The Angel of Ponyville General
As the punch clock slammed down onto Nurse Redheart’s timesheet, she (and not for the first time) wished she were a unicorn. At least that way, she wouldn’t have to feel her teeth rattling every time she clocked in to work at Ponyville General.
“I r-really wish the union didn’t argue for this stupid thing…” she groaned, placing her timesheet back into its little cubbyhole in the wall beside the tooth-shattering time-keeping machine.
She licked the papery taste off her teeth, and added, “Or that they would just loosen the springs a bit more. I’m going to need dental work at this rate.”
Still, chipped bicuspids or not, Redheart wasn’t about to let something so trivial spoil her day. It was Hearth’s Warming, after all. The greatest holiday of them all! And she was at her favorite place of all: Ponyville General!
True, most ponies would (and did) think she was crazy for enjoying working on this most special of days. And at a hospital, no less. The emergency room today would be filled with all manner of holiday accidents and tragedies.
But Redheart didn’t much care to listen to the neigh-sayers and party-poopers of the world; this was where she was meant to be. Where she was most needed today. Helping families through what could be the most troubling and terrible of times.
Besides. It wasn’t like she was going anywhere else on a family holiday.
She approached the front desk and already knew it would be one of those shifts. The halls and waiting rooms were packed with ponies and other creatures, all bundled up against the frigid chill outside, and most favoring, holding, or in a few cases levitating whatever parts of their anatomy were in such a condition that they had to be here.
Still, the little tinsel decorations hanging from the walls and desks were nice. Best focus on those.
Nurse Snowheart sat behind the main desk like a worn-out ragdoll, eyes as empty and insensate as any buttons would be. Her blue mane was frazzled, and her yellow coat without luster. Clearly, the twelve-hour shift she’d completed had done its very worst.
“Oh… Redheart?” she yawned. “Is it Hearth’s Warming already?”
“Seems like it,” Redheart tittered. Then, frowning with concern, she asked, “Long night?”
Snowheart nodded, almost nodding off with the gesture. “Oh, the longest… especially after Doctor Horse collapsed.”
“Collapsed!?” Redheart gasped. “What happened?”
“Poor guy just got worn down and a cold caught up with him,” said Snowheart, who was now piling up a list of recent arrivals onto a clipboard. “We called in Doctor Horse to replace him, but he’s still up in the Crystal Empire, and the trains all got stopped by a yeti sitting on the tracks…”
“What about Doctor Horse?” Redheart asked.
“She’s up in Canterlot, dealing with an outbreak of ponypox.”
“And Doctor Horse?” asked Redheart again.
At this moment, a similarly exhausted Nurse Sweetheart walked by, carrying a pile of fresh towels on her back.
“Broke his leg while skiing.” She paused, mid-step, and frowned. “Hey, how come almost all the doctors are named Horse? Seems odd…”
“Do we not have any doctors in today?” Redheart glanced around, worry knitting her brow as she began counting just how many ponies, yaks, changelings, dragons, and other creatures were packed into the hospital this morning.
That was a lot of beds and rooms to cover without a full doctor around.
Snowheart seemed to either take a moment to think about what Redheart just asked, or more likely was just having herself a ten second standing-nap. But then she shook her head.
“There’s Doctor Feel Good,” she said. “She came in a few hours ago. I thought she was sick, but she says she’s feeling alright…”
Sweetheart, still within conversant range, cheered. “She brought those awesome brownies of hers and left them in the break room! I think they have peanut butter…”
Snowheart rolled her eyes. “Keep an eye on her. Oh, and Doctor Honey Nut’s in as well. But he’s stuck in surgery all day. Some nasty case.”
Redheart sighed through her nose and nodded a few times.
Then she nodded again. And again. And finally, she could deny it no longer.
This was going to be a looooooong day…
“Alright,” she said, at last. She took the clipboard, and checked the top of the list of names.
“Who’s first?”
7:46 AM
She braced herself as she prepared to enter the tiny examination room. Redheart knew she’d be saying this phrase to ad nauseum today, and so steeled herself.
“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.
Octavia Melody’s eyes, upon seeing Redheart enter, briefly flickered up to the nurse’s hat atop her head.
“Are we not to see Doctor Horse?” she asked in that typical Trottingham accent Redheart was half-sure was put-on. “This is a rather… delicate emergency…”
Redheart noted the way Octavia’s eyes then flicked over to the side, where a similarly instantly recognizable DJ pony stood in a silent sulk beside the examination table. It was a look that said a lot of things very quickly, and none of them for polite company.
“We’re swamped today,” Redheart said through a smile as bright and cheery as it was fake and strained to the unintended slight. “But never you worry! I’m a fully qualified healthcare professional, and I’ve been around long enough so that nothing surprises me anymore. Now… what seems to be the trouble?”
Trouble. Good. A little variation to keep the phrase from going stale too early.
Octavia frowned, and seemed to silently mull something over another moment. Then, with a sigh, she shook her head, and said, “Very well. I suppose it cannot be helped.”
She turned another condescending look back towards her companion.
“My roommate here, Vinyl Scratch,” she said with an emphatic wave of her hoof, “was trying to help me set up the decorations for our Hearth’s Warming party. I assume you saw the signs we posted?”
“The… ones warning residents to place mattresses up against their windows and breakable belongings?” Redheart internally groaned, recalling the last time one of these two’s yuletide Wub-Parties obliterated every glass in her cupboard, and how she’d forgotten to properly insulate her porcelain in cotton this year.
Octavia and Vinyl smiled identically. Then, Octavia continued.
“Indeed! Well, in the process of her trying to help, my dear Vinyl decided to show off a… party trick she’d been working on.”
“Oh?” Redheart tilted her head questioningly to one side. “What sort of trick? A music trick?”
Octavia snorted. “Hardly. It was a different sort of trick, though she says it was meant to be done as part of a light show during a… well. You’ll see.”
Here, she turned back towards her roommate, and the frown returned.
“Vinyl?” she asked, darkly.
For her part, the disc jockey coughed, and blushed slightly. Then, with a silent sigh, she lit up her horn with a cool blue light. She held that light, as if she were trying to lift something with her aura, but Redheart couldn’t see anything around the mare move or shift in any way.
Not until she glanced down towards Vinyl’s flank.
“Ah,” she said, clicking her tongue.
“Ah, indeed!” Octavia said with an exasperated roll of her eyes. “Ah was precisely how I put it…”
Redheart approached Vinyl’s side, and gingerly reached one hoof out. She prodded the DJ’s belly right where a diffuse green light seemed to shine from within.
It was warm.
“So…” She searched for the words for several long, quiet seconds. “… that’s a…?”
“A lightbulb from our Hearth’s Warming display, yes.”
“Can’t she just teleport it back out?”
Vinyl glanced away, and tried to scratch her nose in the most nonchalant manner possible.
“She said she can’t ‘feel it’ anymore,” Octavia said, frown deepening. “I’m told that’s a thing with unicorns. It happens whenever she runs a magic current though.”
“I, uh… wouldn’t know.” Redheart shook her head, and tried not to imagine quite what was going on inside her patient at just this moment. Breakfast was only a few minutes ago, and holding onto that was key to surviving such a long shift. “She doesn’t feel that?”
Octavia shrugged. “It is a bit warm.”
Redheart turned, and grabbed her clipboard off the nearby counter. “Okay, well. I guess I can pen you in for a surgical consult and an exploratory laparotomy. Doctor Honey Nut is in, but really busy. You might have to wait a while before that can go ahead.”
“Exploratory…?”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Redheart, somehow talking past the pencil in her mouth. “They’ll open Vinyl up, remove the lightbulb, and make sure nothing else went wrong due to the obstruction.”
Octavia, being the only one of the two who could do so, paled.
“So that’s surgery for one…”
“Two.”
Redheart paused, pencil falling from her lips.
She turned back around.
“Two?”
Vinyl finally smiled. Smirked, really. Still charging her magic, she reached one hoof out and placed it on Octavia’s side.
There was now a diffuse red light coming from the cellist.
Octavia sighed, and her frown deepened into a scowl.
“She said she needed practice first…”
8:02 AM
“What seems to be the problem?” Redheart asked as she entered the next examination room and once again found herself sharing a space with a pair of celebrities.
“Nurse Redheart! About dang time somepony with sense showed up!” cried Applejack in a cheerful (if strained) tone. She stood in the middle of the room, a slight trough cut into the floor where she’d obviously been pacing for the past five minutes and a line of worries crossing her brow that would give Granny Smith a run for her bits.
Right next to her, Redheart could see Rainbow Dash was not having the same sort of morning as her friend. She sat up on the exam table, if only because there wasn’t enough room on it to lie down at the moment. Her colors were a bit faded, her wings hung down at her side like she’d just flown a marathon, and her eyes were just about swimming with the way they lulled from side to side, not quite focusing on anything in particular.
“Oh? Rainbow? How are you…?”
And then Dash opened her mouth and dispelled all confusion for Redheart about her condition.
“Heyyyyyy, Doc!” she slurred out at the tail end of a little burp that did Redheart the favor of burning out all her nose hairs. “I’m fine! Overreacting is just Applejack…”
Dash snorted with laughter, and almost fell off the table before Applejack caught her.
“Heh, I mean… Applejack… heh heh heh…”
“Ya see what I’m dealin’ with here, Red?” Applejack asked, turning to shoot Redheart another frown-lined look. “She’s been like this all mornin’! Somethin’s wrong with her! Can’t ya check her out real-quick?”
Redheart, fighting the urge to throw her head into the trash can, nodded. “I can… take a look. But it’s pretty obvious what this is, Applejack.”
Applejack’s eyebrows shot up her face in surprise. Rainbow Dash poked them with a hoof, and giggled.
“Well, Applejack,” Redheart said, slowly, “it just looks like Rainbow Dash here has somehow gotten herself drunk. Most likely on cider.”
Both Applejack and Rainbow Dash gaped at her pronouncement. Applejack’s eyes widened, and her jaw slackened. Rainbow’s eyes widened, a little bit, but as her mouth opened, a green tinge came over her features. And a moment later, she was at the trash can herself, making some very unhealthy noises into it.
“But… that’s impossible!” Applejack cried, waving her hooves about. “Sweet Apple Acres is a dry farm!”
“Dry farm?” Redheart asked, ears perking.
“Granny banned alch-ee-hol,” said Applejack, her accent somewhat distorting the word ‘alcohol’ as she slipped briefly into her Granny’s accent, “before even my pa’s time! An’ all Rainbow had today was her own cider ration!”
Redheart kept her ears perked, and turned away from the sounds coming from Rainbow Dash. “Ration?”
Applejack removed her hat, and started twisting it up in her hooves. “Right. I give her a cider ration, this time of year. Since she’s been spendin’ so much time at the farm, helping out with chores, an’ doin’ the weather all nice-like. An’ helpin’ Apple Bloom with’ her homework…”
She shot Redheart another, angrier look at that point, probably sensing the nurse’s unspoken question.
“She can do math! Wonderbolts gotta be smart!”
“I can count in base six…” Dash briefly came up for air and bragging, before descending back down. “Eugh… even my first Wonderbolt party wasn’t this bad…”
Applejack’s face froze, mid-indignation.
“Oh… ponyfeathers.”
“Something wrong?” asked Redheart, seeing the look of horror in Applejack’s eyes.
“I… I did this!” she cried out. “This is all my fault!”
“What happened?” Redheart tilted her head, questioningly. “Let a batch ferment by mistake?”
“Nah, ain’t that!” said Applejack, professional pride peeking through her dismay. “Those barrels’re Apple-Made (trademark pendin’). Ain’t no fermentin’ of no kind happenin’ in ‘em lest I say it should! That corn don’t husk, if’n ye know what I mean.”
Redheart briefly wondered if she’d need a ‘Countryism’ translator for this conversation.
Applejack sat down on the exam table herself. “Nah, ain’t that. What I mean is… well… see, this is embarassin’…”
“I’m stuck in a trash can!!!” Dash roared during a brief lull in her sickness. “Get over yourself and tell her what you did…!”
“Alright! Alright! Hold yer horses!” Applejack sighed. “I… Well. This cider season went well. Real well. So well that, I hate meself for havin’ ta say this… but I sold yer Cider ration, Dashie.”
Dash briefly turned her head… and then turned it back around to the can. But the fiery look she gave Applejack was quite the sight, if Redheart could guess at what she’d be saying right now if her stomach would let her.
“It was an accident, I swear! I got bit-crazy! But I wanted ta make it up ta ya,” Applejack said, quickly. “So, I went an’ bought some of my cousin Braeburn’s stock. I figured, yer palette ain’t as… refined as a full Apple. Ye’d never notice.
“Only now I’m thinkin’,” she said, turning away in shame, “that maybe he might’ve sent his… other stock. The kind they serve at Wonderbolt parties an’ galas an’ those shindigs of Rarity’s.”
There was silence coming from Rainbow Dash, but she didn’t otherwise move.
“I’m sorry, Dashie.” Applejack shook her head, and pressed her hat down hard over her eyes. “I didn’t mean ta make you sick.”
And then, a sound more unsettling than anything Redheart or Applejack had ever heard began to bubble up from the trash can. A low, burbling sound. A sound of infinite cruelty.
Rainbow was… laughing. Chuckling, really.
“Heh…” She slowly lifted her head, and turned around to look over her shoulder at the other two ponies.
A smile crossed her lips, and Redheart could tell it chilled Applejack to her core.
“So,” said Rainbow Dash, eyes fluttering seductively (though not in sync with each other). “Applejack. You gave me alcoholic cider? Were you…?”
Her smile turned into a kitty-cat-grin.
“Were you tryin’ ta take advantage of me?”
Redheart whispered, “How much did she drink?”
“I gave her a whole barrel…” Applejack admitted.
After a moment, Redheart hummed, and said, “Black coffee, water, food, and rest… and be glad ponies have a higher tolerance for that stuff.”
She then took off for the door at a dead sprint. And once she was out of the room, Redheart closed the door. There was an awful noise from the other side; the sounds of one pony apologizing profusely while another did their absolute darn best to eke out whatever teasing goodness a prankster and (possibly) fillyfriend could get out of such an opportunity.
Redheart placed her stethoscope around the door handle, and left with a shudder.
9:18 AM
“Like I said, just put some lotion on it, and the rash should go away in a few…”
“I want a Doctor’s opinion on that! So send one in, already!!!”
“Right away!”
Redheart managed to refrain from slamming the door behind her as she left Cranky with the results of his latest scheme to regrow his hair. Instead, she took a few deep breaths, and remembered her professionalism.
Then, she placed a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign over his door, and left for her break. She needed one…
But, as she turned to go, Redheart had to come to a sudden halt as another nurse flew past her.
“Hey! Goodheart!” she called after the speeding mare. “Where’s the fire!?”
Goodheart, a stout pink mare with a strawberry mane, slowed and stopped with all the grace Redheart expected from one of her nurses carrying what looked to be an entire crate of blood-packs on her withers.
That is, very carefully.
“S-sorry, Red!” she called back, a frantic look in her eye, “but Honey Nut’s patient is… he’s in bad shape. I need…”
“Don’t explain it to me!” Redheart shook her head. “Patient first! Just tell Honey to give me back a surgical team soon! I’ve got other ponies waiting, and he’s been working on that one since I got here!”
“They’ll be waiting till next year,” Goodheart said with a tired sigh. “I mean it, Redheart. It’s bad.”
And with that, she bolted away, seemingly carrying the wind with her.
It was suddenly quiet in the hospital.
“Yeah, that won’t last…” Redheart sighed, her mind already elsewhere as she turned towards the front door.
She’d already seen a dozen patients, and every one of them was exhausting in their own way. Accidents and cider-induced friendship/relationship lessons aside, she’d dealt with a few broken bones, a cracked-horn, food-poisoning, and somepony with the worst timing on when they decided they needed to get their flu shots in…
Redheart, passing by the front desk where the rookie Nurse Greenhorn was setting out mugs of candy canes and festive lollipops for everypony, popped a cherry one into her mouth and went outside. She needed the air.
And she got it. The wind wasn’t too bad, but it bit like a windigo with how cold the day still was. Snow lay around in deep banks all across Ponyville, almost like a normal Rockhoof painting (a hidden talent of the famous Pillar!), and the sky was crystal blue and clear.
Not on the main road, of course. By Princess-decree, a crew of kirin were running up and down the streets, telling ‘Yo mama’ jokes to keep themselves nirik’d up so they could melt the snow and keep a path clear for any ambulance-carts that needed to rush somecreature to the hospital.
“Good morning, Flame Shower!” she called out to the nearest one.
The nirik waved back… only to gasp as her flames went out entirely, leaving her a blue kirin with nothing on, save a red scarf and nurse hat.
Flame Shower scowled, and shot back, “Come on, Redheart! I’m working here!”
“Oh, sorry! Uh… your mane looks thin and tangly!”
“I USE CONDITIONER!” Flame screamed, fire blasting out of her form. Then, more quietly, she added, “Thanks!” before leaping at a patch of black-ice.
Redheart smiled at the oddity of her job, how much it had changed in just a few years, and went back to sucking on her lollipop. Just a little ways down the street, she could see a crowd of foals dancing about and playing in the snow.
A few threw whiffle balls and beanbags about in a game she wasn’t entirely sure she knew the name or rules of, while it looked like the Cutie Mark Crusaders and a few of their school friends were trading Hearth’s Warming treats made by their families.
Redheart couldn’t help but chuckle as Scootaloo began eating snow to stop the burning sensation caused by eating one of Silver Spoon’s chocolate-covered chili peppers.
Scanning over the scene of the fillies and colts playing together and laughing together in the snow, Redheart felt a little something she’d been carrying around today fall aside. Like a weight finally being cut loose.
For just a moment today, she’d lost the feeling of happiness she always carried into work on Hearth’s Warming. Just to see how much this season meant to the foals who…
She blinked.
Either Redheart’s eyes were playing tricks on her, or it almost looked like, amidst the crowd of foals, there was one set apart. She wasn’t entirely sure, at her angle, but it almost looked like one filly was separate from the rest.
She was just a little thing, standing in between two nearby houses in her winter coat. She was very small, colored as red as a mistletoe, with a minty green and blue mane.
Redheart frowned. Something felt off. Was the filly playing with the others? Or…?
A siren scream tore her out of her thoughts. Down the street, a batpony stood atop the first of almost a dozen ambulance-carts, wailing and waving a red flag to signal the hospital as the teams of stallions thundered closer and closer with the sick and injured piled up behind them.
With a single bite, Redheart finished off her lollipop, and ran back inside to call out the orderlies and nurses.
There was no time for thinking about anything else. Something terrible had happened!
10:45 AM
“Yeah, I’ll tell you what happened,” Gallus snarled through a cast placed over his beak. “What happened was YONA doesn’t know when to tone it down!”
Redheart just gave a noncommittal ‘uh-huh’, and kept bandaging the griffon’s wing. With her mouth full of wrappings, she didn’t have all that much to add anyway.
Gallus glared at her hoofwork. “And for legal reasons, I am refusing treatment for all this. I’m not getting my insurance jacked because of a stupid Hearth’s Warming play…”
“Yona did nothing wrong!” the full-body cast that once was a yak sitting in the next bed over growled. “Yona is playing Puddinghead. It not Yona’s fault Yona’s character requires more of acting skill than Gallus’, or that Yaks best at gesticulating…”
“She knows ‘gesticulating’, but not how to not shatter an entire stage.”
“SMASH! Yona SMASHED stage! Is different!”
“Now, now!” Ocellus said from the comfortable vantage point of a wheelchair pushed by a relatively unscathed Sandbar. “Nocreature could have known Yona’s improvised smashing would cause the stage hydraulics to malfunction. Or explode…”
She coughed, and looked directly at Gallus.
“Also, Equestria has free, universal healthcare. Plus, so many different disaster funds for this sort of thing that whatever an in-sewer-ants is, it won’t cost you a thing, Gallus.”
“What?” Gallus asked with a scowl. “How does that make any economic…?”
Smolder, laying in the bed opposite Gallus’, lifted her head as best as she could with the brace on, and laughed. “Hey, Gallus? Ask yourself if insurance is a griffon thing, and then remember what Griffonstone looks like.”
In the moment of silence that followed, the only sound audible was a delirious giggle from Silverstream, who could do little else through the beak-cast and morphine drip she was hooked to.
“Eh,” Gallus said, shrugging, “fair enough.”
1:01 PM
“Thirteen-hundred,” Redheart sighed, and sank down into the breakroom chair she occupied. “It’s only thirteen-hundred hours. I just need to survive till twenty-one-hundred. That’s doable. That’s entirely doable. It’s not like I’ve lost track of how many patients I’ve seen in the past hour alone. Sure, there was the play thing. And the hot cocoa explosion. And Doctor Honey Nut is still in surgery after all this time! And whatever happened at Pinkie’s thing that nopony will talk about, but resulted in a hundred broken tails. Why tails? Why JUST tails!? Somedays, this town drives me crazy! It’s full of crazy ponies! Why did I come here in the first place? Nurse Cute Puncture was right; I should have been a teacher. Cheerilee seems like she gets regular sleep, and everypony likes her. Sure, the Cutie Mark Crusaders…”
She paused, and considered things a moment.
“Okay, so maybe not teaching. Maybe speculative trading? Flim and Flam are making a killing with that NiFTy business of theirs, or whatever it’s called. I could sell art like them. I could have gotten a business degree. I can do my own taxes, for Celestia’s sake! That’s more than most ponies.”
Redheart sighed again, and shook her head.
“Now, Red… you’re just being sour grapes…”
Nurse Sour Grapes snorted in indignation, threw down her magazine, and stormed off.
“… Things aren’t so bad. Today is just a rough one. And there will be many more after this one. Some better, some worse. You picked this shift because you love it! You want to help ponies! And other creatures, of course! And just because you can’t feel your hooves, that’s no reason not to put your all into every single patient you come across for the rest of the day!
“Yeah!” She leapt up, and cheered. “You can do this! You can do it! You! Can…!”
Redheart blinked.
Then, she looked down at the empty plate on the table at her side.
“Dang… those were some bombin’ brownies. I gotta ask Doctor Feel Good for the recipe…”
But before Redheart could say or do anything more, the break room door slammed open, and Nurse Worry Wart stuck her head into the room.
“Uh, Redheart? We might have a bad situation here. There’s a bunch of Crystal Pony Guards in the ER, and I think somepony tried to assassinate Princess Cadance.”
Redheart blinked. Again.
“Uh… Redheart? You heard me?”
“Yeah,” she replied, and took one last wistful look at the platter of brownies. “Just… hoping I didn’t.”
1:09 PM
Tempest Shadow snorted, and shifted her weight a little to one side, slightly obscuring her condition from Redheart’s view.
“Look, it’s no big deal…”
Captain Flash Sentry, her one compatriot allowed into the exam room (the rest of her platoon and the Royal Family were still in the waiting area awaiting word), flared his wings and shouted, “TEMPEST! YOU’VE BEEN IMPALED!!!”
Tempest gave a cool, level glare at Flash. Then, she shifted that glare over to Redheart, who hadn’t yet spoken and who hadn’t yet been able to pick her jaw up off the floor.
She looked back down to her barrel, where a length of pipe about a hoof-span across and at least a meter long was currently stuck straight through her torso at an acute angle.
“It’s a flesh-wound,” she said, defensively. Tempest shifted one leg to cover up the injury, only to find the movement of her muscle groups just made the pipe shift away from her attempt.
“You’re delusional!”
“I’ve had worse!”
“Yeah?” Flash asked, head tilted in a questioningly aggressive way. “How?”
Tempest’s eyes didn’t move. Suspiciously, they didn’t move.
“Well?”
“I’m thinking!”
Redheart finally took a ragged, shuddering breath.
“How are you not dead?” she asked, her voice utterly calm and placid despite her rapidly elevating blood pressure. “In fact, why aren’t you in surgery right now? What happened!?”
Tempest looked back to the nurse, and shrugged. “You tell me. One of your nurses fainted when she saw me, and another one ran off to get you.”
“Yes, but…” Redheart began pacing around the patient, mentally mapping where the pipe had to have gone through. “… I’m pretty sure you should be missing a lung right now. How are you breathing?”
The taciturn unicorn paused, and then took a few experimental (if shallow) breaths.
“I guess it feels a little tight,” she admitted. “Nothing too crazy, I’m sure. Just pull this thing out and patch me up, and I’ll get out of here…”
“Are you crazy!?” Flash cried out in alarm. “You’re not going anywhere with that thing in you!”
“Hence why I want the Doc here…”
“Nurse.”
“… Nurse here to get rid of it and stitch me up!”
Redheart leaned in close and looked down the pipe, from behind the patient.
It… was certainly a different experience.
Tempest’s upside-down face filled the other end of the pipe.
“See something you like?”
Redheart shook her head, and stepped away.
“I legitimately don’t know how you’re still alive, much less breathing. How exactly did this happen?”
Tempest and Flash shared a look. The kind Redheart knew almost by heart, the second she spotted it. It was a look of supreme, endless wear and worry and exhaustion.
If Redheart had to guess: a foal.
“Flurry Heart,” the two tired guards said in the same tired monotone.
Which only made things simpler for Redheart. For once today.
“Oh? Princess Twilight’s niece?” she asked.
Tempest frowned. “Yup.”
“Yeah,” Flash concurred, scratching the back of his neck.
Redheart just nodded, and picked up the phone hooked up to the nearby wall.
“I got a Code Purple. Code Purple,” she said into the receiver. “Get the surgical teams prepped, and deploy an orderly to the library. Got that? Good.”
Flash’s jaw drooped slightly.
“Uh,” he said. “Wait… code what?”
“You’re taking this really well for somepony who just heard a baby impaled me,” Tempest added.
Redheart was already halfway out the door, but turned back towards her patient one last time.
“After the Safety Lecture Princess Twilight ordered us to sit through? I better be!” she laughed. “Gave us a whole new codebook and everything. Don’t worry, now that it’s a confirmed Flurry Incident, the Princess will be here with a Canterlot team to take care of… whatever this ends up being. Something magical and crazy, I’m sure!
“Have a Happy Hearth’s Warming!” she called out, before heading out into the hall. And with another patient taken care of, Redheart could hope to find…
At least a dozen more ponies and creatures packing the waiting room.
“W-well…” she said with only a slight quiver in her joints, “… could be worse.”
She stood stock-still in the hall, unblinking.
“How? I don’t know…”
6:11 PM
The sun was going down. It had to be. There was no other reason for the lighting to dim as it was, presently. Unless Princess Luna was pulling a little prank and causing an out-of-season lunar eclipse. Or if the check the hospital paid the power bill with suddenly bounced.
Either way, Redheart was glad for it. The sun going down. It was something different.
It was a sign that time, indeed, contrary to the popular opinion of herself and the other nurses still working, moved.
The last patient had gone, at last. Well. The last one before Cranky finally woke up from his nap and stormed out. Some poor buffalo who’d run across Derpy Hooves making last-minute deliveries and needed his horns replaced.
But now, for a moment, there was silence. Redheart lay her head down on the cool counter, and just let her eyes close.
Nurse Sour Grapes sat down in one of the waiting room chairs, and sighed. Nurse Worry Wart silently chugged a cup of hot cocoa over at the pharmacy window. Nurse Greenhorn and Nurse Ivy were setting out cards for a quick game while the peace presided.
And there wasn’t a single doctor around. Not one. No patients to disturb the sounds of silence.
Redheart started counting.
“Three… two…”
The front doors slammed open and a crowd galloped inside from the dark and dismal night. The batpony at the head of the charge was breathless from her screeching, and alongside the stallion orderlies and nurses who rushed in, all of the kirins from outside were in full nirik-form.
Redheart’s heart cooled as she saw them approach. The batpony was tired. The stallions’ eyes were wide.
The nirik-flames were… sputtering.
“What have we got?” she asked, already leaping to attention as her bones and muscles cried out in agony at the motion. The rest of the nurses were with her, only Sour Grapes falling back to pony the main desk, per procedure.
Redheart met the rush of hospital-ponies as they turned down one hall, towards the ICU. There was a litter between the stallions, little more than a few bedsheets tied together into a makeshift cart.
There was a filly suspended in between them.
One in a little coat. One colored as red as a mistletoe, with a minty green and blue mane.
She wasn’t moving.
“Status!” Redheart commanded.
A whir of information flew around her as the ponies reached a cart and quickly switched the filly over to it. The niriks were panicking, fires almost going out, but Redheart could tell they were chewing hard on their lips to keep the anger up, keep the fire burning.
She knew why, even before she registered what the others were saying.
“Pegasus filly, age unknown. Found comatose in snow…”
“No identification found! She’s freezing…
“… Hypothermia…”
“Breathing is shallow.”
“… parents?”
Worry Wart threw a blanket over the filly mid-run, and then quickly cast a heating spell over her. Redheart could feel the heat as they made it to the ICU and aimed for the nearest open bed. Stethoscopes were out, and IV bags were prepped. They got an oxygen mask on the filly and started pumping the air bags.
But Redheart hadn’t looked away from the still form lying in that bed.
It wouldn’t be enough. It could never be enough…
Flame Shower, the kirin from outside, began to shudder. She sighed, and her flames sputtered again.
Nurse Redheart’s eyes flared more brightly, as she turned around, and met her colleague with a withering glare.
“You suck at Buckball and I hate being stuck on your team during the hospital picnics!” she snarled. Then, before the nirik could respond, Redheart was already spinning back towards the other one.
“And you!” She slapped Smokey River across the mouth with one hoof. “I don’t know you that well, but I bet you’re terrible at your job!”
Both kirin, half-nirik as their flames had waned, paused.
And then, they roared. Fire nearly as tall as a minotaur grazed the ceiling tiles, and white-hot wrath poured out from Flame and Smokey’s eyes.
“Thanks…” Smokey growled in a barely-restrained voice. “What’s up?”
Redheart, eyes clenched shut against the heat, pointed towards one of the nearby cupboards. “Get out as many water bags as you can! The leather ones. Just get them warm, and pass them over here!”
She snatched the first IV bag away from Worry Wart with her teeth, and swung it through the nearby flames. After barely a moment, she tossed it back, and spat out another order: “Warm the IV bags! And get me some heated blood, stat!”
Already, everypony was rushing. Nocreature would dare slow down now, not when Redheart was in charge, and certainly not with a filly’s life on the line.
They would not fail.
7:22 PM
“I saw her, in the snow outside…”
“You can’t blame yourself, Red,” Nurse Greenhorn said, one foreleg around her shoulders. “Things were going on. Patients coming in. You couldn’t know.”
They sat in the empty hall outside the room with the filly. They’d tried everything. Warm water. Warm saline. Warm blood. Water bags. A pleural lavage (basically filled her lungs with warm water). Dialysis…
“I should have known something was wrong.”
They’d tried friction. Shot the filly full of something to get her heartrate up.
They’d worked for an hour on her.
Her heart still beat. Whether or not she survived the night… that could only be known with time.
“There’s a chance,” Greenhorn said again. “We gave her that chance. You did.”
Redheart could only hang her head, and press her hooves into her eyes. The day would never end, it seemed. The pounding behind her eyes was proof enough of that.
But she didn’t even have that moment to herself.
She could hear the hoofsteps approach.
“Celestia,” she whispered. “Just end me already…”
“Redheart?” a familiar voice asked. “Redheart? We need you.”
Redheart didn’t say anything.
“Nurse? Is she…?”
“Give her a moment.”
“We don’t have a moment. We need her up in surgery. Doctor Honey Nut…”
“Why?”
It was a throaty, crusty word that came out of Redheart’s mouth.
She lifted her head slightly.
“Why do you need me?”
Maybe the nurse, whoever it was, hadn’t heard. Or she did, and was suddenly gripped by an odd sort of terror at the sound of it.
Either way, it left Redheart an opening.
“Why do you always need me?” she asked, plaintively. “Isn’t what I do enough? Isn’t all this enough?”
Redheart looked up through a watery smear.
“I just…”
The nurse stared back. Stared back in such a way…
It was like a mirror. A mirror filled with just as much pain and weariness as anything Redheart felt now. She was staring back at herself.
And she hated what she saw.
She paused.
She breathed.
And then, Redheart stood.
“Doctor Honey Nut…?”
8:03 PM
There was a smell to Surgery that Redheart could never stop hating. It was that sterile, staticky smell that reminded anypony who smelled it of everything fake they’d ever smelled before. It was a smell like pain. Like something you knew was bad, but on some intellectual level might remember, from time to time, as being good.
But right now, all it reminded Redheart of was a filly. And she wasn’t in the mood to be thinking about anything, least of all that.
As she entered the area, Redheart knew something was wrong. There was the smell, yes. It was always there, clinging to everything and everypony who worked here. But there was something else wrong too.
The sounds were wrong.
It was an almost silent night. Silent save for the distant wail of a monitor registering the final moment of a pony’s life.
The halls here were nearly empty, as well. A few nurses sat in chairs, or stood in sleep. Or, near-enough to sleep. Their eyes told a different story. Redheart wondered if perhaps she’d been lucky, down in the emergency room today.
The nurses here stared out at nothing at all.
She followed the one who’d been sent to get her, Nurse Goodheart, all the way to an operating room where the doors hung wide open, another dead-eyed orderly standing at attention.
“How is he?” Redheart asked.
The orderly shook his head, and began trudging away.
She walked into the room, Goodheart also falling behind her.
Doctor Honey Nut was… well, there was no denying it. He was a handsome stallion. Tall, with a bright gray coat and a golden mane and mustache that were the envy of every stallion, and the quiet desire of almost every nurse. His smile could cure almost any ailment before he even diagnosed the patient.
And he was funny. A real prankster around the hospital. Redheart could still remember how he’d greeted her on her first day here with a pie to the face and a bucket of confetti in her mane.
She was always secretly glad Pinkie Pie seemed to like that Cheese Sandwich pony. A foal between her and Doctor Honey Nut would probably be a whoopie cushion with hooves.
Redheart had never considered any sort of future with the good doctor. It wasn’t professional, despite the joking comments and earnestness of his smile.
Now?
Even if professional and medical ethics forbid it, she could see nothing here. Just a hollow-eyed corpse, a ruin of a stallion still squeezing a breathing bag that was attached to his patient’s face. The wailing noise from before was loudest here. The heart monitor was still plugged-in, despite the obvious condition of the patient.
“It’s been half an hour,” Goodheart whispered. She said nothing else.
Nothing else was needed.
Redheart took a few steps into the room, and glanced over the patient. She knew everything already, but wanted to confirm.
Stallion. Golden coat. Blue mane. Clock cutie mark. Nopony she knew.
Accident. Something bad. Really bad.
Brain stem damage. No hope.
That was… hours ago.
Honey Nut was still bagging him.
“Doctor,” Redheart said.
“Redheart?”
Oh… it hurt to hear that voice. So empty, where it was usually accompanied by a laugh.
“Doctor,” she said again. “You can hear that, right?”
Honey Nut’s ears swiveled about. After a distressing number of rotations, they settled on the heart monitor. While Redheart could only see the side of his face, there was a tension there now.
“I hear it.”
“Then… you know…?”
“I still have respiration,” he snapped. “He’s still respirating. He’s still… alive.”
Redheart looked over her shoulder. The staff that was still watching couldn’t look her back in the eyes.
“Doctor, he’s gone.”
Honey Nut paused… and then quickly resumed bagging. Each squeeze inflated the body just a bit, but did nothing for the sound of the machine.
Redheart bit her lip.
“Doctor? He’s…”
“He has foals,” Honey Nut said. Without turning around, he continued working. “Two of them, if the names on his… on the gifts he was carrying when the cart hit him are anything to go by.”
Despite the long, long day, and many hours she’d already seen… Redheart held her breath a moment.
“I’m so sorry…”
“And it’s Hearth’s Warming,” Honey Nut said. “It’s Hearth’s Warming Day.”
“Yes, it is…”
“And I won’t write that down,” he whispered. “I’m not… gonna be the one who makes this day the one that reminds those kids their dad…”
He lapsed into silence. But he continued squeezing the air bag.
In and out.
In and out.
Besides the heart monitor, it was completely silent save for the bag.
Redheart stepped towards the monitor, and quietly unplugged it. She could still hear the bag behind her, but dared not turn around.
She walked over to the side of the room, where an old clock had been set so the staff could keep time while in surgery. Redheart had heard through the grapevine that Princess Twilight had been working with some foreign magician called Sunset Shimmer to bring more advanced clocks into Equestria, and at any other time she might have wondered aloud what sort of wondrous magic could power them.
But right now?
Now, she opened the face of the clock, and spun the hour hand until it was five minutes past midnight.
“It’s no longer Hearth’s Warming,” she whispered. “Somepony… call the time and sign the paperwork.”
The sound of the bag stopped. Redheart left before it was replaced by the sound of a grown stallion weeping. She stepped back out into the hall, and looked away from all the eyes around her.
There were too many quiet ‘thank yous’ and ‘good jobs’ and other compliments. Everypony was tired. Everypony was grateful.
But all Redheart could think was…
Was…
She wasn’t sure anymore. She wasn’t sure if it was really still Hearth’s Warming, or not.
“Redheart!”
She looked up. The voice was familiar. If there wasn’t just such a haze about, maybe Redheart could remember who…
“Redheart!” Sour Grapes cried out again. “Redheart! It’s… she’s…! It’s the filly!
“She’s awake!”
And Redheart was off at a sprint.
~~8:06 AM~~
12:06 AM
Match Stick shivered in her bed. She wondered if she was sick, from the way that everything ached. Momma had told her not to play in the snow too long, or else she’d catch a cold.
She’d said something else, but… everything was foggy. It was hard to think.
There was a noise in her room. A beeping sound. It was slow, and came in regular beats. Match tried opening her eyes, to see what was making that sound, but it was hard. Her eyelids didn’t want to open, and it took a lot of effort to finally get them to raise up a little.
She couldn’t see very well. Everything was hazy, and unfocused. But the more Match blinked, the more her sight began to return. She was in bed, but not hers. Or, not the one she remembered having, when she was little. It was bigger, but not all that soft.
It was so warm in that bed. But she couldn’t feel all that warm. She shivered again.
Beside the bed, there were all sorts of machines. Match didn’t know what they all were, but the way they blinked and beeped was kind of cool anyway. The one that woke her up was the coolest. It had a little sketchy line on it, going up and down with the beeps. She watched it, idly as the line went up, and then down. Up and then down.
It was like a heartbeat. How wonderful!
“Somepony! Get Redheart! She’s awake!”
She wasn’t sure where the voice came from. It wasn’t Momma, she knew that…
Everything was going dark again.
She was so cold.
When she opened her eyes, Match Stick knew time had passed, but not how much. There was something about the way the lights moved around the room. It was still cold… or, she was still cold. The bed was as warm as ever.
The other reason she knew time had passed was the sleeping mare sitting in the chair right by her bedside.
Match didn’t know her. Didn’t know what to say. How to say it.
She sat, watching this other pony for what felt like forever. Momma always told her not to exaggerate things, but that’s what it felt like.
What did Momma also tell her? It was important…
“Oh? Hello, little one,” the mare suddenly said. Match looked up as she approached, and her breath, already a little raspy thing, hitched in her throat.
The pony was tall. So very, very tall. And white all over, except for her beautiful pink mane. There was a little hat on top of her head, but Match couldn’t quite see it all that well. Her eyes were still not focusing right. And with the dim light from the lamps in the room washing out everything else…
Why...
This mare looked like an angel. Like from Momma’s stories.
“H-hello,” Match said, finding her voice so quiet that even she almost didn’t hear herself.
The angel smiled.
“My name is Nurse Redheart,” she said. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Match Stick…”
“That’s a very pretty name, Match Stick,” Redheart said with a nod. “Do… you know where you are?”
Match Stick shook her head. Tried to shake her head. It moved rather slowly, despite wanting to answer the nice pony.
“Am I sick?” she asked.
Redheart nodded, more slowly.
“You were in the snow a long time. You… might be a little sluggish for a bit, but I think we found you in time. You’re in a hospital.”
“A… hospital?” Match asked, her eyes widening.
Was that important? It must be. Momma said…
Momma!
“Where’s Momma?”
Redheart kept smiling, but in that way Momma sometimes did when Match asked if there would be food that day. The way where it didn’t reach her eyes. It was a very sad way to smile, and Match didn’t know why everypony kept doing it.
“She’s not here,” Redheart said. Then, glancing over to the machines, she asked, “Do you know where you live? We can go get her.”
“We don’t have a house anymore… oh!” Match’s eyes lit up. The little pegasus leapt to her…
Well. She tried to leap. All that meant was that she shuffled a bit under the sheets.
“What is it?” Redheart asked, worry thick in her voice. “Are you alright?”
“I remember what Momma said!” Match squeaked.
“… What did your momma say?”
“She said…” Match squinted, and tried to pluck at the memory, find its exact sounds, the way Momma worded it.
“She said, ‘Go to the hospital. They’ll take care of you now.’”
That didn’t sound… right. Match listened to the memory again.
No, that’s what she…
“Where’s Momma?”
Redheart did that sad-smile again.
“We’ll find her,” she said, after a long pause. “But until then… she was right. We’ll take care of you, okay?”
Match mulled this over. Redheart was very nice. And pretty. And they knew each other’s names now, so they weren’t really strangers.
“O-okay,” Match said.
Redheart nodded, and smiled for real.
“Good!” she said. She pulled her chair up closer to Match’s bedside. “And in the morning, if you’re feeling up to it, we can have breakfast. It’s really a myth about hospital food, you know…”
Match Stick’s eyes widened into saucers.
“Breakfast…?” she whispered in a reverential voice.
“Yup! Breakfast!”
Redheart hopped up onto her chair… and Match wasn’t sure if the groan she heard from it or the nurse.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “You sound…”
“Oh, I’m fine!” Redheart said assuredly, her smile still genuine. “Sorry. It’s been… a long day. You had us very worried, little filly. Very worried indeed!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. All forgotten now.”
Redheart pulled a little hospital blanket up off the floor and covered herself with it.
“You mind having a roommate for the night? It’s… well. Early. But also, really late. And I’m not sure if my regular roomies would be all that happy if I came home now.”
“Like a sleepover?” Match asked, the cold beginning to fall away as a little spark ignited within her.
“Exactly that,” Redheart said with a chuckle. She tucked herself in, but seemed to keep her eyes open, watching Match.
Somehow… this was nice. It was just like with Momma.
Sleep was slow in returning, however. And after a few minutes, Match wondered if she could ever fall asleep again.
But then, just as she thought she never could…
“You know, it’s alright.”
Redheart’s voice somehow seemed to make the beeping machines sound quieter, despite her never raising her tone.
“What is?”
“The hospital,” said Redheart. “I’ve never really said anything before, but… when I was just your age, I came to live here.”
Match blinked.
“Here?”
“Well, a hospital,” Redheart laughed. “One Hearth’s Warming, my momma told me to stay here, and they would take care of me too. She… couldn’t take care of me herself anymore.”
“Really?” Match asked, quietly. “Did…”
Neither of them spoke. Only the machines made any noise.
“Did you ever see her again?”
Surprisingly, Redheart didn’t get the sad-smile again.
“In a way,” she said, still smiling. “I guess I just… found a new family. New friends. A new… life. And I don’t think I’d trade that for anything. Even on days like this.”
“Well, that’s good,” Match said.
“Oh?” Redheart asked, brows knitting together. “And why’s that?”
“Because…” Match yawned, sleep suddenly coming over her. “… because it’s… Hearth’s Warming… Nurse… Angel…”
Redheart watched the little filly as her breathing became more and more regular. The rhythmic rise and fall of her tiny barrel signaling her falling away into Luna’s other kingdom. She was somewhat surprised to hear such a little snore from Match Stick, after the night she’d had.
But there it was.
New life.
And sleep was not far behind Redheart herself. She took a moment to scooch her chair a bit closer again, and after wrapping herself in the hospital blanket she’d brought with her for this little vigil, she laid her head once more beside the little filly and closed her eyes.
Before anything else, however, she let her thoughts wander back to another Hearth’s Warming night. One of snow, and heartache. Of cold, and of warmth.
Of a mare in a nurse’s hat, who told her it would be alright, and got her breakfast for the first time in days.
The last thing Nurse Redheart saw in her mind’s eye as she joined her charge in sleep was that image: Nurse Cute Puncture, with a cup of cocoa, and a warm blanket.
“Happy Hearth’s Warming, Mom,” she said, as sleep finally took her.
Sweetheart came through the door into the hall first, worry all over her face. “What’s going on? Is Redheart still…?”
“Shhh!” Sour Grapes hissed. “You’ll wake her!”
“Sorry! Oh… is that the filly?”
Sour nodded, and glanced through the glass partition. “Yeah. Almost didn’t get her in time. Poor thing.”
“How long…?”
“All night.”
Snowheart, coming through second, shook her head at the sight.
“Wow. I… I don’t know what to say.”
“I guess the Birthday Party is off,” Greenhorn could be heard behind them.
“Well,” Flame sighed, “nopony knows her actual birthday. So, the twenty-sixth is just as good as the others…”
“But there were presents, and cake!”
“Shush!” the collective nursed shushed.
“And get Pinkie Pie out of here!”
As the one interloper was quietly removed by an orderly, the rest of the nurses (with more and more coming in each minute to behold the little miracle of the season that had blown into their hospital) stood in silent awe at the sight of their friend and coworker sleeping soundlessly next to her patient.
There were few dry eyes in attendance.
“She really is an angel, isn’t she?”
“That she is,” said Sour, nodding only once. “That she is…”
Author's Note
Dedicated to my own Mom, a nurse for 40 years. Thank you for everything. Love.
