turn around tragedy

Jack appeared in the lobby of St Mungos, with the middle aged Susan Bones slumped at her side. Jack vaguely wondered if the reception team knew Jack by sight yet; how many times did she come in, someone slumped at her side, looking haggard and exhausted. Jack pulled Susan along to the desk and said, "I need help, immediately. I found her on a sidewalk, presumably cursed but I have no idea by who or how. Her name is Susan Bones."

She shuffled the woman's weight on her arm, wincing a little. It had been awhile since Jack had been forced to carry dead weight on her arm.

Hannah, one of Khaat's assistants, was at the nurses station tending to chart paperwork when Jack arrived with yet another rescue. How the hell did she just keep finding them? Did she just go out scouring the streets for them? Or did she hang out with a cursed crowd?

But cursed was what this woman looked like she was. Hannah ordered the nurses to take Bones to a room and admit her to the Emergency Room and start whatever comfort measures they could for the moment. Hannah went to find Khaat and found her up in Pediatrics, reducing a fever of an ill toddler. Once Khaat had drawn the fever off for the moment, Hannah asked her to come downstairs. Khaat followed at once and went downstairs to the ER. She saw the small commotion that always happened when a patient was admitted.

She saw Jack there and was hoping she would fill in some blanks, whatever they were. "Come fill in the blanks as you can, please, Jack," Khaat said, motioning for her to follow as Khaat made her way into the room between the healers already in the room.

Jack followed dutifully, silent and appropriately solemn for the occasion. In these situations, Jack's transition into adulthood was very apparent. Young Jack had never found a serious manner appropriate for any situation. She always thought humor was welcome and, dare she say it, necessary. Now, a smile was almost a strange sight upon her pale face. It was this furrowed focused expression that seemed natural.

The beginnings of investigation into Susan's condition had barely begun when Khaat Lupin strode in. Jack was immediately summoned for her intelligence on the situation and Jack stepped forward. "I was on a small corner in London just five-ten minutes ago, muggle-inhabited, and heard a scream. I ran to the source and found her there. I didn't see anyone nearby, saw no signs of struggle, and identified Susan immediately. I didn't check yet to see whether or not she had a wand or anything. I immediately brought her here."

The muggle section? Then the magic tracers should surely be able to give more information on it later. Magic didn't typically happen in the muggle section of town without the tracers being enabled. Khaat just nodded. She would check into that later. "Thank you, Jack," she said.

She recognized the patient. Susan Bones. She didn't have time for her own thoughts or feelings at the moment. Khaat went over and assessed Bones. She knew the feel, immediately, of a cruciatus. It was distinctive for her. She recognized it, not only as a healer but as someone who had experienced it more than once herself. This one had somehow been either cast with some intent to mix something else in it, or the curse itself had gone a bit sideways because it was not going to yield to her as easily as it might have typically done. She knew that just at her assessment of it.

"Director?" Hannah asked.

"Looks like some sort of cruciatus gone sideways," Khaat sighed. "It's going to be a stubborn buggar."

"Shall I find your father, then?" Hannah asked.

"No," Khaat replied. "Its not impossible. I can deal with it." She tried conventional methods for ridding a victim of a cruciatus first, but when she reassessed, she saw the curse was only partly removed. Part of it remained. She had removed the purest part of the cruciatus. The odd bit was what still remained. It was resistant to traditional methods. She glanced at Hannah who had seen this was more complicated than most. She could see the concern in Hannah's eyes.

"I've still got this," Khaat told her. "I can remove this, but she will likely need a day or two to get her strength back. You know how to handle the follow through once I remove this."

"Yes, Ma'am," Hannah said. Khaat laid one had on each side of Susan's head and drew the cruciatus off of her patient. She felt the energy transfer move from Susan to herself. She maintained the connection until she knew the entire curse was removed from Susan. She removed her hands only when she knew it was gone from her patient.

"You can take it from here, I believe," Khaat said to Hannah.

"Yes, Director," Hannah replied, doing her best to not betray her dissatisfaction about what she had just seen Khaat do in order to free Bones from an unforgiveable. It was something probably only another healer would have recognized. Nor would they have approved it. Khaat would be anxious to leave the room now.

"I'll leave it in your hands, then," Khaat said quietly. "Brian will be here shortly and can help you manage. I would expect her to be able soon to wake and to reorient herself. Standard support orders for comfort and care, and alert me or Brian to anything unexpected, please. Thank you for your help, Jack. I need to go. Excuse me." She left the room quickly. Hannah sighed heavily and redirected herself to Bones. Hannah set pain reducing spells in place and calming spells for Bones and instructed the other healers to begin providing any other measure that would help her rest and feel more comfortable.

(ooc: hannah will remain for awhile, just fyi.)

Jack had done her duty and now she stepped away. For some of the time, she stood patiently off at the side, watching the proceedings with a solemn gaze and furrowed brow, carefully examining all that occurred. She soon found her presence was extraneous, so she dismissed herself to a small chair in the corner, close enough that, if she were needed, she could spring to attention and be quickly in the thick of the action.

She, however, was exactly as she had felt - extraneous. Between the all-familiar assistant (Hannah, if Jack remembered correctly) and Khaat, Susan was soon patched up. Jack approached as Khaat thanked her and then dismissed herself. Jack dipped her head, responding with a quiet "Thank you too" of her own before looking to Susan.

Susan could hear disembodied voices but couldn’t hear what was being said or recognize voices. She kept drifting in and out of consciousness. She was very confused about what was going around her. Where was she? Where was her parents and Ernie? What happened? Once in a while she’d see a flash of light and a memory of sorts of the Auntie but neither were making sense. When she was conscious she couldn’t quite bring herself to open her eyes or even move. It hurt to move when she tried. She hated this feeling of being helpless but she couldn’t bring herself to be angry about it.

Brian arrived at St. Mungos after doing an errand for Robert. His overcoat was draped over one arm, and he carried a disposable cup of coffee in the other. He'd been a devoted tea drinker until he'd married Khaat, and then her penchant for French Roast had also somewhat now become his too. He was simply hoping for an ordinary shift, but as he walked through the hospital, one of the nurses stopped him short.

"Mr. Quinn," she said, speaking in rapid, anxious verbage, "Hannah said we were to stop you if we found you...."

"You found me," Brian said calmly, hoping to ease the little blond. "What's the issue?"

"She can't find the director..." the blond began.

"What?" Brian frowned. "Didn't she get here? She left before I did."

"No, no, Sir...I mean..Yes, Sir...I mean..."

"Shut it," Brian said steadily. She clamped her mouth shut promptly. "Now," he said. "Breathe." She obeyed. "Try again now," he said. "Did she or did she not get here?"

"Yes. Yes, Sir. She handled a case here in the ER and then she left before she finished and now Hannah can't find her," the blond said.

"Give me the chart," Brian said. The blond retrieved the chart. He flopped the overcoat over the desk at the nurses station and set down his coffee and flipped open the chart. Cruciatus. Damn. He understood already at least part of why that was tough for her, but it wasn't as if she hadn't removed them since her own troubles. Why was this different? He continued to read. Hannah's notes didn't make sense. Khaat was perfectly capable of removing a cruciatus without difficulty, but healing by touch was a somewhat risky business. Potions and wand charms were more conventional. Less risky for the healer. This was just weird. He handed the chart back to the nurse and went to the room where Susan Bones was.

He saw Jack Dyllan there, sitting, waiting. That, in itself was not unusual. Jack was a frequently flyer here when it came to rescues.

"Hello, Jack," Brian said. "Any response from Ms. Bones yet?" That in itself would tell him much about what was going on. If it had been a clean removal with nothing more or odd, then she might be tired but should have been awake and alert at least for a bit before the fatigue took over. Anything else spelled out something else going on, and that was Brian's chief concern.

Jack was left to herself now, and she remained in the chair, her elbows rested on the arms of it, her hands clasped together in a fist, and her chin resting in the crevice between her intertwined index fingers. She hadn't anywhere to be, having expected nothing of the afternoon but some shopping and some housework, but it seemed she would have that to delay. She believed in seeing a thing finished, and that included rescues.

Brian strode in, a man she knew chiefly from her experiences here and in the Order. Her mouth briefly flickered - not to a smile, but the twitch was enough to be a surrogate of one. She immediately responded, "Nothing much. I think her eyes may have been moving under her eyelids, but I haven't seen anything more."

"That could well be emotional trauma from the curse itself," Brian said. "The brain protects itself by, basically, zoning out, but people respond to unforgiveables in all sorts of different ways, and for just as many reasons." He went over to Bones and laid his hand on her forehead to assess her. "The cruciatus is gone," Brian said. "But...there was something else here with it. Not sure what it was. It was either another layer of some sort to the spell, like a secondary spell, or it was a buggered up cruciatus. Either way, there was something very resistant to being removed." Brian searched for signs of it lingering in Bones still. All he found was her mind's work to recover from it all.

"I don't feel either spell here now," Brian said. "Just her mind's adjustments." It was what he wasn't finding that bothered him. Somewhere the underlayer of the spell, whatever it was, still existed. It just wasnt in Bones. It hadn't been ended like the cruciatus had. It just...well, wasn't here anymore, and the ways that happened were very precious few.

He wasnt' liking what he was seeing. It was looking more and more to him like Khaat had most likely merely purposely transferred the second part of the spell to herself to remove it from Bones, and if she had, she was not going to reveal that to Susan Bones--a woman who, through her newspaper, had openly dissed her family and their work at the Ministry. Khaat was merely going to do her job and never mention that little tidbit to the journalist she no longer trusted. Brian knew, though, there was a possibility that some of the suffering Jack had been trying to rescue Susan from now was manifesting in his wife. When a healer took on something unknown, it was always a pain in the arse to get rid of by themselves. There was starting to be an imperative in his mind to find her and make sure she was alright. But he had the patient in front of him to deal with before anything else.

"I will need to call the aurors," Brian told Jack. "I dont' know who tried to hurt her or why, so I don't know if she's in danger or not. Unless she can wake and tell me." He laid both his hands on Bones head and cast a much stronger calming spell. That would definitely help her to stop the disorientation and to focus and wake. "Susan," he called. "Its gone now. You're safe. Susan--its time to wake up now."

Jack rose to her feet and approached the foot of Susan's hospital bed. Jack listened quietly to Brian's words but found no reason to force a response out of herself. She had nothing else to add, nothing to question, nothing to suggest. Instead, she patiently nodded, her attention focused on the patient.

The Aurors. Yikes. That was not news Jack wanted to hear. No, no, she had too many thoughts about a certain Auror she had been much too close with. She grinded her teeth momentarily, looking a bit torn. "Perhaps my purpose here is done then, huh?"

But Susan was being roused, and Jack found she had no choice but to root herself to the spot to hear what the woman had to say.