ichor - DM

𝟎𝟐. 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

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"Sir."

Reva stood there in the doorway, staring with disbelief at her boss.

"Sir?"

Healer Merton Crow was slumped on his desk snoring loud enough to compete with her broken dryer in her flat. He was partially hidden by a pile of paperwork that Reva was certain he had to complete by the day before.

"Sir!"

The man sat up in his chair with a flash, his eyes dazed and his wiry gray hair haphazard. His hands flew up to his face, patting it madly as he seemed to have forgotten why he was wearing a brown leather facemask.

Reva sighed heavily, hearing her breath whistle out of the filters on her own mask.

"Sir, I have an update on the Soots case."

"Hm? Mm, yes, yes, tell me," he spoke groggily, placing his thin wired glasses over the bridge of his nose. He was still looking around in confusion, and Reva worried that the man was somehow sleeptalking.

"The boy has shown signs of memory loss. He could not remember my name today despite being admitted here for a week."

"Bah. I've known you for years, and I mess up your name sometimes too, Rishi. It happens with the exotic names."

Reva blinked tiredly. "Rishi is the intern you fired a month ago." And the only other Indian Healer to step foot in the ward in the past three months. As well as a man. "Regardless, that was not the only thing he forgot, he is not the only patient who has had issues. I told you, that older woman, Odelia, has been quite confused and forgetful since the first day despite her previous clean bill of health."

Crow waved his gloved hand dismissively before dropping it to scratch his rotund belly through his dark green robes. "One is an incident, two is a coincidence."

"And three is a pattern, correct? Six out of ten of our admitted patients show early signs."

"You younger Healers," he grunted, standing up from his chair as though the last time he had attempted to do so was last year, "are always looking for excitement. You know what they say. If you are looking for a phoenix, every bird will catch fire! Trust me, Azita. I've been doing this for forty years. If this is Cerebrumous Spattergroit, I'll let you know. Go back to the patients."

Azita. Not even the same first letter as her name, but it did belong to the only other woman Healer in the ward. She was Persian, though, which perhaps was the same thing to Crow.

Reva sighed softly as she stepped outside of the office, wondering why she had any hope in having a conversation with that antiquated old man. Adjusting her brown leather gloves, she made her way across the hallway into the main ward. It was one of the bigger rooms in the hospital, yet most of the cots were empty. Only the Spattergroit patients laid in there. Some of them were asleep, looking pale and sweaty. Others were groaning and massaging their sore mouths. One of them was picking at their nearly rupture purple pustules.

Reva rushed over quickly.

"Now, Maudie, I thought I warned you not to do that," she spoke gently, using an antiseptic wipe to clean the teenaged girl's hands. She was fifteen and very angry about being pulled out of Hogwarts to minimize the spread.

"I can't help it, Healer Vora," the blonde girl complained, throwing her hands up in the air. "All that I've got to do in this bloody room is homework that my professors were so kind to send to me —" she did not at all seem to find them kind for that, "— and listen to Odelia over there mumble in her sleep! You all won't even let my friends come visit because it is 'contagious —'" she used air quotes to mock Reva's words, which only confused Reva, "— and I can't even respond to their letters because I've got bloody pustules on my palms that make it impossible to do so!"