2986 Steps

by Verlax

Chapter Eight - The Wilting Roses

“Some things just aren’t meant to go together. Like trying to be happy while being a leper” Primrose thought as she trotted inside. The room was filled with dozens of ponies, all of them lepers. Some of them didn’t look ill, only their grim expressions showing the horrible truth. Others however were covered in terrible wounds, rotting flesh on their limbs emitting a smell so putrid, that even a sniffle would be enough to render one unaccustomed to it unconscious for hours to come.

Primrose tried to stay optimistic, ‘tried’ being the key word. When she arrived here she tried to maintain a smile, but the sight of so many ponies suffering so much... it was just too much to handle. She examined herself every day, and every day she was thankful that she didn’t spot any unwanted changes, looking almost exactly the same as on her first day here. There were times when she was even thinking, that she wasn’t ill at all. Primrose wasn’t like the other patients here not only thanks to her appearance, but also her positive outlook on life. That couldn’t however last long in a place like this.

There was an old pony here, who took a liking to her. He couldn’t see, because his eyes became liquid thanks to the leprosy, but he still kept on saying she was a beautiful young filly. His name was Pruse, and the elder said that he was a fisherpony. It was really boring in the leprosarium, so he took it upon himself to tell her his entire life story, and what a life it was! The first three days of her stay here consisted basically of listening to Pruse’s tales from dawn to dusk. Sadly, it was only the first three days, because at Friday he just didn’t want to wake up. Hansen, the same doctor who brought her here said that he got “serious paralysis”, whatever that meant, and that they had to take him away. He didn’t say if Pruse was going to be fine or not, but Primrose was a smart filly. She knew. She missed his tales, even if most of them were quite boring, but Pruse was such a nice pony. Primorose cried once she realised that even such a kind pony could be killed by such a nasty illness.

From that moment further she stopped smiling and adopted the grim expression the others had all the time. When Pruse died, there was nopony to distract her from the sad reality with their tales, and the stay in the leprosarium became a torture, filled with boredom and hopelessness. As time passed her depression grew, and the memory of her father kicking her out of home was only adding insult to injury. Abandoned by the ones she loved, Primrose felt at times like there was nothing left for her to live for. She tried mentioning it to one of the doctors, but he just shrugged her off, more concerned about the lepra itself than the pony afflicted with it.

In this whole mess, there was one pony that looked like he wasn’t all that worried about the entire situation. An elder pegasus doctor with a dark-blue coat and gold mane was walking around the entire room, examining everypony, giving out medicine and from time to time replacing bandages on the more severely injured patients. The entire group of ill pones waited in a line for his inspection.

Soon, the time had come for her. The doctor approached her and give her a kind smile.

“You didn’t change much from our first meeting, Primrose.” Dostoyevsky greeted her.

“Hello.” she answered softly.

“You already know the procedure, Miss. Ehm, please come a bit closer, I need to have good view of you, so I can form a good diagnose and apply the correct treatment. ‘Bene dignoscitur, bene curatur.’” he said, adding something in a foreign language.

Primrose trotted closer and allowed Dostoyevsky to examine her. She was merely looking at him blankly, letting her mind wander. However, she came up with a question, and try as she might, she couldn’t help but ask it out loud.

“Dostoyevsky?” she started, struggling to pronounce his name correctly.

“Yes, Miss?” he raised his head.

“I-I’m scared. I don’t want to be... a leper. But one pony said there is no cure for this. Is that true?” she asked.

To her surprise, Dostoyevsky didn’t answer her question. While she was wondering why exactly the pegasus hadn’t spoke a word, Dostoyevsky’s mind was a fuzzy mess of opposing thoughts. His honour and the oath he made a long time ago forced him to speak the truth... but he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t say something so cruel to such a young and innocent creature. However, the longer he was thinking about it, the more he was struggling with his own beliefs. Finally, he came up with a solution, that would suit both sides, though he still hated doing this.

“Contra vim lepra non est medicamen in hortis. For now.” he answered.

“And that means...”

“Don’t worry about that.” Dostoyevsky cut her off suspiciously quickly.

“Advantages of knowing Latin... Thank Faust for that.” he thought as he continued examining Primorse, limb by limb. To his surprise, the disease was spreading much slower than he expected. Only a few more centimeters of the filly’s body rotted, and Primrose squeaked when he jabbed her with needle in the face, smiling apologetically as he did it.

“My apologies, Miss. I just had to confirm something. I have to say you are dealing with this illness surprisingly we... we... well...

---

“What in Tartatus is that!?”

“Sweet Faust! Medic!”

“I’m here!” the doctor bursted into the room, carrying a large leather bag with him. His assistant was just behind him.

The room was a huge mess. There was a filly lying in the bed, coughing furiously. Next to her there was an old stallion named Tramelsy, who was currently hugging her hoof and whispering comforting words to her.. Two almost identical ponies, twin brothers most likely were looking at the whole situation in shock. Both of them were dark-blue pegasi with leather caps on their heads. They were looking incredibly similar, the only difference was their cutie marks. The older one had a moneybag for his mark, and the younger had a saber and flintlock pistol for his. Next to them there was a mare, crying silently in the corner of the room, and a grim looking servant.

The filly in the bed was barely breathing. The doctor immediately dashed to her and started examining her.

“This can’t be happening...” one of the brothers, the one with the moneybag whispered silently. “This... this...”

Redrose was his daughter. Almost six years ago his younger brother came to visit them and congratulete them on the birth of their beautufil baby filly.They seemed so happy together and the entire familly was crying tears of pride and happiness.

But now...

Despite the fact he didn’t know much about medicine, he knew what was killing her. Tuberculosis. At first the family was convinced, that this was just some sort of weak disease that they could cure using traditional methods. It looked as though the curation worked for a time, after a few days it seemed like if the disease was defeated. But today...

The doctor took a strange bottle from inside of his bag and poured its contents into the filly’s open mouth. Meanwhile his assistant approached the twins, his face frozen in an expression of seriousness.

“Which one of you is Dostoyevsky?” the assistant asked.

“It’s me” they said in unison. “Ehm... I think you meant this one” the younger added and pointed to his older brother with his hoof.

“My name is Skyscraper and I’m Dr. Stable’s assistant. As you can see, my mentor is... currently busy. So I’ll be the one to explain what’s going on.”

The younger of the Dostoyevsky twins would normally have by now thrown in some kind of stupid joke like : “And I guess your director is mr. House?”, but the situation was just too grim for that. The face of his older brother paled significantly, looking like a porcelain mask.

“Your daughter, Redrose, she’s suffering from tuberculosis. As you may know, MTB is an infectious disease of the respiratory system. The usual symptoms consist of chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, high fever and weight loss. If not treated properly, the infection can spread to other organs at which point… well… treatment becomes very difficult.”

Redrose coughed violently and Tramelski, who was still hugging the filly’s hoof shivered a bit. The servant moved the wife of the older Dostoyevsky from the room once he noticed that she was about to faint.

“Her lungs are almost completely destroyed.” Dr. Skyscraper continued. “From her earlier examinations we knew, that her lungs were really weak for a filly her age, but at this point she can barely breath. Also, we noted that her intestines aren’t working properly and we got some symptoms that would suggest that her kidneys ceased to work as well.”

With Dr. Skyscraper's every word, the older of the two siblings was shaking more and more.

“Will... Will she... Will she survive?” the younger brother managed to ask.

Dr. Skyscraper opened his mouth but after some thought he shut it again. Meanwhile, Dr. Stable was pouring another vial of medicine into Redrose’s mouth. She lost consciousness some time ago.

“Ah... Skyscraper?” Dr. Stable turned his face towards them. “Could you please move Mr. Tramelsky and his sons out of here? There are definitely too many ponies here, especially when we’re dealing with such a dangerous and easily-spreading disease.”

“Right, of course...”

“I’m not moving from there!” the older Dostoyevsky snapped. “This is my daughter Faust dammit!”

“Equus sacra res Equus.” the younger added. “I’m not leaving my brother’s daughter. Not in a time like this.”

“My sons...” Tramelsky slowly stood on his hooves. “As much as I’m proud of your conviction, the good doctors are right.”

“But...” the twins spoke in unison.

“The only thing we can do now is to pray to the Allmother.” their father cut them off. “We are leaving.” he added, nodding at the doctors.

Cottage simply nodded in response and after a moment Tramielsky and both his sons left the room. They took the wooden chairs just a few meters away from the entrance and sat in them silently.

And so they waited. Neither of the Dostoyevsky brothers said anything. Tramielsky was silent too, praying softly under his breath.

“Waiting is the worst part of life”. the younger Dostoyevsky thought. “Waiting wouldn’t be so hard, if not the upcoming news. Will Redrose survive or... Don’t even think like that, of course she’ll be fine! Yes, she must be. But it would be so much better if we would know it ‘now’.” He couldn’t stop his hooves from shaking. Dostoyevsky haven’t spent that much time with his brother’s daughter, he visited her only twice, but he knew perfectly well that she was the pride of her parents. The first time he visited was during her birth in Boatville, when she couldn’t talk and walk at all, and the second time was a few months later when she was a cute little filly, enjoying a small stroll through the house. Now, after a few years it was his third visit...

His brother was taking this a lot worse, but that was to be expected. He was her father after all. Redrose was the fruit of the blooming love between him and Light Drop. She was their first child and they were talking about her every time the younger Dostoyevsky saw one of them.

The door creaked open. Three stallions immediately raised their heads to look expectantly at the two doctors. Dr. Stable approached them first, followed by Dr. Skyscraper. They simply stood a few meters in front of them, their expressions completely devoid of emotion.

“Redrose...” Skyscraper started.

“She didn’t make it.” Dr. Stable finished apologetically.

Silence filled the hallway, stretching out seemingly into an eternity. The meaning of those words was slowly taking root in their heads, crushing their hearts like a vice.

Redrose... sweet little Redrose... was dead.

And then Dostoyevsky let out a pained, animalistic cry...

-----

“Dostoyevsky! Dostoyesky!” the filly was shaking him with her hooves.

“Huh... wha... what happened?” the pegasus doctor came back to his senses, looking around disoriented.

“You just like lost... cons... consien... cons...” Primrose tried to say.

“Consciousness.” Dostoyevsky corrected her, still feeling a bit dizzy.

“Yes, that! But why?” Primorose asked with worry.

“Well, you... reminded me... of somepony.” Dostoyevsky answered as he got his bearings and resumed his examination, albeit slowly. His mind however was working a mile a minute, and he was silently boiling inside from anger at the whole situation.

“I’ll won’t let that happen ever again. Never! I swear to Faust, I will do whatever I can to save her life, I will not allow her to meet the same fate as my niece, even if it will cost me my life.” he made a silent vow.

After a few moments the pegasus finished examining her. Dostoyevsky took out his notebook and checked the patients list.

“Hmm... the is only one pony left today. Wooden Draft...” he read to himself. He brought his leather bag and scanned the room. A lot of faces, most of them covered with awful wounds, but no sight of Wooden Draft.

“Hmm... I don’t see him... Where is he?” he thought aloud.

“Maybe he’s in his room?” Primrose suggested.

“Quite probabiliter” Dostoyevsky agreed.

He trotted towards the patients bedrooms. It took him only a few seconds to find Wooden Draft’s chamber. To the doctor’s slight annoyance, Primrose followed him. Dostoyevsky knocked several times on the door, but he was answered only by silence.

“Wooden Draft? Are you okay?” he asked, worry beginning to set root in him.

Again, no response. Dostoyevsky knocked one more time, but still, no answer. Now seriously worried, Dostoyevsky opened the door, hoping that he was wrong with his assumptions.

He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening at the sight that greeted him. Whatever he was expecting, this was definitely not it. A shocked gasp to his left reminded him about Primrose’s presence, and in a vain attempt to shield her from the sight he reached out with his hoof and tried to cover her eyes. The filly however already seen everything, and in silent terror she backed away into the corridor, her eyes never leaving the gruesome sight.

Dostoyevsky gulped audibly and lowered his head, ears flattening to his skull. “Dear Faust” He muttered. “The Messiah is getting impatient with us.”

Comments

[Spike the Scribe]

ya know man, I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but I've added a few changes to the chapter from our last session and, to be completely honest, I've completely forgotten about them and didn't mention them If it's not that big of an issue could you perhaps look at it and update this chapter with the content I've added?

[Lask]

I must say that I'm really happy that Primrose look like she's gonging to have a bigger role in the story. By the way another great chapter.

[Verlax]

2564864

Derp... my bad.

Thanks, I corrected this.

[UnknownSubject]

I see your at the top of the Grimdark Disease/Famine list.
I'm second, but don't worry.
I'm coming for you tommy.

[Verlax]

2613199

I'm not tommy

Hah, it's good to see another heavily-disease themed story. I wish you good luck, let the friendly rivalry begin!

[UnknownSubject]

2615019
Then it is on friend!
I too wish you good luck.
May the best disease win!

[killingfrenzycreator]

“Contra vim lepra non est medicamen in hortis. For now.” he answered.

Translation: Violence against leprosy is not a medication in the gardens