Empty Beats
BEEP BEEP
Working in a hospital is not an easy job; that’s easy enough to say. But nopony seems to understand how hard it is. And nopony seems to understand that we nurses and doctors are still ponies. Foals see us as monsters. Patients and near enough anyone else think of you as somepony who doesn’t care about other ponies, they think nurses just see patients like paperwork, a cheque, a chore. They think this because we do our jobs, we see ponies die, but we can still smile and laugh and go out and be happy at the end of the day.
The worst part is that sometimes they're right. More often than not. There's somepony at the top who thinks just like that, thinks that if a pony can’t afford treatment, they can’t afford the right for their life. And this gets passed down to everyone else in their training. And everyone starts to think less like a doctor, less like somepony who is trying to save lives, and more like a pony who is trying to make their own better than everypony else's.
BEEP BEEP
But being a nurse like me, whose whole life is basically spent in a hospital, it’s actually quite surprising how many ponies you can meet who didn’t even know that they had a hospital. A place in which ponies get crippled by accidents, a place where they get diseased with no return to what they once were. It would just seem that nopony cares enough at all. Which goes completely against ponies' friendly nature.
But that’s far from the truth. The truth is that by ponies not acknowledging it so much, they are being the best pony anyone can want them to be. Because they don’t think about themselves, they don’t think about how sad they are. They think about how unwell these patients are within these walls, and they think about how they're going to get better, and how happy they'll be when it happens.
They think about how they don’t want to put a down on somepony else's day by going around the place completely unhappy, so they don’t think about how sad they are, because they aren’t sad. Just thinking about the everypony else's joy, the joy of the patients, and the ponies they pass, brings joy to themselves. A joy which gets passed onto everypony else and makes everypony, including the patients, happier.
BEEP BEEP
Somehow, these ponies who do this think that doctors are the exception. They think that we are heartless.
This is a subject I can’t help but think about as I sit here next to a sleeping pony. I can’t help but think how wrong they are, how there are some of us medical ponies who do care for each and every pony, who think of them as a pony, and not a patient.
This pony, the one I'm with right now, was one of the nicest ponies I had ever met. I just wish that we had met under better circumstances.
She suffered from the very rare, devastating unicorn disease called Aurora Borealis, an ironic name for it. It was a magic deficiency. It was given back in the ancient times. If somepony had it and used too much or too little magic, it would give off this beautiful greenish light. But all that did was decieve ponies of its true, dangerous nature. She had to be on 6 hourly doses of medicine ever since she was diagnosed, and even with that, she was never able to use as much magic as a normal unicorn, or too little.
If she used enough each day, she would’ve been fine. It would never have bothered her. But missing medication or using too much or using too little... It could be and was fatal.
But the place where she got her prescriptions from had been shut down by the people at the top. “Not enough profit. It would be better spent somewhere else,” they said. So she had to travel over to the next pharmacy to collect...but her prescription failed. Some small print about how she couldn't just come in like that, to a different pharmacy, without renewing her prescription with that pharmacy... It took too long for hers to be renewed.
BEEP BEEP
She was in a coma for the first four months. I knew she would wake up, but I didn’t know when or whether or not she would be one of the ponies that would hate us and be far from co-operative.
But she was amazing. She gained consciousness and just started talking to me like another pony. And I can tell you, nothing feels better than having somepony talk to you, hearing their voice after you’ve had four months of imagining it. Talking to an unresponsive body and just hoping for a response. It feels even better when that response is that of somepony who wants to be your friend.
She never once complained about having to stay in the room. She could walk fine, and was able to walk around the room and sometimes out around certain areas of the hospital if her vitals had no irregularities for a few days... She never complained.
I laughed at my thoughts. It’s kinda funny how this whole situation brought us closer together. It was only two weeks after first talking to her, this is before she even gained consciousness, that I began staying back after some shifts to just be there because nopony else was. Safe to say, that stopped when she came to.
I ended up getting ahead of myself and telling her that not too long after she was awake. I immediately thought she would imagine me as some creepy nurse who watched patients sleep in some creepy way, but no, she just laughed with me about it. And she actually invited me back afterwards. In probably one of the most awkward ways possible, she didn’t want to waste my time if I didn’t want to do it. I had to remind her that I had been staying back even before she was able to speak.
So that’s when we started talking properly. We still talked about ourselves, but it felt less like some conference thing like it did the first time. I don’t know why, it just felt different in spare time.
BEEP BEEP
It was one and a half months into her consciousness when she had her first failure. Her condition had caused some of her veins and muscles to swell, this swelling grew so large and fast that it cut of blood to multiple organs, the most vital of which being her lung. That’s one of the worst parts of Aurora Borealis. The illness itself uses magic to cause extreme changes incredibly quickly.
The first stage of the illness is that it damages your magical capacity, your borea and protection. The unicorn body produces a constant amount of magic until the borea is full. This illness stops the brain receiving the message that the borea is full, so it continues to produce magic until it ‘overflows’ as such if you do not use enough magic.
If you use too much magic, your body tries to keep up with consumption when your magic levels start running low, so it speeds up. When your brain is producing more magic, it causes another problem: if you use this magic, then it starts ‘leaking out’. For example, a unicorn's magic is about ninety-five percent efficient. The other five percent is released as the light you see and the sound you hear.
Somepony like this mare I’m with, their magic levels are only sixty percent efficient and the same five percent gets used for light and sound, but the remaining thirty-five percent never makes it out of the horn; it gets lost inside the body.
The whole point of a unicorn's horn is that it cleans magic so that it is not harmful. If pure magic was not harmful, the horn would not be needed. But, this magic that gets lost inside the body has not passed through the horn, and the protection of the veins which carry it has been worn down. This means this magic roams around inside the unicorn's body, and gets absorbed by each organ and muscle it touches. At this point, it has been so diluted that it can not be detected, and it can do anything that normal magic can do. Just without the command from the brain.
BEEP BEEP
In this case, it produced this liquid inside her body that caused the muscles to swell. I had to drain it with her awake, just staring at me, gasping for breath as I inserted the small tube into her chest. The effect was nearly immediate. Instant pain. Not exactly a nice thing having something the size of a pen being stabbed into you, but I could tell it felt a lot better than not being able to use a lung.
She had claimed before that she wasn’t scared of dying. I knew it was bullshit at the time, but I played along. Still, nothing ever matched the fear I saw in her eyes that day.
She changed after that. We connected a lot more. She was in tears after she returned, and truth be told, I was as well. She was different from every other pony I had treated.
She was a lot more open with me after that. The next week she had told me that she was a fillyfooler. Gotta admit, made me feel a little awkward at first - yet another thing we laughed about. I felt a lot better when she mentioned dating some bat pony called Shockwave and that she was going to be visiting the next day.
She arrived that same night while I was with a different patient. Met her when I was off duty and going to talk after my shifts. I opened the door to see both of them lying together in the hospital bed. She was just curled up against Shockwave, looking so peaceful. Shockwave was just watching her with a smile. Not a care of anything else, just that they were together again.
Celestia, I’m a sucker for a romantic moment. It brought a tear to my eye.
That tear was matched as the same scene was replayed in front of me now.
Shockwave and I really hit it off. She was amazing, and they made such a perfect and cute couple. Shockwave was hilarious; when I asked what she did, she said she travelled the multiverse, whatever that is, trying to find some shite for her home planet. Safe to say we had a good, albeit silent, laugh.
I ended up leaving the pair of them together, not wanting to be like some awkward third wheel for the rest of the night, especially as they were kinda sharing a bed. That was even more so evident when I came back the next day to see them both still there, just that Shockwave was asleep and she wasn’t.
She returned most days after that. Stayed the night more often than not. So it was then, the three of us always talking, always laughing. We ended up on the subject of relationships again, somehow. 'Til that moment, I wondered how they could speak so freely about exes to each other. But now I know it was that they simply didn’t care about what the other had done in the past, just that they were there now.
But this time it was with me, and they near enough forced me into spilling every detail of the most embarrassing first dates I had ever been on. From stand-ups to crazy ponies to one-night stands, none of them stayed secret with me for much longer once they got me started. It’s literally the most embarrassing thing when I’m having to say the most annoying pony if put up with a date for just to get laid. One of the ponies had a name that was similar to Flim, and the other similar to Flam. But I can tell now that it was worth it for the laughs.
BEEP
Two months later was when the next thing happened. I couldn’t believe it when I ran into the room. Shockwave was furiously smashing the ‘call for assistance’ button next to the bed. Next to her was the mare that had caused the panic, spasming on the bed, and lots of blood seeping through her skin on her right foreleg. Not through cuts, I mean just pushing its way through the skin like water through a wet paper towel, but without breaking it.
This time I didn’t take part because I simply had no idea what to do. I stayed out with the crying bat pony. I wanted to join her with her tears, but I had to at least try to hold up for her. I didn’t last long.
The report about what happened came through to me before the surgery had finished. I know I wasn’t meant to, and I knew I could get fired if I let it leak due to patient confidentiality, but I couldn’t resist the pleading of the bat pony.
I explained to her what I read. The magic had spiked inside her right foreleg. Any other illness would have left us completely stumped over how it happened, but we knew. The magic had basically started ripping up her muscle from the bone. The magic was traced from the stomach, and was infused with the acids used to break apart nutrients. They were greatly exaggerated by the magical properties, and started eating up her own leg and forcing the blood out, yet somehow it reinforced her skin as well.
She came free from surgery two hours later. They had managed to subdue the magic within half an hour. But they had spent the rest of the time repairing the muscle as much as they could, and draining as much of the pure magic as they could. This was when they found where it came from originally. This was when they found it had passed through her heart and lungs. This was when they knew: this was when they could give an estimate.
…
...Time until death.
…
...One month.
I cried every time I saw her after that for the first week. I cried when I found out. I cried when I told Shockwave. We both cried when I had to tell her. I could see it inside her, the same fear she had when her lung was blocked. The same tears hiding in her quivering eyes. You could hear it in her voice, like there was a rock in her throat. But all she could wheeze to me was “Don’t start crying... P-Please don’t start crying. Because that’s gonna make me start.”
Just thinking back on it brought more tears to me. I couldn’t bear remembering hearing it. I can’t bear it happening now.
Just…
...One month! One, fucking month! No pony should have to deal with that. Finding out that they have one fucking month left to live!
I left the her and Shockwave alone. I didn’t want to be in the middle of the moment that only two lovers should be sharing, so I walked, for a long time.
I returned back to the room three hours later. The pair of them were asleep on the bed once again, both of their coats were dampened with tears around their necks. I just quietly took the seat next to the bed, the seat I had always talked to her in, and just waited for sleep to come.
...
Time until death… five hours.
I hated this illness, this dreadful disease. I hate that it happened to her, a pony that talked to me, a pony that wasn’t afraid to show she was afraid, a pony who knew we doctors and nurses did care. I hated the fact that I could do nothing, but just sit there and just…
...Watch her die.
I…
...I-I-I just…
…
…
I stood up from my seat. I could no longer think about the events that had transpired those past few months, those few hours.
My hoof had gotten wet from the number of times I had wiped my nose and tears with it. The tissues had long since run out, so I just stood up and looked over her, letting my tears fall to the mattress.
The moonlight shone through the window over her. Her white fur looked so angelic in the moment. Her face so peaceful with her lover's hoof wrapped around her, the other gently stroking her mane like she had been for the past five hours.
She spared me one knowing glance and tears began to fall once more.
Her heart monitor had turned silent for far too long.
I walked around the bed, struggling with every step, every breath, and rested a hoof on her shoulder. She didn’t stop to acknowledge me. She just kept stroking.
And stroking.
And stroking.
And stroking, until she fell asleep with her partner for the last time.
I was just left there, standing over the pair. This great pony and her marefriend, the pony with whom I had been able to laugh, the pony with whom I had been able to share everything I have ever known without a worry.
...And she was just gone. Just like that.
It shouldn’t have happened. It could have been easily avoided. But no, some bigshot pony wanted more money, and it cost this one her life. Being a nurse is a hard job. Ponies think we're monsters, think we do it for the money, think we don’t care about the patients. They couldn’t be more wrong. We do our job because we want to save lives, make them better. And at the end of the day, because we care.
Because we care
No pony should ever have to die in a place dedicated to saving lives.
No pony should ever have to watch their partner suffer, through pain and tears. But no pony should have to face it alone either.
That’s why I’m here.
Because I care.
The only pony I knew who could prove that...had now died. The only pony who was nice enough to see the truth and suffered the fate that should never have been given.
And all I have left of her is the memory, and these glasses she left to me.
The glasses of my greatest friend.
The glasses of the greatest pony I could ever have known.
The late Vinyl Scratch.
Author's Note
So yeah. My first one-shot...kinda
I may add a second chapter with dialogue later but it will be the same story so for now. This shall be classed as completed
