Double Trouble

It was hours later. Khaat had done surgery to repair Jack's damaged left lung and the badly broken knee and had reset the numerous breaks to her fingers. She had used every spell she knew in order to make Jack stablize as quickly as possible. Jacks' youth and her good health had been an asset to her that had helped her get through things.

There were massive bandages on Jacks' chest now, and her left arm was immobilized until her lung was reinflated and more stable. Her knee was going to be at least two weeks before it was weight bearing--and that was with the advanced spells for fracture repairs in place. The finger breaks might take a couple of days, three at best. However, Khaat just never did like the results of the spells to eliminate bruising. It just never ever looked right. Her thoughts were that the bruises were, at best, hastened to heal a bit earlier but not removed as the spell proported to cause.

She sighed. Jack was alive. And strong. She was going to be alright, and if Khaat made sure she had the right amount of pain potion, she wouldn't curse her through the first couple of weeks of her recovery because of how miserable she would feel without it. Khaat put in powerful pain potions so that Jack would be comfortable.

When the surgery and recovery stage was over, she had Jack taken and placed very gently in room 213. It wasa close to the nurses station so that if Jack needed anything, she would be heard. Khaat had had no desire to place her in intensive care, so she decided to try her in the trauma room.

She found Michael still waiting, her personal effects in a manilla envelope in his hands. He perked up when he saw her face. "Khaat?" he asked.

"She's going to be fine," Khaat said.

"Where is she? Can I see her?" Michael asked.

"She's sleeping. She may sleep for several hours.

"I want to be here when she wakes."

"Then give her three or four hours at the soonest."

"That gives me time. I'll be back. Khaat--for me--promise me you'll stay with her." He left like a man on a mission. Khaat had no idea what he had up his sleeve, but he had a purpose in mind. She sighed tiredly, went upstairs, found her enormous cup of French Roast, cleaned up and changed into fresh light blue surgical scrubs and placed herself in the large overstuffed chair in Jack's silent room.

A small group of healers poked, pried, and cast spells on Vito continuously for what he had deduced had been ten minutes. They were determined to keep him alive, but they wouldn’t have been if they had know who he was. Vito had been good at keeping a low profile during his stay in London for twenty-five-or-so years; he was not as ignorant as many of the Death Eaters he had worked with before they had been locked up behind bars. Vito could see the concern in the eyes of those who were desperately attempting to return a pulse to his heart, but the concern only made him more content with his actions; they dissevered a good blow to the ego after having forced Vito Dee Symons to resort to such extremes in order to get their attention. He’d been bleeding on their floor, and yet, they had done nothing until he had acted as though he’d died.

-

Vito gasped loudly when the cold air of the morgue sunk deeply enough into his body to chill his lungs; it had become difficult to breath correctly, and the beating of his heart had slowed dramatically, causing a sharp pain in his chest. Before the healers had called his time of death they had healed the wounds in his wrists, and Vito could not contain the laughter that had been building up since the moment he had “passed away”. His cruel chuckles grew louder and louder as he let himself go in the empty room- empty, save the dead, whom Vito was sure would never tell Jack that he had expressed so much emotion- until his laughter echoed off of the walls of his small, dark compartment, and caused the pain in his chest to worsen.

He needed to focus and get himself out of the cold.

Having decided that it was best to assume there would be an employee in the morgue, Vito brought the fingers of his right hand- which he stopped to flex first with a satisfied smirk on his face- to his temple, and quickly flickered into nonexistence. With both of his palms flattened to the head of the compartment, Vito pushed, forcing the table that he lay on to slide outward. Luckily, no healer had yet had the chance to lock him in. Vito squinted as he slid outward and his eyes stared directly up at the glaring overhead light, before turning his head to the side to examine the room with green spots in his vision.

He had been right to assume that he would not be alone; their was a short, middle-aged man with shaggy black hair standing against a wall on the far side of the room with a pen and a chart in his hands. The man looked up at the sound of Vito escaping, the fear that he felt quite visible in his eyes- the dead did not often move, after all- but as he looked in the poltergeist’s direction, he found nothing but a table that must have slid out on his own. “Damn thing... scared me out of my wits,” he whispered to himself and made his way towards it, but Vito had already slipped down from the table and walked out the door.

In his hands he held the ID tag of the man who he had frightened- he had swiped it from the surface of the man’s desk on his way out- which he clipped to the front of his bloodied suit. His bloodied suit… Vito frowned; he would certainly be in a sticky situation if any of the healers who had tended to his wounds spotted him, and so he made his way to the elevator, which he hoped would eventually bring him to a locker room of some sort.

-
After having looked through several different, freshly painted lockers, Vito decided that he had no choice but to settle for the best thing he could find, which was a blue, long-sleeved, checkered shirt; it was as though men with a sense of style were extinct, save himself, of course. It was nothing close to the Tom Ford suits that he was accustomed to wearing, but it fit him well and was something that he nay have worn underneath one of his suit jackets on a normal day- and therefore, it would do for the time it took for Vito to find Jack.

He was so very eager to boast to her of his accomplishment.

Vito adjusted his collar, folding it over the patterned Italian tie- he had gotten lucky with that one- around his neck, and turned away from the mirror he was facing, leaving every locker that he had raided with its door open and the items it had once contained scattered about the floor.

“Could you please direct me to room six? It is my first day on the job, and I could use your assistance,” Vito lied, speaking to a faceless healer that he had spotted further down the hall. “May I please see your identification?” she asked, only looking up from the case file that she was reading to see if he, indeed, had proof. “Of course!” Vito replied before flashing the laminated card in her face quickly, moving just fast enough for her to see that the thing existed, without spotting the photo. “I will bring you there, but may I ask why you wish to see room six? It is empty; the most recent patient was just moved," she asked him, her words causing Vito's eyebrows to arch slightly; why had Jack been moved?

"Jack Dyllan was moved? I was not paged... something must have happened. I was called in to treat her just moments ago... where was she moved?"

"She was moved to surgery, but she is in patient room 213 in trauma. What did you say your name was again?"

"We don't have time for names, miss, you don't seem to understand; I was supposed to be one of her surgeons, and if they started early, something went wrong. I need to get to room 213 immediately. Are you still willing to give me directions, or am I to let her die?" He asked, playing the role of clingy surgeon quite convincingly.

"Of course- I'm sorry- follow me."

When Jack finally stirred, she felt as though she had indeed died and then been drug back to the land of the living. She felt heavy, as though she was not made of flesh and bone, but of solid lead. She tried to lift her head, but someone seemed to have filled it with sand or something of the sort. she did not lift her head, but tested twitching her fingers, her torso, her toes, her legs...

Everything seemed it working order. Her knee still did not seem quite right, but she could get over it. She had pain tolerance. Crutches for a few days, then forced physical therapy, using a broom a lot, and wa-la- she would be moving around. That HAD to be the case. She could not be immobile. She had Quidditch. She had PA. She had a low capacity for patience!

She had once cracked a bone in her foot, when she was nine. She had wrapped it and forced herself to walk on it until she got a cast. And she had not gotten off her feet either. This is who the Healers were dealing with.

When she finally forced herself to open her eyes, she saw Khaat, in a huge chair. "I come back from the dead," she said in a hoarse voice, grinning. She cleared her throat and reached up a hand- a heavy hand- and rubbed her eyes. "Ah, I bet I was a pain in the ass, huh?" She did not think about offending anyone, she was too tired to try to be polite. She paused. "What happened to the man I came in with?" For all they knew, though, he was in the room.

Khaat was fatiguing. She had watched the dinner hour come and go and she sat and kept watch simply because Michael had asked her to. The sun was going down. Her assistant, Hannah, had brought simply one little apricot colored rose from the gift shop downstairs to make Jacks' hospital room look a lot more humane than the chaotic emergency room she had been originally brought into. For that matter, the room did have warm comforting woods, beautiful artwork on the walls, and one wall was almost entirely glass looking over a beautiful spring flowergarden. Something Khaat had insisted on for trauma patients--a warm, quiet place that was so far removed from the panic from when they entered. The furniture was homelike and comfortable. Almost too comfortable for Khaat. She had had to get up and pace.

Michael returned, with several large shopping bags. Khaat wanted to laugh out loud. "What did you do?" she asked him softly.

"Only what was necessary," he replied, depositing an enormous bouquet of spring flowers on the bedside table. Necessary? Well, somewhat. She'd give him that. "You gowns are nothing more than humiliating bits of cotton sacking, Khaat," he told her. "Jack isn't going to want that nor wear that. She'll at least have a choice." She watched him draw out some pajamas that she actually approved of. Soft cotton, in beautiful colors. Each set had drawstring pants, a cami, and a cardigan. They looked beatifully comfortable,and the knit meant that it would hurt far less than the annoying starched cotton that was mandatory at St. Mungos. And he clearly had been unsure of the color. She figured it had come in 8 colors, because he had eight sets. The last thing he drew out was a long box from Ollivanders. "Will it do?" he handed the box to Khaat.

Khaat opened the box. Twelve inches, willow, dragon heartstring, but this one was engraved with beautiful willow branches. It was subtle, but elegant. And Khaat could feel the power that lay in it. "A wise choice," she told him. "Was it necessary?"

"Yes," he told her quietly. "Did I forget anything?"

"Yes. You forgot to tell me what she means to you," Khaat said.

"Never mind," Michael said. "Just leave it that she does. I'm going to go get coffee." He walked out.

It was at that time that Jack woke.

"No, you weren't a pain," Khaat told her. "Welcome back. I'm glad you're a pretty tough character. It serves you well. I don't think I've seen anybody bring out the parts of Michael that you do. He'll be back. Oh--The man you came in with...he's...he's not here," Khaat stumbled a bit over the words. "He...bled out. I"m sorry."

Jack took in her surroundings. A big bundle of flowers- she wondered vaguely if someone had sent those to the wrong room. There was a stack of nice clothes- she hoped they were for her. The bloodstained clothes she was wearing was a lot better than those robes she had seen in the movies, the one with your butt hanging out. And lastly, some sort of box. Huh. Her room had been visited.

Had she had a visitor?

Weirder things had happened she supposed.

Jack nodded at Khaat's words, scooting up and pushing her elbow down on the bed to prop herself up. The other was not exactly working, but she had a feeling it was being healed rather than being useless. She felt a twinge in her knee but it was nothing she couldn't deal with. She had lucked out... For once.

At Khaat's words, an icy trickle spread throughout her body. Could it be true? Khaat hadn't said they never found a heartbeat, but that he had bled out. No, Jack refused to believe it. She knew Vito was alive- that son of a b!tch wouldn't 'die' that easily. Instead she put on a grim face and nodded, as though she had just learned about the death of a stranger. "Oh. Right." She wondered how long it would take Vito to try and find her; if he wanted to at all. She was sure he wanted to say something, at least gloat about his escape. "Hey Khaat, I'm really tired, and you need some dinner or something. You can leave me here, I kinda want some alone time. If Michael's still around, tell him thanks and I'd like to talk to him once I'm on my feet."

Several large double doors, winding hallways, and elevator rides later, Vito and the nurse that he had asked directions from arrived outside of the Jack Dyllan’s room, leaving Vito wondering how difficult it had been for the healers to switch her rooms, as well as why she had been moved in the first place. Surely, the floor that they were on was far nicer than the one that she had been on previously- Vito had taken a look around her original floor as his “GPS” explained that no elevator within the hospital carried healers to the same floor, and that they needed this specific floor’s elevator- but that was no real reason to move a patient in a condition such as Jack’s.

They put a name on you after they left you in the morgue. They moved her for her own protection, just in case you decided to rise from the dead, his thoughts suggested, but he ignored them, realizing that these people would need to be as smart as he in order to pull off such a feat, and that, he was certain, was not a possibility. Perhaps it was far simpler than that- and it always was, for Vito often over-thought things out of suspicion –and Jack had been moved because the healer that was treating her had personal ties with her, and felt she needed more privacy than a transparent, sliding door would have provided.

“This is the room, sir,” came the voice of the women who had assistance Vito, her eyes constantly displaying her skepticism; she obviously did not trust Vito, but she had done as he had asked against her better judgment, and that was what truly mattered. Vito found that human beings often did things against their better judgment when he was involved… and the thought caused the corners of his lips to upturn proudly, forming a smirk that the nurse would certainly think nothing of, despite the warnings from the smarter half of her mind. “Your were a great help,” he told her, refusing to thank her in the traditional manner, for not even he was that skilled at lying, and dismissed her.

The moment the tips of the moronic women’s brown hair whipped around the corner, Vito pressed his ear to the door before him to listen to the muffled voices inside. The wood was quite thick, and made it difficult for him to listen, but he was certain that Jack was not the only being in the room; the concerned healer who had attempted to treat him was most likely at Jack’s side, holding her hand and comforting her. Vito rolled his eyes, “humans…” he whispered, speaking in a hushed whisper that would not be heard through the door by those on the other side.

Vito turned away from the obstacle and pressed his back against the wall, kicking his right foot up on its toes with his knee bent; he would have to wait until Jack was alone once more. He folded his arms over his chest and took a look at his wrists once more in the hallway’s bright lighting in search of any form of scar, but there was nothing but perfect skin, which he had washed the blood from in the locker room. Why the healers had dropped him off in the morgue before scrubbing his skin and changing his clothing, he could only assume was a result of the one healer’s emotional connection to Jack; she had been so eager to deem Vito dead and rush to her aid, hadn’t see?

He would have to learn her name some time, and pay her a visit while she slept… Vito could not contain the laughter that the thought brought on; a single, bitter chuckle which sounded quite similar to the growling of a dog. It was quite unlike Vito to laugh so frequently, but he had died, after all.

Unbeknownst to him, the laugh had been loud enough for Jack and her very-human pal to hear...

"Certainly," Khaat said, "Oh, and Jack? The flowers and all the boxes of pajamas? Those were from Michael. He doesn't let a lot of people into his life like that, but somehow you got your way into a part of him he keeps rather closed off. I just wanted to say that its nice to see that from him again. Thank you. It seems he considers you someone he trusts. If you need something, just let us know. There is a menu on the nightstand for you to pick your next meal with. The food here really is quite good. We have a five star chef in our kitchen now. The nurse will pick it up from you before mealtime."

Her ears perked up when she heard the sounds of evil, bitter laughter immediately outside the door. She drew her wand defensively. "Excuse me," she said to Jack. She walked to the door, threw it open and thrust her wand into the throat of the figure right outside the door. She didn't like eves-droppers. Then it registered with her. She had had enough attempts on her life here that she didn't trust situations like this. It merited no sort of grace or mercy at the moment. Defense now, grace later. Perhaps. Probably not, though, in all reality.

"What the hell are you?" she narrowed her eyes at the man. "I just sent your behind downstairs to my morgue. You clearly are not human. However, if you want to remain in your present form, I suggest you start talking."

The voices on the other side of the wall had stopped far too abruptly for Vito to have turned away from the door and make an escape; within seconds of the room having gone silent, he found himself pressed against a wall with the tip of a wand pressed deeply into the skin of his throat. “Excuse me,” Vito began, his tone of voice low and smooth once more, though a dash of disrespect had been added to the mix, causing his words to sound threatening, yet still rather amusing to anyone with his sense of humor, “you’re pinching my neck with that neat little toy of yours, and I am growing quite bored with sticky situations.”

Of course, the “smart” little thing had pieced together the clues that he had mistakenly provided her with and deduced that he was not, in fact, human- good for her, it took her long enough. Vito sighed dramatically, looking at the brunet through his eyelashes- something which had become quite a habit of his- as he began his reply, “Are you threatening me? How adorable is that!” Vito brought a hand to one of the women’s cheeks and pinched it in-between two of his fingers sarcastically with a smirk, though he found that he was already growing tired of their conversation.

“Hey Jack”- Vito turned his head backward so to look inside her room to add on to his words - “she threatened me!” he repeated himself for Jack’s sake, though he no longer sounded amused as he spoke, making it quite clear that he simply wanted to rest.

“I’m a hallucination,” Vito finally answered, though the answer was fabricated, “or a fantasy if your more of that type of women- no, you know what, scratch that; you are quite unattractive, aren't you? Hmmm, yes, now look up towards the light”-Vito abruptly look her chin in his hands and forced it to move to the left so to get a better look at her – “you see… you are so dreadfully plain.”

Vito folded his arms across his chest once more, moving his attention away from the nurse, “now if you don’t mind, I have a lovely story to share with Jack,” he spoke once more, taking a few confident steps inside her room; he was obviously under the impression that that would be the end of it- a result of Vito's permanently over-inflated ego.

Khaat didn't care what he called her or what he thought of her, but he had interfered with her duties to a real, living human being who had been honestly in distress, and that was something she did care about. That was something she did take very seriously. She followed the figure into the room and came around him and jabbed her wand into him again, standing toe to toe with him.

"Look, you little weasel," she said fiercely. "You can try to insult me all you want, but if you ever show up here again to prank my staff or me and you do it at a time when it takes our energies away from living, breathing human beings who might well die because of your time wasting, believe me, I can make you into a different form altogether, and I'd be just as happy to do it. If you want medical help, fine. That's what we're here for. If you want to waste our time with practical jokes or other manipulations, there are other creatures that I would be just as pleased to transfigure you into. And really, at that point, I suppose you might make a handy taxidermy experiment.

"And just for the record, its not a threat. Its a guarantee," she said. She was not afraid of dead things. Or was he undead? She wasn't quite sure. At either rate, she was finding great pleasure in letting her mind decide on exactly what she would transfigure him into if he pushed her. Since he wasn't living, that opened up a whole realm of possibilities to her, and that did sound like tremendous fun. Maybe Nearly Headless Nick needed some sort of a pet. That could be fun, and he might appreciate a gift. And if she turned him into a bug and put him into one of her father's bug jars, would he be a live bug? Or a dead one? Hm...he might be fun after all.

Jack gaped slightly at Khaat's words, not sure what to say. Flowers, pajamas, a wand... Why had Michael done all that for her? Khaat obviously did not know either, so instead, Jack just nodded, showing as much gratitude as she could in that gesture. It was nice to know someone was watching out for her. Technically, so was Vito... But it was nice to know someone was watching out for her that hadn't tried to kill her as well.

Khaat drew her wand and Jack smelt trouble. She tried to let out a warning cough, but Khaat was quicker and Jack's lungs were recovering. She strained her eyes, listening and tried to call out to Khaat, let her know Vito would not be a threat unless she made him out to be one. Vito called to her and Jack closed her eyes. Vito was not going easy on her.

Jack sighed and slowly sat up, stretching slowly as the bandage moved around her body. She reached out and grabbed one of the cardigans, throwing it on over her clothes, before pulling the pajama bottoms on as well. She shouldn't have taken the time to change, but she did not think it would be nice if Michael showed up and she wasn't wearing the PJs. Plus, it gave Vito time to get all the snarkiness out so he might actually cooperate.

Finally, she faced the task of moving. She turned in bed and slowly tipped forward before her feet touched the ground. She stood, her knee groaning a little. Her arm was still immobile as it healed and she slowly made her way to the door, pushing out into the hallway, her hand gripping the door frame to keep her standing. She quickly looked over the situation and sighed.

"Khaat, it's okay. He's an asshole, but I guess he's my asshole. He's my visitor anyway." She paused. "He's the only reason I'm alive. And he really did need help. He wasn't dead, but he almost did die. It's... It's a long story," she said, closing her eyes. They opened slowly, directed now on Vito.

"Vito, stop insulting her for a moment, please. Seeing as it looks like your hands are still attached." She gave him a look that said- I saved you too, please just shut up for me. She looked at Khaat. "If I promise to keep him in check and we promise to be good, could he speak to me in my room?"