Of Cold Nights and Long Sleeps
It was colder then it had been for a long time, Dr Hugh Shields remembered as he continued to drive down the back country roads outside of Canterlot in his beat-up pickup truck. "Damn it's snowing hard tonight." He said to no one as he turned on the wipers to keep the snow from accumulating on the windshield, as even going forty clicks wasn't fast enough to stop the snow from obscuring his view. This blizzard was nearing a total white-out, and if that was the case, he might have to pull over till the storm passed, and Lord knows when that would happen, he could be out here all night.
He glanced over for a second to the other side of the truck's bench seat at his antique Doctor's bag that his father had given him when he graduated from Harvard, it's silver clasp engraved with the words "Primum non nocere" 1. "Least Mrs Primrose is doing alright," Hugh said as he passed something on the side of the road. "Was that red hair?"
Pulling to the side of the road he jumped out of the driver's side, grabbed a battery-less flashlight from the roadside kit he kept under the seat and gave it a few shakes and turned it on, nearly blinding himself, and set off down the road until he found what he saw, a young woman in a black jacket, orange scarf looped around the top of her head and ears, an orange skirt and purple leggings. Not clothing you should be wearing in weather like this, Hugh thought. "Least she's wearing boots,"
"Miss!" He called out to her, "Miss!" He said, shining the flashlight in her direction, careful not to shine it in her face until she suddenly dropped to her knees. "Shit!" Hugh said, rushing to her side, his hip killing him as he pushed his seventy-three-year-old legs as hard as he could until he was at her side. Holding her close, he felt that she wasn't shivering. Worried, he pulled up the sleeve on his right arm and pressed it to her forehead, which only confirmed his fears. "Miss, Miss, can you hear me?" He asked. Getting no response, he picked her up and headed back to the truck where he put her on the bench seat.
Climbing in overtop of her, he placed his index and middle finger over her carotid artery and felt a weak pulse while at the same time placed his cheek near her mouth to listen and feel for breathing and watching for her chest to move.
It didn't.
With practised ease, he put his right hand on the back of her head and used his left hand to lift her chin up to open her airway, plugged her nose and began mouth-to-mouth, giving three strong breaths, waited with his cheek over he mouth and watching for her chest to move, then gave three more breaths. Hugh repeated this four more times.
He took his knuckles and rubbed hard on her sternum2 for a couple seconds. "Come on!" He exclaimed, before giving three more breaths, repeating the same process two more times before he heard her groan while giving her sternum another rub. "That-a-girl," He said, checking her pulse again and noting that, while weak, she was breathing on her own again.
After tucking her legs up so he could close the passenger door, he raced around the front of the truck, pulled himself into the driver's seat and started the truck. Betsy started like a dream, she is a good truck and never failed him. After cranking the heat he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the loathsome cellphone his daughter had insisted he start carrying, making a mental note to apologise for complaining to her, flipped it open and dialled the number for his home, hoping the storm wouldn't make such a call impossible.
"Come on, come on, pick up," He said, listening to the ringing for a few seconds before he heard a soft voice on the other side.
"Hello, Shield residence,"
"Seon-Hui, listen, I found someone on the side of the road, severe hypothermia, start boiling some water for water-bottles and throw blankets in the dryer," He told his wife while looking around the truck for a landmark. "I'm by the big oak tree near the Richardson place, I'll be home in fifteen." He finished, closed the phone and put the truck in gear.
Sunset awoke warm, her eyes were still too heavy to open, but she was warm. And why does my chest hurt? she asked herself as she let out a painful groan. Feeling something tighten around her right bicep as something pumped air, she turned her head and opened her eyes to see an old man with grey hair sitting on an ottoman, stethoscope in his ears with the other end pressed onto her elbow joint, and looking at his watch. Smiling, he opened the valve on the blood-pressure cuff and took it off.
"Welcome back," He said. "How're feeling?"
"Still a little cold and my chest hurts," She answered groggily.
Turning away, he called out to another room. "Seon-Hui, is the water bottle ready?" the man asked, scratching his cheek with a hand that was missing its pinky and ring finger, a faded pink scar where they should have been. Noticing that Sunset was staring, the man deepened his smile to put her at ease.
"Filling it up now, be right there," a female voice called out. Hearing the light pitter-patter of footsteps, Sunset looked up to see an Asian woman come into the room and kneeled down next to the man. She then reached for the top of the blanket and gently pulled it down, grabbed the water bottle on Sunset's chest and replaced it.
"Thank you,"
"You're welcome, dear."
"I think introductions are in order," The man said, "This is my wife of forty-six years, Seon-Hui," He continued, the woman giving a polite nod and a smile, "My name is Hugh Shields, I'm the doctor in these parts."
"Sunset, my name is Sunset Shimmer," She said, as she made an attempt to sit up, which prompted immediate help from the two people in front of her. "Ahh..." Sunset said in a low groan. "Why does my chest hurt?" She asked.
"Well, Ms Sunset, that's what you get when you pass out in the snow in front of a doctor," Hugh said in an obviously sarcastic tone.
"You'll forgive my husband, despite being a doctor for fifty years..."
"Fifty-two,"
"Fifty-two years, his bedside manner is not what it should be,"
"Sunset, when I found you, you nearly died," Hugh started to explain. "You probably did for a bit there, but you're lucky I found you. You stopped breathing when I put you in my truck and I was able to bring you back with mouth-to-mouth," He continued, noting the colour shift in Sunset's cheeks. "While it's good to see the colour returning to your face, its nothing to be embarrassed about, as for your chest, I might have rubbed your sternum too hard with my knuckles when you were unresponsive, you'll be ok in a few hours."
"Thank you," Sunset said.
"You're welcome, sweetheart," Seon-Hui said with a smile. "I'll go fix us some tea, be right back."
"What were you doing out there?" Hugh asked just as his wife returned with a teapot in one hand and three mugs in the other.
"That's... That's a long story," Sunset told him while Seon-Hui sat down next to her, listening intently.
Sunset explained that the last few days at school had been hell. Someone had been spreading embarrassing stories about her friends and the school was starting to blame her as the one responsible.
Hugh sat there as she explained. While he didn't know what a "Facebook" was, he guessed it had to do something with the "Intranets" his granddaughter was always raving about the last few times he visited. High School politics and drama, that he understood, somethings never changed.
"I met up with my friends at the diner we liked to hang out at, to try and explain things, but they wouldn't listen. The hot head that I am, got angry and stormed out. I headed back to my apartment when I got a text on my phone to meet her at her house and that everything would be explained. Then my phone died." Sunset continued. "By the time the storm got bad, I was too far out of town to head back, so I pressed forward. I don't remember much after that."
"You wouldn't, sweetheart. Hypothermia can have that effect." Seon-Hui told her.
"Where were you headed?" Hugh asked.
"Hmm?" Sunset asked as she took a sip of her tea.
"Your friends, where do they live?"
"Mile 40 marker on the road you found me on."
"I know the place, if the weather's good and if I feel that you don't need to see someone at a hospital in the morning, I'll take you there," Hugh told her. He thought it odd that she had said that her friend was a girl, as the only kid her age at the Apple's was Macintosh. Applejack had just started grade three and Apple Bloom was barely out of diapers. He brushed the thought off and took her at her word. Why would she lie about that? He asked himself. Unless... No, couldn't be. "Whoa, what are you doing?" Hugh asked as Sunset made to get up.
"I need to pee," She said bluntly.
"I'll take her," Seon-Hui said, helping Sunset up and taking her down the hall from the living room.
"What am I wearing?" Sunset asked as she walked down the hall, pointing out the flowery nightgown she had on.
Looking around the room, Hugh noticed that Sunset's jacket was on the floor where he had tossed it when he and his wife hastily took it off her to get her out of her wet clothing. Picking it up, he felt one of the pockets was heavy. Intrigued, he pulled out the black rectangle with a red and yellow sun on one side, a shiny glass face on the other, with the word "Samsung" written on the top and singular button on the bottom. Giving the button a few presses and nothing happening, he shrugged and put back, whatever it was, in the pocket, folded the jacket and placed it on an end table near the front door.
"Is this you?" Sunset asked startling Hugh who turned around to see her looking at a picture on the fireplace mantlepiece.
"Uh, yeah, back in my army days, during the Korean war," Hugh explained, pointing out himself, and his two friends Thomas and Bill. "God, must've been twenty-six, twenty-seven then, got drafted right out of medical school, and I found myself as a surgeon in the 4718th M.A.S.H unit."
"Oh, like the TV show?"
"Not quite the same, but pretty much, the real thing was quite different."
"Is that..." Sunset began to ask.
"Where I lost my fingers? Yes." Hugh said grimly.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to ask something so private."
"Its ok, Sunset, it happened forty-seven years ago," He told her to put her at ease. "It was during the second winter of the war, we had gotten word that a neighbouring M.A.S.H unit had been attacked by a sniper and lost two of its surgeons and was short-handed. Our Colonel ordered Bill and I to head over there in the morning because there was a storm blowing in from the Sea of Japan and we were expecting heavy snow.
Bill and I, when walking back to our tent passed by the Admin tent and overheard a radio call that the unit we were to be sent to was being overrun with casualties. Not wanting to risk his men, our Colonel said to wait till morning anyways because of the storm, but a Pilot volunteered and Bill and I convinced our CO to let us fly there.
The winds weren't that bad when we started out, but halfway there the storm blew in with a vengeance, and we were forced to make a crash landing a field. Bill and I were ok, but the Pilot had a compound3 leg fracture. We pulled him to a nearby farmhouse that turned out to be abandoned. We stopped the bleeding and immobilized his leg the best we could, but there was nothing we could do warm ourselves. The chimney on the fireplace had collapsed and there was nothing in the house to burn. The temperature got down to minus thirty-five C that night. By the time we were found in the morning, I was the only one left alive. My hand was so badly frostbitten that they had to amputate my fingers."
"That's horrible," Sunset said, genuinely shocked. "I'm sorry about your friend."
"I am too." Hugh said, looking at Sunset but staring right through her.
"What he hasn't told you yet is that's where he met me," Seon-Hui said, stepping up to her husband hugging him at the waist. "I was an army nurse with the Canadian Army in Tokyo where he was sent." She explained, "He was such a shameless flirt that I ignored him for a week. But he was persistent, rest is history." She finished, pulling him down for a kiss. "Come, you should see the photos I have."
The three of them laughed as they looked through album after album until sunrise. Sunset had made quite the rebound and Hugh found her to be in good health, which Seon-Hui took to mean that she could help her in the kitchen, as she wasn't going to let her leave the house without eating breakfast first.
Looking into the kitchen from the living room, Hugh watched as the two women went about the business of cooking, and smiled, but that quickly faded.
Why didn't you tell her? Bill asked, his ghastly visage clear as day standing between Hugh and the Kitchen.
Why didn't you tell her that I blamed myself for Lieutenant Miller? A red hole appeared on his chest.
Why didn't you tell her that I shot myself rather than freeze because I couldn't handle the guilt? His chest was now covered in blood.
You knew I should have been rotated out when I made that mistake in OR earlier that week, that I couldn't deal with losing that boy barely old enough to wear a uniform because I fucked up. You knew I couldn't hack it. I told you I couldn't hack it! Why didn't you say something?! Bill silently screamed.
"I'm sorry," Hugh said weakly, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Hugh," A feminine voice said from behind him, snapping him out of the haze he was caught in. There was his wife, wearing a smile and a concerned look in her eyes. "It's ok," She told him, reaching up and putting a hand on his cheek, which he leaned into and joined her hand with his. "It's ok,"
Despite the heavy snow, the roads were still possible and it didn't take long for Hugh to drive Sunset to the Apple ranch. In the distance, the two of them could see smoke rising from the chimney and movement in the kitchen window while a light flurry was falling from the overcast sky
"Here we are," Hugh said with a smile.
"Thank you, for everything,"
"You're very welcome, little lady. I'd say 'anytime', but that would imply that I'm ok with you almost freezing to death again, which in my medical opinion..."
"Just shut up and give me a hug," Sunset interrupted and gave him a tight squeeze. "Thank you," She said again.
"Sunset, I have to ask. You didn't intentionally go out into the storm, did you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You and I both know that you're old enough to know what I'm implying."
"You're asking if I did it to kill myself." She told him. "Look, what happened to me at school was rotten, but it's far from the worst thing that has ever happened to me, trust me, and even if it was, even given what happened, my friends are my friends."
Hugh looked into Sunset's eyes for a long while but saw nothing but determination. "Ok, good enough for me,"
Sunset smiled back as she left the truck but paused. "That and freezing to death is, like, the worst way you can pick to off yourself. Zero out of ten, bad Yelp review," she told him and started walking towards the house.
Movement just outside the driver side window caught Hugh's attention, but it turned out to be falling snow from a tree branch. Turning back towards the Apple family house, there was nothing there. In the back of his mind, Hugh couldn't shake the feeling that something should have been there, but he brushed the thought off. "What am I doing parked here anyways?" He said to himself while reaching down to turn the radio on, and started to head home.
"This is 105.7 The Beat here with your morning dose of news, with only a few more days until the Year 2000, computer experts are still divided on whether or not the Y2K 'bug' will have any effect...
Sunset turned and waved but found nothing there. Standing there puzzled for a moment as to why she would wave a bunch of trees, she turned back and started to trudge her way through the snow towards her destination, not noticing that the tracks she was making only started a few feet behind her.
"Sunset! Is that you?!" Applejack called from the house.
"No, it's a manticore," Sunset said dryly.
Still in her pj's and wearing a winter coat and hastily donned boots, Applejack ran out and grabbed her friend in a tight hug. "Listen, ah shouldn't 've accused you like I did. I'm sorry." Applejack told her. "Now come on inside before you freeze to death!"
Sunset just laughed but didn't know why.
"Applebloom!" Applejack called out with readily apparent anger in her voice.
"Yeah, sis?" Applebloom said sheepishly as she poked her head around the corner from the kitchen. "Oh, yeah. That."
"I think you have some explaining to do." Applejack admonished her sister.
Author's Note
1 - Latin - "First, do no harm", erroneously believed to be part of the Hippocratic oath but is thought to have originated in the 17th century.
2 - Rubbing your knuckles hard on the sternum (the center bone of your ribcage), is a First-Aid method to attempt to get a response from an unresponsive person. This hurts. A lot.
3 - Compound Fracture - Broken bone where the bone pierces the skin, greatly increases the risk of infection and other complications.
This story is obviously a take on Anon-A-Miss, and has is AU to that story's dubious canon. Instead of Sunset solving the issue right there at in the diner where she meets her friends, she storms off, the rest is explained in the story.
Replaced 'MyStable' with 'Facebook' (out of all the ponifications of social media platforms, they go with MySpace? Really?!)
Sunset is an Android user, deal with it. She has a Galaxy S5, as this was the latest version as of 2014 where this story takes place.
Seon-Hui is a common Korean given name and was a 2nd generation Canadian upon her birth.
Like that little twist at the end?
