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// Chapter 4: Brain Death 
// Story: For the Sake of Progress 
// by Lucaro 
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	They followed the scientist mare down the hallway, doctors rushing past as they progressed to a more secluded part of the hospital. “My name is Crystal Glow,” the scientist mare said. “Infectious disease specialist, I work mainly with children.”
Applejack sobbed, stroking Applebloom’s red mane. “Please, Applebloom. Wake up. Please wake up.”
Hot tears ran down her cheeks, dripping onto the ground from her muzzle. There was an alarm over the intercom, and Crystal gasped. “We have a Code Red, we have a Code red in Isolation.” the intercom buzzed.
“What?” Crystal said, dumbfounded. She raced down the hallway, and the two stallions rolling Applebloom’s bed gave pursuit. 
They all followed Crystal, and Applejack shouted. “Why are we going to isolation?!”
“One of the other cases just went critical,” Crystal said.
They pushed through several air tight doors, and Applejack wrinkled her nose at the recycled air in the complex. Crystal slid her access card at a security terminal and the door opened. They dashed into a room with about seven other children. At the very edge of the room, there was a group of doctors surrounding a young colt. Crystal pushed past the huddle of doctors, and sighed. “Is this our code red?” The doctors nodded. Crystal slipped the latex gloves onto her hooves. “Let the physical examination begin.”
Crystal stood beside the colt, who seemed to be in a deep sleep. The black ooze dripping from his mouth had a strange crystalline appearance, with small cubes of the mineral deposited within the viscous black fluid. Crystal leaned down and screamed into his ear. Applejack’s heart jumped at the shrill wail. “No response,” Crystal said. She then poked the cold with a needle. She poked him with the needle again, this time drawing blood. “No response,” Crystal repeated. After a few more tests, Crystal was resigned. “Set time, 6:13 pm. Patient failed to respond to physical stimuli, code red status confirmed.”
The doctors took the clipboard hanging at the colt’s bed, and wrote over it in beg red letters. “BRAIN DEAD.”
Applejack wanted to cry, and she heard Fluttershy sobbing behind her. The bed was pushed aside, and Applebloom’s bed was rolled up right beside his. Crystal was talking to a doctor, “Inform his family. We need his bed, but we still need to ask permission to take him off life support. Pointless keeping him alive now, he’s gone.”
One of the doctors looked around frantically. “Isn’t that Mr. Filthy Rich’s son?”
“Yes, it was.” Crystal Glow said. “He owns the hospital, so tread lightly.”
As soon as the doctor left, Applejack stormed up to Crystal. “How can you do this!?” she screamed. “How can you be so coldhearted!? Do none of you doctors have any feelings?”
Crystal retained her stoic expression. “This is a tragedy that we face every day of our lives. I once worked at the nursery, where I took care of prematurely born foals. I cried when we lost our first foal and went into a deep depression. After crying and crying, seeing foal after foal dying, I stopped feeling.” Applejack stared into the mare’s face. “It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just…” Crystal sniffed. “It’s just that I have to remain emotionally detached. I can’t let my feelings get in the way of my duties.”
Twilight was standing beside the colt’s bed, looking at the crystalline deposit that had formed outside his mouth. Crystal noticed Twilight looking. She wiped her tears, not able to look at Applejack anymore. “Yes, I see that you’ve noticed the crystals.”
Twilight nodded. “Yes, it’s so odd. I guess the disease attacks the central nervous system first, causing the comatose state.”
“Yes, definitely. It’s a similarity with all the cases, though Mr. Rich’s son was our first case.” Crystal Glow gathered up the crystals up in her hooves. “These crystalline fragments,” the crystals began to glow, the unicorn using her magic to make them levitate. “As the disease progresses, the dead tissue laden ooze starts to harden and crystallize. The colt’s blood was full of the crystalline powder, and the crystals were forming on his spine and brain stem and spread to all his other internal organs, and solidifying them. It’s like he’s being petrified from the inside out.”
Twilight looked up at the mare doctor. “Well, what do we do now?”
“We sent samples to our labs in Canterlot. We should get the toxicology report from there any day now.” Crystal sighed, looking at all the sick foals. “It won’t matter though. Most of these foals will be brain dead by then. The best we can do is make them comfortable as they sleep.”
Fluttershy approached Crystal. “Can’t we do something? Could we inform Celestia or the other royalty? Maybe they can help.”
Crystal shook her head. “We can’t tell anybody.” Crystal looked at all of them in turn. “By patient privacy protection laws, you all are legally bound not to speak a word of this to anybody. Unless the family decides they want to give us permission to disclose the patient information. Since you’re working with us, it’s fine, but you cannot tell anyone.” Crystal looked at all of them, “No one.”
Twilight attempted to reason with her. “As long as you don’t mention the names it’ll be fine, right? Maybe you can publish an article in a medical journal….”
“No, still we cannot tell anyone. Not only will the hospital face a devastating lawsuit, but...” Crystal looked at the brain dead colt. “That is Mr. Rich’s only son. His father gave us strict instructions to keep his son’s sickness a secret, and furthermore the entire outbreak.”
Applejack grew suspicious. “Why does he want to keep it a secret?”
“It’s simple,” the mare said. “That colt is the heir to Mr. Rich’s business empire. It’ll hurt his company’s stock value when people learn that his son is critically ill, and especially now that he’s brain dead.” Crystal looked all around the room. “All this state of the art equipment, our wages, this entire hospital, if his company goes down, so does this hospital. He owns all of it.”
Crystal looked at the door, and they all looked behind them. Two more beds with sick foals were wheeled in and set aside. “All we can do is wait for that toxicology report, and hope that we can stop this thing in time.” Crystal began trotting to the two new sick foals. “Now excuse me, I have work to do here.”
Crystal walked away, and Applejack nuzzled Applebloom softly, looking at her brother. “Oh Big Mac, what do we do?”
“I don’t know, sis.” He said, his eyes watery with tears.
Fluttershy looked around panicked. “Are all my animals going to die now?” she looked around, panicked. “I can’t afford life support machines for all of my animals, so when they go brain dead…” Fluttershy scrunched her face up, her lips trembling, her eyes threatening to flood over.
Twilight shook her head, stamping her hoof. “I refuse to stand by and do nothing while this happens. We’ve got work to do.”