smith; ZACHARIAS (zsmth) wrote in reduxpitch, @ 2016-03-25 23:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, character: celia wood, location: st. mungo's, retired character: zacharias smith |
who ? celia wood and zacharias smith
when ? friday afternoon, 25th
where ? st mungo’s magical artefact accidents unit
what ? zac has ended up in a need of a medi-witch
status ? complete
Zac worked on the top floors of the Gringotts. Sometimes he worked on the top floors in some of the Muggle offices Gringotts held. But without an exception, Zac worked in offices. Zac did not work anywhere near the vaults. Zac did not work near any magical artefacts. So imagine his fucking surprise when one exploded in his face. Apparently it was due to a fire test gone wrong. How exactly a magical artifact was being used for the said fire test, Zac did not know. Mostly, he had been in too much pain to question it. The only saving grace was that another three employees also were harmed and every single one of them had been an investment banker Zac worked with. The amount of whining and complaining and cries for suing the bank were spectacular.
They were all ushered off to St Mungo’s, minor damage to all. At least no one had died, the bloody goblins had said. Zac felt that with the burn marks on his torso he kind of wished someone had died. Specifically the idiot who had set the artefact off in the wrong part of the building. Alas, death upon all, apparently, was not an option.
He’d been given some pain relief that only helped marginally and sent off to wait for a medi-person to see him. Zac’s shirt, or what had been left of it, had been stripped from him and he wondered whether the room was actually chilly since most of what he was feeling currently could be described as ‘ow ow fuck ow’, pain relief or not. It had been almost twenty minutes since he’d been told to wait and Zac was starting to get rather impatient. He couldn’t exactly tell, but he was pretty sure there were shreds of the blasted - literally - artefact stuck in his skin, it felt like it was crawling.
When someone finally did enter the room, Zac sighed dramatically. “Not the most efficient system you have here, is it?” He asked before glancing over to see the girl. She was tiny. Zac was pretty sure she was smaller than the artefact that had caused the damage to him in the first place. He might have also been a little high from the pain relief potions, it was hard to tell. “You’re really short,” he informed her and promptly decided that the pain relief potions were definitely doing something to his ability to think.
--
Celia had gotten there as fast as she could, to be fair. She wasn't even the person who was originally supposed to, but then she'd been caught in the hall and sent that way because things were almost always a little nuts in that department, and the medi-wizard who was supposed to be taking care of Zac had gotten sidetracked with someone else. So she knew there had been a wait, and she was sorry, but her desire to apologize lessened considerably when the man in the room told her how short she was.
"Really?" she asked, an eyebrow raising slightly as she moved over to where he was. "I hadn't noticed." Her gaze moved down to burns on his torso, her nose scrunching slightly as she examined them. "What happened?"
-
“Yes,” Zac confirmed briefly somewhat puzzled at how she might not have noticed that she was short. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happened overnight to tall people. Then he realised she was just being sarcastic. There was definitely a degree to which the pain relief potions were affecting Zac’s thinking. “But obviously you’d know that,” he said more for his own sake than hers. Zac was pretty good at pinpointing what people didn’t want pointed out and then proceeding to do just that. Shortness wasn’t usually what he went for, though. Hell, body image in general was pretty low on his list of favourites to pick on people for, because it just seemed so easy. Apparently having suffered a harrowing incident clouded his mind.
At her question, Zac sighed. “Some fucking idiot tested ‘fire alarms’ on the wrong floor at Gringotts,” Zac told her successfully employing air quotation marks to illustrate just how much he thought that’s what they had been. “Some sort of a metal box exploded across the office,” he added before looking down at his bare chest. “And me,” he added as if it weren’t obvious. Looking back up at the girl, Zac made a face. “It feels like there’s bugs under my skin,” he told her honestly since it really did. Not necessarily in a way where he felt the need to scratch constantly, but certainly in a way that felt uncomfortable.
--
Her gaze flickered up to his face while he spoke, eyes widening a little when he said what happened. Sure, they got a fair number of injuries in from Gringott's, but not for things like that. Usually it was things in the vaults that weren't to be messed with - but Celia tried not to ask too many questions when it came to that sort of thing. As long as people didn't lie about what it was, which might cause the wrong treatment and a worse injury, she didn't care what they'd been messing with.
"Yikes," she said softly, biting her lip. "And it feels like there's bugs under your skin? Any other sensations? Burning, pain - sharp, or dull, numbness anywhere?"
She stepped away from him to go over to a cupboard, looking over the bottles of potions there before pulling a few from their shelves, taking them to set on the tray beside his bed and moving her chair over next to it.
-
“Pain,” Zac replied almost automatically when she asked. There had been a lot of pain. “Burning and sharp,” he added thinking about it. Zac didn’t particularly believe that he was a good patient but he also put high value on being efficient. Telling the-- “What’s your name?” He asked watching as she got things out of the cupboard, moving around like some sort of a tiny, productive creature (but not a goblin because a) fuck goblins, and b) she was much cuter than a goblin).
When she moved back, Zac shifted slightly, bringing his left hand up to scratch his shoulder but stopping himself before the hand could make contact with his skin. That was probably an awful idea. “I was given pain relief,” he told her because again, it seemed like the sort of thing she should be aware of. “Strong pain relief,” Zac said with a roll of his eyes. He was hardly someone who would object to being high, but usually he liked to pick the situation to be high in and this, this was not it.
--
Celia paused when he mentioned he'd been given something for the pain, moving one of the bottles back away from the rest. If he needed something else, at least it was close by, but she would let him be the judge of if it was necessary. She wasn't about to overly dope up anyone, no matter who they were, but especially not someone where one of the first things they'd said to her was about how short she was.
"My name's Celia. Can you lie down, please?" she asked, motioning for him to do just that as she got a few different implements from the drawers behind her, sitting patiently as she waited for him to get comfortable, or at least as settled as he could since she was sure he was in a lot of discomfort. "This is probably going to hurt a lot more than it already is. There are pieces of shrapnel in there and I need to get them out first."
-
“Celia,” Zac repeated, testing the name out. He felt that it was an appropriate name for a short person. It was a short and catchy name. It worked well. And fucking hell was he high. “I’m Zac,” he replied instead of commenting on how her name sounded short when his name was literally shorter. There was also a consideration in Zac’s mind to comment on how he would be very happy to lie down for her but no matter how he turned and twisted in his head, there was never going to be a way in which that didn’t come across wrong. He might be high but he wasn’t stupid. So he moved instead, lying flat on his back on the bed.
At her words about how it would hurt more Zac winced slightly. Not that anyone enjoyed pain, not this sort of pain, anyway, but Zac in general hated being injured. Still, nothing to do about it now. “I will trust you to be gentle, Celia,” he informed her instead. “But I will also make no promises at shouting in pain,” Zac added. Realistically, he did not feel like those were promises he could make. But as a medi-witch, Zac was sure she had heard plenty of pained cries. “Have you been a medi-witch for long?” He asked glancing over at Celia. “You’re terribly young looking,” he told her, pausing for only a moment before adding ‘and short’ just for the sake of it.
-
"I would say nice to meet you, Zac, but I'm sure you'd rather not be meeting me," Celia replied with a soft smile, watching him get settled on the bed. She shifted her chair a little closer and picked up a pair of forceps from the tray. "I will be as gentle as I possibly can," she promised, a very sincere tone to her voice even though she knew there was no way it wouldn't hurt him. She would be gentle, to the best of her ability. "You can shout all you want, that's fine."
She paused at the last bit of what he said, looking up past his chest to his face. "I'm technically an apprentice, but I'm nearly done with my training and have been trusted to work on my own for quite a while now. If you're not comfortable with me treating you, I'm sure I could find someone older. It would probably take a while for them to get to you, though. It's very busy today."
-
“Perhaps not under these circumstances,” Zac told her when she said that she was sure he rather not be meeting her. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her, so Zac had no reason to presume that if they were in a bar he wouldn’t walk up to her. Perhaps a bit too you, he wasn’t sure. She seemed to at least know what she was doing in her job but whether that confidence would carry on outside the hospital, Zac couldn’t yet tell.
The way she paused at his question made Zac tilt his head ever so slightly. Maybe not as confident as he had given her credit for then. “I don’t mind,” he told her honestly. “I doubt that you’ll kill me,” Zac said frankly. He didn’t actually have an issue with apprentices, not when he suspected that she was incapable of doing the job required, she wouldn’t be allowed to be here unsupervised. “Why did you want to become a medi-witch?” Zac asked instead. “Is it because you’re a nice person?” Because to Zac it seemed that anyone who wanted to help people had to be considered as ‘nice’ by the greater society. Personally, Zac liked the surgeons. The level of god-complex they had was impressive.
--
A little smile quirked at the corners of Celia's mouth when he said he doubted she'd kill him. She certainly wouldn't, she was quite sure of that. Her gaze shifted down to the lacerations on his chest from the burns, looking to see where the worst of it was and figuring she would start there and work her way toward the least of it - hopefully a better strategy than leaving the worst for last and causing more and more pain as she went.
"Because I wanted to help people," she said, bringing her free hand up to rest on his chest away from the wounds, kind of holding him in place as she used the forceps to hold onto the edge of a piece of metal stuck under his skin, carefully pulling it out and dropping it into a bowl on the tray. "And it's something I was good at, in terms of what you need to know about to do well."
-
When Celia started working on his chest, Zac winced, sucking his lower lip between his teeth with a hiss. That hurt like a bitch. Briefly Zac wondered how much it might have hurt if he hadn’t been given pain relief potions. A lot, was the automatic conclusion he came to. Being oddly high was definitely the better option in this situation, he thought. He listened to her reply, trying to concentrate on it but between the pain and the drugs it wasn’t particularly easy.
The temptation to ask why she would want to help people was rather great but Zac also knew the answer. Some people just felt the need to help others. That was a fact. It wasn’t something Zac understood, cared for or, for that matter, cared to understand. But he also knew better than to point any of that out. People weren’t very keen on hearing how you thought their reasoning for things was silly and pathetic. “So you did it because you couldn’t do anything else?” Zac asked instead. It was what she had implied, he was sure. Probably.
--
Celia kept her hand firmly planted on his chest to keep him from moving much while she went after the second large piece of metal she'd seen, her nose scrunching when it didn't come out quite as easily as the first, but it did eventually. She looked at it closer for a moment before discarding it, not sure what kind of metal it was but wondering if there was more to it since he'd said it felt like something was crawling under his skin. That question could wait until it was all out.
His question hit her a little harder than he'd probably meant it to, and she glanced up at him a moment before looking at the next piece she was going to take out from his chest. "It wasn't my first choice, but I'm good at it."
-
The pain from her tugging on one of the pieces was almost blinding and Zac swore, breath sticking in his throat. Perhaps she had done it in response to his question, it was hard to judge. But even high on drugs and by now pain, too, Zac was able to tell that she stilled at the question. Not for long enough to really be noticeable, but long enough for Zac to spot it since he had waited for a response. Not her first choice, so perhaps not as good of a person in the end. That was curious.
“What was?” He asked her instead, wondering whether guessing Celia’s other career choices would be worth his time. She was too short for some career paths, Aurors probably wouldn’t have taken her. The Ministry in general was no one’s first choice, so that was probably out, too. Academic pursuits, perhaps? Those were easy to aim for and also fail to get. Zac thought that if he had been in less pain, especially if Celia hadn’t been in control of causing more of it, he might have tried to guess. As it was, he’d have to settle for her answer. If she gave him one.
--
Celia carefully took the next piece out before pulling her hand away from his chest, giving him a bit of a break from her inflicting more pain on him than he was already in. They were far from done, but she didn't want to make it much worse. He wouldn't be the first person to pass out from the pain if that happened, but she preferred him staying conscious. It was easier to get through everything that way, and there was less paperwork involved.
"Would you like some more pain relief?" she asked, tilting her head to look up at him, her brow furrowed slightly. It was easier to focus on him and his pain than his questions, but she wasn't going to stop him from asking. If he could talk, that meant he wasn't in intolerable pain. "Quidditch."
-
“Yes,” Zac replied before Celia could even properly finish the question. Yes, yes, he did want more pain relief. Before she had started the procedure, Zac had felt okay. Not pain-free but okay. Now that she had picked and pulled at his wounds, Zac felt like his whole body was on fire. Whilst he didn’t particularly like the idea of accidentally becoming even more intoxicated, not when usually he did so with a great awareness of what the drugs would do, Zac also didn’t want to be in pain. So he was more than willing to take the pain meds Celia would offer him.
Quiddich! Oh. Zac almost chastised himself for not thinking of professional sports as an option. Then again, he wasn’t sure how common of a dream and goal that was. He did turn his head a bit, though, to look her up and down. There didn’t seem to be any physical ailments to her, apart from being short, but Zac doubted she could fix that, besides, her body was probably perfect for the Seeker’s position. “Seeker?” He asked to confirm. “What stopped you, then?” Zac added. He was going to put his money on either lack of ambition or lack of talent. Perhaps the latter more than the former. Unless, of course, she did have a hidden injury somewhere.
--
Setting down the forceps, Celia picked up one of the potion bottles off the tray and measured out an amount in a small glass, her hand resting behind his shoulder to help him sit up a little and be able to drink it. Moving with those wounds, especially more tender now she'd been messing with them, probably wasn't easy, but the potion would help.
"Seeker," she confirmed, trying to ignore the way he'd looked her over. She put a stopper back in the bottle once he was back flat on the bed, setting the glass to the side as she scooted back in to focus on all the little bits of metal gleaming against his skin. "Didn't work out, that's all." With him newly drugged a little more, she was able to get a few of the littler pieces out in quick succession. "Yet."
-
Zac let her move him easily so he could take the potion. There was no need to oppose the actions since they were all intended to make his pain lessen. She seemed rather good at her current job, Zac decided. The effect of the potion wasn’t immediate but it was near as a slow warmth spread through his body, making everything just a tiny bit cloudy. “Didn’t work out,” he repeated, looking at the ceiling. It seemed nice than it had a minute ago. “Yet,” he added just the same as she had before turning his head slightly to glance at her. She, too, looked nicer than a minute ago.
“So,” Zac drew out slowly, mostly due to the potions rather than any actual need to do so. “Why are you doing this then?” He asked. “So much time and effort for what? A backup career?” At least as far as backup careers went, being a medi-witch was probably a reasonably paid one. “Or do you not actually think that you’ll ever succeed in Quidditch?” That seemed more likely to Zac. Knowing nothing about her but plenty about how easily people failed, Zac felt that he could establish for himself a sense of who Celia was. A nice girl, working in a hospital, helping people, big dreams, too big. It was all very curious and yet not at all.
--
Having been around people every day under the effects of various pain relief potions, Celia could tell when it started to set in a little more. It was in how his body seemed to relax a little on the bed, how his words got more drawn out and slow. She let him take his time to talk, letting her focus stay on getting the shards out of him in the meantime. The smaller pieces came out easier, didn't disrupt the rest of him so much, and there were only a few bigger ones to get after those. She was waiting for the potion to kick in fully before she got those.
"I like doing this," she replied, looking up at him for a moment before going back to what she was doing. That wasn't a lie. She liked doing it, but she loved Quidditch. There was a difference. "Of course I think I'll succeed. You never know when a career might end once it starts, and better to have something to fall back on than not."
-
Zac could feel her carry on pulling bits and pieces out of him but it felt more uncomfortable than actually painful now. That was nice. It was certainly much prefered to the jolt of pain he had experienced before the potion. Then again, perhaps she had gotten the bigger pieces out already. Zac had no idea. He presumed that the big waves of pain had been that. Hoped, really, because if not there was a lot more pain to come yet.
In response to her saying that she liked her current job, Zac hummed. It was still beyond him why anyone would like this, unless, of course, she got some perverse pleasure out of causing people pain legitimately. If that was the case, Zac could see that as a bonus, certainly. He could also very much agree that having something to fall back on was far more practical than putting all of the eggs in one basket. “What are you doing to succeed?” He asked Celia presuming that if she could say with such conviction that she would succeed there had to be something she was doing towards achieving that success.
--
"I have a strict training schedule I'm following to get ready for tryouts," Celia replied easily, gently moving his arm out of the way to get to where the burn was on his side. Oliver had set her up with a schedule to follow even when she was doing it on her own, and she did everything exactly the way he told her to, including drinking the somewhat disgusting smoothies he'd given her recipes for. If she didn't succeed, it was because she genuinely wasn't good enough - and she didn't believe that was true.
Her hand rested on his shoulder to keep him still while she worked on getting the last few bigger pieces out, and then she gave a quick look over him to make sure it was all gone. "Okay! That part's done, so I think the worst is over."
-
“I assume you’ve tried out before?” Zac asked because if she hadn’t that seemed foolish. He at no point would call himself an expert on Quidditch, but Zac had enough awareness of the sport to know that majority of players entered the League straight out of school. Couple of years in reserve if they were good and forever in the reserve if they were okay. Those who were neither just didn’t get in. With the minimum of 28 players graduating each year from Hogwarts, it wasn’t exactly like the league was in a shortage of talent. “What team?” He added because that probably also changed the level at which she needed to play. Canons, it seemed, would take a dead badger in.
Zac’s body did bulk when she pulled the biggest piece out and the sigh of relief he gave when Celia assured him that the worst was most likely over was genuine. That was definitely a great thing because the ceiling was now starting to look extra blurry and Zac had no idea if that was down to pain or medication. He was also rather interested in actually hearing her replies, not just having a hazy understanding of the fact that Celia used language to express herself.
--
“I did, straight out of school,” Celia replied, setting the forceps down on the tray and getting up to go over to the counter, pulling a few small towels out of a drawer to take back with her. “Montrose, and the Harpies.” She stayed standing when she went back beside him, tossing the towels onto her chair and looking down at the potion bottles left to find the right one. “Does it still feel like there’s something crawling under your skin?”
She looked over at him, an eyebrow quirking up as she waited for an answer. Whether he did or didn’t, that would maybe change what she should do. Then again, she wasn’t sure if he would be able to tell for sure with the pain relief potion in him… but she would hope he could tell if there was a feeling like that going on.
-
Zac thought about her question. Did it feel like there was something still crawling under his skin? “Not really,” he replied honestly. “More like--” He paused trying to think of the best way to describe it. “A memory of something having been there?” Zac offered because that seemed the most accurate way to explain what it felt like. It had felt weird and uncomfortable alongside the pain whilst now it was mostly just aftershocks of pain, which Zac could barely feel at all due to the potions he had taken.
“Those are good teams,” Zac commented bringing his hand up once again but stopping short of touching anywhere on his chest, instead settling for running the hand through his hair. At least his face hadn’t taken any damage. He would have been a lot more annoyed if that had happened. “Have you considered worse teams?” He asked. “It seems that those might be easier to succeed at,” Zac explained thoughtfully. He couldn't judge her ability to succeed on anything but the fact that she hadn’t yet. Lowering her expectations might be an option, unless pride came first, of course.
--
“Okay, good.” Celia smiled softly and turned back to what was on the tray, grabbing a jar of salve and twisting off the lid. “And yes, they’re good teams. That’s why I went for them.” Well, Montrose had been because of her family, but also because she gladly would have played for them if they’d taken her. Honestly, she would play for anyone. “I plan on going out for more this time, broaden my chances. Plus I think having had time away from school to train, get better on my own, will have helped.”
She dipped her fingers into the salve and looked down at his chest before glancing up at his face again. “This will probably sting. Maybe burn a little, but then it cools down so it shouldn’t hurt for long.” Carefully, and with a light touch, she applied the salve over everywhere on his chest that was burnt, paying extra attention to the spots where it was deeper and where the bigger pieces of metal had been stuck.
-
Zac was sure that there was a situation wherein which Celia applying wet and sticky stuff to his bare chest could be sexy. This was not it. This was so far from it that Zac couldn’t really get past the idea that it had the contextual clues of even being sexy. She was right, it did burn. She was also right that it started cooling down quite quickly. By no means was this a pleasant experience. At least she was female. Zac would have had a lot more issue with this being done by a man, medi-person or not.
“How--” Zac started before being stopped by a hiss of pain. After a pause, he carried on. “How do you intend to prioritise? Presumably tryouts all tend to happen around the same time? Wouldn’t want to be exhausted for any of them,” he commented, watching her carefully. “What happens if you fail again?” Zac asked, picking the question rather carefully.
--
Celia looked over his chest to make sure she hadn’t missed any spots before picking up one of the towels from the chair and wiping off her hands. His first question made sense, because of course there were bound to be scheduling conflicts when it came to that sort of thing and she didn’t want to fall off her broom from exhaustion, but she had faith she could do it. “I didn’t say I was trying out for them all,” she started, shrugging a shoulder. “Just have to make sure I get all the times right to find the ones that will work, with teams I’d want to play for, and then go from there. Determination trumps exhaustion, anyway.”
She picked up one of the potion bottles and used her wand to clean out the glass she’d given him the pain relief potion in before, pouring a bit of the potion in after and looking over to him again. “I’m not going to.”
-
Zac nodded along with her explanation. It was hardly surprising that she had thought of this, he would have been disappointed if she hadn’t. So far, Celia the Medi-Witch had seemed rather determined in most of the things she got up to. Zac obviously could only judge the medi-person-ing and the way she sounded so passionate about Quidditch, but it was easy to apply that same conviction and ambition to other things in Celia’s life that Zac didn’t nor particularly cared to know about.
When she told him she wasn’t going to fail, Zac gave a laugh. It was mostly a genuine and honest laugh, perhaps somewhat aided by the drugs. She sounded so determined, so sure of herself. Zac honestly and thoroughly hoped that Celia would fail. He was pretty sure that anyone who was so sure and determined not to would be amazing to watch as their dreams crashed and burned. “I wish you all the luck,” was what Zac said instead, though. Because that was what you said in response to this sort of thing.
--
Celia didn’t like being laughed at, even in a more relaxed or friendly circumstance. So she definitely didn’t like it coming from someone who was kind of rude to her from the get go, and who didn’t actually know her. She wouldn’t let it stop her from helping him, because that was her job, but she didn’t have to like it.
“Thanks,” she replied, holding the glass out to him. “Sit up and drink this?” She waited for him to take it before moving over to grab some gauze out of a drawer, waiting for him to be done with the potion - which was sour, and she didn’t feel bad about that one bit. “And please hold your arms out to the sides.”
-
Perhaps if the situation Zac was in had been different, he might have noticed the way she reacted to him laughing, but as it was, he followed her instructions for what they were - instructions. He winced only a little bit at how sour the potion was, then placing his arms as she told him to. Zac glanced down at his chest, almost inspecting her work, despite being aware that he hardly knew what it really entailed. “I think you’ve done well,” he commented much more sincerely than his good luck wishes had been. Zac was many thing, majority of them not great, but he was capable of giving credit where credit was due. It just wasn’t very often he felt people deserved the credit.
“I’m sure that if you don’t make a Quidditch star, Celia, you will make a decent medi-witch,” Zac said looking at her. Did he think she would make a Quidditch star? He had no idea, actually. Without seeing her fly and even then, Zac had no knowledge to judge such skill. His chest, however, felt much better, and she had achieved that. As much as he found her failure a hilarious idea because Zac did, he could also admit that at least her backup career would probably work out for her.
--
“Why thank you,” Celia replied simply, starting to wrap the gauze around his chest, reaching around his back to get the roll of it to pull around, over and over until the whole injured area was covered and she could tear the gauze off and tuck it in carefully to keep it all in place. She knew she’d done a good job, though she supposed it was nice to hear it from him - or from anyone. He didn’t know the details, but she did, and she knew it was good.
“Decent,” she repeated, taking the glass from him and setting it aside with the leftover gauze, taking a step back to examine her work and make sure she hadn’t missed anything. “Thanks again.” She offered him a slightly wry smile before shaking her head. “So make sure to keep that wrapped overnight, and then tomorrow morning you can take the gauze off, be sure to wash anywhere there was an injury, and within a couple days it should be back to normal. The potion was the help speed the healing process.”
-
‘Decent’ in Zac’s opinion was a pretty good compliment. He wasn’t in a position to make promises of her excellence, but he was in a position to say that she didn’t seem like she’d be awful at it long term. But she did thank him, which was potentially out of politeness, Zac supposed, but he accepted it nonetheless. He hadn’t been aiming for gratitude anyhow. If anything, he owed her thanks and decided to say as much. “Thank you, Celia,” Zac told her once she had explained the procedures of looking after his wounds. Zac fully intended to follow them carefully, since he had no intention of returning here with an infection.
“It may not have been nice to meet you under the circumstances, but despite your height you seem,” Zac paused. “Decent,” he told her with a small grin. She did seem nice but Zac hardly considered that a compliment. If anything, it was probably an insult coming from him, so ‘decent’, he figured, was once again a reasonable word to use. Especially if it didn’t seem like one.
--
Celia offered him a slightly more genuine smile at his thanks. But then he followed it up with that and she wanted to roll her eyes - but she didn’t. That would be unprofessional. Instead, she huffed out a soft laugh and shook her head. “And you seem decent as well, despite your height,” she replied, taking a step back and motioning toward the door. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
She waited for him to step out of the room before joining him, walking out to the lobby to send him on his way and find the next patient who needed help, who was hopefully less obsessed with how short she was.