Alessio Malaspina (alessio) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-09-08 02:28:00 |
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Current mood: | uncomfortable |
Tuesday morning, 15 September 1942, at St Mungo's Hospital in Londinium...
Priscilla Chattox-Kyteler rose to answer the knock on her door and was not entirely pleased by what she saw. Alessio Zabini was there—as she had requested the night before, when she’d sent them home to Tintagel—but Yvon Malfoy was standing a little behind him. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as she let them in, smoothed her skirts and sat back down at her desk. “You may sit down, Alessio. Magister Doctor Malfoy, I am not quite sure why you are here; you are not Zabini’s proctor, nor have you been cleared to return to duty.”
Malfoy crossed his arms across his chest; he clearly wanted to speak his mind, but he knew better. “I’m not cleared to return to active energy work,” he said, “but I’m consulting on Lovegood for Corinne. And I would like Alessio to work for me.”
Priscilla couldn’t quite keep from raising an eyebrow, but she tried to look at them both as dispassionately as possible. “That’s…irregular. Alessio, you want to go back to your old speciality? You don’t want to continue with Wilkes?”
“No, ma’am,” said Alessio, pushing his fringe back behind his ear awkwardly. “I think I’d do better work in trauma. I was good at it during the war. Well, the last one, I mean.”
Priscilla studied him, glancing from one to the other, and wished that it weren’t so rude to put her lenses on and watch the flow of energies between them. “So this hasn’t anything to do with the fact that you two are lovers once more, for however long that lasts?”
Yvon’s cheeks flared red; his fair skin sometimes made it impossible for him to completely hide his emotions. But he held his tongue, only gripping the back of the chair in which he had not yet been given permission to sit. Priscilla smiled at him.
Alessio’s cheeks were also burning, and he shook his head. He felt like a schoolboy again, in trouble and called up to Dumbledore’s office to explain himself. “No, ma’am. It’s just that I…I mean, Magister Doctor Wilkes hasn’t given up on me, but…I don’t think it’s the right speciality for me.”
“Why not?” Priscilla leaned back in her chair. “By all accounts you are very good with his patients.”
“I just…” Alessio started, then stopped. It was hard enough to get the words to come to him sometimes, but with her staring at him like that it was almost impossible. “I want to help people get better, not ease them into giving up. And I know that I’m good with the patients. That’s what I like best, ma’am. The patients. Making things better for them. And I know how to do that in trauma. I did that before, and I want to keep doing it.”
Yvon had had his fill of being silent. “He’s wasted in Wilkes’ ward. All he does, all day long, is be kind and compassionate. Wilkes does cure some of his patients, but so many of them just…die, no matter what we do. Alessio taught me the very first healing charm I ever knew, when we were thirteen. He used to save birds when he was a child, because my foster-mother taught him the charms she remembered from the OWL seminar when he was ten and showed him one of the anatomy books she kept for her artwork. How many ten-year-olds can fix a bird’s broken wing?”
Priscilla looked up at him. “So you’re saying we should have hired him when he was ten?”
Yvon snorted. “He would have done better then than Pomfrey does.”
Priscilla rolled her eyes. “Your opinion has been noted, Miss Rosier.”
“That’s not fair!” Yvon protested. “And anyway, Pomfrey treats Rosier abominably—”
“You know,” Priscilla said sharply, cutting him off, “it’s one thing for you to sleep with people I’ve already hired for your department, and another thing entirely for you to ask me to hire or transfer the ones who are already your lovers into your service.”
Yvon lifted his chin slightly. “You want Alessio back, Priscilla. He’s talented and we need everyone we can get right now. You know I’m right.”
Priscilla shrugged. “I don’t doubt Alessio’s talents. I doubt his commitment. And your commitment to each other, which is very old, but also new. I know what happens when the two of you are on the same service and you’re fighting.” She sighed. “I won’t have that again in this hospital. You know if Laurens hadn’t wanted you, then, you would have been out of here. Of course when Laurens didn’t want you any more, you had grown up.”
“And here I thought it was Miranda who had saved my career.” Yvon shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re bringing up this old rubbish—”
“Her, too,” Priscilla agreed. “But it isn’t your career on the table today.” She glanced back at Alessio.
Alessio’s face was redder than ever; his heartbeat was roaring in his ears. It always boiled down to his inability to make anything stick, anything at all, from his relationship with Yvon to his work, all of it. And somehow, protesting that he meant it now felt stupid, perfunctory, like it was just what he was supposed to say, whether he really intended to stick with it or not. “I know it’s my career. My career’s about what’s good for the patients. And I want to be able to make them get better. That’s what I want. And I know you think I’m going to quit again, change my mind, but I won’t.”
“That’s really your problem,” said Priscilla. “Healing is about what’s good for our patients. Your career is about what’s good for you. If doing this job isn’t right for you, then you won’t stick with it. I never hear what you want, Alessio. It’s always what someone else wants or needs. The patients, your brother, Yvon, Portia Parkinson, Dr Wilkes, Miss Benedetto…I always hear about what’s good for them, and never what’s best for you. And as long as you tie everything in your life to whichever person is holding the reins at the moment, I know that as soon as those reins get dropped, you’ll wander off to something else.”
It was on the tip of Yvon’s tongue to say that he wasn’t dropping those reins, ever again, for the rest of their lives. But he knew exactly how Priscilla would take that statement, so he didn’t say anything.
“This is what I want,” Alessio protested. “It is.”
“Why? I don’t want to hear about Jemmie, I don’t want to hear about Yvon, and I don’t want to hear about what’s good for the patients. Why do you want to do this? Do you even know?” Priscilla demanded.
“Because helping people accept what’s happening to them and just give up makes me give up, too,” Alessio replied, his voice firm, almost surprisingly so.
“And why do you want to be a healer at all?” Priscilla continued.
Alessio swallowed hard, and then finally blurted out what had been on his mind for a very long time. “I…I don’t. I mean. I don’t want to be a magister. I know it’s crazy, but we have magistri who are a thousand times better at what they do than I would be. They can see the problems and the challenges and work through those. But the wards, all of them, need people to do nursing who aren’t there because they’re trying to learn to be a healer or because they’re not smart enough to do anything else. We need people to do the basic care for patients because that’s what they love, and because it’ll make the healer’s goal easier. Because it’ll keep them from suffering in the small ways, too. The small ways matter. I know that’s not what you brought me on to do, Doctora, but it’s what I want.”
“Alessio,” Priscilla said quietly, unable not to smile at Yvon’s shocked expression despite her own cool surprise. “You want to be Florence Nightingale. You don’t want to be a journeyman on the trauma ward, you want to be preceptor of skilled nursing. Well.”
“Could…is that possible?” Alessio asked, pushing his fringe back again.
Yvon, through pure strength of will, managed not to say anything at all. He felt as though he’d been slugged in the gut.
“Possibly,” said Priscilla. “You need to be a magister. You do. In fact, you need to be a magister doctor, because you intend to teach, even if you’re going to be teaching our nursing staff. But you’re bright enough for that, it’s always been willpower you lacked.” She looked up at Yvon. “I know what you were thinking, Malfoy. You want him on your service, on your ward, on your shift, so he can bring you coffee and rub your shoulders and make the patients smile and pick shrapnel out of the Ziteks. But the first three are not actually requirements of your practise and the last can be done by Király.”
Yvon’s face went dark. Priscilla grinned at him. “I’m sure Miss Rosier remembers how you like your coffee,” she said, “although I’d best not catch her rubbing your back—or anything else—again. Especially not in the linen closets.”
“Magistra Doctora,” Yvon said stiffly, “this line of discussion is unworthy of you.”
“And that line of behaviour is rather unworthy of you, but you didn’t let that stop you.” Priscilla shook her head. “Rita Turpin does a tough job very well, despite the light her younger sister casts upon her. And I do think Alessio should continue working as a healer, because he is actually quite good at it. When he manages not to absorb things. I am perfectly willing to let him work your shift and the lion’s share of the nursing work is done during those hours, anyway.”
Yvon sat down. If she was going to haggle with him like this over Alessio’s career, he was damned well going to do his share of it sitting down. He crossed his arms across his chest. He couldn’t believe Alessio was telling her this when he’d never told him.
Priscilla rolled her eyes at him. “You are not a ruling prince here.”
“I don’t recall saying I was,” said Yvon, with a little lift of his chin.
Priscilla turned back to Alessio. “Alessio, you need to understand the root of the problem. In the mundane world, smart women become nurses and schoolteachers because they really don’t have much choice. It’s damnably difficult for a mundane woman to attend medical school, work an internship and a residency, and have a serious career in medicine, particularly if she marries. Here in our world, most healers are women, and the men who choose this profession do so because they are driven to it. This is the reason why most of our nursing staff consists of volunteers, people who leave school after getting their OWLs, and even the occasional Squib.” She shrugged. “You’re never, ever going to stop people who want to be healers from becoming healers. You are always going to be dealing with volunteers, undereducated people and the disabled. The question is, how much do you think you can teach them?”
“Enough,” Alessio said. “Enough to keep them orderly and to help the healers, not get in the way, and to be aware of their patients and what they need. Enough to do the work well. I don’t want to stop people from becoming healers, I just want to make sure that the people who’re here to tend to the patients can do that, and know what they’re supposed to do and that they can make a difference, too. Because good nursing can. Especially with patients that are in here for a while. And maybe, maybe with a good system and someone to teach them, it won’t just people undereducated people and volunteers, maybe people will want to do the work itself.”
“Alessio,” said Yvon. “As long as the war continues, I need you, and not just for backrubs and coffee.” He glared at Priscilla, then turned back to Alessio, hating the way it felt as though he were pleading, begging the one person who’d promised to take care of him, to serve him. “You can save people I can’t. You always have been able to. You don’t like being in charge. I do, and I’m good at it. But you can save people I can’t.”
Alessio nodded. “I know.” He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, what he’d said to upset Yvon so much, and he was afraid that it was going to come out between them later, but if he didn’t say what was on his mind now, he was never again going to be able to say it at all.
“Can’t this be some kind of project that you and Priscilla and Rita work on together? Does it have to be your whole job? I don’t know what I am going to do if we get a case like that guy from last night and you’re running around in the laundry trying to make Kitty Turpin and old Mrs Shunpike behave themselves.” Yvon sighed heavily, and glanced at Priscilla. “Thank you so much for reducing this all to backrubs and coffee.”
Priscilla snorted. “I was about to suggest something very like that, Yvon,” she replied, shaking her head. “You’re almost as bad as Laurens sometimes, you know.”
“It may shock you to realise that I am taking this position because I know he has a gift,” Yvon replied firmly. “He’s had it since he was a kid. And I don’t mean the kind of gift Patil runs off at the mouth about, either, not necessarily. I mean that he can save people that no-one else can. It’s why Wilkes and I fight over him.” He glanced at Alessio. “You do have a gift. You know that, don’t you?”
Alessio flushed scarlet, but he nodded wordlessly. He wasn’t sure that it wasn’t the kind of thing Patil had talked about, and if it was, then he knew it Wasn’t To Be Discussed (which he could hear Nicodemo saying, complete with capital letters, in his head).
“And you love using it,” said Yvon. “I’m sorry, but you enjoy saving a hopeless case as much as you do anything…well, anything.” He was more than a little in love with the way Alessio looked, sometimes, when he was holding off the angel of death with his whole being.
“Then why does he turn aside from it?” Priscilla asked, glancing from one to the other of them. “For his brother. For the Zabini Company. For anything. For you, if you demanded it of him, which you won’t, but only because you value it.”
“I did. But I’m not going to do that anymore. I won’t. Not when I know I can use it, really use it,” Alessio said, feeling terribly unbalanced. Yvon was angry; he was walking a tightrope; Priscilla was ready to sack him, he could feel it in the air, and Nicodemo would be furious if he talked about this. And he knew he was going to be told he was trying to absorb everything people had wrong with them or something, even if that wasn’t what he was doing at all.
Priscilla glanced at him sidewise. “What was stopping you before?”
“I…everyone thought it would hurt me. It doesn’t,” Alessio finally said after some deliberation.
Yvon frowned. “I wasn’t talking about that,” he said, brow furrowed. “I was talking about the way I’ve seen you pull people away from the edge, countless times…were you always doing that? Even with birds, when you were a boy?”
Alessio nodded miserably. It was after all the same thing Charteris had done. “I think so. I just…” He glanced at Priscilla and his cheeks got red again. “It’s the same kind of thing.”
Priscilla glanced from one of them to the other. “Does it ever fail?” she asked quietly.
“Not often,” said Yvon, guardedly.
“It just…depends, I suppose,” Alessio added, though he didn’t know why and didn’t want to go on about it.
“It takes a lot out of him, sometimes,” said Yvon. “But it isn’t true that he has to vent the energy. Because it’s gone, when he finishes. It’s not in him. I’ve monitored him before. It matters a lot to me, you know, that he doesn’t kill himself.”
Priscilla laughed. “I should suppose it does. Even when you wouldn’t speak to each other, you always looked at him…” She frowned. Maybe they would make it work, this time.
“That’s why I couldn’t vent when everyone told me to. I just…couldn’t. There was nothing left,” Alessio tried to explain.
“Michael Charteris used to say the same thing, I’m told.” Priscilla tapped her pencil on the table. “Well, he hasn’t died. All right then. I suppose it would wear Alessio out, and to no good purpose, to put him to work on cases we can cure in other ways. You and Wilkes will just have to share him,” she said, and then boggled at the sound of it. “That sounded dirtier than I meant it to.”
Alessio blushed. Yvon flung his arm around the back of Alessio’s chair. “Not sharing,” he said, and kissed Alessio’s cheek. “You’re willing to let him work with me?”
“I want to test this,” said Priscilla. “Wilkes won’t say anything to the guardians, but he’s almost sure we’re going to lose Lovegood. I want you to save him. And I want to monitor.”
Alessio nodded. “I can do that. I think.”
“Good,” said Priscilla. “Yvon, you’re supposed to talk to the boy? Go down there and do it. We’ll discuss this more afterward. Both Alessio’s job, and our project. In the mean time, Alessio and I need to discuss this case with Corinne.”
“All right,” said Yvon. He wanted to talk to Alessio himself, but not here, not now. “And thank you.”
“Thank you,” said Alessio softly.
artisson, balm_of_gilead and alessio