Love is Watching Someone Die
Hitch wasn’t sure if he had fallen asleep.
He blinked, slowly, as if the motion would usher the world around him into life. As if it would stir the straight-backed curtains into action. But the movement, if anything, just made the world more sleepy.
Hitch fought away a yawn, his breath a warm contrast to the frigid temperature of the room. He looked across from him, at the hospital bed that was shrouded in darkness. It draped itself around the bed like a suffocating blanket, slithering around and coiling the bed like a snake would its prey.
It terrified him and made him furious.
Hitch stared into the shadows, at the cascading, lumpy forms beneath it. They rose and fell softly, in a movement that felt all too slow and unnatural. Squinting, he could make out two pricks of light staring back at him.
As he watched he held his breath.
All the air was sucked out of the room when he did so. The dull-colored balloons ceased moving, holding completely still at the bedside. The stuffed animals, also shrouded by shadow, seemed to turn their beaded eyes to watch in a thinly-veiled interest, peeking out from behind the store-bought cards surrounding them.
And when the lights began to dim and flicker, and the sheets slowed in their rising and falling, Hitch looked away and exhaled in defeat.
The silence was oppressive and his head began to spin. Hitch furrowed his brow, chewing the inside of his cheek. He stood and was instantly struck with a bout of dizziness. Even as his eyes automatically shut, he felt something tumble from his lap and hit the floor with a thud.
His eyes shot open as a sharp breath escaped him. Hitch looked down at his hooves, and at the sea of stainless floor tiles that stretched out around them.
A camera sat there, gazing back up at him in offense. Hitch bent over and gently picked it up, turning it over in his hooves. It felt familiar yet foreign at the same time, like an alien he had known for years. The lens had a sharp crack down the front now from its sudden impact with the floor, but Hitch couldn’t bring himself to care.
When he looked up he found that the bed was empty and the shadows were gone. All that remained were the balloons and stuffed animals, and the faint hum of the fluorescent lights above.
Hitch snarled quietly to himself. He turned slowly, hooves scuffing on the tile and rebounding in the impossibly cavernous room, and pushed open the door to leave.
He stepped out into a hallway that was far too well-lit. The floors were pristine and shiny, and the air reeked of chemicals. The walls were white and Hitch hated them for it. The doors were all closed and the windows had their blinds drawn.
It was lonely, and Hitch hated that.
He sighed, kicking the door nearest him and listening intently as the echo bounded down the hall. It never returned, and that only made him feel more lonely.
As his hooves shuffled down the hall automatically, he held his breath again. He let his mind wander in a method that Izzy had taught him years ago: he thought of birds outside, and the gophers and the rabbits burrowing in between the bushes, and the tiny fluffy creatures that would surge from the forest to greet him whenever they heard him coming.
It didn’t help.
When Hitch finally had to breathe again, he found himself at a hallway junction. In front of him was a nurse’s station, currently unoccupied, and to his right was a bench where a familiar face sat.
Pipp had her back pressed against the wall and was poised perfectly, chin level and mouth in a tight line. Her phone was in her right hoof but her eyes weren’t on it. Instead she stared off at the opposing wall, practically boring a hole into it with her gaze.
She didn’t blink until Hitch sat down next to her. “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey,” Hitch said, his voice rough and scratchy. He sucked in a breath and held as soon as the words slipped from his mouth.
Pipp set her phone aside, a move practically unheard of for her. “You holding up?”
“Don’t know,” Hitch replied gruffly, determined to ration the air before he had to breathe again.
Pipp nodded, her head moving up and down like a buoy lost at sea. “I… hm. Yeah. I guess I feel the same.”
Hitch didn’t dare breathe as his eyes scanned the room. A pair of vending machines kept vigil opposite of them, nestled in between two benches. They glowed brightly and merrily, buttons backlit by a pure white beam, the machines humming in perfect harmony.
“It’s like I’m in a plane, I guess,” Pipp said as Hitch tried to ignore her. “One that doesn’t have any wings. One that doesn’t have any control. Just stuck in a metal can, flying towards the earth.”
Hitch’s ear twitched as he continued scanning the room, his eyes passing over the rack of expired magazines filled with germs and worn with age. It was almost funny how they sat in contrast to the pure cleanliness of the rest of the hospital.
“It reminds me of before,” Pipp continued. “Before Sunny came. When we were young, I tried to fly. Jumped off a tree branch and broke my foreleg. I… I think of it every now and then. The feeling of just falling, not being able to control anything…”
There was a moan and a rattle as the air conditioning kicked on. The rudeness startled Hitch. A bit of air escaped from his nose but he clamped down hard to force the rest to stay put.
“I… I’ve been thinking about what Sunny said.”
At that, Hitch closed his eyes and let the stale air in his lungs escape. He sucked in another breath, filling up his lungs, and willed himself to speak. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You remember, right? We were by the lighthouse, and she was crying. She said… she said ‘one day, we’re going to leave each other behind.’ Like it was the first time she was realizing it.” Pipp began blinking, clumsily grabbing for her phone.
Hitch looked down and picked up the camera in his lap. He turned it on and began scrolling through the photographs stored on it, faces of his friends and family passing by.
“And I remember how Izzy just held her, said it would be alright…”
As he kept scrolling, the photos began changing: growing less colorful and less detailed. Soon, Hitch realized that Sunny wasn’t in them anymore.
“...but I think we were all struck by that. As if all of us were realizing it for the first time,” Pipp continued.
A few presses later and Izzy wasn’t in the photos anymore either. Then Sprout. And then Zipp began to change. Her mane grew washed and gray, her face grew wrinkled and her eyes dull.
“It’s ridiculous, huh. Something we all know, but…” Pipp’s voice collapsed completely and the silence came rushing in.
Hitch blinked, and the photographs on the camera became nothing more than empty rooms. Of hospital beds and dining room chairs, of bare park benches and naked rooms with peeling paint.
The camera slipped away and fell to the ground again, and Hitch turned to look at Pipp. He asked her a question, but a faint ringing in his ears filled the room, mixing with the humming of the vending machines to fog his brain out completely. He forgot it as soon as it left his mouth.
But Pipp smiled weakly and shook her head. “I don’t know, Hitch. I wish I did.”
The noise suddenly gave way to a pounding beside him, and when Hitch began to breathe again the pounding became hoofsteps. “Mr. Trailblazer? Mrs. Petals?”
Hitch turned to his right to see a nurse smiling at them. “They’re ready to see you now.”
“Oh!” Pipp popped up to her hooves, prancing eagerly. “I’m so excited!”
“Oh, um-- yeah,” Hitch stuttered, trying to get his bearings. He fumbled the camera in his hooves before steadying himself. “Pull yourself together, Izzy is going to kill you if you break this,” he admonished himself.
With that, the nurse led them through the wandering maze of corridors until they came to a stop.
“Well, this is it,” Pipp declared. “You first, Hitch. It’s your wife after all.”
Hitch nodded, feeling a strange buzzing sensation at the back of his skull. “Y-Yeah. Pipp, is this really happening? Are we really going to do this?”
“Of course, silly! C’mon, don’t keep her waiting!”
Pipp practically shoved him into the door, so with no other option, Hitch pushed it open, held his breath, and walked in.
The first thing he saw were Zipp’s eyes shining bright, like stars in the night. They soared over the small pile of stuffed animals and assorted gifts at the foot of her bed, and weaved in between the balloons that stretched up like skyscrapers around them.
And then he saw the foal in her arms, a tiny fragile little thing that was almost glowing in the pale white light.
Hitch raised his camera, hoof already poised on the button as he felt a million emotions burning within him.
Zipp smiled, and as the shutter clicked a strange question rose in Hitch’s mind.
Who’s going to watch you die?
He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came and rushed forwards to embrace his wife.