In The Night

Hospitals always gave ponies an eerie feeling of anxiety, the white walls surrounding you, feeling as if they might just close in and smash you in between their shinning walls. I remember the last time I was in one, ponies here and there, some rushing somewhere, others hysterical from whatever they had witnessed. Screams of agony, cries of despair echoing along the halls, vomit and feces littered along and pushed into the corners to prevent ponies from slipping. Some ponies would just sit there talking to themselves, arguing with themselves, insanity gripping over them ever so slowly. Family members sitting in the waiting area, praying, sobbing, sleeping soundly as if nothing is going on; like they don’t even care.

The doctors and nurses would be scrambling around to stop the hemorrhaging or complete insanity of a pony, least of all being hit, cussed at, vomiting on, defecated on, urinated on, all the while just trying to do their job. Yet when they finally got one restrained it was off to another pony, somehow they were still able to keep cool, yelling orders, administering a shot of some sort of sedative to sooth the patient. Yeah, hospitals, and ponies wonder why nopony likes them with their tall and daunting stature.

Of course, it isn’t always like that, sometimes it’s actually pretty calm and relaxing, something everypony that works there fears. Other times it was like it is now, silent and calm, the hospital must be airlifting ponies here, no way an ambulance can get through the wall of weepers surrounding this place, not without making their job all the more difficult.

I arrived at the elevator, I never did like elevators, but they were faster than stairs, and when you want to see somepony in a hospital, stairs become as oblique as a shimmer of life in bottom of an ocean. I walk into the elevator and press the number 10, the doors close, and the elevator shifts. There is music in the elevator, familiar, but not recognized. It was soothing, not your casual piano or jazz, a little more elegant and flowing. The elevator stops, it shifts a little and opens its doors, I walk out and I hear the music from the elevator echoing though out the halls, its doors shut and silence befalls me.

I look at each of the room numbers, I gaze into each room, only to see a pony lying contently on their bed, their monitor giving beats of stability. I see some nurses and doctors sitting behind the counter, looking at me with a blank stare. As I arrived at the counter no pony said anything, they just looked at each other, as if using some sort of telepathy. After a few seconds a nurse stood up and walked around the counter and faced me, she gave me a nudge to follow her, I followed, only a few steps behind. Our walking was the only sound in the halls, and when we finally stopped our hoofsteps echoed a little.

She opened a door and led me into a room, the room was dim, but still had enough light so you can see. To the left was a window, from which a light shinned though. I looked through the window, only to see a pony lying face up with a red tube going into her left foreleg, a respiration mask over her snout, some other tubes going into her, one of them in her mouth, and other intricate objects. There were doctors surrounding her, a bright light beaming over them. They were removing the bullets from her body. Funny how calm a pony can be when their body is ripped open and their organs and bones are exposed. Ponies digging through them to find and extract what they needed.

The doctors were levitating different kinds of objects, from what looked like tweezers to a needle with a string attached to it.

“They’ve been operating on her for 8 hours now. Removing bullets is usually an easy task, but ironically she was shot exactly where it starts to make things hard. They got 3 of the bullets, now they’re trying to get the one that landed into her chest cavity. Apparently it landed right behind her left lung, almost puncturing it, thankfully it didn’t, or without a doubt she wouldn’t have even made it to the hospital. I’m not sure how much longer, but If you want you can stay here until they’re finished.”

“When will I be able to talk to her?” I asked.

“Your best bet will be when the operation is done and she wakes up, her room number is 225, on this floor. Do you know where that is?”

“No.”

“Come; let me show you, you can wait there.”

I took one last look at the operation and left, strange how things can so easily cling to you. As the nurse showed me to Vinyl’s room she began talking about her life at the hospital and how bad it can be sometimes and how much sorrow there is. It makes you wonder why ponies like this line of work anyways, knowing somepony else’s life is in your hooves, or you see somepony die right in front of you. It makes you wonder where their emotions are.

We arrived and she led me into Vinyl’s room. We both sat down and breathed in the air of silence. Strange how quiet ponies can be in a hospital, you’d think that they'd want to talk to get their minds off of things. Why is the nurse even here?

“You can go if you want to; you don’t have to stay her with me.” I said.

“I could, but from what I’ve seen, and the amount of time I’ve been here, I began to know when ponies could use company. I’m not intruding am I?” The nurse said a bit worried.

“N-nuh- no, i-it-it’s just, you know, kind of awkward, yuh-you know, silence and all.”

The nurse simply forced a smile and looked down. “So, are you and her, like, umm, lovers?” The nurse was clearly trying a little too hard to make conversation.

“Uh, no, we’re not. I went to her performance over at the Grand Foalympia Hall, and, for some reason, she gave me her glasses. Next thing I know she's on the news, and somepony was saying how she was looking for me, and that she needed to tell me something. So I came here to see her, and find out why she was acting so frantic when I left her performance.”

“Ah, yes, I heard about that, I was wondering why she was acting so strange when she was on her way to the hospital. As soon as we put her in the van she woke up, and was in what I think shock; all she was doing was looking around the van, ambiguous to everything that was going on. She even tried getting up, but she just kept falling down, and for some reason she kept trying. The medics just told her “I need you to lie down, hun,” or “I need you to stay still.” She just looked at them and complied.”

“You were there?” I asked.

“Yes, I was the observer, I was renewing my License at the time, and so I had to watch what they did in the Ambulance. She was trying to say something, too; I couldn't hear her, though. I always found it strange how some ponies do that; completely unaware to what happened. I remember she was trying to take off one the bandages out of discomfort. When she noticed that every time she tried to take it off it hurt, she looked at her wound and just touched it. She pulled her hoof back only to see blood on it, and just looked at it with curiosity."

"Next thing I know we arrive at the hospital, and as the medics unloaded her, she looked at me and stretched her hoof toward me. I extended mine to hers, and when the medics pulled her out of reach a tear fell from her eye. It was like she knew what was going on, and was afraid to go into the hospital, yet she couldn't express anything."

"She was just like a new born foal, scared, but can't express any form of emotion, but let out tears to show she doesn't know what's going on. She just looked at it all so-"

I broke her off, “Innocently?”

“Yeah… strange isn’t it?” She answered back.

“Yeah, it kind of makes you wonder what goes on in their mind. What they’re thinking of and what they’re seeing. Makes you want to experience it for yourself, just to feel as they do, to feel like a new born entering this world.” I trialed off until the nurse said something.

“Are you alright, filly?” The nurse looked at me with some sort of concern.

I looked at her blankly for a couple of moments, thinking nothing I said “Yeah, why?”

She looked out the window to the raving city, and to the crowds beneath us. “When you work in this line for as long as I have, you begin to learn when ponies are a little ‘off.’ I can’t tell you how, it’s just one of those things, you know?”

I remembered how alone I was when I was little, how only those who experience loneliness can know its effects, yet can't explain what it does to them. Strange how these types of things happen to us, yet we cannot even give an answer to why.

A few moments passed, only the sound of our breath and beating hearts could be heard. The nurse looked at me and asked “what’s your name?”

Ever ask a question and not get an answer? Yeah, life is strange. I looked at her and said “…