I look longingly through the dusty window despite the low-hanging sun in my eyes, vaguely wishing I could see my apartment building on the other side of town. The top floor of the hospital has a wonderful view of Fillydelphia's city center. Tall buildings rise up unrivaled anywhere else in Equestria, save for Manehattan itself. The inside of the window isn't dusty – everything is kept scrupulously clean inside this state-of-the-art facility ... but the city's well-hidden miasma of grime has free reign to fog the outer pane between its infrequent washings.
My shift will be over soon, thank the Goddess. It's been a long day.
I had only recently moved here from Ponyville, and while the workload here is far more demanding, the promotion in status – not to mention the pay raise – makes it well worthwhile.
Enough window-gazing, though. I have work to do: the next shift will be coming in soon, and my paperwork is only half-complete. I turn away from the window and back to the forms. This effluence of paperwork was another shock after my work at Ponyville General, but in time I became accustomed to it, more or less.
As I'm settling down into the monotony, Nurse Whitengale darts in through the door of the tiny office. “Is Penny here?” she asks, looking for Penny Saved, the administrator for the hospital's nursing staff.
I shake my head. “She left a couple hours ago.”
“Eee!” Whitengale whines. “Tender Hooves can't come in tonight. Her foal has some kind of stomach flu! And I can't find Penny anywhere!”
“Calm down.” I stand up and watch her agitated prancing. Somepony will have to cover Tender's shift tonight. “Have you talked to Plush?” Nurse Plush Pillow was my counterpart for the afternoon shift. She might be able to do it.
Whitengale's head hangs low, shaking back and forth slowly. “She has her daughter's birthday party tomorrow morning. She said she'd do it if she had to, but she really doesn't want to.”
I exhale slowly. Well, I don't have anything planned tonight beyond sleeping, and I can take a break from that if it means making one of my few friends here happy. “Okay. I'll do it.”
“Phew! Thanks a bundle. I don't know if I could handle telling her she needed to stay.”
Turning back to my paperwork, I flash her a quick smile. “It's no big deal. Now go get logged in – the last thing we need now is for you to be late on the floor.”
As she rushes out, I look back at the papers, no longer in any rush to finish them. I'll have another full eight hours before my now-doubled shift ends. My joints are already stiff and my eyes are already scratchy... but I know I can do it. I've done it before.
* * *
Finally, the last patient of the night. I should be elated to be near the end of the grueling day, but I'm not. There's a reason I've been putting this one off until the end. The thought of going in his room yet again fills me with dread, but it's my duty and I put on the best smile I can manage as I open the door. I hope it's convincing, though I fear it won't be after such a long day.
Top Kick's room is like any other in this wing of the hospital. It's full of whirring and beeping, and I don't have any idea how the poor guy ever gets any rest. I assume he does rest sometime, but right now, he's wide awake, staring at me despite it being past midnight.
“Still up and kicking?” I ask him.
He chuckles, and the oxygen tubes in his muzzle make him sound very nasal.
“Anything I can get for you?”
He winces. “A little more of the good pain meds?”
“Sorry.” I shake my head and sigh. We've been through this before. “It would be too risky to up the dosage any more.”
“Ha! Risk.” He coughs weakly a couple times. “How much worse can I get?”
I check the bedpan and find it mercifully clean. His saline drip is almost empty, though, so I go about changing it. I'd heard he used to be a major hoofball star back in the day, a legend in his time. To look at him now, though... I wonder what he thinks about the change in his circumstances. Does he miss the days when he was young and vigorous, or did old age sneak up on him so slowly that he didn't really notice?
“You know,” he says, “did I tell you Doctor Heartstitch came in to see me today?”
He'd already told me three or four times over the course of my long shift, but he's on some very strong medication. In my experience, it'll go better for everypony to just let an old stallion ramble. “No... how did that go?”
“He gave me a week!” The old stallion coughs. “A griffon-loving week is all he gives me. Bah!”
I grin thinly at him as I connect the line to the new bag. “Oh, I plan on coming in here to check on you a lot longer than that.”
“I'll be here if you will. It's a date.” He gives me a phlegm-laden giggle, but his smile soon fades. “Wish they'd just let me go home. Be with my family, you know. Back in my day that's how it was done.”
Quietly, I set the old saline bag aside and checked his vital signs on the monitor ... weak but steady.
He slowly shook his head as much as the tubes would allow. “It ain't right to make an old colt die alone.”
“You're not going to die,” I scold.
“Doctor says otherwise.”
I take a deep breath of the dry sterile air, then look down at him for a long moment. “And you're not alone.”
His mouth rises into a slight, trembling smile, and I think I catch a glimpse of sparkling tears in the corners of his eyes. “It means a lot to me, what you do,” he says after a thick pause.
I smile slightly, then pick up the used saline bag and leave the room. One backward glance as I close the door shows him still looking at me.
Once back in the brightly lit hallway, I shake my head and compose myself. A few more chores to take care of, and I can finally be on my way home. Most of my paperwork is already done – another way to procrastinate before going into Top Kick's room – but I do still need to put his entries in the log and make sure my replacement comes in as scheduled. Goddess I hope she shows up. This day has been far too long already, and all I can think about is my comfy bed back home.
* * *
I can hardly think straight when I finally stagger out of the hospital's door. It's that deep longing for bed and the sure knowledge that I've overextended myself ... again. My joints are dry and creaky, my eyes are dry and gritty. Every step makes my dry, raspy hooves ache.
I take a deep breath of the fetid city air. There are no cabs out at this hour, so I'll be walking. I knew that already. I've done it before.
The dark rectangles of the city's buildings frown down at me. I've never gotten used to that. It somehow feels like living in a prison every day. The city ponies I talked to when I moved here said I'd get used to it quickly, but I still haven't.
I begin my walk, and I'm once again struck by the eerie quiet and stillness of the late-night city streets. They're broad and lit well enough to blot out the stars ... and they're completely vacant, as if the city has been abandoned to whatever apocalyptic end fate brought to it. There are the far-off sounds of the city, the ceaseless dull roar echoing through the dark alleys, but the only local sound – the only sound I can see the source of – is my own hooves clicking on the hard pavement.
The city never ends, or at least that's the illusion it seems to want. It might as well be true for me – at this rate, I'll be able to get home, sleep, wake up, and then have to rush right back to work. “You have to stop saying yes,” I mumble to myself. I have other priorities in my life!
Well, I want other priorities in my life. I don't really have any friends outside of work, not since I moved to this unfriendly place. There have been some dates, awkward and creepy affairs that never led to a second. I'd had this ideal, though, when I came, that I would finally settle down, work less, begin a family of my own far away from the town that held my parents' graves.
I'd been stupid to think I could get away from my own mental hangups that way, though. The city is far worse.
I can't go back though, not after the bridges I've burned at Ponyville Clinic. There are other towns, but they're all disconcertingly unknown. Staying here might not be pleasant, but it's safe, known, and I understand it well by now. It's a sort of momentum, a stagnation maybe. I'm unhappy here, but not unhappy enough to risk moving again. What if it's a pattern, and every time I move I'll end up in a worse place?
I plod on with that grim thought in mind, down the grey sidewalk next to the grey wall under the starless grey sky.
It makes me feel sick inside, sort of empty and used, like I'm just a cog in some enormous, mindless machine. What I wouldn't give to see open fields and trees again!
Horseshoe Park ... of course! It won't completely fulfill my unspoken need, but its long, curved pond and graceful elm trees will help, and it isn't far from where I'm walking now. I'm on 81st street, and the park is between 85th street and 87th street, so if I cut through the alley, I'll be able to walk through the park on the way home.
Somehow, I think if I can see trees and grass and the reflection of water again, my joints will free up and my eyes will feel clean again. I can't help but think it will make getting home easier, and I need to cut over that direction a little in order to get home anyway.
So I duck into the next alley, pleased with myself for my savvy shortcut and knowledge of the streets. It's dark, and there's a slight ribbon of dribbling water where the two sides of the alley slope down into the middle – not to mention the smell – but I press on. The park's fountain will be so beautiful, sparkling in the night... It might even be enough to make me enjoy being in the city for just a moment, and that would be almost as priceless as my own soft bed.
Smash! Something slams into me, shoving me into the rough bricks of the opposing wall.
My side aches where I was hit, and the little scratches from the wall sting. What happened? Did somepony accidentally run into—
“Gimme your money!”
I press myself against the wall and waveringly look. It takes me a moment to focus my eyes on the dark silhouette of a stallion in front of me. He's holding something that glimmers in the reflected light of the glowing sky.
“I...” Wow, was this really happening? Sure, the city is depressing, but I've never had any problems like this in it! “I didn't bring my—”
“Gimme your fucking money!”
A light clicks on and a nearby window glows, blasting the alley with unwelcome light. The stallion turns to glance at it, and I finally get a good look at him. Tall and gaunt, sparse green mane, deep lines under his eyes as they open wide. It takes me until he looks back at me to recognize the glaring, irrational fear in his eyes. He swings his lanky hoof.
I feel it hit my chest, like getting kicked hard. He raises his hoof and brings it down again. I try to block it, but only end up redirecting it sideways into my belly. His eyes flash bright in the light of the window as he lands blow after frenzied blow.
Then, before I even realize it, he's gone, and something clatters to the floor of the alley as his galloping hoofbeats retreat.
My mouth hangs open and my legs tremble. I can't understand what just happened, can't process it, but there's a surging energy in my legs, a burning need to flee or fight.
I look down to see where the stallion punched me.
Red. There's so much red on me, reflected in the harsh light from that single window.
What?
Why is it...? My eyes dart around the alley pavement and come to rest on the metal thing, the thing he held when he stood over me. A knife, a thin and plain, cheap old dinner knife, laying next to the trickle of water in the cracked alley pavement.
Oh Goddess. It's a knife!
I look down at myself again, at the dark stains growing through my coat. I can only stare. It's not real – can't be. This doesn't happen to good ponies like me.
A strange feeling of weakness is crushing me, my stomach feels hollow and empty as my eyes dart all around the alley, desperately looking for some way to convince myself that it didn't really happen.
Finally, my long-honed nursing instincts kick in. I cover the source of the blood with my front hoof. Oh Goddess, there's a lot of it. Slumping against the hard, grainy wall frees up another hoof to clutch at another wound. But I see another, and another. My hooves aren't stopping the flow. I should push harder ... I can't push harder. Why are my hooves so weak?
What am I going to...? I need to get help! Somepony to save me! “Help! Help!” I cry into the alley, but my voice is weak and choked, and the only response I hear is the uncaring walls echoing my pathetic cry back at me. “Help!”
It's hard to breathe. I lie against the wall and pant shallowly, waiting to recover so I can cry out again. Somepony will hear me next time, I'm sure.
I look down at myself.
It makes me woozy, makes my head spin and an uncomfortable warmth washes over my face. All over my chest and belly, little red slits pouring dark red into my white coat. I pity the nurses who will have to clean that when I get to the hospital. They'll probably just shave me, I thought with a wince.
Categorize. Triage. Assessment.
The upper ones are the worst. If the one on the left is deep enough, it will have gone through the lung. The one on the right is too high for the heart, but it may have hit bronchial tubes or important arteries. A pony can live through that. I've seen lots of ponies come into the hospital with worse and eventually come out just fine.
Three, no ... four, punctures in my side and lower abdomen. They probably all hit intestines. Damn it, those are going to be nasty. I know they take a long time to heal. I hope the upper one wasn't deep enough to puncture the stomach. Having that spill internally would be even worse. I've seen patients with that, and it's horrendous. I'm not a surgical nurse, but I see the scars – long scars running down the whole belly from sternum to pelvis.
Damn, how did that stallion even reach there? How did he get me so many times? It had been so fast, all going by in a blur of motion and panic. What did he look like again? The police would want to know.
I'm still panting, but I think I can call out again. “Help! Help! He—” I cough, covering it with my foreleg by sheer habit. When I pull my leg back down to put pressure on the wound, it has new speckles of red. Definitely lungs. I let my head flop back against the hard wall.
It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Blood loss, one lung punctured... Deadly wounds, yes, but they kill slow. I have time. I just need to get rescued quickly. I give it all I've got: “Help!”
Instantly, I double over, holding myself in a fetal position. That strain feels like it tore me open from the inside out. I can feel it now, too many points of pain to count. Deep, horrifyingly deep, they pang. With every throb, they spread ... until I can hardly tell them apart. My whole abdomen is engulfed in it.
Damn that hurts. I'd been hurt before, but not like this. This isn't a tooth cavity or a split hoof, not even comparable to the cracked cannon bone I once had. This is intense. I can't think of anything but how to make it go away. I know the drugs that will make me feel better. They're in the hospital. Once I get there, the doctors will want to prep me for surgery right away, which means general anesthesia. The pain will all go away then. And when I wake up, it will be mostly gone. I'll spend some time in the hospital recovering, but on good drugs the whole time. I can recover from this. And all my friends there will pamper me, I'm sure. It's going to be okay.
Maybe the pain will be less if I lie down.
The light in the window turns off with a soft click.
There's somepony in there! There has to be! They have to hear me!
“He—” The pain stabs me all over again. “Aaahn!”
It's a strain, and I have to grit my teeth against the pangs coming from my body, but I push my hoof against the wall and roll myself onto the bottom of the alley. Oh Goddess, it hurts more! I raise my back legs to get up again, but that helps the pain.
Release abdominal tension. Let the muscles relax.
I lie there, shuddering, letting my legs relax apart from each other on the ground. Yes, that feels a little better. And it's good. This position will help delay the onset of shock.
Am I in shock? I'm probably in shock. Can a pony tell when she's in shock herself?
Look for eye tracking response. Ask victim simple questions.
What's the... What day is it? I, uh... the 17th... right? No, the 27th. That doesn't mean anything. I'm okay. Lots of ponies forget what day it is. I just need to ask more... why is the date so important anyway? I should find that pony where is... Where is that window? I look around me: dark, flat walls rising featureless on both sides with a strip of glowing grey sky in between. Where was that window that had the light before? I couldn't remember where it—
Hoofsteps! I hear hoofsteps approaching from the end of the alley! It's going to be over soon. Once somepony finds me, I can relax and let them take care of me. Won't that be nice? This not knowing, it's a stress and a strain I don't need. I need to rest.
But I don't rest. I need to see them! It takes a monumental strain, but I raise my head and look down the alley at the brightly lit street beyond.
Where are they? They must be echoing from farther than I thought.
There! Two ponies are silhouetted against the light for a brief moment as they walk past the alley. They didn't turn, didn't look.
Oh no! “Hel...” my cry tapers off into a wheeze.
The hoofsteps don't change in rhythm. Now they're getting quieter and quieter.
No! Damn it!
Stupid ponies! Why couldn't they just have happened to glance at me? Would it be that hard? And what about that pony in the window? My cries were quiet, but they must have heard something! Stupid, heartless city ponies, all of them!
And that mugger! He didn't have to stab me – I would have given him anything he wanted. He shouldn't be the scared one. He's the one with the knife! It's his stupid idiocy that put me here, gave me all this pain.
Stupid Tender Hooves and her stupid kids! She was always taking time off for her kids and making me work extra to make up for it. And why don't I have kids? Maybe because I'm so busy picking up the slack for her I don't have time to go find myself a husband! This is all her fault! If she had just come in and done her job, I'd probably be on a date right now, meeting my true love. I wouldn't be going home late at night through this stupid city or in this stupid alley or stabbed by that stupid stallion or ignored by that stupid pony in his stupid window! It makes me want to—
The pain made me curl up again and wince, letting out a pathetic moan.
Relax. Assess.
I'm laying in a puddle of my own blood. It's slowly seeping into the rivulet of water in the middle of the alley and washing away. I can see the dim reflection of it, smell the coppery smell. There's so much. I fight back a groan of dread and the urge to vomit.
No, I'm going to be fine. It looks worse than it is.
I have to get myself out of this. You have to get yourself out of this, I think. You can do it. You're not far from the hospital. I can do it. I can. I have to. I can.
I roll a little more, getting a hoof underneath me. Oh Goddess, it hurts!
I have to. I can.
I push myself up. My hoof is almost straight! If I can just get my back legs underneath me...
The blood is gushing now. As soon as I look at it, the strength leaves my legs and I fall to the ground hard. I think I bit my tongue when my jaw hit the pavement. I can feel the little grits of it stuck in my skin. Somehow, with all the other pain, I still feel that.
Okay, Redheart. You can't walk all the way there. You can't walk at all. No! That will only take me to despair. I can't give up. I can do it. I have to do it. I can.
If I can't walk to the hospital, I can at least crawl out of the alley. Somepony will see me, and I'll be saved.
Still clutching at my wounds with one front hoof, I pull the other out in front of me. When I draw it back, it just scrapes across the smooth pavement. I try again. I help by kicking with my back legs.
I move, sliding forward slightly.
It's excruciating. I pause and catch what little breath I can. I would scream if I only could, if I could spare the energy.
Again I scrape my way forward a few precious inches. My wounds are dragging through the dirty alley. It feels like my whole belly is being torn apart.
No! I can do this. I have to do this. I can do it.
I do it again, but my hooves are trembling too much. My back legs won't move enough. My front legs are too weak. No. No. No!
My eyes burn and blur and my jaw is clenching. No! This has to work!
Ignoring the moisture running down my cheeks, I stretch out again and move. I only get a pathetic fraction of an inch before I have to stop.
I roll over into a fetal position, facing the middle of the alley. My eyes are crying uncontrollably, sending cold streams down either side of my face. No, I won't let myself cry. Crying won't fix anything. No, stop crying. No!
But I can't stop. My chest spasms as I gasp for tiny breaths. The night wasn't cold, but the pavement below me feels icy, like it's draining my life away. I tilt my head toward the center of the alley where I can barely make out the trickle of water, now running thicker than it had before. The alley – this stupid alley – is draining my life away.
Oh Goddess. I might not be saved. I might not make it.
My thoughts stray to Ponyville, and my eyes burn even more. I clench them shut, blotting out the blurred outline of cruel buildings and ugly sky. I wish I could see Ponyville again, the nice little houses and the little creek and little trees. And I would go talk with the mailmare and wave to Pinkie Pie when she goes by. I would go get lunch with Cheerilee and Roseluck, and we'd talk about flowers and fillies and difficult patients and the lovely food in the cafe. And I'd see my sister Tenderheart, and I'd hug her again, tell her that I missed her. Tell her I was moving back to Ponyville.
I open my eyes again, blinking away the tears. That's it. If I get out of this, I'm moving back to Ponyville. If the clinic won't take me back, so be it. I'll do something else. I just really need to see that town again, to see my friends.
But I'm not going to see them, am I?
I can't help sobbing, my lips clenched tight. I want to say it, but I can only mouth the words: 'I'm sorry, Sister. You were right. I should have stayed.'
A cough shoots through my body, igniting my wounds all over again ... and then another, and then another. Each time, cold splatters land on my chin and neck afterward.
I blink away the tears, but the edges of my vision are still blurry, but not distorted or dimmed, they're grey and sort of tingling. The grey smudges are growing, bleeding in toward the center.
Blood loss. Severe blood loss.
The hollow feeling in my chest grows and gnaws at me, and I know what I should know, but I don't want to know it. I don't want to admit it. It's too horrible. I can't.
Nopony is coming. I'm not going to be saved. I'm not getting out of this alley. It's too late now. Even if somepony does come, they won't be able to save me.
Damn.
My breaths get shallower and faster. Breathing in too much hurts terribly – I have to balance it against the pain of breathing too little. So I get sharp, shallow gasps, pants that keep me just barely going.
When did it get so cold? The night used to be warm. It's not supposed to be cold yet.
I stare at the sky, the ugly grey glow of the sky, as the greyness slowly takes my eyes from me. I can only see little circles, as if through a long grey tunnel ... and then, finally, that's gone too.
I close my eyes – I think I close my eyes – but it doesn't change what I see.
Now there's only grey. I can still hear, though. The distant sounds of the uncaring city still come to me dimly, though they seem to echo strangely.
My hooves fall away from the holes in my chest. All four of my hooves are tingling, getting numb, and the heavy, prickly feeling is slowly seeping up each one. I can almost pretend I'm on the surgeon's table, being put under. I can pretend I'll wake up again and be better. No I can't. I wish I could pretend that, but there's a part of me that won't accept it. I can still hear the slight trickle of water through the middle of the alley.
I'm so thirsty.
It catches me by surprise, but there it is. I'm lusting after that water, wishing I had the strength to roll myself into it, blood and all. It suddenly feels like I've been in the desert for weeks. I would do anything for a drink. My tongue feels huge, my throat gritty and dry. It's not making it any easier to breathe.
Not just thirst. My body is straining, yearning for something it doesn't have, but I can't decide what that is. But the desire for this unknown thing is all-consuming. Somehow it seems that if I could just have that, I would feel completely better, everything would be fine... But I don't know what it is. I can never know. It's a need for something I've never known before – it's a sensation I don't know how to name.
My breaths are too shallow. I'm not getting enough air. But I can't.
My lungs are burning, burning more than they did already, but I can't breathe. It's like they're completely plugged. My chest is heaving, spasming. I can feel my diaphragm pulsing madly, but it's for nothing.
I can't feel my legs at all. I can't breathe. I try to breathe, but it only produces little chokes, strangled gasps that try to get free but can't. Again and again my chest is spasming, but nothing is happening, even as my mouth opens and closes desperately.
I'm twitching, at least the muscles I can feel are twitching, though the numbness is creeping over me.
Mercifully, the numbness begins to take away the pain. It's an amazing feeling of peace. The spasms and twitches aren't sending flares of pain into me anymore. The torture is almost over, I promise myself.
With a surprising suddenness, I feel the last vestiges of the twitches stop. My head flops loosely against the pavement and I can't feel my desperate, spasming efforts to breathe anymore. They've stopped.
It's very peaceful without the struggle.
The sounds of the city are fading away. I can barely hear them anymore ... but the last of the pain fades away too. Soon, there's nothing, no more sensation, no more thought, no more
.