Healing Arts PV Kelsey Brumby FINISHED

The students and staff around the castle were all hyped up for the upcoming Blossom Ball, and Kels had been inundated with unsolicited gossip about how dangerous the balls at Hogwarts were supposed to be. One person explained how last year, kids had to be treated in the Great Hall because the need had been so dire. Not that he was liable to take everyone at their word, but precaution and prevention were a healer's best friend. Because of that, he had devoted the whole month of May to prepping for the worst. House elves and student helpers would be walking around briskly, looking far more preoccupied than they had since Kels' assignment to the wing in November.

It was in this mid-May froth of diligence that Kels was wildly checking and re-checking his checklists, busying himself around the multitudinous cabinets with a quill and a clipboard. It was important to make sure everything that might be expected to be needed was there, and in healthy quantities. There wasn't much more to do, really, but he was far from his usual state of reading esoteric science publications with some cold tea at the desk, waiting for some sorry kid to come in with a broken ankle.

That said, some sorry kid came in with a broken ankle, only really recognized when he wailed for service at his desk like it was a fast food joint. Looking up from his papers with more alarm than was warranted, Kels slowly remembered the job he was supposed to be doing beyond the project that was currently consuming his brain space. He plopped the board down on the shelf he was standing by, and walked up to the waif.

"Eeyup." He said briefly, leaning on the desk with both hands. "Be pretty funny if there weren't. Well... not funny fer you, prolly. Hah."

Whether the boy found humor in his observation or not, he would continue. "Siddown, ya shouldn't put weight on it. Why d'ya think it's broke?"

He pointed to the pea green chair beside the desk, in case the kid was lost.

Nikolai’s face flared red, and he felt a noxious mix of defensive and embarrassed at the nurse’s flippant tone. Something immediately wanted to snap out at him, something unkind (Of course it’s not funny, stupid, I’m in pain! What kind of a nurse are you?!) but he held his tongue and limped to the indicated chair instead.

He couldn’t look the nurse in the eye. Gaze locked on his feet and fingers knotting nervously in his lap.

“Ifellthroughthe—” Nikolai stopped himself, and tucked his chin further into his chest in shame and bitter self-consciousness. He tried again, more slowly. “I stepped through one of the stairs that isn’t there. I mean—one of the invisible stairs. And twisted it real bad. I dunno if it’s actually broken broken…”

He looked up and scanned the Hospital Wing and he found it devoid of anything that he’d come to associate with a doctor’s office or a normal (muggle, he reminded himself again harshly) hospital. No electronic beeping, no huge machinery with blinking lights. He’d been in his fair share of hospitals (pushed down hard by one of the bigger boys he’d been stupid to stand up to in the first place—landed so hard his mother was terrified he had a concussion), in and out of them for years for myriad tests.

“How could you even tell if it’s broken? You don’t even have an x-ray machine or anything.” Nikolai’s frown puckered.

@Kelsey Brumby

The kid sat down, looking quite cross. It was usually worth trying a joke or two, even if sometimes it made people angry. For some, it lightened the mood, made them forget their pain. Others were not so easily swayed, even indignant at the attempt to make them smile. Well, it was his problem, not Kels'. All he had to do was treat it.

Moving around to the other side of the desk, he'd listen to the sob story. If he made it all the way up to the third floor alone, it was probably not broken. Probably sprained, at worst fractured. It would have been a claxon of bloody murder otherwise, given the mewling he was doing already. Still, Kels would kneel down to where the feet dangled, still not quite touching the ground, and observe the one he had been limping with. There was also the chance that he was just pretending the whole thing, and was trying to get out of trouble for something else. It would be impossible to tell exactly what was happening to the bone just by looking though.

Funnily enough, it seemed the kid was already smart enough to know that. In fact, Kels would snap up to look at him with impressed surprise.

"You know what'a x-ray is? Heeeey, smart kid!" He'd smile broadly, that was just the kind of kid he used to be, except not in that way exactly. His mum was obsessed with 'alternative healing', so he didn't see a doctor's office until he was an adult. "Anywho, there's other ways to tell. Mos' likely there'd be a deformation, ya wouldn't be able t'walk at all, also."

Kels reached out his clean, yet somehow still grubby, fingers and squished the tender ankle, ready to assess the level of pain.

"How'zat, from 1 to 10? 10 bein', like, 'I'm dyin'!'"

“Of course I know what an x-ray is,” Nikolai bit in, his lip curling just slightly. “I’m not an idio—” Nikolai cut himself off with a hard yelp as the nurse violently manhandled his wounded ankle. A few scattered heads popped up to look in their direction from the bustle of the Hospital Wing around them, but it must have been business as usual enough for life to move on.

“Nine!” Nikolai snapped, painful tears pilling in his eyes unbidden. “Seven! I don’t know!” He shoved the heel of his hand to one of his eyes (oh he was not going to cry in front of all these people, even if this rabid nurse tried to yank his foot clean off) and tried to play the move off as best he could.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need to be,” Nikolai said with a deepening look of discomfort and anxiousness. His eyes darted again to the people who weren’t paying them a lick of attention and he shrank down in the ugly chair just slightly. “I’m not doing it for attention, if that’s what you’re trying to figure out.”

That was possibly the last thing he wanted. Even more eyes on him than he already had—more than just the scrawny kid in his big brother’s too-big hand-me-downs, now he was going to be known forevermore as That Idiot Kid that Actually Fell for the Invisible Stair Thing. What jerk even thought put in invisible stairs, anyway?

@Kelsey Brumby

This kid was not likely to be an easy customer, but he never started a day of work expecting things to go perfectly. Life was crazy, wild, no matter how much people pretended it had become tame. This kid was most likely from at least a partly muggle family, there wasn't a wizard hospital anywhere that had an x-ray machine in it. Magic wasn't always a perfect one-for-one with technology, but for things like that, magic had long since made it redundant. He wasn't about to teach this snotty kid medical magic history, no matter how smart he was. There as only one thing he was here for, and the truth was, it wasn't a big deal.

"It's okay lil' guy." Kels crooned in a soothing voice, from what his backwater dialect could achieve in that field. "I know, I know, it's okay."

If it hurt that much, it could be worse than a sprain, it clearly was causing him a great deal of distress. Whipping his wand out from behind his ear, Kels trained it on the ankle and spoke more clearly than usual, "Ferula."

The spell was a no-brainer for any fracture or sprain, it not only wrapped the area, but also applied a smoothing pain relief. This 'nine or seven' pain the kid was feeling would quickly become and 'one or zero'. That was the power of magic, after all.

"Now be careful on that fer a day or so. You'll tell me if it hurts again, right?" Kels stood up, grinning and expectant. That was it. That was the whole treatment! If he was really a muggle, he expected him to be quite impressed.

Nikolai should probably have felt affronted at the soothing chatter (the ‘lil guy’ epithet burning particularly bright in his chest). He even opened his mouth to protest, to put up some kind of wall against patronizing him. But before he could react in kind, the nurse was already finished with treatment. Or so Nikolai assumed, based on the fact that his ankle was wrapped and the pain was very quickly deescalating.

The boy looked down at his foot, not realizing that his mouth was still slightly ajar after not snapping back. He rolled his ankle just slightly to test it. And though the pain hadn’t completely dissipated (and if it had, Nikolai might just have started to wonder if he had been making it all up) he felt it was easing away much like a tide.

“Oh,” Nikolai said, and his voice was much calmer and quieter than it had been. At first, he felt utterly sheepish. He’d come here for help and he’d been nothing but a miserable ass to this man. And he’d still helped him despite his attitude. It managed to humble the boy pretty effectively.

But even beyond that, the simple, effective way that he’d been healed utterly fascinated him. Nikolai had been shoved in MRI tubes, stuck with what felt like a hundred needles, poked and prodded and wrapped up in casts his whole life. And with a wave of a wand, this nurse had turned that miserable process into something fleeting, almost an afterthought. Easy, safe, and (in the right hands) even inviting.

“That’s… amazing,” Nikolai said aloud. His dark brown eyes were suddenly bright when he looked up from his foot to the nurse now standing in front of him. “It’s really that easy? To help people, I mean.”

@Kelsey Brumby

As the kid tested out his foot, it seemed like the mystery had likely been solved-- a sprain, just stepped on it wrong and hurt himself. Kels had done it himself all the time, not to mention the times he got his own bones broken. Even though healing magic, and definitely this spell in particular, had become old hat to him at this point, it was fun to see someone experience it for the first time. It happened so much more frequently here, where a few kids had seen nothing but muggle doctors up until that point.

Kels could remember what that moment had been like for him. He believed in magic before he knew it was real, thought his mum's crystals and sage waving were saving people, but it couldn't compare to when a nurse instantly removed the suffering from his body. It wasn't far off from this kid's reaction, the sudden realization that all those times he wished he could help, he actually could. He'd grin happily, patting him on the shoulder. He could leave now anytime, obviously, but Kels never turned down chit-chat, even if it was with a kid in the middle of his shift.

"Healin' magic iddnt easy!" He guffawed, knowing for a fact that Hogwarts curriculum didn't even teach a single healing spell until third year. "But if ya get real good at spell castin', an' practice a lot, bam pow! Instant healin' at the tip of yer wand!"

Kels bopped the stunned child on the head with his wand for effect. "Bonk."

Nikolai winced at first when the nurse’s wand came right at his head (expecting the worst, as usual), then flushed again when it turned out to be a joke.

And, finally, Niko cracked a smile. A tiny little laugh hit him in his middle and his small frame shook with quiet mirth. Amazing what a little bit of pain relief and TLC will do to even a little jerk like him.

“I didn’t mean easy like that. I meant… I meant it’s that much easier than it is in the real—” Nikolai sighed, corrected himself again. “In muggle hospitals.”

There was a blossoming question in Niko’s mind that was starting to bloom out of control. Can you teach me? Stupid question, of course. This wasn’t a teacher, this man was only here to heal the sick and treat the wounded—not give lessons to inquisitive idiot children (who fell through invisible stairs even though they’d been warned again and again which stairs to jump) at the drop of a hat. He was probably taking more time out of his day than he already was supposed to just to help Nikolai, and the thought humbled him even further.

“I, um…” he hesitated, searching for the right words and taking his time to be sure he got them out right. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for being a complete jerk.” He shifted, rolled his ankle again (even better than the last time he’d tried). “You’re Head Nurse Brumby, right? My name’s Nikolai.”

He didn’t know why he was trying to introduce himself now, after he’d made a fool out of himself. Nikolai had a penchant for making the worst first impressions possible, and it seemed that he’d done it yet again. Maybe if he managed to put himself in a better light, endear himself even the slightest bit, the head nurse might be more inclined to put up with him when it came to… future inquiries.

@Kelsey Brumby

There it was! The frigid little twerp cracked a smile and a giggle, which warmed Kels' heart. Not that he expected him to lighten up, but he liked that about kids. They got over little things so much quicker, even their wounds healed quicker. Even though the wisdom and skill that came with age was preferable in a lot of ways, the flexibility and adaptability of youth was truly commendable. He stumbled over a response to cover up his alleged dismissal of Kels' hard work, but the truth was Kels knew what he had meant and was just messing with him.

"Yeah, cheaper too!" With that, Kels tucked his wand back behind his ear.

Think the conversation was over when the kid just nervously fidgeted in place, Kels tucked his hands in his pockets, looking for where he left his clipboard last, before there were a few more trepidatious human-sounding squeaks from the chair, bringing his easily lost attention back.

"Yop!" Kels answered about who he was. "Nice t'meetcha, Nik-o-lai."

Kels put out his hand for what seemed like the right time to offer a handshake. It was introductions, right? Kels sometimes appeared like a scatterbrain, but he had a singular skill at memorization. It was doubtful he would remember every kid he met once he had been there a few years, but that wouldn't stop him from getting to know the ones who wanted to be known.

"Don't be a stranger, now that I know yer name!" Whether Nikolai shook his hand or left him hanging, Kels would figure that was all the squirt wanted to say, and turn back towards the cabinet he left open.

@Nikolai Dragos
Leaving thread unless stopped