Manehattan East Side Memorial Hospital
December 25th, 9:32pm Equestrian Standard Time
Painless reached for the decaf.
The carafe was the wrong color for decaffeinated coffee, but that made little difference. Painless was well aware of the habit most of the staff had for brewing with whichever of the break room pots happened to be available at the time. His years of putting himself through medical school on a barista’s pay served him well enough to know that there was more behind the robust scent of hazelnut wafting from the glass orb that floated patiently in the vermillion hue of his magic. The odor was hollow, weak, and flat. It had to be decaf, and it was about half an hour shy of congealing into black tar.
Turning up his muzzle in displeasure, he tipped the spout and poured a measure of the dank liquid into a paper cup anyway. The taste was bitter and lifeless, but the liquid was hot, wet, and provided as much of a soothing burn going down as an on-duty resident could imbibe without risk of inebriation from harder drinks.
“…ugh…”
Shutting his eyes tightly, Painless drained the cup in one swallow and exhaled a puff of the expired drink that filtered into his nostrils, cloying around his senses and giving them unavoidable affront.
“…the heck is the point of decaf in a place like this…”
It wasn’t the first time the oxymoron had spun the cranks of his higher reasoning. Decaffeinated coffee in an emergency room environment was as much a sin to him as ice cream with hayfries, but there were ponies in perches loftier than his who insisted that artificial stimulants of any kind were the enemy. Thus he bowed to the inevitable.
He blinked hard, fluttering his eyelids until a view of the street came to him from the hospital’s third floor window. Below, what few ponies had dared to venture out from their happy homes were trudging through heavy snow that showed no signs of sparing them. Were it not for the strapping young stallions that comprised the bulk of Manehattan’s city road crews, Painless doubted he would have been able to determine at a glance where the street ended and the sidewalk began. Each quiet streetlight was a beacon in a storm of white so thick, it didn’t take a pegasus to realize something had gone wrong with the weather. Until the denizens of Cloudsdale had the problem under control, the city would simply have to ride out the storm.
Upon every flagpole and at the summit of every streetlight were festive wreaths, each ensorcelled by a spell that gifted them with tiny pinpricks of cheerful holiday light. It was an annual tradition for the city to put out the enchanted decorations to set the mood for the season. Painless nabbed the cord for the window blinds in his teeth and yanked the slats closed. All of the other resident physicians were home spending time with their families. It had been a fair draw to see who would stay, and he had been stuck with the shortest lot. It was better to spare himself the festive thoughts he was not entitled to.
“Paging Doctor Painless,” A droll voice crooned. “Emergency caffienedectomy, code blue.”
Painless lifted the carafe up from the counter with his magic, swirled the small remnant of bitter liquid within, and replaced it on the warmer. “Time of death, nine forty-three P.M.” He replied without turning to meet the invasive voice. “There was nothing we could do.”
Painless was too slow noticing the small object that was on a trajectory for his temple, and caught it in his magic only after it had beaned him on the noggin.
“O-ow!” He yelped, whirling on his assailant, “Did you seriously just throw—” He glanced at the item, realizing he had no idea what exactly it was, and saw a clipboard with a small stack of papers attached, “—wait, did you just throw somepony’s chart at me?”
Leaning up against the doorway, her forelegs folded smugly before her, was a middle-aged, chocolate brown earth pony mare wearing a white lab coat similar to that which Painless sported. She had thin, smart looking eyeglass frames upon her muzzle, and a telltale nick in her ear that made her identity unmistakable.
“How much coffee do you suppose they pay you to polish off?” The mare mused sardonically. “You drink twice as much as any other resident here, Painless. Maybe that’s why you got stuck with this shift. Keep that up and you’ll never sleep again.”
Painless held the clipboard to the side and polished off his second cup, shuddering with it as though he had downed a shot of whiskey. “It’s just decaf. The placebo effect helps me focus. I’m on call twenty-four hours a day. I bet the only living creature that has a job more demanding than ours is Cerebus himself, but even he doesn’t have to do anything except stand in front of the gates of Tartarus.”
The elder mare drew her lip back in a wry smile. “I bet if you were off right now, you’d be spending Hearth’s Warming bopping around your apartment with a cup of noodles and a dirty magazine.” She chuckled lightly to take the edge off her words, “Tell me I’m wrong. I was a resident too once, you know.”
Painless couldn’t argue the point. Home was in a rural community just outside the splendor of Las Pegasus, and it had been months since he’d been there. Some of the other residents were fortunate enough to have family and friends to spend the holiday with. Painless had a pile of anatomy textbooks and a plush parrot named Kiki that his mother gave him for luck.
“How’d it go in surgery today?” The mare asked. “I might be your attending, but there are better neurologists here than me. I bet assisting one of them was a valuable learning experience.”
Painless shrugged, “The patient died.”
“And?”
Painless squinted. He knew he was being put on the spot – it was not uncommon for his superior to resort to ‘sudden enlightenment’ education, involving things like whacking somepony with a chart or hammering them with ambiguous questions.
“Aaaaand…” He rummaged around in his head for a proper reply, “She was an old nag. Everypony knew how unlikely it was for her to survive treating a tumor that size.”
“And?”
“And she signed the release papers in sound mind. She knew the risks too.”
“And?”
Painless recalled his superior’s trial-by-fire rule concerning residents bearing the heavy weight, “…and I broke the news to the family.”
The attending nodded, “How did they handle it?”
Painless seemed confused by the question. “Well…they were sad, obviously. The daughter cried. The granddaughter not so much. I gave them all the information they’d need. Everything they need to know and whom to get in touch with.”
“So you did your job,” The mare observed. “Right to the letter.”
“Yes?” Painless adopted a smart-aleck tone that his superior only allowed because of the stressful environment, “Should I not have?”
“What was her name?”
Painless blinked. “Who’s name?”
“That old nag,” She replied, “The one you were so certain wouldn’t survive.”
Painless was caught like a timberwolf in the glow of a magic lantern. “I…don’t know. Why?”
“That,” The mare pointed at Painless with her hoof. “That right there is your problem.”
Painless watched the mare’s hoof grow closer and closer until he went cross-eyed, the chocolately tip of it touching his forehead.
“You think with this too much,” She commented, moving the hoof to touch his heart. “And not enough with this.”
Painless looked away, his ears drooping. His expression was less out of emotion and more mere supplication to his superior. “…they train us to be good doctors…”
“The first time you had to break the news to a family,” The mare explained, “you said you were sorry. Offered them emotional support. Was that just part of your training to be a better doctor?”
Painless said nothing. The attending continued-
“You’re sliding down a slippery slope – a slope called indifference. Keeping a pony healthy is ten percent technique and ninety percent frame of mind. You’re the most talented resident I have here right now, from a technical standpoint. When you got here your heart was bigger, but now-“ She held her hooves out and made a crushing gesture, moving them together until they touched, “Now you’re blocking things out. Protecting your own feelings by hardening yourself to the world.”
Painless felt the searing heat of his companion’s eyes. He turned to the window, wishing now that he hadn’t shut away the cooling view of the city. “I thought you said we had to suck it up. Learn to cope, or else this place would chew us up and spit us out.”
“Suck too hard and you’ll lose your guts,” The mare tilted her head and peered at him from above her glasses. “You need to be tough enough to handle this job while also being soft enough to support your fellow pony. The oath you took was to do no harm. There’s more to that than just the physical. Every day you hold lives in the frog of your hoof. You know how to treat their ailments, but you’re forgetting how to mend their hearts.”
The exhaustive weight of a double-shift fueled Painless’s indignant response, “There are support groups and therapists, what are they for then…”
The mare ignored the comment and nodded at the chart. “That’s your job tonight.”
Roused, Painless finally floated the chart to a point where he could get a look at its contents. “Job? I thought we were just minding the store tonight?”
“Read it,” She commanded.
Painless glanced over the first page, flipped it up, and began rattling off technical terms from the second. When he’d recited several vital statistics like a pro, he added a sterile comment, “This says he was in a carriage accident and he’s on life support.”
“Actually read the first page.”
Painless obeyed-
“Carrot Cake. Thirty-two years old. Earth stallion from Ponyville. Next of kin…Cup Cake. Personal belongings suggest he has two foals and runs a bakery with his wife in their hometown.” Painless made a face, “What’s he doing here on Hearth’s Warming? You’d think a family pony like this would be home for the holidays, especially if that’s where he works, too.”
“Good question,” The chocolate mare conceded. “That’s why he’s your job tonight.”
Painless’s expression betrayed no understanding. “But…this says he’s in critical condition on life support. There’s so much damage listed here that there’s no way he’s going to survive.”
“He won’t last ten minutes without the machines that are making him breathe,” The attending said soberly. “And he’s not going to get better.”
“…what about his family?”
The elder physician nodded at the window. “Blizzard. There’s no safe way to even inform them of the situation, much less receive them.”
Painless felt the coffee continue to congeal into tar in the pit of his stomach. “So what am I supposed to do? I can’t save his life. ”
“Go and talk to him.”
Painless looked exasperated, “According to this chart he’s probably a vegetable. What good will that do? He won’t even know I’m in the room.”
'Paging Doctor Poultice,' A mechanical voice rang out, 'Paging Doctor Poultice, your presence is required in intensive care.'
The mare called Doctor Poultice was halfway to the break room door before she spoke again. “I thought you’d say that. I have work to do. Your job, for now, is to go up to room one seventy-eight and talk with your new patient. That’s an order, Doctor Painless.”
Alone again in the break room, Painless swiveled his ears towards the plodding hum of the radiator. On his way out, he rolled his eyes and glanced at the clock. In three hours, at one in the morning, the endless holiday shift would be at an end.
Sleep would be welcome.
* * * * *
December 25th, 10:08pm Equestrian Standard Time
Room 178 was connected to a series of patients’ quarters down a secluded hallway. The area had been informally requisitioned by the hospital staff for two purposes, the first of which was a quiet area to place patients who were sensitive to sound, or required inordinate amounts of sleep.
Listening to the rhythmic, echoing clack of his hooves on the disinfected linoleum, Doctor Painless glanced at a vase of flowers on a narrow table in passing and recalled the second reason. Patients in deplorable condition were also sometimes sequestered here, so that other patients who might be potentially nervous about their own care didn’t have to see them. This was typically done when there could no longer be anything to gain from keeping the patient in the ICU, but the hospital had yet to confirm the wishes of the next of kin with regards to, as the staff sometimes put it, ‘cutting the patient’s cord’.
Painless grasped the knob to room 178, found the door already open a crack, and instead pushed it open with his hoof, taking a moment to secure it behind him on as he passed across the threshold.
The scene was much as he expected – the bellowing huff of respirators mingled with the steady cadence of beeping from an EKG monitor. Both sounds brought a familiar flick to the young doctor’s ears, and all but replaced out the sound of the patient’s actual breathing. The room was mostly dark – a soft glow from brazier of candles on a nightstand provided a cozier feel to the room than the brash, magically-charged overhead fluorescent lights, which were hardly necessary at the present moment. The dividing curtain was drawn and the closest bed lay empty, while the bed nearest the window sported a single prone form.
Painless covered the distance across the room in a few quick strides and glanced down at his patient. The stallion called Carrot Cake was enshrouded up to his neck in hospital quilting, swaddled like a newborn foal. The sunflower yellow of his coat was only evident in the few patches of clarity that existed between the bruises on his face, and the muzzle under his oxygen mask. Portions of his mane were gone, but Painless noticed the even, telltale lines of stubble from hasty shaving to address head trauma. His eyes were expectantly closed, and the only movement of his damaged body came from the inflation and deflation of his artificially-filled lungs.
Painless brought Carrot Cake’s chart to bear again and examined it. The catalog of damages read like a perverted grocery list, penned by some almighty power just waiting to collect the shattered stallion and deliver him into oblivion. Painless had seen a lot in his brief residency, but even he was glad that pulling back Carrot Cake’s sheets would not likely be necessary to complete his task for the evening.
Painless sat the chart aside, cleared his throat unnecessarily, and strapped on an appropriately detached demeanor.
“Mister Cake,” He announced, “Hello.”
Much as he expected, the only response to his words was the stubborn hum of technology.
“Hello?” Painless repeated. “Mister Cake, I’d like to…talk to you, if you have a moment.”
Beeping, clicking, and a few knocks from the room’s single radiator were his only reply. Painless rolled his eyes.
“This is stupid,” He voiced his thoughts aloud, averting his eyes to the persistent snowfall out the window instead. “He can’t hear me. He can’t do anything. Is this supposed to be some lofty life lesson or something? Sit and watch a fatally injured stallion die until I have some epiphany and suddenly become Celestia’s gift to medicine?”
Painless took in the room, and found it devoid of one otherwise expected affectation. There were no get-well cards. No balloons. No offerings of treats or flora save for the single potted petunia the nurse’s pool always seemed to have available to brighten each pony’s journey through inpatient care. He crinkled his muzzle wryly, wondering what magic was involved to produce the endless stream of greenery all year round.
But there was nothing else – just the one obligatory, flowering plant that the patient would never even know was there.
“Of course not,” Painless said aloud to himself, “Nopony who cares about him even knows what’s happened. Nor will they, until the weather clears up enough to get a message out.”
Feeling awkward in the silence, Painless glanced about for any inventory that was not a part of the room’s regular compliment. In the corner he found a worn leather travelling bag, and upon the window sill rested a paper hat, not dissimilar to the one he wore as a barista in a small-time coffee shop on the west side of town.
“…ca…ke…”
Painless blinked. He turned his attention back to Mister Cake, and found the stallion’s eyelids open a crack. The slit between them wasn’t even enough to make out his eye color, but the stallion’s brow creased in a feeble attempt to bring things into focus anyway. Under his mask, in a nasally tone resulting from the flow of air, his lips quivered.
“…weety…kin…s…”
Painless made a face. He knew the sign of consciousness was not cause for summoning a code blue alert. The claims of the chart and his superior were undeniable, and Painless himself had seen this before. Mister Cake’s heavily damaged brain was simply firing off impulses; activating parts of itself in a meager attempt to deal with its own impending demise.
In the window, Painless noted a fleeting reflection of himself. His iris-purple coat seemed somehow dingy under the white, standard-issue lab coat he wore. The bounce in his butterscotch mane had withered to a flat cap over his scalp, and the grayish bags under his amber eyes were prominent. He was awake and fully able to do his job, but it had taken some months of mind over matter to force his body into capitulation when the going got rough.
“…pies…in th…oooven…”
Painless raised a brow and decided to play Doctor Poultice’s game.
“I took the pies out of the oven,” He replied simply. “They’re cooling on the windowsill.”
Carrot Cake’s brow furrowed again. “…squrirrrls…”
Painless’s lip turned up ruefully at the scolding. His mother would have told him the same thing. He appended, “I’ll move them to the cooling rack.”
This seemed to mollify the patient. Carrot Cake’s upper and lower eyelids made friends again, and the tightness in his expression relaxed.
Painless glanced at the clock and found it to be a mere twenty minutes after ten. He’d barely been in room 178 for ten minutes – if his superior caught him wandering the halls now, it would not only be insubordination, but he would have failed at…whatever she sent him to do. Sighing, he ensorcelled a rolling stool, brought it up to the bedside, and parked his rump. The task before him was tedious and without purpose, but at least it afforded a few spare moments to acquiesce to the needs of his recalcitrant muscles.
Approximately three and a half minutes into mindlessly staring at his patient, Doctor Painless got bored. In a desperate bid to stave off exhaustion and satisfy his piqued curiosity, he grabbed the patient’s worn travel bag in the vermillion aura of his magic and brought it over. It wasn’t proper to be going through the patient’s personal effects, but if he didn’t put his mind on something, anything, soon, he was quite certain he would be found unconscious at the end of his shift, felled by drudgery and sprawled out upon the body of a pony who was essentially dead already.
The latter breach of etiquette was clearly worse than the former. Thus, Painless undid the buckles on the bag’s three pockets and took to entertaining himself.
The smaller pouches contained mostly travel-sized toiletries. There were redundancies among them – store-bought copies of products that nearly any hotel would make available to their patrons on a complimentary basis. Their presence suggested Mister Cake was not given to adventuring throughout Equestria, and thus a novice at long-distance packing. Either that, or he had a particular fondness for one brand of shaving cream or shampoo over another. Painless had standbys of similar types when he went to the market, but he thought it inefficient to bring along what would obviously already be there in some form or another.
The larger pocket was far more interesting. Within, Painless found a neatly-folded baking apron, a bulbous, red-and-white striped bow tie, and a bound bundle of papers. Painless considered putting it all back, but he had come this far already. With a few flicks of his glowing horn, he separated the stack from its binding and spread its contents out on a nearby table.
The bundle consisted entirely of papers and loose photographs, the former of which shed a little light upon mystery of what Carrot Cake was doing so far from his family over the holidays. A number of official-looking communications from Manehattan bakeries and food suppliers suggested the trip had something to do with obtaining special ingredients – most likely for a holiday feast. Painless glanced over these with as much interest as he might favor the bill at a restaurant, then sifted about for something more exciting.
Among the photographs were two in thin frames, and a small keepsake book meant to house half a dozen more. The first framed image depicted a lanky stallion with an underbite, wearing the same paper hat and bow tie present among the contents of the bag. It had to be Mister Cake – underbites were uncommon among ponies, and though Painless had no desire to venture under the blankets to match up the patient’s cutie mark, the pony who smiled in the picture had the right mane and coat colors. Standing next to him was a stocky, somewhat plump mare with pink earrings and a wispy mane that somewhat resembled a colorful dollop of whipped cream. In the foreground, sitting upon a counter, were two foals that were still so young, their irises had not yet shrunk enough to show visible sclera.
“A pegasus and a unicorn?” Painless mused aloud, intrigued by the foals, “From two earth ponies? Were they adopted?”
Expecting no response of course, he sat the framed photo aside and turned to examine the other. This one featured the same family of four, plus one. The new addition was a mare that any pony with some concept of current events would surely recognize, and Painless was no exception.
“Pinkie Pie?”
He’d never met her of course, but he was in touch with the world well enough to recognize the visage of one of the famous Keepers of the Elements of Harmony. He tapped his chin, trying to summon up any scrap of personal information about the Element of Laughter that might exist in the jungle of medical terminology and procedure that had been programmed into him for the past several years.
“They say she lives in a bakery, right?” Painless put two and two together and thrust out his bottom lip with a measure of surprise. He glanced at the blasted, imperfect form of Mister Cake in the hospital bed and offered his thoughts. “You keep some prominent company, huh.”
Again no response was expected, but Carrot Cake stirred anyway. His eyes cracked again, and his lips began to move in delirium-
“…schm…schmoopyki…ns…”
Painless blinked. Considered the odd word. It was a name, but not one a pony was likely to be born with. A pet name - probably something he called his wife. Embarrassed, Painless did not reply, but neither did Mister Cake relent.
“…swe….sweekins wher…wherey’go…?”
Painless felt awkward again. He glanced around the room, looking for something to put his attention on until Carrot Cake slipped back into the void again, but the persistent mutterings soon backed him into a corner.
“I’m, uh…” He cleared his throat, this time with purpose, “I’m right here.”
Mister Cake’s brow creased with disapproval. Painless took a breath and tried again.
“I’m here, um…honey…cake?”
Painless wasn’t certain what a honey cake even was, but Mister Cake’s expression cleared up satisfactorily. Somewhere under the myriad sheets, his foreleg jerked. More likely than not it was a simple involuntary muscle spasm, but the movement occurred again, and was accompanied by more mutterings-
“…h-hoo…hooome…s-s…ssoonn…”
Painless opened his mouth, closed it again, reached out with a hoof, drew it back, and finally chastised himself for his bumbling uncertainty. He sat in near-silence, his ears perking and relaxing with the rhythm of the machines. The clock read nearly forty-minutes past the hour. He wondered precisely how much time would be sufficient to sit in the lonely room before he could return to the land of the living.
The gibbering consciousness of Painless’s patient flared to life again. His words were incomprehensible, but the spasming foreleg accompanied it again.
Painless could no nothing for him. The unicorn gritted his teeth in frustration and wracked his brain for something that was still in his power to offer the flailing, terminal mind. Without allowing himself time to think, he peeled back the covers just enough cradling Carrot Cake’s twitching hoof in his.
“Shh,” He offered helplessly, “You’re already home.”
The addled mind accepted the lie as easily as that of a newborn colt. The hoof twitched again and Carrot Cake’s eyes jerked under the thin membranes of their lids, but no sound issued from his lips.
Painless stroked the limp, pale hoof in his embrace. It was a soft hoof – that of a poet, be it a poet of words or confections. A thought occurred to him, and he gently sat the hoof back on the mattress to retrieve a sheet from the papers on the table.
Painless tilted his head in exasperation at the crudeness of the crayon scrawl on the page. It was barely legible and fraught with errors, but he understood enough of its content to read from it-
“Daddy,
Punkin and me will miss you very much over Hearth’s Warming. We can’t wait for you and mommy to make your super yummy extra special food for us that you went to get stuff for. Mommy says we will have Hearth’s Warming when you get back. Mommy says we can open our presents, but Punkin and me said no, we wanna wait for daddy. Please come home soon. We love you a whole bunch.
P.S. – Punkin wants to say stuff too.
Daddy, Pound and me love you very much and can’t wait to have Hearth’s Warming with you. Please take lots of pictures and don’t forget to bring home something neat. Here’s a bunch of hugs and kisses.
-Pound and Pumpkin Cake”
Painless rattled off the letters ‘X’ and ‘O’ several times. He glanced at the photographs lying on the table, studying in particular the infantile foals smiling in the foreground. Intrigued, he lit his horn and opened the tiny photo album. Within were a number of other photographs of members of the happy family, and Painless was surprised to see the young Pegasus colt in flight, right alongside the little unicorn filly, floating under the power of her own magic. He’d thought the little ones too young to write a letter on their own, no matter how crude, but their physical talents were clearly exceptional for their age group. Perhaps they were capable of even more.
Painless’s decision was overturned by the second letter he uncovered. The errors were minimized this time, but the crayon writing was in the same sloppy, overexcited style. He cleared his throat and read aloud-
“Mister Cake,
I hope you liked the letters from Pound and Pumpkin. I wrote them myself! Well, they told me what they wanted to say and I wrote it down. Sort of. There was a lot of goo-gooing and gaa-gaa-ing, but I’m pretty sure I got the gist!”
Painless smirked and read on-
”Anyway, I really think it would have been super-duper exciting to go to Manehattan with you to pick up all the special ingredients for your Hearth’s Warming feast, but you’re right, I have to help the whole town get ready for the big bash at Twilight’s palace! When you think about it, this is a totally fantastic idea, because now everypony at Sugarcube Corner can have two special days, all thanks to the best daddy in Ponyville! Well, not my daddy I guess, but you’re still totally the best daddy in town. I think so anyway.
Oh, I have to go. I promised Missus Cake that I would help her with the pies. She says she’s all done, but she only made four! When I’m done there’s gonna be like a million bashmillion, enough for the whole town at the big party!
Hugs with a rock candy cherry on top,
Pinkie Pie”
Painless noted a string of half a dozen ‘X’s that were crossed out and replaced by just as many ‘O’s. Further down the page the process had been repeated in reverse, with the ‘O’s crossed out, and then further still it had all been done a third time, back to the ‘X’s. He’d never met any of the elemental keepers, but he had read plenty of articles in the Manehattan times. Apparently everything they said about Pinkie Pie was true, and further, she seemed to have as little understanding of which of the two letters respectively represented hugs or kisses as Painless himself did. Shaking his head and smiling as if he had just engaged the famous earth mare in conversation, Painless sat the letter aside. His eyes wandered until they fell upon Mister Carrot Cake, who hadn’t moved.
Painless’s amber eyes went back and forth between the photographs and the withered body of the stallion in bed. No balloons. No get well cards. No Hearth’s Warming decorations. Just a single petunia plant from the caregivers who didn’t know the patient at all.
Rising to his hooves, Painless pointedly took the two framed photographs in his magical aura and floated them to either side of the plant, setting them up on their easels. He stood back to admire his handiwork, sporting a look of smug self-satisfaction.
“…pudddin…”
Painless wondered if his patient was hungry. It was unlikely – he wasn’t a neurologist, but he had some idea what the flickering neurons in Carrot Cake’s head were conjuring up. The machines were the only thing that kept his soul anchored to the world. His brain, floating lost in an ocean of oblivion, was dipping random memories into the waves and rowing its way in circles to nowhere.
Mister Cake’s left ear, or what was left of it, twitched.
“…sweet…swetteie…”
Painless found himself rubbing his shoulder as though the beleaguered syllables were airborne needles. He returned to the stool and began to sift through the papers again. There were some recipes, a number of receipts, and other assorted documents that would no longer be of any use to their owner. He slapped the stack down on the table in frustration. When Carrot Cake’s chest quivered, his physician placed a hoof gently upon it.
“You’re okay,” He once again lied. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’m here.”
The snow fell. The machines clicked. The damaged stallion grunted, trapped within his own mind and body. Painless felt his teeth grating. All his training, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to ease his patient’s pain.
Furiously, Doctor Painless sifted again through the papers. This time, his eye caught the ragged edge of a sheet of paper so yellowed, he was surprised he didn’t notice it before. Taking it carefully in his magic, he brought it to his eye. His suspicions concerning the age of the document were confirmed by the decade-old date upon it.
It was a letter, composed in fine cursive. Painless scanned its contents and immediately felt shame for the violation. He sought to stash the letter away at the bottom of the stack, but Carrot Cake grunted again.
“…swee…sweetpea…”
Painless’s eyes rolled between the letter and the patient. He took a deep breath, and, lightening his pitch, he began to read aloud by the glow of the candelabra and his own magic-
“My Dearest Pudding Pop,
It’s two in the morning at Manehattan Central Station, and I’m waiting for the two-fifteen to Ponyville. It’s cold and it’s snowing, but the pegasi have everything under control tonight. I should see you in time for Hearth’s Warming. I’m not sure why I’m even writing this since I’ll end up being the one to deliver it. I could just wait, and tell you everything I have to say muzzle-to-muzzle. But we can’t always control when those special moments happen in our lives, and I’m just a little bit terrified I might forget some of the things I want to tell you. So, I’m writing it all down.
Maybe I won’t even give this to you, I don’t know.
I’m wearing the scarf you gave me for my birthday last year. I bet you thought I didn’t have it anymore. I have lots of scarves – hoof-knit ones from my mother and grandmare, expensive gifts from friends, and a few I even made myself. The one you gave me came from a department store and it’s not made of wool. Some ponies would think that less desirable, but it has something the others don’t. It smells like you. That’s probably ridiculous – how could it smell like you after a whole year in my closet? But it does. It’s only made of cotton, but it’s so warm, and it feels like your forelegs around my neck, holding me close.
I saw the ring already. I know what you’re planning. I should be ashamed for snooping, but the truth is, I feel like a teenage filly again. I’m out here, getting special ingredients for our holiday feast, wondering if it’ll become a tradition, and I feel like I could reach up and touch the moon in the sky. I know that you’re going to propose when I get home. And I already know I’m going to say yes. It no longer matters what else happens around me, be it good or ill.
It’s cold here. They say it’s barely fifteen degrees. But I’m out on the platform, sitting on an iron bench. The ponies in the terminal probably think I’m crazy, but I don’t feel cold at all.
I’m going to marry you. I’m going to have your foals, and every day of our lives, I’m going to roll over and find you there, smiling back at me, come what may. I used to worry so much about my future - where I would go and what I would do. My teachers told me to go to graduate school in Canterlot. My parents want me to be a master chef in Fillydelphia, apprenticing under the greats. Everypony says I’m going to be something big, but the more I let them fuel my ego, the more I confused my desires for theirs. I thought I needed to live for them. Impress them. Be everything they want me to be.
But none of those things are what I really want. The answer to the question of my future – my answer to it – is you. I love you with every piece of my heart. That bakery we’ve been talking about opening in Ponyville? That’s what I want. A small, quiet place, there with you, doing what we both love. I adore the name you came up with, and if we can ever scrape the bits together, I think we should call it ‘Sugarcube Corner’ too. I promise I won’t tell anypony where we got the name. You know. In the corner. At that party. The first time you called me ‘sugarcube’. That’s a memory just for us – the world never need know about it.
I was in a shop on third street yesterday and I heard them talking about an accident with a train. There was too much ice on the track and the train was sent out before the weatherponies could clear it up. Somepony died, and I thought…that could have been me. The train they were talking about was the five-thirty to Neighagra Falls. I was thinking of taking that train and getting a layover so I could be home to you sooner. I don’t know why I didn’t take it, but it made me think about how fragile ponies are. Any day, any time, something could happen out of the blue, and suddenly…we’re gone, just like that. What if I had taken that train? Only one pony died, Celestia help them. But I could have been that pony.
But the more I think about it, the more I know what would happen if I died today. I know that I would still be there with you. When the stars came for me I would refuse them, and if they didn’t like that, I would tell them to go to Tartarus, because my place is with you. Every breeze on your cheek would be my caress. Every drop of rain on your muzzle would be one of my happy tears, that I would cry just for being by your side. If I had died, I would still be there to hold you. Every day for the rest of your life.
But if you married somepony else instead, I wouldn’t be bitter. I couldn’t be, because your happiness means more to me than that. I would even share you with her – work with her to make you happy. I would slip into that little box in your heart that you would lock up tight on your wedding day and exist there forever, cheering you on until the day I could see you again. On that day, I would hold you close to me, show you the scarf I kept around my neck always, and read you this letter, that I wrote on a train platform on my last day of life.
I’m okay, and I’ll come home to you soon. I wonder if we’ll ever do this again, this holiday feast with fresh ingredients we can’t get at home. Maybe we’ll have foals to share it with someday.
I will love you every day of my life, and if my life ends up shorter than yours, I will keep loving you each and every day of my forever up in the stars. If you ever have to go away, I hope you’ll take this silly letter with you, and hold it against your heart. When you do, nothing can hurt you, and you’ll never be cold again.
I love you.
Your Sugarcube in the Corner,
Cup Cake
P.S. – If something ever does happen to you, I’ll wait the rest of my life to be with you again. And I’ll know that every drop of rain on my cheek is one of your happy tears.”
Painless’s recitation was broken up by a stain on the aged paper. He reached out to probe it with the tip of his hoof, found it to be wet, and then touched his face. Running in an irrigated trail from his amber eye was the source. Mortified, he shoved the paper back into the stack and took in a sharp, cleansing breath as he rubbed the back of his hoof over his eyes.
Painless opened his eyes slowly - wet, hexagonal crystals of light danced through his vision and coalesced into the twinkling banners on the streetlights outside. Carrot cake’s eyes were closed. Machines breathed for him. The curl of his underbite was probably coincidental.
But it might have been a smile.
Painless sat in silence beside his patient for a long time. He occasionally offered up some pleasant, cozy words in as effeminate a voice as he could manage.
“Doctor Painless,” A familiar voice eventually announced from the doorway as a rough shaft of light sliced into the room, “I wasn’t sure I’d actually find you here.”
Painless’s sullen expression ground itself into a scowl. He kicked the rolling stool out from under himself and stood, whirling on the short-mopped, bespectacled form of Doctor Poultice, his superior.
“Why?” He hissed.
Doctor Poultice shrugged her slight shoulders. “I don’t know. Why?”
“Don’t play games with me!” Painless growled. “Why are you doing this to him?” He stabbed his hoof at the prone form of Carrot Cake, “He’s already dead! There’s no way the family can be here in time, so why are you keeping him plugged into all these machines?”
Doctor Poultice said nothing. She merely stared at the young resident with an even keel to her expression. Incensed, Painless light his horn like a torch and yanked the aged letter out from the stack again, thrusting it in his colleague’s direction.
“They can be together again! There’s still time for them to be together again for the holidays!” Painless rattled out the words manically, “He’s with her! She’s with him! It says so right here!”
“I read it,” Poultice said simply.
“Then why are you keeping him from her!?” Painless rumbled. “Let him go! This is cruel!”
Poultice raised a brow. “Do you think so? Cruel for whom exactly?”
“For her!” Painless yanked the letter away and gestured dramatically at the window, “And for his children!”
“They’ll get all the information they need,” Poultice recited the previously uttered words of her subordinate, “Everything they need to know and whom to get in touch with.”
Painless opened his mouth again, but nothing came out. He felt as though he had just slammed right into a brick wall, and the shock had yet to register. Doctor Poultice touched a hoof to the rolling stool that her student had sent her way, and sent it scurrying across the smooth floor back to him.
“You're starting to understand. Sit down.”
Painless didn’t move.
“Sit down.” Poultice warned.
Painless sat. His superior closed the door and trotted slowly over to the window to gaze at the falling snow.
“Eighteen years ago,” Poultice began, “My grandmare died of congestive heart failure.”
Painless blinked, “I fail to see what that has to do with—”
“She was an old nag,” Poultice interrupted, “and her death was not unexpected. We all knew it was coming. I mourned, but it was easier for me and I got over it. My mother got over the initial mourning period too and life went on, but my grandmare died on December 25th, at 4:38 in the afternoon. My mother has never been the same on Hearth’s Warming since. She goes through the motions, but there’s no longer any love in her heart for it, because it reminds her of only one thing – the day her mother died.”
Painless opened his mouth to comment, but Poultice cut him off again, this time fixing him with a withering gaze she usually reserved for a formal dressing-down. She spoke-
“Death isn’t about the dead, Painless. We can’t understand the relationship between our departed loved ones and the stars above, not until we go to be with them someday. Death is about who we leave behind. I breached etiquette the same way you did. I picked up that bag over there, went through it, and read what I found inside. This stallion has more to live for than some of us ever find in our lives, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s about to die.”
Poultice did something Painless had never seen before. She raised her glasses and rubbed her eye, as she continued to speak-
“You might think I’m being cruel, Painless. Maybe I am. But you said it yourself - Mister Carrot Cake is already dead. His family will have to live on without him. And so help me Celestia, I will not allow his little foals to think on Hearth’s Warming as the day their daddy died. Death is for the living, Painless. Not the dead.”
The ears of both ponies perked at the sound of the EKG monitor. Its solemn beeping had mutated into a single, long, flat tone. The patient stirred no more.
“What time is it,” Poultice asked, her glassy eyes never coming off the bed. Painless glanced at the clock.
“Eleven fifty-eight.”
Quietly and calmly, Doctor Poultice silenced the EKG and disengaged the pumping of the respirator. With her back to Painless, she removed Mister Cake’s mask and draped the sheets over his face.
“Make a note,” She said without turning around. “Death occurred at four minutes after twelve, December twenty-sixth.”
Painless felt a shiver roll down his spine. “…that’s falsifying records…”
“Report me, Doctor,” Poultice replied solemnly. “If that’s what you feel you have to do.”
Painless looked around the room uncomfortably. Eventually his eyes fell on the patient’s chart. He floated it over and took up the quill attached to the clipboard.
“Time of death,” He repeated, “Four minutes after twelve. December the twenty-sixth.”
Poultice, still facing away, had her hoof on Carrot Cake’s still chest. Her eyes were averted, and her ears hung flat against her skull.
“…thank you, Doctor,” She finally said. “Good job tonight.”
Painless said nothing. There was nothing to say. He took to gathering up the papers and photographs to replace them in the leather travel bag. When he finished, he stood over the bag, gazing down at its worn fringes.
“I…have some leave coming up,” Painless said, “…I’ll take all this to his family.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes I do,” Painless insisted. “You made him my patient. It’s my job to break the news. And my job to comfort them.”
Poultice turned. Upon her normally stoic lips was a small smile that lit her face up in youthful ways Painless didn’t even know existed within the diminutive, middle-aged mare.
“I know you’ll do it right,” Poultice said. She sniffed again, shaking her head in a vain attempt to rid herself of the emotion. “We…we get off an hour. I’ll take you for a cup of something better than the tar we have here. We can talk.”
“No,” Painless shook his head and hefted the bag over his shoulder. “I mean…no thanks. I have things to do. Raincheck?”
Poultice nodded. In passing, she touched Painless affectionately on the shoulder.
“I’m proud of you, Doctor Painless. You’re going to make a fine attending physician someday.”
With that, she was gone.
Painless, with a beat-up leather bag over his shoulder, stood before the shrouded corpse. He placed his hoof where his superior’s had been. There was no heartbeat, but the warmth of life lingered. He smiled.
“Go to her,” He said softly. “Go and be with her. I promise I’ll do the rest.”
Painless left room 178 to call the orderlies. Outside of the Manehattan East Side Memorial Hospital, a silent snowfall kissed the streets.
