiling high glass, ending easily a good seventy five hands above. History books say when the castle was still in construction, what could be call historians of the time had the intention of filling these frames with crystalline murals to display Equestria's proudest moments. That never came to be. The throne room ended up within the center of the castle do to cries of more space needed, and the windows we see are these days are formed and lit by magic.
It is always with surprisingly short time that I find myself standing in front the throne, and today proves no different. I suppose sometimes I too am guilty of day dreaming off. With a secondary bow I thus proceed to seat myself down on the plush rug in front of my Princess.
"What is the report this month, good Doctor Stitch?"
I inhale deeply, preparing for the gloom that is to come, "Your Highness, the mortality rate remains the same. All infants born since I last saw you have passed away. Only one lasted longer than a week." I always have and always will hate delivering such news to somepony I, like many others, wish to see smile.
"I see...I keep hoping one of these months you will get to come to me with news that might brighten our hopes of a cure. It has been nearly four years since last a foal lived past its first year, has it not..."
"According to the censuses received from outlying regions, that would be accurate..."
I trail off slightly as I become aware that no longer is Princess Celestia's attention held solely by my words. Instead it does appear her gaze has wandered upwards. Though I know what I will see I too turn to the ceiling. The famous mural. I've seen it many times and each time it both amazes me, leaving me with the sense of a child's wonderment, and leaves me with the curiosity that drove me to my current field of work. Above us it watches down, its spiral of hope always there, the two alicorns in a constant spin around the planetary bodies which allow for any life at all to exist. The sun and the moon.
I clear my throat and try to proceed. "Yes, all reports from outlying providences-"
This time I find myself being truly cut off. Not from a gentle cough emanating forth from my audience, but instead with the long bang that echoes forth from solid doors being thrown open. I turn around, planting a genial smile on my otherwise annoyed muzzle. Between the open doorway of the entrance I see framed in the contrast of light just one of the royal guards, a courier if I must say.
"Your Highness, Ponyville’s monthly report. "
"Very well. I will address it right after Doctor Stitch finishes."
"Ma'am, if you don’t mind, it is marked as urgent."
Sure enough, a blue glow forms at the guard’s horn and plucked from the recesses of armor a blue ribboned scroll appears. With a blink of one’s eye a yellow aura wraps itself over blue, and with it the scroll is carried down the length of the room in quick order. As it passes by me I turn once more to where the Princess still sits. Other than the luminescence around her horn she has not moved a muscle in wake of the other pony's arrival. Nor as the scroll unravels does a single muscle move.
I feel myself grow unreasonably inattentive, one might even say bored, during this whole ordeal. While it is not uncommon for the Ponyville report to be delivered within the same week as my own report it has never once arrived during my own appointment. There is a reason each providence has their own schedule that is to be at the very least roughly adhered to. But there is that word. Urgent. Had the report arrived late I would have assume the town, like many before it, had simply ceased to be, taken away in the wind by the disease. But I recollect no such occasion such as this where a report arrives earlier than deemed normal. Watching Celestia’s face gives no clue away to what the contents might contain.
When Celestia finally did turn away from the letter it was not, as I hoped, to inform me of what likely catastrophe went down in our nearest providence. No, indeed it wasn’t.
“Quick Stitch, is there any pony on your team that you might willing to spare?”
As I said, this told me nothing of what was within, I would expect nothing less of anything marked urgent. And I could only think of one pony I would be willing to spare.
“The new medical intern you assigned me. If that pleases you, Your Majesty?”
"Young Fluttershy? I agree she is a good candidate but... Is she not doing well working alongside your team? I ask only because your answer came so swiftly."
"She is very adept at what she knows, however I am afraid too often she lets her heart get the better of her. I don't think she is cut out for the position, yes," I say this bluntly, a good heart will get you nowhere in Equestria after all. " I can safely say Fluttershy would be better inclined to a position held elsewhere."
Celestia cocks her head slightly at my response before speaking. "Very well. Inform her that she should have her bags packed by noon. A chariot will be ready to take her to Ponyville in the front court yard."
Author's Note
Each time I read over this I find something new to tinker with...
Pardon if it gets rough. I wrote this at...is it seriously already one in the morning? Hmmm.