Adapting. It's what Pecaris do. on Hospital Wing

Holly Greer

November 05, 2009 12:03 PM

Adapting. It's what Pecaris do. by Holly Greer

Ms. Yuma was gone. So was Ms. Nelson. There had been no replacement for them announced at this year's Welcoming Feast. The school psychologist's office was closed down and dark. Holly's knocks had not been answered. The notes she'd stuck under the door were still there. The conclusion was plain and obvious, even to Holly's desperate denial. Sonora did not have a therapist for her to speak with every week anymore.

It couldn't have happened at a worse time.

She was a prefect now. The badge hanging off her robes was heavy. She hated it. Every one of her friends had wanted one of their own, they congratulated her on receiving one herself, and told her how wonderful it was to be a Prefect. Holly didn't want it. It was responsibility. It was expectation. It was pressure. It was stress.

Holly did not deal well with stress.

She needed a therapist to get by even when she didn't have the responsibility of looking after her whole House. A House which, by the way, she didn't even like being a part of in the first place. Not that any of the others were any better, but Pecari had Pecaris in it. And now she had to deal with them, officially. She had to make nice and pretend like they weren't all beneath her. It was awful.

And she didn't even have Ms. Nelson to talk to about it anymore. If she just had a therapist, it would be better. The calming and anti-anxiety potions she downed in quantities that even she recognized were abusive and unhealthy only did so much. They treated the symptoms, not the cause.

She needed a therapist.

And since there wasn't one, she'd just have to make do with what was available. That was the one Pecari trait she had in spades. She could adapt the world around her to meet her specifications for it.

Sonora forced a responsibility on her that she felt ill equipped to perform. The new medic was about to get one as well.

"Hello?" she called, stepping into the hospital wing. Except for her first year, when she came by to let the previous medic know about the sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medications her muggle psychiatrist had her on, she hadn't seen much of the place. All her health problems at the school so far been mental rather than physical, so she'd reported to the psychologist, not the medic.

She imagined she didn't look the part of the normal patient walk-in. She had no obvious injuries. Her skin had a healthy flush to it. She was in no way disheveled or otherwise less than immaculate in appearance. Thanks to the pills and potions, she'd even slept well last night, so there was no puffiness or exhaustion in or near her eyes. Even if there had been, she'd learned how to use make up and cosmetic charms to cover it up quite well. The only outward sign that she was in less than perfect condition was that she was here at all.

With a hesitant step inside, she closed the door behind her, and lightly brushed a manicured hand against the fine custom tailored school robe she wore, in a nervous gesture that anyone meeting a doctor for the first time might display. She could feel the prefect badge heavy against her chest (which, incidentally, was finally starting to show a feminine curve) and wondered if maybe she should have removed it for this. She was here as a student in desperate straights, not as an in-control prefect.

Not that Holly would know how to be an in-control prefect, even in the best of times.

"My name is Holly Thistle," she told the medic upon sighting the woman now in charge of the Hospital Wing. As she'd created a therapist where there was none, her name was likewise invented to better suit her. 'Greer' had such an awful sound to it, so she didn't use it. "Last year, I had weekly sessions with Ms. Nelson, the school psychologist. I would like to continue these with you, now that she's gone. I just need someone to listen, or I will have a nervous breakdown this year."

She had absolutely no doubt about that at all. She'd come close several times already, even with the support of a qualified therapist, and then she hadn't been facing the dual pressures of being a prefect and her upcoming CATS. At least Flatt the First was gone. That was one small mercy. If she'd had to deal with him, too, she may as well have signed up for a padded room now.

1 Holly Greer Adapting. It's what Pecaris do. 123 Holly Greer 1 5

Medic Rock

November 09, 2009 9:47 PM

Counseling. Not quite what Healers do. by Medic Rock

Cleo Rocamboli was not disorganized. Her old apartment and her soon-to-be-ex-husband might beg to differ, but when all was said and done Cleo needed to have everything in her workspace completely clean and alphabetized. This need for hygiene reflected itself in her meticulously clean fingernails. These contrasted with the burn tissue on her freckled hands; the marks had long since healed, left over from her days as a trainee, but Cleo was much more careful with potions now. Her new workspace—the Sonora Academy Hospital Wing, in which she had promptly shut herself up after the Opening Feast—was bare of personal effects from its previous inhabitant; the only things left behind were the various pieces of equipment, plus a few basic Healer's textbooks that she already knew by heart. Cleo rearranged the supplies, sorting the potions and salves into two separate groups and then by alphabetical order. As she worked, she hummed Danny Boy, even though she missed most of the notes and may have been in the wrong key—or not in a key at all.

The thirty-seven-year-old was waiting for two owls, one of which she was expecting at any moment. The other was a day overdue, but Cleo could forgive Teo for not writing; he was, after all, recovering from another session of chemotherapy. Jarrett, on the other hand, had no excuse for not writing Cleo about how their mother's MS was going. It wasn't as though the Obliviator had much else to do; for a man whose job it was to erase other peoples' memories, Cleo's brother ordinarily had no trouble recalling his tasks.

With everything relevant to her job in place, Cleo took out a few personal items. There was a wizarding photograph of her family and a still picture of Teo and his sister Stacey, who was Cleo's best friend. There was a deck of tarot cards, a brand new slinky—what a stress-reliever!—and two books. The cover was almost falling off the larger, The Dream Oracle, from use, and the second, a romance novel that involved far too much Amortentia for Cleo's entertainment, seemed to have been opened very few times. Stacey had written and self-published it, though, so Cleo was trying to get through the tome.

It surprised the russet-haired medic when a student—a prefect for Pecari, as the badge on her robes indicated—walked into her Hospital Wing without so much as a knock. The student looked healthy, too, so Cleo responded to the girl's greeting with a nonplussed “Hello” of her own. Immediately, the girl—Holly Thistle, as she'd introduced herself—began detailing her problem to the blue-eyed woman.

Counseling? It wasn't a job Cleo had ever attempted before. Still, there were certain aspects of bedside manner and interacting with patients that was in that same vein. At the very least, Cleo decided, she would try to help the girl. If she was no good at guidance, Cleo felt with optimistic certainty that other arrangements could be made for the prefect.

“Okay,” Cleo said. Her voice had a standard East Coast non-accented timbre with soft influences of the Wyoming town she had mostly grown up in, and it was gentle but authoritative, as Cleo had always thought a Healer should sound. “I'll do what I can.” Realizing that a proper introduction would be necessary—although Sadi had mentioned her name at the opening feast, Cleo couldn't assume that every student would remember or had been paying attention—the medic smiled and said, “I'm Medic Rocamboli. You can call me that, or Cleo, or Medic Rock, or whatever you're comfortable with that's polite.”

0 Medic Rock Counseling. Not quite what Healers do. 0 Medic Rock 0 5

Holly

November 10, 2009 4:40 PM

Prefecting. Not quite what nervous anxious types do. by Holly

Holly smiled in relief as the medic promised to do what she could. "Thank you Medic Rocambole-Rocamabel- Medic Rock." She half-smiled, half-grimaced as the woman's full surname defeated her ability to pronounce it and then resorted to the shorter form of address instead.

She took a deep breath - as one of her first psychologists had taught her to do when she need to re-center herself - "Last year, I just came by Ms. Nelson's office every friday after classes. We talked about what happened during the week. It was pretty casual. Sometimes she made tea. That's really all I need. I have enough medication from my muggle psychiatrist to last until midterm."

After a momentary pause, she added in explanation, "I have anxiety attacks. I can have my father send you the doctor's note and prescription information if you need it. I gave it to Medic Wolfe when I started, though, so you might already have it here somewhere."

She decided not to mention to potion supplements she used in addition to the pills, out of fear that Medic Rock might make her stop or reduce the amount she was allowed to take. Knowing she had an addiction was entirely different from wanting to do anything about it. She needed those potions. Especially now.

1 Holly Prefecting. Not quite what nervous anxious types do. 123 Holly 0 5

Medic Rock

November 10, 2009 10:06 PM

I'll make an exception if you will by Medic Rock

Cleo was used to people butchering her last name, and she smiled a little as Holly made a mangling attempt. “Bit of a mouthful, isn't it?” she said brightly. “Medic Rock is just fine.” She jokingly blamed her dad for the family's hopelessly complicated last name. Even if it was phonetic, Rocamboli seemed to always give trouble to people who weren't in the family. For about nine years, Cleo's surname had been Ma, but Cleo had changed her name back after she and Teo had decided to divorce. Better to have her own unpronounceable last name than her soon-to-be-ex-husband's short one…though it was true that after a year of working toward divorce proceedings, they had nothing to show for their impending separation than separate bedrooms. Her second-favorite thing about this job was that it provided her somewhere to live besides her and Teo's house, which smelled depressingly like a hospital. Stacey, Cleo's sister-in-law, could take care of Teo, and there was too much tension in the home for Cleo to enjoy living in it.

The medic's favorite thing about the job, of course, was that she got to work almost solely with kids. Children were better patients than adults—temperament-wise, they didn't make ridiculous demands and were always nicer and more polite than their parents; medically speaking, kids were resilient and had better recoveries than adults. Working with kids was a delight; it had been a harsh blow to handle when multiple miscarriages had forced Cleo and Teo to concede that maybe they just weren't meant to have any children of their own. Cleo, of course, had all her young patients, and her Squib husband had the third-grade Muggle students that he taught, but it wasn't the same as raising your own kids.

Holly seemed to be of the helpful sort of student; she was very articulate in describing to Cleo how she had interacted with the counselor in previous sessions. Talking and making tea seemed to have been the counselor's main jobs for Holly. Cleo considered this. She could talk. She could make tea. “Friday afternoons sound perfect for me. Do you prefer tea bags or tea leaves? I don't think I have bags, but I'm sure I could get some if you like.” Cleo forsook tea bags because she read leaves, although she kept this information to herself. As far as Cleo could tell, there wasn't a Divination class offered at Sonora, and she didn't know how enthused students were about that branch of magic. “And of course, if you prefer a certain brand or flavor, just let me know.

“I haven't looked at the files yet,” she continued, glancing beseechingly over her shoulder at the filing cabinet that she had cleaned up but not perused. “The records are probably in there, but I'll let you know if I can't find them. Now, is there anything else I can do for you while you're here?” If Holly wanted to talk now, for instance, Cleo wasn't averse to the idea. She had to get to know some of the students—Holly especially, if they were going to be meeting weekly.

0 Medic Rock I'll make an exception if you will 0 Medic Rock 0 5