Nurse redheart walked the halls of the Hospice ward with shaking knees. She didn’t want to go into that room and see her childhood friend, Merry Way, the way she looked now.

Merry Way was an earth pony friend of hers since early foalhood. Though she became a technician and she became a doctor, they stayed in contact. Occasionally they went out together and spent the night. Merry Way eventually married and had three wonderful foals. Life, for her, couldn’t have been better and in Redheart’s opinion she deserved a far better passage from this world than what had befallen her.

Merry Way, on a trip to the Zebra lands on vacation with her family, had contracted Striped Fever. Contrary to the disease’s name, the symptoms do not include stripes of any kind. It begins with an infected fly bite, a foul, black swelling around the punctures. Fatigue sets in. The body rapidly loses weight in a matter of a week. Teeth and hair intermittently fall out. Blood vessels in the eyes rupture. Bones weaken. The pathogen gets into the brain. Anything would have been more merciful than this.

She was admitted earlier this week. This pathogen must have been some kind of mutant strain because it successfully fought off every treatment possible. There was no way to save her. She was going to die tonight for certain. She had called her husband and told them to come so they could be with her when the inevitable happened.

Redheart stopped at the door to Merry Way’s room. She froze. She couldn’t bear to go inside and see her like… that. She took a deep breath, and with a trembling hand, she pushed open the door.

The light from the hallway slowly illuminated the inside.

“Merry Way, your family will be here soo…” she trailed off as the hallway’s light revealed two other ponies. A unicorn mare in a patient gown, and a mare in a lab coat leaning over Merry Way, who’s face had been covered with her blanket.

The one in the patient gown turned to look Redheart right in the eyes, and the one in the lab coat jerked around to hiss at her, blood running from her lips. The heart monitor next to her bed was showing a flatline.

She recognised both of them. Obviously, Emerald Lustre the Mortician who was having a very bad day, and Ms. Rarity who was scheduled for a checkup before she vanished. Both of them had piercing red eyes, pointed teeth.

Redheart froze in absolute terror and confusion… her brain pieced together the gruesome scene, but it was still too horrid, too strange to process. She fainted, falling to the linoleum floor of the hallway.

Crude and replacement: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/23338804/