Nurse Redheart didn’t really hate anything or anypony. She was always adamant that waking up in the middle of the night could never be deemed a remotely pleasurable experience. Now she was awake and bleary-eyed, the weight of slumber already leaving her. The faint pain from that sensation setting in, tugging the thought that it might be another long night awake into her head still clogged with the dense fog of dreams.
She had actually dreamt too, or at the very least she had remembered what her tired mind had peddled to her this time. Those nights were rare. Nurse Redheart couldn’t say how rare, just that if it ever occurred to her to think about dreams, she reached the point in her life where there wasn't anything to say about them. Last year, she'd had a dream about buying groceries for one of Ponyville’s many fall harvest festivals – that was the last dream she could remember.
She was propped up halfway, in polar opposite to the effortless grace of statues of struggling ancient warriors she had seen in a book long ago. Yes, she supposed that now it was long ago. The memory of the book she'd nearly forgotten vanished quickly into the faint, insomniac buzz threatening her. Nurse Redheart felt like she was teetering; the world was still dark because the world was her bedroom. There was never anypony else here. Just Nurse Redheart in her tangled bedsheets and air that made her think she should open a window. She should do the unthinkable, in leaving the weight of her bed behind and its malaise that tugged at her.
Instead, Nurse Redheart’s posture betrayed her. In the night – and to her, it was such a dull night – she made no resistance when her tired body gave way. She slumped back into bed, her eyelids drawing the brief peek of the world to a close until Princess Celestia would raise the sun again, somewhere far, far away from Nurse Redheart’s little cottage where the buildings sparkled with sunlight and greater magic than she ever remembered Ponyville having.
Nurse Redheart’s dream picked up again, the way a student’s eyes would be weighed back down to anatomy textbooks and homework sheets, not thinking of their lifelessness. Her dream was a yoke; in it, she was trotting to the gait of life. Everypony was calling her Nurse Redheart. In Ponyville General and on the streets. During dates and when she visited her parent’s cottage, three blocks away from her own. Everypony called her Nurse before her name, at all times further pushing away the little part of her that was really her in the same way that nopony was a Mister or Miss or a Professor or Esquire at their heart.
Even the little self-narrator personal to every dream decided that Nurse Redheart should call herself… well, Nurse Redheart. It was absurd to think that she needed to remind herself of what she was called, even in her own head. But it proceeded with the monotony of normalcy, so maybe it had happened before.
There was no strength she found to even dislike it, and no voice that ever found her. She just went on as her dream-self spun of fog and shadows, moving through a slice of tragedy she would not know how to name.
And when morning came, Nurse Redheart would not remember her dream.
…
Nurse Redheart didn’t think too much about smiling, but she sure did it a lot. The mane that had been masked by dusk when she went to bed wasn’t the puffy cotton candy bun that earned her a conveyer belt of compliments. Strands of it were poking at every odd angle in a graceless display of bedhead.
So her smile vanished, and not just because it had to for Nurse Redheart to pick up her mane brush.
The dampness from her morning bath was starting to chill her, and her mind was consumed with thoughts of fetching a towel before anything else.
…
When the sun was out just enough to slip through her shutters and sting her eyes, Nurse Redheart finally made herself breakfast. Then, she would pack something else to have in the other half of her shift. It was a late one – again – and she needed something in case idle snacking threatened her during breaks. Again.
There was leftover pizzaghetti in her icebox, and way too much of it. Her mother always made too much, and then gave it all to Nurse Redheart, who was beyond summoning up any objections. Most of what she had was at the stage in the leftover lifecycle when it could be described as cold enough to be adequately crunchy as soon as it was pulled from the appliance.
She couldn’t really object to her lunch-cooler’s reality of finite space that would restrict anything that wasn’t pizzaghetti to having a single apple. For variety’s sake. She pulled the zipper shut, wishing for gods knew how many times that Ponyville General had a staff cafeteria instead of just a patient one.
Sometimes, those ponies didn’t realize just how lucky they could be – spoiled with meals, attention, leisure reading, and constant rest.
Nurse Redheart couldn’t say the same for herself. She only got halfway through the newspaper’s daily crossword puzzle, and her cornflakes were already mushy and bordering on lukewarm. The only way they could be described now was inedible.
All in all, a perfectly average moring.
...
Doctor Stable looked up from his clipboard to Nurse Redheart without a change in expression. His telekinesis withdrew a pen from behind his ear with a smoothness that had long since stopped startling her. Unicorn magic – and Alicorn magic, she supposed, though Nurse Redheart had never met one – was just something much more than flashy at times. Was a mare who had lived for decades in a little village and shipped off to nursing school in old, earth pony Manehattan where she was rarely exposed to arcane arts never to bat an eye at them ever?
She just wondered about those unicorns sometimes; she really, really did. Could anypony blame her? More than a few times she had to help with holding down an ill or outraged unicorn patient – those were hardly ever locals – during surges and other displays of magical power. Kicks from pegasi and earth ponies were nothing compared to what unicorns could do.
“Hello, Equestria to Nurse Redheart!” Doctor Stable smiled good-naturedly, pulling her from the worn thoughts her tired mind had wandered to. He clicked his pen a couple of times like it was a component needed to break a spell. “How much coffee have you had today?”
Nurse Redheart smiled tiredly. Next to her, Nurse Sweetheart and Nurse Coldheart were clutching clipboards. She heard them chatting about somepony in the maternity ward. “Oh my Celestia, it hasn’t been enough.”
She could hear Doctor Stable chuckling, but he sounded far away today. “Clearly. Why don’t you go get another? After that, please head to room 213 and bring the patient their breakfast.”
Nurse Redheart’s gaze fell to his stethoscope, and despite the buzz in her head she tried to recall what being grounded and focused felt like. When was the last time her job had that feeling? When was the last time she had that feeling? Or any that could go beyond being described as either dingy or normal?
Without hearing the polite words of goodbye that left her own lips – perhaps a ‘see you later’; that sounded like something she would say – Nurse Redheart left. Trailing after her was the sound of her own hoofsteps and the unshakeable, molasses-slow malaise that had been creeping after her since the morning dawned on Equestria – and maybe even longer.
…
Nurse Redheart brought her breakfast cart to a halt and worked on struggling to get the door open. Ponyville General wasn’t terribly old, but she could never understand why an earth-pony-strong village decided that their only hospital – one that originally had all-earth pony staff – would ever have thought to resort to handles as their first choice on doors. The darned things were impossible to deal with when it was mandatory for anypony who was handling food to wear those horribly itchy, slippery gloves over their hooves. She remembered Manehattan’s Royal School of Technical Healing, where medical magic was minimal, staircases were endless, and every door opened with a tap and a nudge, so to speak.
Here, all gentleness was abandoned and she arrived with wheel squeaking and some clattering. With the din came the brief cacophony of her own thoughts, of the sorts like Doctor Stable who while not always doctors – oh no, Equestria didn’t discriminate like that – were always surgeons and other sorts with their fancy supposed qualifications from ‘longer’ and ‘more intense’ studies at places like Her Majesty the Sun’s University of Arcane Medical Arts or Sir Bright Eyes’ Academy of Surgical Magic.
Sometimes, there was that old feeling – and she dare not call it envy; that was too strong and too wrong – that welled up. Nurse Redheart would have to remember how she didn’t even get into Dame Kindheart the Sun-Blessed’s Nursing School of Horseshoe Bay.
These days, it vanished quickly, and was rarely ever as strong as it used to be – or at least, as strong as Nurse Redheart guessed it used to be.
“H-hello?” stammered a voice.
Immediately, Nurse Redheart turned around, a smile on her face, as she faced her patient. “Well, good morning! I’m Nurse Redheart, and I’ll be taking care of you and your neighbors today. I brought you breakfast!”
“Th-thank you, dear,” came the same whisper of a reply.
Nurse Redheart looked at her patient, taking in what little there was of the elderly mare under the blankets with an effortless friendly look. She couldn’t help herself; in her line of work, kindness was mandatory. After a while, it would just stick. No matter what.
Her patient was the palest shade of purple that was possible to be just short of white. Her thin, sleep-mussed mane was falling out of its curls of faded silver. She was wrinklier than a whole litter of those pruny toy dogs Nurse Redheart had seen in magazines in the marketplace. There was a distant air of wealth to this mare, one that never sat well with Nurse Redheart. Only the most spoiled, condescending patients had the kind of refined disposition that was an echo in this mare. Really, everypony knew that ‘refined’ meant snobby and rude.
The mare’s eyes were quite milky; on her clipboard, it stated she was nearly blind and startled easily. She was somewhere between the sleepy gaze of all elderly ponies – one that usually went away when they felt the need to demand – and a wide-eyed look of fear. Anypony in her situation would be. Her old wings were bandaged; her legs fared no better in their splints and similar dressings. The smell of familiar ointments in the air told Nurse Redheart that quite a few cart splinters had been removed. An IV-drip hanging nearby was getting a little low.
“What’s your name again, d-dear?” asked the mare shyly.
Nurse Redheart kept her smile from becoming drawn thin and tight. It was an always unfortunate sign when the morning was marked with questions – and long morning-to-night shifts just weren’t for her. Ponies were quieter at night, and so much less meddlesome – be they patient or staff. Her co-workers hadn’t taken to calling her the Graveyard Keeper because she aimed for morning shifts.
“My name is Nurse Redheart,” she said again, pushing the breakfast cart closer to the mare’s bedside. “I hope your morning has been a pleasant one so far. Would you like to tell me your name?”
“Mmm-hmm,” the mare mumbled from beneath her layers of blankets. They were the only thing that made her weak, delicate body look like anything more than a ghost. “My name is Wisteria Terrace – did your papers not say so?” Her voice was laden with concern under its hush, papery sound.
“Not at all, Missus Terrace. All your papers are in order; I just like to ask ponies.”
Wisteria Terrace nodded sleepily, and without a word. Nurse Redheart wanted to frown but instead pulled the top off of the breakfast tray. A glass of orange juice, oatmeal bowl, and toast. Shining silverware was reflected in the plastic covering around the needle slipped under the thin, visibly veiny skin of Wisteria Terrace’s foreleg.
“Thank you, dear. Th-though, are you s-sure you have the right breakfast?”
“Hm?” Nurse Redheart felt her throat tighten with impatience. “Is there something else you need?”
How much longer will I have to be stuck with this spoiled nag?
The mare pointed in the tray’s direction weakly, her bandaged foreleg shaking. “I’m allergic to citrus, dear. W-was that not in the papers?”
“Oh,” Nurse Redheart murmured, feeling her expression slipping into something more neutral. “I’m so sorry, Missus Terrace. We normally always give out the orange juice. Is there something else I could get you?”
Clearly, she hadn’t been reading through the allergies section as closely as she thought to miss something as big as a citrus allergy. If she were going to be honest with herself, the extensive injuries sustained by this mare during her cart crash drew Nurse Redheart’s interest. The thought of coming all the way through a nowhere-place like Ponyville in order to attend the nine hundred and seventy-seventh Summer Sun Celebration in Dodge City was a ridiculous waste. Nopony who had real things to worry about and anything short of an excess hoard of bits would ever make such a costly trip, no matter how vital it was for Equestrians to see their goddess.
“Just some w-water, please,” was the faint reply Nurse Redheart was given.
Nurse Redheart nodded dutifully, giving Wisteria Terrace an effortlessly friendly look. “I’ll be right back with some water and a new IV for you. Just stay put until then, okay?”
Wisteria Terrace blinked in confusion. “I… alright?”
What a spoiled mare, Nurse Redheart thought as she closed the door.
…
Nurse Coldheart was taking bites of her daisy sandwich that were daintier than they had any right to be. Next to her, Nurse Sweetheart was chattering incessantly, her fatty lunch of Sugarcube Corner leftovers currently untouched.
“Oh, Coldie, don’t you feel so bad for that poor little filly in room 112?”
“Diamond Tiara?” Nurse Coldheart asked, well, coolly. Nurse Redheart always found that to be equally enviable and off-putting about the older mare.
“Yes, that poor dearie! To have broken a leg when she was supposed to open her cute little treehouse is just a tragedy!” Nurse Sweetheart’s lip was quivering already and her eyes were a little more than damp. Everything was a tragedy to her, and it was to the point where Nurse Sweetheart was comparable in sensitivity levels to Ponyville’s resident nopony Buttershy, or something like that.
“Of course,” Nurse Redheart said, “it’s always a shame to see such a young face here.”
“Oh, her crying was just awful! Awful, I tell you!” Nurse Sweetheart prattled on – and really, it wasn’t the prattling that Nurse Redheart was bothered by. In fact, it was always a relief when there was a conversation of any kind at all, knowing she would go home to so little.
What she really couldn’t stand was Nurse Sweetheart having any sympathy for the Rich couple and their daughter. Their name held all the reason to resent them, but Nurse Redheart knew to keep something like that to herself – just like the husband tried to keep quiet about how obvious it was that he married a no-good gold digger, even though it was right there on her flank. At least Nurse Coldheart agreed with her on that, but in a ‘he should have known, the poor stallion’ and an ‘I pity his poor daughter’ way that Nurse Redheart only faked. To Tartarus with the little filly, she was born in bits and would die a snob in bits.
Everypony knew her mother took trips out of town to get her muzzle done anyway, and there was nothing buffoonish old Filthy Rich could do to stop her.
“Didn’t she at least get a goodie bag to take home?” Nurse Redheart asked, drenching her voice in the kind of concern normally reserved for patients.
“No,” Nurse Coldheart replied, frowning over her sandwich and shaking her head. “The mother wouldn’t let her have one. Sweetheart and I insisted that they were customary for little foals, but little Diamond wasn’t able to have her father around. Poor thing.”
“They really need to set up a train station out here,” Nurse Sweetheart said. “It could have at least guaranteed that sweet little filly would have had somepony who really cared around, and not that nag. Filthy would have been here, I swear on Celestia herself he would have.”
“I guess the only time she’s ever showed her true colors was the time she dressed as a witch last Nightmare Night, huh?” Nurse Redheart chimed in. There were a thousand little things she would have rather said about the patients instead, just little unflattering things wrapped under the guise of criticism and kindness that were so much like her to say, but she dared not bring up something so off-topic when the others were laughing so hard, in complete agreement with her.
...
Bedpans could go to Tartarus, and they could stay in Tartarus for all Nurse Redheart cared. There were dozens of nurses and other ponies staffed here today – absolutely dozens of them – and they seriously couldn’t make somepony else do this? To Tartarus, if they were for ‘her’ patients or not, this wasn’t the kind of drudgery a mare with her background ought to be doing.
And yet, the worst part was it wasn’t an unfamiliar duty to her. The sound of hot water crashing out of the narrow faucet in a torrent and splashing against the soapy, wither-length gloves that Nurse Redheart wore had all the boiling hot fury she wished she could summon at this point. The patients were supposed to belong to her, and instead, she was left to do something so foul as this while it was treated as though she was the patients’ own choremare. The bits hardly mattered when she felt that something of herself was being washed down the drain with manure and other waste.
A few strands of her mane escaped from where they were secured under her hat and in her bun. She took this path for reasons beyond what her cutie mark proclaimed; she wanted the dignity and respect that something like this could offer. There was a high and mighty feeling that came with knowing somepony else was placing their life in your hooves – not in the way the other nurses said; she thought it would be something more – and she had not felt it once since the graduation ceremony that had finally given her a few embers of promised power.
She hadn’t felt that once since leaving. These weren’t the lifeless dummies or ponies who treated her with a reverence like she had wanted it to be in her training and practice years. No, this was just her job and every day it felt like eating thistles that festered inside her because she knew she deserved more than this, even if she could not say precisely what.
Over the roar of the water crashing into the gross interior of Wisteria Terrace’s bedpan, Nurse Redheart heard somepony call out to her.
From the doorway, Doctor Stable was waving his forehoof at her. There was a wide, friendly smile on his face and his uniform had been exchanged for an everyday coat and shirt. Seeing anything less than the coats and hats that made these ponies who they were to her was always jarring and sparked an unsettled, scared feeling that was small and buried deep in her. It was like being unmasked.
She didn’t want to know that Doctor Stable would be going home to his wife and get to see his foals. She wished that Nurse Coldheart didn’t bring up her marefriend so much every other day at lunch. All she wanted them to be was her co-workers.
“See you tomorrow, Redheart!” he called, the evening light from the window dancing in his brown mane.
She hid her awkwardness with a smile and waved back. “You too!” she called, ignoring the soap being flicked into her mane.
Nurse Redheart was still clutching the bedpan in her hoof.
Then she realized whose bedpan it was, and now that she was finally alone she could gag.
...
Whenever everypony left was when Nurse Redheart felt the best, and she could sigh with relief. The nurses who worked night-shift exclusive were less chatty, and some who were morning and night shifters like her paid her about as much attention as she gave them. Aside from the early lunches she took with the others, Nurse Redheart slept most of the afternoon and until dusk when she would be needed again. Sometimes, she really wanted that attention too, provided it came from one of the better patients.
She liked confining her existence to the hospital that way. It made her feel useful. She had always longed for her work to feel like fixing the sick and the broken, as she knew it should. Instead, she was left with a breathtaking banality of ungrateful ponies who expected her to be in twelve places at once and cater to them like they were prized vases and she was but a poorly equipped maid fit only to place little dabs of glue on them here and there, hoping things would turn out alright and that the results would be worth waiting for.
Now, she was just another ghost in white and red shuffling through the halls with medicine and waiting for anypony who rang to summon her. As if she were their servant. The moon was dark over Ponyville General, but it was always bright outside no matter how shadowy the world around them was. The stars didn’t have to reach here.
The plaque to room 213 was gleaming and bright in the constant hospital lights tonight. Nurse Redheart had heard from the nurse on the last shift that Wisteria Terrace had neither asked for a night shifter to check up on her after her sleeping medication was given – but neither had she forbidden it. The hour was long past the time when those were given out, and Nurse Redheart had made sure to write down the exact number she wanted the old mare to be given. It wasn’t worth the risk to have an elderly patient waking through the night wanting this and that when they could just deal with feeling a little foggy in the morning. A nice, tranquil sleep lasting through the night was just what most ponies in such severe accidents needed.
And that was completely understandable, some ponies liked their privacy.
But what if frail, ailing Wisteria Terrace wanted a psychopomp?