Hospice

by Regidar


Sylvia

Sylvia

I dread every time she wakes up...

Caramel sat down in the lunchroom on the first floor, picking at his daisy sandwich. He didn’t feel all that hungry;his insides contorted into terrible knots of dread. Blinking down at his lunch, he heaved a sigh, and turned his head to look out the window.

The window would have provided a lovely view of the forest he had gone through to reach the hospice, had it not been pouring rain. Birds fluttered about the tops of the trees, darting in and out through the downpour, little blurred blobs through the obscured landscape.

“Doing some introspecting?”

Caramel looked up and saw Doctor Thead next to him. He was balancing a plate of hay fries on his head. It was very odd; every time Caramel saw Doctor Thead eating—which admittedly wasn’t very often—he was always eating hay fries. Nothing else.

“Yeah, I guess,” Caramel said, sighing. Leaning one hoof against his cheek, he continued to watch the rain splash against the window pane.

“New patient get to you?” Doctor Thead asked, his voice somewhat softer than the joking voice that had asked him the first question.

Caramel nodded. “A bit, yeah... She’s very odd. Still, I like her.”

“Yeah, she’s a bit of an oddball, that one,” Doctor Thead confirmed. “She had a different hospice worker before you, you know that?”

Caramel perked up in interest. “What? She did?”

“Yup,” Doctor Thead confirmed. “Interesting girl, had a very elegant mane. Don’t think she was from around here... then again, I don’t go into town very often, so I wouldn’t know.” The Doctor laughed, then sat down across the table from Caramel.

“That’s weird...” Caramel said. “After lunch, I guess I’ll go back up and ask her about it. We didn’t do too much talking; it was a really peculiar experience.”

“Indeed,” Doctor Thead said. “Probably why the last mare left. She only made it about two weeks, poor girl. They seemed to hit it off otherwise, and then she just... stopped coming.”

“That’s really bizarre,” Caramel said, arching an eyebrown. “I’ll definitely talk to her after I eat; that’s something that warrants a bit of investigation.”

“You do that,” Thead said, munching on a fry. “I’ve got some work to do with a few other patients, and then I have to fill out some paperwork. Boring stuff, you know?”

Caramel smiled weakly, then looked down at his sandwich. He wasn’t really hungry, but figured that he would need the strength at any rate, so he took a bite. It was older than he had estimated that morning, and was rather dry. The daisies also had a peculiar taste to them, a weird sort of texture that felt as though it were paper on his tongue. Still, it was better than nothing, so he took another bite.

“How’s your other job?” Doctor Thead asked, popping another hay fry into his mouth with a hoof.

“Pretty good, I suppose,” Caramel responded, taking another unsatisfactory bite of his sandwich. “I’ve got the day off today, which is why I was here so earlier.”

Doctor Thead swallowed his fries, then asked another question: “How’s that Bon Bon mare? Haven’t seen her since she was really young, when her sister was in here.”

Caramel felt a twinge of sadness; Bon Bon’s sister had died from bone cancer at the age of ten. He had remembered when it had happened, Bon Bon leaving school early, the cloud of sorrow that had hung over the school for the rest of the month. She had been fighting the cancer since she was eight, and everypony was desperately hoping she would make it. Caramel regretted not becoming better friends with her, despite seeing her regularly on the playground. Hell, he hadn’t even been Bon Bon’s friend until they started working together, right after they finished their schooling.

“She’s doing fine,” Caramel said, swallowing a lump in his throat that had nothing to do with the daisy sandwich. “Business is going pretty well, and it’s great to see all the foals rushing in after school to spend their allowances.”

“You supply Sugarcube Corner, too, right?”

“Yeah,” Caramel said. “Although, between you and me, I think it’s just Pinkie ordering our stuff in bulk.” He laughed halfheartedly, the feeling of unease and sorrow still stuck to him. “Would explain why she’s so hyper all the time, wouldn’t it?”

Doctor Thead nodded, smiling a bit. The two didn’t talk much after that, and instead just dug into their respective lunches. By the time Caramel had finished the last bite of his disappointing sandwich, the rain had let up a bit. It was still pouring pretty hard, but he could make out shapes beyond the window a bit clearer.

“Alright,” he said, turning to Doctor Thead, who was eyeing his last fry predatorily. “I’m going to head back up to Victory’s room. See you around.”

“See you around,” Thead said. As Caramel got up to leave, his head darted down, and the last fry disappeared in an instant.

The walk to Victory Rose’s room was a solemn one. Caramel thought about all the emotions boiling and tearing through his insides, spinning his guts into intricate knots and clumps. He already had a special somepony, and was in deep love with another... why did he have to fall for this fragile, dying pegasus? He knew, deep within himself, that this was going to end terribly. His mind, however, had masked that knowledge with feelings that Caramel knew all too well.

He was at her door now. Room 207, the room where his patient lay beyond. He carefully opened the door, and took in the dimly lit place. Victory Rose might have still been sleeping, but with her back turned, he couldn’t tell. Other then that, the room had stayed... essentially the same. The coldness in Caramel, which he thought he had gotten used to, cleaved down through him like a swiftly swung axe. He shivered, and entered the room.

Walking over, quietly, to the other side of her bed, he checked to see if her eyes were open. They were not, instead thin lids covered her large eyes. Caramel sighed, a bit loudly, and her eyes fluttered open.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Caramel said, blushing. “Did I wake you? I didn’t mean to wake you, it was just that I was in here watching you sleep and—” He stopped, realizing what he had just said. Blushing even more furiously, he attempted to correct himself, “I mean, I wasn’t watching you sleep like that, I was just—”

“You seem more jittery than before,” Victory said, looking up him, expression sleepy and neutral. “More nervous. Did something happen?”

“What?” Caramel said, confused. “No, nothing happened, it’s just...”

“Well, whatever, it’s not that big a deal,” Victory said, shrugging slightly, wiggling about under her blankets in an attempt to get more comfortable. “While I’m up, might as well do something. Can you get me my book?”

“Your book?” Caramel asked.

“Yes, my book. It’s on the bedside table.”

Caramel walked around the bed, and checked the bedside table. Indeed, there was a book, which he must have missed last time he was checking the table. He checked the spine, reading the book title out loud:

The Jared Bell,” he said. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about a mare who struggles with mental illness,” Victory said simply. “It’s not a ‘feel-good’ story. Sometimes I do like to read about ponies that are worse off than me.”

“That’s... vaguely disturbing,” Caramel noted, and picked up the book in his mouth.

“Well, what’d you expect? I’m dying; let me have a bit of freedom with my enjoyment.”

Caramel left the book on Victory’s bed, just next to her. The pegasus picked it up with her hooves, and flipped to the bookmarked page, towards the very end. Caramel trotted back to the chair that was up next to her bed, and sat down, watching her read. The pegasus could read fairly quickly; about once a minute, she was turning a page, flipping through the book almost systematically.

Caramel didn’t know what else to do, truthfully. He just sat there, watching her read. After a few moments, Victory set down the book, and looked over at Caramel.

“You’re staring at me.”

Caramel blushed again. “I’m sorry.”

Victory Rose smiled. “It’s alright. You just looked like you wanted to talk about something, is all.”

“Yeah, I did have a question, actually,” Caramel said.

Victory shrugged. “Sure, I’ve got some time. Ask away.”

“How was she?”

Victory Rose was silent. She looked first at Caramel, then turned to look at the window, the rain still making its rhythmic pitter-patter. She then looked down at the book in her hooves, and finally back at Caramel again. It felt as though a bucket of ice water had just been dumped on Caramel’s head. He couldn’t help but shiver.

“She was... nice.”

Caramel cocked his head. “Nice? That’s all?”

“Why, should there be more?” Victory said, a bit defensively.

“No, not at all,” Caramel hurriedly said. “It’s just... well, she was only your worker for a few weeks, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right,” Victory confirmed. “Just two. Why do you want to know? What, do you think I think she’s better than you?”

“Well,” Caramel said, blushing even harder. “I mean, I don’t know, that could have been the—”

“Because if that is what you are asking me, then you would be right,” Victory said. “I do think she’s better than you.”

Caramel stopped talking, and gave Victory an apprehensive look. The pegasus smiled, which was the first time Caramel had seen her do so. “I’m kidding, of course. You seem to be pretty decent for a hospice worker.”

“Thanks,” Caramel said, his twisted insides twisting around themselves even more.

“Hm, I guess you were right,” Victory said, still smiling faintly. “The smile did help.”

Caramel laughed nervously, and Victory smiled back at him. The mare returned to reading her book, which left Caramel awkwardly glancing at her now and again.

After about ten minutes, Victory flipped the last page of her book, and closed it. Glancing up, she saw Caramel still looking at her.

“Do you want it?”

“What?” Caramel asked.

“The book,” she said, balancing it on one of her hooves, holding it out towards him. “You can read it if you want. I’m going back to sleep anyway; these medications make me really tired.”

“Um,” Caramel muttered, confused. He leaned over and took the book in his mouth, then dropped it onto his lap. It opened up about halfway through the book, and Caramel closed it quickly, as not to gather any random fragments of the story. He opened it, and tried to start on the first page, but found it to be blank. Same with the second and third pages. On the fourth page, however, there was a title page, and on the fifth a dedication, and finally, on page six, the book started.

Caramel read through two pages of the book before bookmarking it and then closing it. Sure, it was interesting, but he just didn’t feel like he was in the reading mood. Casting a gaze back to Victory Rose, he saw her to be asleep, her chest rising up and down rhythmically, softly, as she breathed.

Caramel took the book in his mouth and stepped out of the room. As he made his way to the stairs, the only sounds in the lonely hallway were his own breathing and the rhythmic tapping on his hooves on the tile floor. Halfway down the stairs, he stopped and shivered as another cold draft tore through his muscles and chilled the marrow in his bones.

When he had readed the lobby, the nurses had switched, and it was one he did not recognize at the counter. He put the book down on the counter and looked at her; she looked back up at him, and asked, “Checking out?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed. The nurse nodded at him.

“Alright, I’ll make a note of it.”

“Don’t I usually sign the sheet of paper where I checked in?” Caramel asked, looking around the counter for the paper.

“I took it down, I’ll just write it in for you,” the nurse said. “You can go if you want.”

Caramel nodded, and took the book back up in his mouth. Slowly walking towards the glass doors, he pulled it open with one hoof, then walked outside. He stopped right underneath the awning of the building, looking out at the world around him. The rain had decreased to a light drizzle, but the clouds in the sky remained.

It was far too risky to head through the forest; the rain would have covered the trees, and even though it was merely drizzling now, the water from the leaves and branches would fall down on him every time a breeze rolled through, drenching him and the book. No, he would have to head through town.

Caramel sighed, and walked down the designated path that lead from the door. This path lead right into town, and the outskirts of Ponyville were right in sight. It would only be a short five-minute walk, and he would be trotting right through town.

Caramel kept his head down as he entered town, shielding the book from as much rain as he could.His eyes, however, darted around Ponyville as he approached the Town Center. Ponies were out, although not as many as usual; he suspected this was due to the storm; most ponies didn’t want to be out in the rain, except...

“HIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHI!” Caramel didn’t even have time to brace himself as he was tackled by a giant, wet, pink blur. He landed flat on his back in the mud, the filth splashing everywhere, yet the book miraculously stayed undamaged.

“Mmmgh!” Caramel said, dropping the book out of his mouth, where it slid safely onto his chest. “Pinkie!” He said now that his mouth was unobstructed, somewhat annoyed. Pinkie was soaked, dripping bits of water all over Caramel. He had to forget to make sure the book escaped the small drops cascading from the pink pony.

“Heya, Caramel!” Pinkie Pie said, grinning big enough to fill up her entire face. “I haven’t seen you around in ages! Where’ya been? What’ve ya been up to? How’s Bon Bon? Your caramels are as good as ever, by the way! How come you’ve got that stunned look on your face?”

Caramel had been living in the town since he was ten, but he still hadn’t gotten used to Pinkie Pie. She had moved to the town when he was twelve, and he still remembered the first time she introduced herself. He swore that his hearing had never been the same since then.

“Well?” Pinkie said, cocking her head. “Is something wrong? Oh no! Are you sad? I can’t have one of my best friends being sad! I’ll throw you a party to cheer you up right away! There’ll be cake and balloons and everypony’ll show up and—”

“Pinkie!” Caramel said loudly, stopping Pinkie’s manic rambling. “I’m fine, trust me! You just startled me, that’s all.”

Pinkie Pie blushed. “Whoops! Sorry about that. I was just really really really really really really reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyREALLYREALLYREALLY happy to see you!”

Caramel smiled. “Well, it’s been nice to see you too. I’ve actually got to get home now, so—”

“What’s this?” Pinkie picked up The Jared Bell in her hooves, and looked it over.

“It’s just a book I picked up,” Caramel said. “But Pinkie, I’ve really got to—”

“Hey, I’ve seen this before!” Pinkie said in a tone that conveyed both excitement and curiosity. “But where have I seen it before?”

“I don’t know, at Twilight’s library?” Caramel said, his annoyance mounting. “Pinkie, I’ve seriously got to get home now, I need you to—”

“OOOOOOOH!” Pinkie shouted very loudly, causing Caramel to clutch his ears. “I know where I’ve seen this before!”

“Y-you do?” the pinned pony asked, slightly disoriented from the yell.

“Yup!” Pinkie Pie said with a smile. “It’s Rarity’s!”


Caramel walked down the path to his front door. The whole time he had gone to head home, he had thought about what Pinkie had said. He had tried questioning her about it, but after half-an-hour of unintelligent banter, he got nowhere, and to top it off was roped into another hour of random discussion with Pinkie, and had to head to Sugar Cube Corner to talk to Mrs. Cake about a new caramel cake, per Pinkie’s request.

When he finally got home, evening was giving way to twilight, and the clouds had cleared enough to let the last rays of the sun shine through. A cold breeze wafted in from the Everfree, and Caramel shivered. His teeth would have chattered had Rarity’s book not been clenched tight in his mouth.

He thought it over some more as he grew ever closer to his house. What did this all mean? Was Rarity the one who been with Victory Rose before him? And if so, why was Victory being so secretive about it? This couldn’t lead to anything good...

He stopped, his door right in front of him. Carefully, he opened it with a hoof, and slowly entered the room. He hoped that he would be lucky, and that she had gone to sleep very early, but that was not the case. Hell, in the back of his mind, he had known that she would be awake, and he would have to suffer through the torment that would follow.

“Where the hell have you been?” asked the angry unicorn sitting in the dining room. Her light blue coat was matted down in places, as though water had been poured on it, and her mane was disheveled, the large white streak intermingling with the darker blue on either side. Her deep blue eyes sunk into Caramel, but he did not shiver with the cold as he had done with Victory Rose.

“Hello, Minuette,” Caramel said, after her put down his book on the table.

“Answer me,” she said, still glowering at him. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I had a day off,” Caramel said casually, his eye twitching. He struggled to keep his voice level, but the emotion underneath threatened to boil to the surface at any second. “Spent it elsewhere.”

“Sure you did,” Minuette said, rolling her eyes. “Where did you go?”

“Hospice,” Caramel said, mumbling a bit.

“Where?”

“Hospice,” he said louder, trying not to sound sarcastic. Minuette looked him over, then looked at the book, and then back at him. Caramel held his breath, wondering if she thought he was lying, but evidently he had passed her test; she sighed, then looked off towards the kitchen.

“You should be working as much as you can at the shop,” Minuette told him. “We need money, and my job can’t pull in all of the cash we need.”

“Well, I got a new patient at the hospice, anyway,” Caramel said, trying to be inviting and engaging with his tone. Minuette, however, did not pick up on this.

“New patient? I never understood why you go there. They’re all just going to die anyway,” she said crassly. “What’s the point?”

“My father was in that hospice,” Caramel said quietly. “And so was Bon Bon’s sister.”

“You’re just there for sentiment?” Minuette said in a haughty tone. “That’s a complete waste of time.”

“No it isn’t!” Caramel said indignantly. “I help those who are dying be more comfortable on their way out; I give them companionship, and I make sure that their last days are as nice as possible! It’s not a waste of time, especially not with my new patient. She’s very sweet, and I—”

“She?” Minuette said, cutting Caramel off. Her voice was dangerously quiet, and Caramel could feel a sinking feeling of despair.

“Um, yes?”

Minuette glared at him. “So, is that why you’re down there at the hospice? To see other mares? I swear to Celestia, Caramel, I will—”

“No, it’s not that!” Caramel said hastily. “I swear! I’m only down there to make them as comfortable as possible; besides, the last pony I took care of was an old stallion. Use your brain, Minuette.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Minuette said harshly.

Caramel looked down at his hooves. “Alright, I’m sorry then.”

“You better be,” Minuette said. Her tone conveyed all too well that she wasn’t joking. She stood up from the table and walked over to Caramel, brushing up against him. “Also, you’re a lucky one tonight; I’m in the mood, so you should probably get on dinner. It’ll probably be the only time this week you’ll get anything.”

“Oh, joy,” Caramel couldn’t help saying. He quickly clapped his hoof to his mouth, but Minuette glared at him anyway.

“Excuse me?” she growled, seething, her eyes bearing down on him. Caramel shrunk down, glancing to his side.

“Well, I mean, would it kill you to make dinner once?” Caramel asked, his voice nearly a plead with the angry mare above him. “I remember when we first started going out together, you made the best dinners... that never happens anymore! I want you to cook something for me again, just once.”

Minuette gave Caramel a shocked look. “I work my flank off all the damned day, and I ask you to do something you usually do anyway, and you have the nerve to talk back to me? Caramel, I swear to Celestia...”

Caramel stood his ground, his expression never wavering. He grit his teeth, and opened his mouth to speak, but Minuette cut him off once again.

“Caramel, I’m getting tired of this crap. You can’t just treat me like this, you know how stressful it is with all the work I have to do at the office. There’s the patients, the paperwork, and the god damn workers... and you know my condition. You’re just like everypony else who’s screwed me over! I swear, you get me so ANGRY!”

Caramel couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to. Minuette threw herself against him, and he lost his balance. He fell, almost as if slow motion, towards the table. His head smashed against the side, and it was filled with breaking glass and bright lights. The stallion collapsed on the floor, feeling something warm drip over his forehead and into his eyes.

“Sorry,” he heard a voice say from above, but it didn’t sound very sorry at all. Caramel tried to blink the blood from his eyes, and tears formed as he did so. The throbbing in his head was so excruciating that he had to keep his eyes shut tight.

After a moment, he felt something light fall onto his side. Minuette’s voice came from above him, still somewhat scornful. “Here’s some gauze. Clean yourself up and make dinner. I need to go lay down.”

Caramel opened his eyes, this time successful in blinking away the tears and blood. He struggled to his hooves, and looked down at the role of gauze Minuette dropped onto him. He debated calling after her, to say something more, but Caramel was frightened; he was frightened of her rage, he was frightened of her violence, he was frightened... of her.

Cringing, he walked to the kitchen. He was so distraught by the cut that he didn’t even notice Rarity’s book missing from the table. He entered the kitchen, and walked swiftly across it to the sink. Once there, he lifted a hoof and turned on some hot water. He watched it, listlessly, as it spilled from the faucet.

He bent down, and ran his forehead under the warm water, sighing in contentment as the water soothed his stinging laceration. After the wound was cleaned, he looked down in the water that had collected in the basin of the sink. His rippling reflexion revealed a rather large gash that started at the center of his forehead, and that continued down to rest right above his left eye. Caramel groaned; that was going to scar, for sure.

Wrapping the gauze around his hoof, he took the other end in his teeth, tearing a bit from the rest of the roll. Slowly, he wrapped it around his head, so now he resembled some sort of sorry excuse for a rebel, or at the very least, looked like some kind of failed punk.

Sighing, he walked to the fridge to prepare dinner.


She was already asleep by the time he finished dinner. He had walked upstairs to find her passed out on the bed, sleeping on top of the covers. He looked over her body laying there, and suddenly she was replaced with Victory Rose—the morphine alarms of the room scaring her while he froze in place, slowly becoming an ice statue.

As soon as the vision had come, it had gone, and Caramel was only standing there, alone, while Minuette slept on the bed, her chest rising up and down in a steady, healthy rhythm.

“Oh, Minuette,” Caramel whispered to the dark room, and his sleeping special somepony. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to me?”

Minuette merely grunted in her sleep, and rolled over, hugging the pillow. Caramel shook his head. His voice didn’t seem to be doing any good lately, alienating Victory Rose, making her feel so alone, angering Minuette, no matter how hard he tried not to...


“What’s happening to us, Minuette?” Caramel asked the sleeping pony softly. “We argue all the time, our relationship is almost nothing but angry sex... we can barely stand to be in the same room as one another! We can’t carry on like this; we’ve got to do something!”

Minuette said nothing, her slumber undisturbed. Caramel, however, continued his tirade, uncaring that she didn’t hear him. In fact, he was glad that she couldn’t. He could say everything.

“You’re mean; you really are. There’s no excuse in that you’ve got a stressful job, or about whatever happened to you when you were younger. I feel bad that it happened to you—I really do—and I feel bad that ponies at your work don’t treat you right, but you cannot take it out on me! You are becoming violent, uncaring, and you are not the mare I fell for anymore.” Caramel took a deep breath. “In fact, you’ve driven me away so much that I fell for another another mare! It’s the one in the hospice, like you thought, although I’m not cheating on you. She doesn’t know it yet, but...”

Caramel stopped, panting. Minuette lay on the bed, quiet as ever. Knowing he could never do this otherwise, Caramel let the words slip from his mouth.

“I love Victory Rose!” He loudly proclaimed. Caramel stopped talking, and waited quietly, half expecting Minuette to leap awake and kill him right there. It never happened, though, and Caramel smiled a sad, yet victorious smile. Only now, after his great rant, did he begin to feel the weariness of the day.

Trotting over to the other side of the bed, he laid down on the sheets. The window, which was on Caramel’s side of the room, was open. A night-time breeze rolled in, cooling off Caramel, who had worked himself up when shouting at the sleeping pony beside him. Minuette, however, shivered, and Caramel frowned. Carefully, he moved the blankets out from underneath the unicorn, and placed them over her. She smiled, and so did Caramel. Gently, he kissed her on the forehead.

“Why can’t you always be like this?” he whispered. “Quiet, happy...”

Caramel lay back on the bed, resting his head on the pillow. Minuette snuggled herself up in the blankets, and Caramel noticed for the first time that The Jared Bell was laying on the bed.

Taking it in his hooves, he rested it on his chest. Taking another look at Minuette, he said the last words of the night to her.

“I hate how I can only talk to you when you sleep, pretending that you’ll listen...”

Caramel turned on the bedside lamp, and started to read from The Jared Bell.