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                 Nurse of Bleeding Hearts                  
                        -by Apogee-                        
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        Considerations of the Emergency Room Nurse         
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Considerations of the Emergency Room Nurse
Nurse Redheart hated her cutie mark. Nurse Redheart hated her job. Nurse Redheart hated helping ponies.
Nurse Redheart sighed. Or at least she tried, though it sounded more like a ragged pant as she ran down the long hallways of the hospital. Jumping to the side to avoid bumping into a wayward stretcher, she felt the container around her barrel whip around and smack into her legs. She hated doing this. And “this” happened often.
It seemed like every other day a pony would crash into a tree or drop a piano on another pony—Redheart had spoken to Derpy about that, but she couldn’t blame her with her heterotropia—as if they had a religious belief deep down that Ponyville’s Hospital could fix them as good as new. Without trouble at all.
Now, some things are unpreventable, like illnesses, but some of the ponies in the town could only be described as stupid.
How does a mare, the assistant in a bakery, expect her friend to make cupcakes with her and sell them to customers? Nurse Redheart was pretty sure there was a law somewhere saying that was illegal, or at least someone to frown upon it with the dozens of ponies that the mare had given food poisoning.
That mare Rainbow Dash? Yeah, she’s here every month for some accident, always the result of overworking or putting her goals too high. Nurse Redheart expected her to be crippled after the sixth incident with the way that mare acts. At least she wasn’t, thankfully.
Rounding the corner, Nurse Redheart could see the two white doors at the end of the hallway. A large sign above the doors had two black, bold letters against white.
The emergency room.
The blandly white room surrounded by equipment and sectioned off for multiple patients. Redheart was always nervous whenever a patient was brought in. Usually a patient means a challenge. A challenge meant something that she couldn’t heal. Couldn’t fix.
Bursting in, the room was a calm mess. Doctors and nurses alike were working with the patient, but you could tell with the nervous looks upon their faces that they were wrestling to keep control over the situation. It’s always like this. No matter how a situation was, there was always the fight to keep it from spiraling from control.
Catching the eye of another nurse, Redheart handed over the small package. It was blood packets, full of O-negative blood. With a quick glance at the label, the other nurse started prepping the intravenous lines. No one was able to tell what blood type the patient had with leftover magical energy from the wound hindering any attempt of finding out using a horn, and there was no time for a physical test.
Apparently a stallion had been trying to long-range teleport his best mate and ended up teleporting every part of his friend except a large section of the fur and a little bit of flesh on the pony’s right side. This is why ponies don’t usually teleport themselves, and especially other ponies unless they are fully capable of doing so.
Not only was it traumatizing for the pony who got mostly-teleported, the stallion somehow managed to teleport his friend onto the dinner table of a foal having a cutecenera. According to the stallion that had brought the victim here, he had thought it would be a good idea to trick the young foals with a prank, the teleporting earth pony. Instead there was blood everywhere, according to the ambulance ponies. Sadly, not all cuteceneras are full of fun times and happy ponies. Redheart’s own wasn’t as happy as she’d liked.
Now there was probably a filly somewhere washing blood out of her coat. Now there was a pair of very disappointed parents. Now the mostly-teleported pony was here, most of his barrel covered in blood. One could barely tell that the original color of the fur was a pretty light blue under the coat of crimson.
Trotting to the side, Redheart found the box of disposable latex gloves and put them on.
Carefully moving on her hind legs to the front as to not dirty the gloves, she observed the treatment. Too many times has Nurse Redheart seen a pony bleeding. Probably more than some of the older doctors, actually. Depends on what they did.
As she looked on, a nervous unicorn doctor began preparing a spell to clean the wound of magical energy, a necessity for wounds sustained from magic. With a quick flash of light, it was over and no more than a wisp of bluish color was left.
By the time this had finished, Redheart had donned a facemask. Not really a necessity when a pony was bleeding to death on the table, but nice nonetheless.
The nurse next to Redheart had rummaged through a cabinet and grabbed a simple opaque bottle. She shoved a bottle into Nurse Redheart hooves before she began another task. Nurse took the bottle in her hooves and screwed the lid off with her mouth. Maybe the facemask had been a good idea. She would have to make sure she did it more often. After the quick note, Redheart tipped over the bottle over the stallion, splashing the saline on him and a few nurses in the process. Better overdo things than not. The saline would flush the physical wound, unlike the magical purging the doctor had done.
The clear liquid mixed with the crimson, running down to pool on the stretcher.
As soon as Redheart tipped the bottle away, a nurse was pressing a towel onto the wound while another was bringing up some bandages. The nurse motioned for Redheart to take her place, and she moved over to allow for the shift.
Nurse Redheart has gotten blood on her coat before. It was easy to tell when this happened, as her coat was a pristine white. It wasn’t anything more than a nuisance, however. Nurse Redheart always showered like she had blood in her coat, it was a habit. Actually, it was acceptable for ponies of the emergency room to not have full body protection. Because of the time required to don even an apron for an earth pony, the practice was discontinued for fear that time would be essential or the clothing would get in the way. Aside from the gloves, the only clothing that Nurse Redheart wore was her cap—or would have been wearing. She grimaced when she realized it must have fallen off sometime in her mad dash here. Another note, this time to find her cap.
Some blood has stained the tips of her gloves red by now.
At least it looked like the bleeding was slowing. A doctor gently shoved Nurse Redheart out of the way to apply the bandages. Nurse Redheart wasn’t even sure if the bleeding had completely stopped. It wouldn’t. Not with this stallion’s wounds. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. One of the doctors who until now had been standing off to the side began to prep an autologous skin graft. If Redheart heard correctly, it would be a split thickness. Probably best for a graft of this size.
It was ugly. The skin underneath the fur was an angry red. As soon as the doctor used a combination of his magic and a dermatome to cut into the fur of the stallion, Redheart could see the sliced areas begin to shine red. When Redheart had been taught to use one, she had no magic. She never had to use one, but the process would have been uglier than this. Messier. A manual dermatome always produced less attractive results compared to a magically powered one.
Still, watching a doctor peel off sections of the stallion’s skin wasn’t amusing. Taking from the inner thigh, the doctor began handing sections of the skin to a nurse, who used a skin mesher to stretch them out into thin sheets before laying them onto the uncovered side of the stallion. Then another doctor would sew on the sheets.
It was lucky that the stallion had lost next to no flesh. It simplified things, and Redheart liked simple. Why couldn’t everypony just get hurt in simple ways?
After the patient had stabilized and everypony was sure that he was in a good condition, Nurse Redheart watched as a few ponies wheeled the stretcher away to the intensive care unit. As soon as the doors shut, she tore off her gloves with taut snaps and threw them into the proper wastebin. The facemask soon followed. Checking herself, it was a pleasant surprise to see that she had made it through the ordeal without staining her coat with blood, as unlikely as it was. That was always a welcome sight.
Moving to the sink, Nurse Redheart scrubbed her hooves in the stainless steel washbasin. It always felt like her hooves could never be clean enough. It wasn’t because they were dirty, it was just another habit. Something simple that could keep her anchored.
When it felt like they couldn’t get cleaner, she dried her hands and finally left the ER. A quick check of the clock told Redheart that her shift had ended a while ago. A quick trot down her earlier path revealed her cap lying in a corner. Somepony had trampled it. Straightening it out, Redheart tucked it on her head and continued walking.
When she finally trotted out of the service exit of the Ponyville Hospital, Nurse Redheart gave a tired sigh. The night was beautiful, and she thought that it was a sort of belated peace for her. In a way, Redheart’s favorite time was nighttime. Nighttime meant that the day was over, that it was time to clean up and settle down. That whatever challenges that the day held were over.
However, it also meant that everything was over.
Staring into the night, Redheart once again found herself thinking of lost possibilities she had passed without a second thought in her life. She knew it was pointless, even negative, to consider things past but she found that it always wormed its way into her brain like a parasprite eating away at her. Maybe she could’ve been a daycare worker. She loved foals. A secretary? She was neat. She was literally trained to be organized.
Anything but a nurse. A nurse means somepony has been hurt and needs help. A nurse helps ponies. Nurse Redheart has helped too many ponies in her life and been a nurse, a medic, too long. Her being a nurse was literally branded on her body. The mark of a nurse.
She sighed.
Nurse Redheart hated her cutie mark.
Author's Note
"Ignavi coram morte quidem animam trahunt, audaces autem illam non saltem advertunt" -Julius Caesar
Sed quae indignus est ignavi qua suam officium bene meret?

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                     Graduation Highs                      
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Graduation Highs
APPLICATION FOR ACTIVE DUTY FOR TRAINING, ACTIVE DUTY,
AND TOUR OF ACTIVE DUTY OF EQUESTRIAN MARINES
Last: Redheart  
First: N/A  
Middle: N/A
ESSN: 521-26-5694  
Permanent Home Address: 556 Mustang Ln. Fillydelphia, EQ 610
Sex: Female  
DOB: April 19, 981  
Marital Status: Unmarried
Race: Earth Pony  
Colors, Fur: White  
Colors, Mane: Pink  
Cutie Mark: N/A  
Height: 3’9”  
Weight: 112lb
To the best of my knowledge and belief, I am physically qualified for active military duty, I was:  
Last examined on: January 6, 998  
At: Flankfort Hospital, Fillydelphia
Signature:______________________________________ Date: January 10, 998
Redheart sat alone at her kitchen table, bent over a paper and bathed in a warm light. It was well past midnight, and yet she was still awake. She had sat with a pen poised over the form for a while now. Taking a deep breath through her nose, Redheart chewed on the pen the recruiter had given provided. That was always a bad habit of hers, if the dozens of chewed writing utensils on my desk was any testament to it.
Yeah, it wasn’t like she was signing a contract for four years of her life for training and deployment then four more years of the reserves, was it?
‘It totally is,’ Redheart’s brain told her.
‘Hush, I knew that,’ Redheart countered, before realizing that internal debate was not the answer.
Spitting the pen out of her mouth, Redheart sat back in her chair and tapped her chin repeatedly. She licked her lips. After about a minute of staring out the window into the night absentmindedly, she groaned and threw her head onto the table.
“Urg.”
Lifting her head off the table, Redheart glared at the form with narrowed eyes. On one hoof, this was her key to getting out of Fillydelphia, to a new life, and to so many opportunities. On the other hoof, she was dropping into the unknown, but then again, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, what’s wrong with a little excitement in her life? This was a once in a lifetime experience!
Though it would be all new, Redheart knew she could be deployed to Aquastria, in the Griffon Kingdom, maybe even pick up a few life skills along the way. Redheart smiled to think that someday she might be a valued scientist developing some cutting-edge research, or maybe a firemare saving some children from a burning building.
Seizing the moment of abnormal confidence, she picked up the pen in her mouth and scribbled her own illegible signature. Dropping the pen again, Redheart stared at the paper with wide eyes, the fact running through her mind that the deed was done. No turning back. This was it.
Gingerly picking up the single sheet of paper, she laid it onto the stack a little to its left which consisted of dozens more forms on everything about her life imaginable, already filled out. She used her hooves to tap it into place and shifted the stack into the portfolio given to her, a plain-looking manila folder. It seemed awfully insufficient for the information and importance it held for her life.
Slowly picking it up in her mouth, she walked it to the desk in her bedroom. Carelessly sweeping away papers and pencils to the side, Redheart laid the folder down carefully in the center of the desk for her to take when she left to turn in the information to the recruitment center tomorrow. The event was circled at least three times on her calendar, as if she could forget.
Sitting down at the edge of her bed, Redheart felt her eyes grow heavy. It was now 1:36 in the morning. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have spent the last six hours ignoring the forms. She could have signed it next—well, later this morning—but she couldn’t sleep the five times she had tried, each time before getting up and staring at the offending form for at least thirty minutes each time, only to lie back down in bed.
Going back into the kitchen to turn off the light and get a final drink of water, Redheart lied in her bed. She had already gotten ready for bed the first time she tried sleeping. Finally reaching over and turning off the light on her bedstand, Redheart closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Redheart began to bash the back of her head into the pillow in frustration of her futile efforts in searching for sleep. Last she checked, it was around five in the morning. She didn’t need to show up at the recruiter’s office until 3:00PM, so there was no reason not to sleep a bit later. But she couldn’t, for some reason. Rolling over to check what time it was, Redheart saw that it was 3:17AM. Apparently twelve minutes had passed since she last checked. Time had decided to slow down, it seemed.
Laying back down, Redheart once again tried her best efforts to get comfortable. She decided that it was a crime, not being able to sleep in such a comfortable bed. She had longed for it in times of need, but now she could not cherish it. After a moment’s thought, she reasoned that it was sleep she wanted, though, not the bed. After another moment, she wondered why she had taken the effort to think about it.
Flipping over to her stomach, Redheart kicked off her covers and rubbed her face into her pillow. Her mane was going to be mess tomorrow, but that was a problem for future her. Actually, this position was quite alright. Her face, when turned to the side, was at just the right angle that she could breathe, yet feel comfortable. She was in a position some would consider lewd to be in, but then again, almost everypony slept naked. All that mattered was that she was comfortable.
She lay there for what seemed like hours, floating in and out of sleep. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. The flow of time was constantly disrupted by the fading of sleep and the sudden realization of the passage of consciousness. Truly, this was a phase of being blind to the passage of time. Oh wait—technology.
Bringing herself out of her blessedly nice position in her bed to check the clock, Redheart saw that the time meant that it was the fifth occurrence in the last hour that she had checked the time, despite feeling like she was asleep for at least most of the night. Redheart cursed herself mentally and began to weigh her options, now that there was proof that sleep was useless. Sleep or no sleep? Try to sleep for another four hours and not get any sleep or get up now to get some work done and not get any sleep?
‘Buck it.’
Redheart came to the reassuring conclusion that she could take a nap later if she was tired. Not even getting up, Redheart turned herself over and stretched her stiff limbs under the covers. Actually, they were usually quite supple; Redheart had always found stretching regularly to be soothing. Always done in the morning, of course.
Surprisingly, Redheart liked the morning. The morning was soothing. The morning was energetic for her. It meant that everything that happened yesterday dropped away, that it was a new leaf to her life. What better way than to start it early?
That being said, Redheart took the leap and kicked off her covers. Instantly a creeping coolness brushed her body, and Redheart found herself longing to pull back into the comforting sheets, already regretting the sudden change. However, she instead jumped out of bed in a herculean act of self control, or so she told herself.
Now trotting into the bathroom one door down from her room, she flicked on the lights within it. Only blinded slightly, Redheart turned the tap and splashed her face with cold water before she could even catch a glance at how bad her mane was. As uncomfortable as it was to wash her face with the cold water, it woke her up.
After an array of tasks in the bathroom finishing with brushing her long, pink mane to perfection, Redheart was admiring herself in the mirror and deemed herself ready for the day. At least, she reasoned, even if everything went wrong, she would look pretty while it happened.
A silly thought struck Redheart, producing a grin on her face, of her strutting into the recruitment building looking sexy, her long hair flowing, explosions rocking the background.
Now wearing that stupid grin, Redheart flicked off the lights and left the bathroom.
It was 2:53. That was bad. Very bad. That was the basis for any of Redheart’s thoughts as she made her way out of the door the second time that day.
The first time was almost perfect. She had her saddlebags, she was going to be five minutes early at a relaxed trot at the expected time of 3:00, and she was relaxed. Well, had she not forgotten to actually put her documents into the said saddlebags, it would have been perfect. Now she was spitting in anger. Well, more from the long hairs of her mane that had found their way into her mouth. But a little anger.
Now Redheart predicted that at the speed she could hit, she would be five minutes late. That was not reassuring at all for her. Now locking the door of her home after her, Redheart jumped off the steps leading to the street and started a fast canter in the direction of the recruiter’s office.
Even though Redheart considered herself a reasonably fit mare, she found herself tired after only reaching a quarter of the way to the office. Every breath of the cool January air burned in her lungs. Usually Redheart liked the crisp air, but something she agreed with was the opinion that it was not good to overexert oneself in said air. Nevertheless, she was doing it.
The afternoon was actually quite busy for a cold day like today, with ponies trotting through the sidewalks that Redheart was currently rushing through. The snow that had covered them this morning had been shoveled to the side, and the snow on the roads were cleared for the wagons that were busily moving to their next destination.
As Redheart ran down the sidewalk, she panted. Her warm breath sent little streams of fog behind her, and her throat felt numb. Rounding a corner, she had to stop to avoid running into two other ponies.
“Sorry,” Redheart muttered, already past them.
She was now about halfway there, to her best guess. However, Redheart couldn’t help but feel like she couldn’t make it much farther. Her hooves were becoming numb, and only now did Redheart remember the boots that she had left in her closet. The saddlebags bounced against her sides in an irregular beat as she ran, only adding another annoyance to her unintended run.
Redheart was in the downtown area by now, and noticeably more ponies were in the streets. The recruitment office was actually at the corner of the next block, and within sight, if she looked through the crowds of ponies.
Redheart was doing just that, but doing so led to her not avoiding the pony standing still on the sidewalk, curiously reading a sign above a store. Redheart deflected off his shoulder, causing him to stumble backwards several steps and look at her with surprise, but Redheart herself tripped on her hooves and stumbled onto the sidewalk face first.
The green pegasus that Redheart had galloped into recovered first. “Oh, hey. Are you alright?”
Redheart had scraped herself on the sidewalk and was cringing in pain. Still, the pony looked at her expectantly.
Biting back tears, Redheart looked him in the eye and mustered as much sarcasm as she could. “I’m fine, thanks. Just bashed my face into the concrete.”
“Alrighty, then.” The pegasus looked at her nervously.
“It hurt.”
“Well... I’ll think I’ll be going now. You sure you’re fine?”
Redheart stopped him with an outstretched hoof and looked into his eyes, trying her best to convey her annoyance. “No. No, I’m not fine.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Redheart was sure this pony was kidding.
“Just help me up.”
“Alright, but I don’t know why you didn’t just say so.” Nope. Not kidding.
The glare that Redheart gave the pony as he helped her up seemed not to pierce through his glowing smile, but Redheart persisted nonetheless with the cold stare.
The pony seemed not to notice Redheart’s scrapes and the grit on her coat. “Welp. It’s been nice meeting you.” He then promptly turned and left for the store they had been standing before.
That left Redheart at a loss, staring at the strange pegasus’s flanks dumbstruck as he trotted away, hoof still hovering in the air. Unable to find anything to be angry at, Redheart felt confusion decide that her head was a nice place to settle in.
Breaking off her gawking and closing her mouth, Redheart shook her head before beginning to brush herself off. She took one last look at the store the weird pony had entered, a quaint and little place named Aragon’s Bookstore, before she began her trip to the office once again.
The rest of the gallop to the office, more careful, was luckily uneventful. When Redheart finally made it into the building, she pulled open the door before passing a barrier of warm air. A heater was dutifully blowing out hot air with a low hum and the overall impression that the building gave was of a minimalistic, spartan building.
A single earth pony sitting behind a desk looked up at Redheart before watching her trot up to her desk. He was wearing the standard guard’s armor and identical with every other with the only difference being a recruiter’s badge attached to his breastplate. He gestured to the chair in front of him and Redheart realized that she had been standing in place and staring at him before rushing to sit down. Redheart wasn’t sure, but she was sure that she saw a raised eyebrow at her deep breaths.
“One moment, please.”
The stallion broke off his lazy gaze before looking back down at paperwork that he looked not at all pleased to do. Redheart shifted her saddlebag off and onto the ground uneasily. It seemed like the recruiter was in no hurry. Redheart had a nagging feeling that he already knew about the stack of forms in her saddlebag and what it meant for him.
As soon as she thought that, the recruiter looked up with weary eyes and a fake smile. “Hello, welcome! I’m Given Role, or Give Enroll, depending on who you ask. I go by both. I assume that you’re here with plans for recruitment?”
“Yup.” There wasn’t much more Redheart thought she could say. She wasn’t quite sure why he had said his name twice. Probably a guard thing.
“Have you met with someone already?”
“Yup.” Redheart wondered why that was all she could say.
“Alrighty then! You’ve filled out the necessary information, correct?”
‘Tell him something funny, how long you stayed up, how you almost forgot the forms, how you—’
“Yup”
‘Dammit, brain!’
“Not much of a talker, eh? That’s alright. Not much to say in the Royal Guard.” The stallion smiled at Redheart. “Your forms, please.”
Face now reddening rapidly, Redheart fumbled in her saddlebag, happy to have something to look to.
“Here you go,” Redheart said as she brought the folder onto the desk.
“Thank you. One moment while we process this, I’ll be back in a moment, Miss—” He opened the folder before briefly scanning the documents. “—Redheart!”
With that, the stallion was gone. Redheart suddenly realized that she had quite literally watched her life as she knew it walk away. However, at the same time, she felt like a weight has been passed off of her chest, it was like she had just been accepted to her new job—which, in a way, it was. Before she could think too deeply on it all, the stallion returned, this time with a genuine grin and no folder.
“Welp, just a few more things and we’ll be done here!” He pulled out a paper from the desk’s drawer before sliding it between them before reaching into a pocket in his armor and placing a card to the left of the paper.
“This is some information you’ll need for when you get shipped to basic training. The card is my contact information. Just call if you have any problems. Do you have any questions, concerns, or comments, maybe?”
“When do I leave?” Redheart eyed the paper before taking it in her hooves.
“Just whatever’s on the paper.”
“Okay, thank you. So just show up?”
“Whatever it says.”
Redheart slowly nodded before pulling the paper closer.
“Welcome the Equestrian Armed Forces, miss,” he said before turning away and walking away. He waved once before entering the back room and closing the door.
Redheart’s eyes widened as she realized that, much like the night before, she sat alone at the table, bent over a sheet of paper. Only, this time, there was no going back.
Author's Note
"Iulia Pompeio nupsit." -Julius Caesar