The candle passed to Nurse Redheart. She placed it on the end table in the patient’s room. The soft glow cast the room in a golden light. She preferred it to the harsh fluorescent, sterile light of the overheads.
Especially for assignments like this. The patient wasn’t going to make it. They all knew he was beyond saving. It was just a matter of time and she was there to witness it.
The hardest thing for a nurse to do was nothing. She had a lifetime of skills she could use to save anypony that rolls through her ER doors. But this time she couldn’t use them. The family and the patient had said so. He was suffering enough and to keep him alive felt like a crueler fate.
Still Redheart couldn’t help but think of all the ways she could prolong his life, glancing at the many machines and devices she used to save the dying. Normally those things brought her comfort in a brightly lit room. In the dim candlelit bedchamber they looked foreign and unwanted. Like a set of toys at a funeral.
She pulled out her book, she didn’t need to stare at the young stallion to know he was still breathing. The machines could tell and she could hear his ragged lungs moving, gurgling with each breath. It was enough to make try and cough herself. But nothing she did was going to clear them.
It was a small book, a trashy romance novel in the famous Whinny Latrot series. Her sisters and friends had got obsessed with this charming vampire that swoon fillies off their hooves only to devour them at the end. In more ways than one it appeared.
It was hard to get into. Whinny was so over the top in his speeches that it became cheesy. None of the characters had believable reactions and most overreacted. Definitely not the type of thing to read next to a dying patient.
Each victim reminded Redheart of the one that lay next to her. The vampire was taking a life that should have lived long and happily with their families. It was similar to the disease that was taking the young stallion. The vampire had no remorse and patted himself on the back for his guile and subterfuge. It was sickening.
She closed the book on the gloating killer. It wasn’t helping. She would have to have a serious talk with her sisters on their level of taste. Instead she looked around the room. It was barren save for the end table, medical equipment and a few peaceful looking paintings. She tried looking anywhere but the patient.
But she couldn’t look away for long. The patient coughed a wet cough and her eyes locked onto him. He was gaunt, she could see most of his bones through his skin. He wheezed through his mouth. His eyes were pale and glassy. He shook like a leaf desperately clinging to the tree beach on one of the last days of fall.
She wondered for the first time who he was. Most of his care had been given by specialists and trained nurses that dealt with his condition. She didn’t even know what condition it was. She was only told, he’s dying from a painful disease that wasn’t contagious and the family didn’t want anymore done. Palliative care, just make his final moments comfortable.
She glanced at the morphine bag that hung next to him. A mystical potion that made all pain go away. It also stopped the patient’s breathing if they used too much. He was still breathing, and the morphine kept him from screaming.
Redheart glanced at the records. Silver Shill, it read in thick block letters. It told her nothing of who he was and what his life had been like before. Had he been a respectable stallion, helping grandmothers across the street? Was he the type that made all of Equestria better by being in it? If he was then the world would be a bit greyer with his passing.
He looked like a mess. The sheets around him were strewn with wrinkles and his body was twisted and contracted. All in the efforts to preserve his life as long as possible.
Redheart finally got up and adjusted the fallen helper of society. She sat his body up so he could breathe better and took some the twist out of his limbs. She readjusted his sheets and heard a clatter on the floor.
Had she broken something? What was it? Glasses. She found a thick pair of wide rimmed black glasses on the floor. They must have fallen off the bed. She picked them up and gently placed them on his face. This was how his family would know him. A pony with large glasses and thick eyebrows.
Looking at the face with glasses, Redheart wondered if he was an accountant of some sort. He had the gentle and meek demeanor of somepony used to being in the background. Still he was probably a decent pony. Working hard for his family and moving Equestria forward behind the scenes.
Redheart shifted his lower half down and laid him in a more comfortable looking position. It was the least she could do. As she did, a small silver coin rolled from his hoof. It glinted in the yellow candle glow and wobbled slightly as it settled in front of her.
She picked it up. It was just a five bit coin, nothing exciting. Maybe it was a rare minting or something limited. Redheart didn’t know much about coins. She placed it back in the clutches of his hoof.
A coin could be a lot of things. A miserly pony who loves only money, a family heirloom give from a father or mother trying to pass their passion on, even a token from a lover or spouse. She didn’t get a good look at the family and the records didn’t say he was married.
He was still pretty young so maybe he had a girlfriend and they were supposed to be married before this tragedy. Perhaps his coin was the first one he earned on his way to his wedding plan. Maybe it was the first one given to him by his love.
Redheart checked the monitors and noted not much had changed. She wrote the vitals on the sheet. Then her mind wandered. She could see the stallion in her mind, nervously running for the bus. He hollered in his small soft voice but the bus wouldn’t hear him. Some kind pony told the driver his plight and the bus stopped.
The small pony thanked whomever it was but sadly realized he didn’t bring his bit pouch. The pony offered their own to help. Only one coin remained in the pouch after the fee he held onto that one in his hoof.
Did he date the pony? Did he just hope to find them again after? They met on the bus so he could have sat next to them, chatting about all the silly times they both forgot things. She could see the small nervous stallion finally opening up to this complete stranger. He never had a conversation starter like this before. Most of his life had been behind a desk counting counts and balancing numbers.
The pony started to see the patient everyday. They talked about the funny things that happened that week or how they were going to break out of the runt they were in. The pony probably mentioned going to a beach and Silver had never been.
Redheart snickered at the mental image of this pony in jams, running down the beach. His pale coat unable to protect him from the sun’s rays due to years of staying indoors. In her mind he enjoyed himself more than ever, despite the discomfort of sand and salt everywhere. The pony he was with, they were special.
What happened? Why didn’t he marry them? Why weren’t they here with him now? Maybe they were already waiting for him on the other side.
Redheart looked at the strained face of the patient once again. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe there was no beach, no other pony, but then that possibility felt worse. No, there was a pony. A pony full of life and love that helped him see the colors of the world. He would have loved to have his small boxed-in-world opened.
What if he was one of those career ponies. What if Silver loved accounting and numbers as much as she loved being a nurse. What if the world was filled with numbers or made of numbers. All of life could have been a puzzle to solve.
The amount of pressure it would take to turn the doorknob might have been a fascination that she would never know. The way water shoots through a sprinkler could be filled with multiple variables that could brighten his heart to find. The way the world looked to a pony like that would have pushed him to continue to study. Maybe physics.
The thick glasses could have easily stared at tons and tons of books, filling his head with a microverse of calculations. He could have delighted in figuring out the amount of glass needed to protect ponies from magical explosions or from Derpy damage. He might have been on the verge of creating self propelling carts or a way to heat food up faster.
Ponies didn’t need significant others to feel filled in life. She was a prime example. Although Zecora was definitely nice to have around and so comfortable. She slept much better next to the zebra and her life was just that much more full. Did this stallion find that? Was his life bursting with fullness?
She looked at the patient as the deep thoughts crossed her mind. She could see a million possibilities for this pony but none of them mattered. Those chances were gone. A small touch of sadness graced her face. It was enough to remind her how reserved she normally was.
The passing of a pony was a solemn, sad event but she felt very little any more. It was just another day at the hospital for her. A small worry crossed her mind. Was she losing her connection with ponies? How could she sit there and watch this pony die with so little sorrow? Try as she might, he was just another pony. One that loved, laughed and cried at one time or another. He was just like her in that way. Yet that knowledge didn’t sway her.
She wondered, not for the first time, if her time in the hospital had broken her in places. Most ponies say their lives were changed forever just witnessing one pony passing. She’s seen hundreds and felt very little change. Maybe this time, she could make the connection a little more.
A beeping on the monitor pulled her from her dreaming. It was happening. His oxygen level was dropping. Redheart put an oxygen mask on his face. It wasn’t going to change much but it was all she was allowed to do. The breathing rhythm changed. The patient breathed in long shallow breaths, mouth like a fish drawing in water. Guppy breathing it was called.
Agonal respirations, it was a sign that things were falling. The body strained to breath but the air couldn’t get to the brain for some reason. She turned up the airflow on the mask but it was just for her. The brain stopped fighting its fate and Silver Shill stopped breathing altogether. He got paler, a strange bluish gray color or perhaps it was just his coat color.
The monitor continued to trace the heart’s rhythm as the electrical activity winded down. The pauses between the individual crests drifted longer and longer as the heart nodes began to flicker. They were firing on principle alone. The heart itself had stopped beating. Silver Shill had already left but the machine his soul drove continued to function just a little longer without him.
Finally the body shut down completely. It lay there still and limp. His time in Equestria had passed and Redheart glanced at her watch. 12:19 pm, that was Mr Shill’s last minute with her. She wrote the time down and opened the window. The light flickered briefly as Silver Shill rushed out into the open sky, or perhaps it was the wind bringing that special pony to him again. Redheart would never know. But the last thing she wanted was his soul to be trapped in this room.
The outside world continued as if nothing had happened. Redheart took a breath of fresh air as she realized from the world’s perspective not much had happened. Ponies are born and ponies die, to the world it was the natural cycle. Like eating breakfast in the morning. Or in her case moving on to the next patient. She picked up the candle by bedside. And the candle was passed.