Chapter 10 - Octavia Melody
Octavia Melody counted her blessings.
She had her place in the city, she lived near the warmth of the Generator, she was given preferential treatment as a medical doctor, and she wasn't as bitterly alone as she was even when she first left Ponyville. Steam Scalpel had been kind to her, and even though she was actually clueless about the job she was meant to be educated for, he had seemingly ignored it and given her instructions every single time she turned up confused.
She tucked the medical manual she had been gifted away in her saddlebag. Day and night, she'd been studying up on anatomy, medical language, and some simple illnesses that sounded like they might be common in their situation. Of course, this did not make her anywhere near skilled enough to actually be a doctor, but so far knowing some basic vocabulary and which pills made what pains feel better had proven useful in at least helping her to pretend.
The medical post, a slightly more insulated version of the tents everypony lived in, stood before her. A small crowd of ponies sat outside its door, all of them sick and openly injured, waiting for a space to open up within the medical facility. A pony with a red sash stood outside the door of the medical post, and looked at Octavia with scrutinizing eyes.
"Hey, stop, get to the back of the line. Medical post's full, wait your turn," The gruff administrator snarled at Octavia, putting a hoof up to stop her from entering.
Octavia blinked, before giving a dignified cough, "I'm afraid you have it wrong. I'm a doctor, sir."
Behind her concerned facade, she smirked. She had to admit, it didn't feel all that bad to be treated as a treasure in this new reality. She was an impostor doctor, sure, but she had figured out how to act the part very well by now. First in line at the cookhouse, and always having normal shifts at the medical post was rather cushy when compared to the conditions the others worked in: hauling coal, carrying freezing wood out of the snow, and plucking the Steam Lorries clean of steel in the bitter winds outside of their valley.
The administrator stepped aside, and Octavia gave a quiet "thank you" as she stepped past him and through the tent flaps of the Medical Post.
The now familiar stench of infected wounds, antiseptic, filthy bed dressings, and overworked staff hit Octavia's nose as she walked into the medical post's interior. 10 beds were lined up within the post's walls, all of them occupied.
She frowned. Yesterday, there were only a hoof full more sick and injured sitting outside. Now, there were about ten to fifteen extra sitting outside, and all the beds were still full. Soon enough, those outside waiting for treatment might end up as corpses on the street.
She'd hate to be one of them.
A familiar voice came from the back of the medical post, "Octavia. Good to see you up bright and early."
Octavia automatically went to a pot of water on the back of the medical post. She reared up onto the edges of the pot, reaching down into it to wash her hooves. Once she had picked the dirt off of her hooves, she went to a tray next to the water basin, wrapping a layer of sanitized cloth around her forehooves.
"How are you doing, Scalpel?" Octavia asked.
"Exhausted, and we haven't even started our shift yet," Scalpel sighed, "I can see that sleep did not come to you easily either."
Octavia blinked, before giving a sheepish smile and rubbing her baggy eyes, "Yeah... our new quarters aren't exactly what I was used to before the frost."
"Indeed. Though, in our conditions, I feel that sometimes I am too exhausted to sleep," Scalpel turned around, walking towards one of the beds, picking up the clipboard attached to its foot and studying it closely.
Octavia, finishing up her sanitization,went to tend one of the sick ponies who had arrived overnight. It was an orange earth pony, with a freckled face. A cowpony hat lay at the foot of the bed, and the mare had her foreleg in a cast. She was currently asleep, with her eyes closed under a strained facial expression. Coal dust smeared the patient's face, along with flecks of burnt fur running down her neck and chest.
Chewing on her lip, Octavia read the checklist.
Applejack: Generator coal hauler. Passed out from exhaustion and fell off of the Generator bin, receiving a hairline fracture in her left foreleg. Minor burns from Generator furnaces sustained during her job. Corrected breakage in the leg, applied a cast, and administered painkillers. Patient should be given a single 5 mg dose of morphine every 12 hours, as per Doctor Horse's painkiller rationing protocol.
Octavia looked back up at "Applejack", before dismissively placing her clipboard back down at the foot of the bed. After a quick check of the patient's pulse, she moved on to the next bed. There was nothing she needed to do for the poor worker right now.
The next bed contained a familiar unicorn mare. It was Berryshine, the pony she had bandaged up on her "First day on the job". She disregarded her checklist, considering Octavia herself was the one to write it, and went to check the patient's status.
Even now, three days after finishing their journey, the pony was still suffering "complications". She was running a high fever, couldn't seem to hold down a meal, or even water...
Despite her deplorable state, she still seemed to muster a brave face whenever her daughter came in to talk to her. Even sitting up in bed despite her burns and wracking sickness. Octavia admired the steadfastness, and in a way... she hoped she could make her better.
"If I could've known that I would take such pride in this work... maybe I would have actually become a doctor," Octavia thought silently, before reaching up a hoof to measure the mare's fever.
Right now, the patient was drifting in and out of consciousness. Her forehead was baking hot, and caked with sweat. An unpleasant smell wafted from her, and Octavia wondered if the nurse was yet to change her bedpan. She also noted that the bandages were dirty again, making her grimace.
"Nurse!" She shouted, "I need bandages, gauze, and some disinfectant here!"
Her voice seemed to attract the attention of the sick mare, and Berryshine's bloodshot eyes slowly opened to focus hazily on Octavia's face.
"...Water..." She whispered, pleadingly.
The familiar shadow of the nurse came up behind Octavia, as well as a hoof bearing a tray containing the medical supplies she wanted. As Octavia took the tray, she looked behind her at Nurse Redheart, smiling and saying, "And a cup of fresh water, please."
The permanently-disgruntled nurse nodded with a grunt, before walking away as one of the other medical staff shouted for something.
Octavia made the process of taking off the dirty bandages and reapplying the clean ones. The bloodied, dirtied pieces of cloth she removed with scissors and her forehooves would eventually join a pile of dirty bandages, that would be summarily dunked in a pot of boiling water to be cleaned and reused. Good cloth was not a thing the ponies of New Ponyville could just waste.
A lot of the burned skin was beginning to flake off on its own, which made Octavia hopeful that her recovery would follow soon after. She applied the bottle of disinfectant to a cotton ball, before beginning to dab at the red, blistered skin that was only slowly beginning to heal. She knew how the first time she had forgone this measure, and that after being told off, she had begun applying disinfectant before bandaging any wound.
At the time, she hadn't even thought about removing germs from the wound. Back in the day when she cut herself slicing vegetables or while walking around in the wild, she'd had just applied a band-aid to the cut and forgotten about it.
After finishing applying the new disinfectant, she began wrapping the burns once again with clean cloth. Eventually, the shivering, feverish mare was all patched up once again.
She left the patient on the bed, before moving on to the next patient.
Cheerilee: Construction worker. Suffered hypothermia while clearing space through the snow for a street....
There was a slight commotion behind Octavia, making her glance over at the door momentarily.
A light purple unicorn filly with a hay yellow mane bounded through the tent flaps, with the forehoof of the Administrator outside scrabbling to grab her. The filly ran past Octavia before reaching up to lean beside Berryshine's bed.
It was Pinch, the patient's daughter. She came every day, as soon as the visitation hours began. It seemed though, that she was just a bit early for visitation.
Yet, it didn't seem like the administrator wanted to bother chasing the filly indoors, and none of the other doctors seemed to have the heart or time to fuss about working around the little intruder. Octavia didn't mind either, and simply went back to reading the checklist.
"How are you doing today?" Octavia looked up at Cheerilee, who was currently awake and staring at Octavia as she did her work.
Cheerilee shrugged, "I'm fine, after some rest."
"Then we'll start looking to get you discharged," Octavia mumbled, "We're short on beds right now," she began going through the general checklist of checking if the patient was indeed okay for discharge. Hypothermia was an extremely common ailment out in these temperatures, so Octavia knew what she was doing in advance.
"Short on beds? You're packed full," Cheerilee chuckled, before sitting up in bed and letting Octavia begin checking her, "I'm surprised you aren't putting ponies on the floor yet."
"We aren't allowed to by law yet," Octavia took out a thermometer to check the mare's body temperature.
"Rubbish," Cheerilee let the thermometer go under her tongue, "You poneesh chould be helin mor with the spache you haf."
Octavia just shrugged, not in the mood for conversation with the mare's sunny personality.
A few minutes later, Octavia finally finished her checks, "Alright. You're alright. Get up and make your own way out."
She ignored Cheerilee's thanks as the mare got up and left the tent. Octavia began to walk back towards Applejack to make sure the mare wasn't awake yet, before she noticed a commotion coming from Berryshine's bed.
"Mom? Wake up! Wake up!" came a small voice over the general hubbub of the Medical Post.
Octavia paused as she went to see Berry Pinch shaking her mother's limp hoof. She stopped in place, mind going blank as she stared at the patient's bed.
The nurse was already walking over to the patient's bed, a tray with a tin cup of water already on her back, but she quickened her pace and brushed by Octavia as she came to the patient's bedside.
After a moment, Octavia saw the nurse reach up to feel Berryshine's neck. As the nurse's eyes froze in fear, so did Octavia.
"...We have a dead one," Nurse Redheart mumbled bluntly, removing her hoof from the patient's neck.
"What!? Dead!?" The filly exclaimed, clinging to her mother's hoof as she stared up at the nurse.
The entire medical post stood still, looking out towards the nurse and the filly. Octavia herself stood in shock, heart thundering in her ears.
"Oh Goddesses... what did I do wrong? What will they think of me? I thought she was fine!" Octavia's mind raced for anything she could've missed in her short perusal of the basic medical manual. Her stomach churned, and fear gripped her heart.
The dull orange body of Doctor Horse walked past Octavia, the head doctor locking eyes with Berry Pinch and saying, "Little miss, you should leave now..."
The filly looked between Doctor Horse and Redheart, tears quickly welling up in her eyes. She seemed to want to make a retort, but her voice was quickly drowned out by a chain of sobs and hiccups as she buried her muzzle in the forehoof of her mother.
"Nurse. Escort her outside," Doctor Horse ordered, before reaching out with his magic to grab the checklist at the base of the bed.
Nurse Redheart wordlessly wrapped a firm hoof around the filly's midsection, before prying her away from the corpse. She began to drag the filly away as she fought viciously to get back to her mother's bedside.
"NO! NO, NO, NO!" The filly howled, beating against the larger adult's leg as she was dragged across the wooden floor of the tent. As Nurse Redheart and her prisoner exited the medical post, the entire staff could still hear the child's ragged screams disappearing into the cacophony of the Generator's machine noises.
The entire medical post remained silent as Doctor Horse read the checklist. Berryshine was the first pony to die in New Ponyville. Nopony was even sure where to take her corpse. Back on the Steam Lorries, they just tossed the bodies off the back of the lorries to be buried under the snow. But here... that hadn't even been thought about yet.
Octavia's soul froze over once again as Doctor Horse began to unwrap the bandages of the corpse, inspecting the burns. He gagged as he inspected the wounds closely.
Turning to the room, "Dear Celestia. This mare has suffered third degree burns. What madpony didn't remove the burned flesh? It's rotted right on her! She went septic and died! Goddess's sake!"
Octavia stayed completely silent, "Dear Celestia... I didn't know..."
Doctor Horse levitated the clipboard in front of him, "Dr. Melody!"
Octavia wanted to run, but her legs felt frozen to the floor.
"You wrote this report, yes?" Dr. Horse affixed her with a judgemental stare.
Octavia gulped, before nodding slowly.
Dr. Horse frowned, "...Were you the one to initially treat her?"
Octavia's lips drew into a thin line as she quivered. Did he already know? Was he just testing her?
She pounded her fear into check, knowing her body was attempting to betray her lies, "...No, sir. I did not. I was hoofed the case once we arrived here in New Ponyville," She hoped her voice firm, because Doctor Horse's stare was definitely firmer.
After a few terrifying moments, Doctor Horse's eyes returned back to the corpse, "...I see. Does anypony else know the doctor that first treated her?"
There was a general shaking of heads around the medical post. The steam lorry's medbays had been chaos that night. Nopony else noticed Octavia's lie, not even the nurse who had most likely been too busy rushing supplies around.
Scalpel, however, fixed Octavia with a different stare. She wilted as he gave a grim look towards her, knowingly. Eventually, though, he turned back towards Doctor Horse and shook his head.
Doctor Horse's face turned into a snarl, "Celestia damnit. I know none of you want to admit it, and if we weren't so pressed for doctors and time, I'd have everypony here investigated. I just hope whoever it is, you know you just murdered somepony. I hope Celestia will show you mercy, because I sure as hell know I wouldn't."
Octavia kept her face firm, but behind her mask she battled with her emotions.
It wasn't her this time. She was alive. That was all that mattered.
The Cookhouse was a much more... unpleasant experience than even the Steam Lorry mess halls. Even though there was much more space inside than the absolutely packed cafeteria of the overcrowded lorries, the Cookhouse was built outside of the range of the Generator, with the inner circle packed with tents made for sleeping. This made the air inside much more chilly than the comfortable wraps of their homes, and generally made most ponies just scarf down their meals and leave in a hurry.
The cookhouse was made out of a large seating area, large enough for 200 or so ponies to come in and eat at once at huge, lengthy wooden tables bordered by benches. Several windows looked out to the streets outside, and to the Generator as it chugged away past the tents. An electric chandelier hung over the entire mess hall, illuminating the tables and seats with a dim light. On the far left side of the cookhouse, a kitchen sat in a wall. Ponies with their manes done up in hair nets dished out stew and mashed potatoes for the hungry workers and engineers coming to retrieve their dinner rations.
Plunging her spoon into her vegetable stew, Octavia silently ate alone at a table.
Her silence was soon interrupted as Steam Scalpel thudded down on the seat opposite to her, his dinner tray clattering onto the table along with him. He fixed her with a hard stare, and a scowl.
Octavia lowered the spoon from her mouth, "...Is this about today..."
"What else would it be about, Melody?" Scalpel grumbled, taking a spoonful of mash and shoving it in his mouth, "You heard Doctor Horse, you're a murderer!"
Octavia remained silent, taking another sip of her stew as her emotions ran amuck once again.
"The only reason I didn't say anything is because I was complicit, you rat!" He poked Octavia in the chest with his spoon.
Octavia's face fell, and she dropped her spoon into her soup, "I didn't know. I'm a pharmacist not a surgeon. There wasn't anything I could've done."
Scalpel blinked, "...What. You-" He stuttered, "Somepony died because of you. She had a child, and you were-"
"What do you want me to say?" Octavia picked up her spoon again, giving Scalpel a dark look, "That I'm sorry that she's dead? I am. But that won't bring her back, will it?"
Scalpel stayed silent as Octavia continued to hungrily eat her meal. The clatter of plates, murmur of distant conversations, and constant hoofbeats of ponies moving in and out of the hall all punctuated Scalpel's gobsmacked silence.
"I am... shocked by your apathy," The aged stallion eventually said.
Octavia swallowed another mouthful of her stew, "I've gone through a lot. Enough said."
Scalpel stayed silent, before looking down into his stew blankly.
Octavia picked up her bowl, before tipping the rest of the stew's broth down her throat. The warmth and fullness of a full meal filled her stomach, making her feel comfortable for once.
"...Octavia... I can't let you continue to practice like that," Scalpel shook his head, ignoring his food, "We are sworn to heal ponies, not hurt them."
"We only have ten doctors for a city of two hundred ponies," Octavia muttered, "I won't make the same mistake twice, and I'll learn more field medicine from your manuals. Isn't that enough?"
"You are infuriating, Octavia!" Scalpel angrily slammed a hoof against the table, drawing stares from some nearby patrons, "Somepony died on your watch, you've made an orphan, and you haven't even shed a tear!"
Octavia chewed on another scoop of her mashed potatoes, looking up at Scalpel's watering eyes. All around them, ponies stared curiously. Eventually, Scalpel noticed the attention he was drawing, and tried to calm himself and sit back down.
"You've put me in no mood to eat," Scalpel grunted, crossing his hooves and looking away from his meal.
Octavia reached out, placing a hoof on the edge of his tray, "Well, if you're not going to finish it-"
Scalpel swatted away her hoof, causing Octavia to cringe away with a slight stinging pain, "I'll finish it in due time, young lady!"
Octavia shrugged, before continuing to scrape the last remnants of mash potatoes off of her plate.
Deep within, she was very much upset over what had happened. Somewhere, someplace, she still held her equinity, and it cried out for her situation. Yet, the more grief she felt over her action, the more her own apathy rose up to suppress it. She couldn't give in to her emotions, not now... not after so long.
"There's rumors the Captain will be building a cemetery soon. You'd better be there to bury that poor mare with your own hooves," Scalpel spat in Octavia direction, before standing up and levitating his dinner plate with him to go and sit somewhere else.
Alone with her thoughts, Octavia licked her lips and stared at her empty plate. Alone, both in her mind, and in the world...
"Attention everypony! Today we have regrettably experienced our first death! Miss Berryshine, a valued member of our community, has passed away from complications of burns from an accident on our journey!" Shouted the Captain's silhouette from atop the roaring Generator.
Octavia watched from the crowd as snow flakes fluttered from the heavens, mixed in with the tiny embers floating down from the smokestack of the Generator.
"For now, her corpse is being stored at the Medical Post. Tonight, our construction crews will erect a Cemetary where we will bury our current and future dead with respect!" The Captain announced, causing murmurs to arc through the crowd once again.
"Ashes to ashes... dust to dust..." A stranger said from beside Octavia.
"She deserves no less. A good mare, if a bit of a drunk..." Another voice said.
The announcement continued, "I am also proud to announce that the Beacon has finished construction! As you can see behind you, its enchanted light pierces the snowstorm and can be used as a navigational marker for our budding city for miles around!"
Indeed, as Octavia and much of the crowd had already noticed before they gathered, a hot air balloon towered over them, even taller than the Generator tower. Two lenses, salvaged from the fronts of the Steam Lorries, continually spun around, causing a sweeping lighthouse-like beam of light to beam out into the Frostlands for miles. Atop it, Octavia could vaguely see several pegasi acting as lookouts (or, at the very least, that's what she believed they were).
"Using the navigation and telegraph communications from this Beacon, we will be sending out a Scout Team from our city to finally rescue those we left behind at the crevasse!" The Captain said proudly, causing a cheer to make a wave through the crowd.
Octavia stayed silent. They were going back for the survivors. Was her lie really worth it? Maybe she could have stayed with the others legitimately...
She shook her head. No. It had been too risky. Without the protection of the Generator, and without being able to access either of the Lorries with their close proximity to a drop to their deaths...
She didn't have much hope for the camp of survivors.
"You are dismissed! Go to your quarters and rest, everypony!" The Captain began the descent as the crowd began to disperse.
Octavia turned back towards the roads leading out to her tent, following them with her head low and coat drawn close. She ignored the others as they chatted with each other, heading out to their tents.
As she approached her own home of canvas and wood, she noticed a crowd of ponies standing around a single mare posed on top of a wooden crate. She held her Lamp up high, shouting at the top of her lungs.
"Repent, my ponies! We must not stray from the Goddesses and their guiding light! Princess Twilight Sparkle, the omniscient Princess of knowledge, constructed this Generator to replace the lights that our Goddesses gave to us!" The preacher shouted with fervor.
Octavia, curious, joined the crowd as they looked up in awe at the pegasus in a woolen coat.
"We must not stray! We must worship this wondrous machine like we once worshipped our Princesses! It alone has been left as our guide to eternal life among this horrific cold, as a mighty stopgap until the Goddesses return and repel the frost! Bow and worship! Give your prayers to the Generator and you shall be answered!" The preacher insisted, pointing a hoof firmly at the Generator
Almost by providence, the Generator roared as its core received a fresh dump of coal, the risers around it grinding harder as another wave of warm heat blasted through the campsite.
A few of those around Octavia bowed, whispering indistinctly.
"Are you kidding? The Goddesses abandoned us here. The Company gave us a Captain for a reason, we didn't come here to be guided by some damn hunk of steel!" Somepony said from the crowd, causing heads to turn back away from the Generator tower.
"It matters not what you think! Faith has guided us through worse times, and it will guide us through these!" The preacher turned back to the crowd, "Take hope, ponies! There is a greater power at work here! Our suffering will not be meaningless!"
Perhaps, if Octavia had any hope left in the first place, the preacher's message would not have fallen on deaf ears. Regardless, the grey earth pony stepped away, sleep driving her steps back to her lodgings.
Octavia reached her tent. There were other ponies there, but she had not even bothered to learn their names or even acknowledge their appearances.
A vague greeting came from them as they chatted in a corner, which fell on deaf ears as Octavia reached and climbed into her hammock. Rolling up into a ball, Octavia dimmed the light on her Lamp, before pulling out the heavy medical manual that had been taking up its place in her knapsack.
Opening up back to her dog-eared page, she began to read herself to sleep once again.
For a moment, she thought she heard the screams of a filly being dragged away from her mother, and her eyes drifted away from her textbook.
"I must survive. It's the only way she does too..." Octavia whispered, before blocking out herself and huddling down under her cloth blanket, eyes endlessly scanning her manual.
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"Murderer. Traitor. Imposter. Today you go free. "
Praise the captain for this glorious new chapter!
11227550
It's interesting seeing the thoughts of some pony who hasn't played frostpunk.
I've never played Frostpunk but this story has me hooked!
Well there it goes my hope for a "no deaths run".
I wonder how Octavia will sleep at night after what she did to that filly's mother, is your sanity worth loosing for the sake of your survival? What kind of life is that? Also that manual will only get you so far, medicine is complex and takes many years to master properly, so unless she manages to miraculously learn the job quickly enough, someone's will eventually find out her lie. Despite hating her for her actions I can't help but think what would I have done if put in her place. I don't think you can really answer these questions until you actually live through it.
On a side note this story is great! You really captured me with these chapters and I'm eager to see the story develop. I Can't wait to see if we'll go order or faith. Worshipping Twilight's Generator as some substitute to Celestia's sun seems very fun, a very original take on faith.
Better be careful and learn fast, or you will one day be greeted by this sound:
You need to sleep to become less exhausted, but you're too exhausted to sleep, so you'll become even more exhausted.
At one point you might even be too exhausted to die of exhaustion...
I don't like those implications...
You don't know that. For all you know a well-meaning volunteer may had patched her up in some hallway while the other medics were busy.
Maybe they can offer a trot-in where ponies just walk by, grab their rations and eat at their homes.
Hopefully they manage to clear the Lorry and bring it back to the city.
Not only would it be a waste to leave it behind (especially the Steam Core), but some of the survivors may not be able to walk all the way.
And then the mare gets into an argument with a stallion on another create nearby who claims this would be a waste of time.
Instead they should trust the Captain, work dutifully and maintain order.
Good chapter!
I enjoyed reading it and look forwards to the next part.
11229775
SOMEPONY'S SUS!!!!!
media.discordapp.net/attachments/447853451041308672/981482122684551178/unknown.png
A takeaway order for McFrosty's Sawdust Burger and Bark Fries
Order? Is that some kind of joke I'm too Faithful to Twilight to get?
And here we see the world through the eyes of the Coward. It seems the cost of her lies has nipped at her hooves. But if the end suggests anything, it seems she will be throwing herself into becoming a Healer.
We see the first sparks of Faith! Some ponies have begun their worship of the Generator, and there are those who are dismissing the preaching as lunacy.
Another Law is passed, and the cemetery is planned! The ponies need some hope, especially after their first death.
At least Applejack is getting some well-deserved rest.
I am incredibly concerned about the state of Octavia's headspace. I sincerely doubt that she is of sound mind right now. If I were to guess, I'd say she's stuck in a depression from losing Vinyl. I can only hope she learns to accept her death soon.
This story captures the true personal story that I feel you can become detached from when playing Frostpunk. Octavia's arc is a microcosm of the thesis of the story and the game: What are you willing to do to survive?
That`s odd, the main 6 are practically celebrities, Octavia should know who Applejack is.
Also, frick her. This is the most selfish person I have read about on this site, and I hope she eventually gets found out.