Here's To You, Mrs. Sullivan

by Flea Candy

Ends and Beginnings

Here’s To You, Mrs. Sullivan

Mrs. Sullivan knew it was bad news from the way the nurse walked. His walk, which had previously been shuffling and slow enough for Mrs. Sullivan to consider contacting his supervisor about it, was now brisk. He was going somewhere in a hurry, but not because he was excited. His shoulders were too hunched and his head too low. No, he just wanted to get it over with, and she could appreciate that.

“Sending a nurse to do a doctor’s job, I see,” she said quietly as he approached the waiting area.

The nurse must have seen her mouth moving or heard her speak because he looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face. She wanted to give him a frown in response, but even that would’ve been too much energy for her to use. All she really wanted to do was to sleep and dream and forget that this day ever happened.

Her daughter got up from her chair and swayed from side to side, her mouth moving without sound and her eyes red rimmed. Mrs. Sullivan tried to bring her back down to her chair with a single gnarled hand, but she -- always the one for dramatics -- remained standing.

“Is she alright?” Her daughter asked.

The nurse licked his lips and pushed his glasses up his nose. Mrs. Sullivan took this as a bad sign and tried to pull her daughter back down again.

“You might want to sit down for this,” she said.

But her daughter still wouldn’t sit back down and began to sob so hard it could’ve been mistaken for laughter.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, and Mrs. Sullivan’s daughter started to wail. “She’s… she’s gone. I’m so sorry.”

Mrs. Sullivan’s tiredness suddenly vanished. She felt like flying at the nurse, slamming him against the wall, and demanding that he show her proof. But she didn’t. Mrs. Sullivan knew that the proof was in the room just down the hall, waiting for her. She let out a long sigh and reached for her cane, using it to stand herself up. She brought her daughter’s head into her shoulder and cradled it there, feeling her cry.

+++

All of her school friends came to the wake. Mrs. Sullivan watched as little boys and little girls, barely old enough to even know what death meant, paraded in front of the casket in their black outfits with their parents. Some of them were crying openly, but most of them had faces as if they were in a bad dream. She didn’t expect any of them to realize the gravity of the situation, not quite yet.

When it was her turn to approach, Mrs. Sullivan felt the first tears fall down her face. She did nothing to stop them, only wiping her face when it became too blurred to look at the little body.

They had done a good job of making her look life-like. Mrs. Sullivan hadn’t thought it possible, but modern science and technology could apparently work wonders. But as wondrous as that was, she still couldn’t look her granddaughter in the face. Whenever she looked, her face looked like it was changing before her eyes - from the face of a young girl to the face of an old man, to an old woman, to any number of people that ran the gamut of age. All of them were just as stiff and just as formal as the small child that actually lay there. She winced and stopped looking.

There was a tap on her shoulder, and Mrs. Sullivan slapped her prim and proper face back on. She turned around and there stood her daughter, her face pale except for splotches where her makeup had been washed away by tears. She held a piece of paper in her hand.

“There’s something she wanted me to give you,” she said.

Her daughter handed over the piece of paper. Mrs. Sullivan trembled as she looked at it. There on the paper was her and her granddaughter, at least as well as a six-year-old could draw them. Surrounding them were creatures that she first mistook for dogs but soon realized they were horses. There were six of them, arranged around the two human figures in a circle. Across the top read, in black crayon, “Gram Gram And Me Make Friends With The Ponies”.

“She w-wanted to give it to you for your birthday next month but…”

Mrs. Sullivan nodded and said, her voice cracking, “Thank you.”

Her daughter rushed forward, nearly knocking her off her feet. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist and burrowed her head into her hair.

“I love you, Mom,” she whispered.

“I love you too.”

+++

Mrs. Sullivan hadn’t slept since that night at the hospital. Whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see was her granddaughter’s face and the faces of so many others. The nurses at the retirement home had given her sleeping pills, but she hadn’t taken them; they still laid unopened on her nightstand. They had said to only take one, so they must have been pretty strong. Her eyes flicked to them, and Mrs. Sullivan sighed.

She got up out of bed and walked over to the bathroom. She stared grimly at the mirror and turned on the faucet. Mrs. Sullivan splashed herself with the cool water that gushed out of the tap and held her palms under it for a moment or two, bringing them up to her lips and drinking it down. She looked at the mirror again, and she could see where her granddaughter got her brown, almond shaped eyes. The water from the faucet trickling down her face mixed in with her tears.

She really needed to get some sleep tonight, Mrs. Sullivan decided. Shuffling around, she got a small plastic cup from the medicine cabinet, filled it with water, and returned to the bedroom. She took a quick glance at the clock on the wall, tick tocking away. It was just after midnight.

“Tis now the very witching time of night,” she muttered to herself.

Mrs. Sullivan popped the pills out of their little pocket bubbles with some difficulty. Pain shot up her fingers as she did so, but she got them open in the end. They had only given her four pills. That was probably the largest amount you could take in one sitting without overdosing, she surmised. She took a pill in her hand and held it there, staring at its pearly whiteness. Mrs. Sullivan took a deep breath and swallowed the pill, chasing it down with the water.

She got into bed and, within fifteen minutes, began to dream.

+++

Twilight Sparkle stood on a grassy knoll, watching the stars in the sky through her trusty telescope. Spike was curled around her hooves, sleeping soundly. She looked down at him and smiled. It’d be such a shame to wake him when she only needed him to take notes on the planets’ movements. But that could wait. She had last taken her calculations at precisely two o’clock in the morning, and it was only about midnight, so the baby dragon could rest a little longer.

Truth be told, she too was tired. Perhaps just closing her eyes for just a little while would remedy that. Twilight sunk to her knees and placed her head on the soft grass, listening to Spike breathing. In and out, in and out, in… and… out…

+++

“Twilight! Wake up, Twilight!”

Spike’s voice called out to her, and Twilight’s head immediately snapped up.

“Oh my goodness! Did I miss marking down the planets?”

Spike came into focus a moment later, and he nodded his head.

“That’s not our biggest problem here, Twilight,” he said. “Take a look at this!”

He pointed to the sky, and Twilight got to her hooves unsteadily - still weighed down by sleep. She looked up and gasped.

“A meteor? Princess Luna’s Almanac said nothing about any meteors this month!”

Spike nodded and said, “That’s not the only thing. It’s… it’s getting closer!”

“What?!” Twilight exclaimed. “Let me do some calculations…”

Her horn glowed, and her magic found her notebook and quill. Twilight looked into the telescope for a moment and then began to scribble furiously. After doing this a couple of times, she gasped again.

“Spike! According to these--” She jabbed her quill into the notebook. “--the meteor is moving pretty slowly… for a meteor anyways. But it’s not just that. My calculations say that, based on its current trajectory, it’s headed straight for the Everfree forest!”