Dorian blinked, trying to make sense of this remark. But he was somewhat distracted from his brother’s snarling by shooting pain in his wrist that was proving difficult to ignore. Gradually, he also became aware that the side of his face was very cold, even though it was his back that was lying against the freezing, wet ice. He’d fallen. He remembered his feet suddenly being pulled from under him, and hitting the ice, arms outstretched. He’d been skating long enough to know that was the wrong way to fall, but it hadn’t been a normal fall. Of course it hadn’t.
“You’re fine, just get up!” Matthieu was instructing, addressing him now, and he sounded vaguely panicked, and was grabbing Dorian’s shoulder which shook his whole arm and made him screech.
“You wanna back off? I think you’ve already done enough damage, don’t you?” This voice was hard and firm, and Dorian didn’t think he recognised it, except turning from his brother, he saw Jean-Loup. Arceneaux. Right. He was wearing a bright yellow gilet over his robes and as he knelt down, glaring at Matthieu across Dorian, Dorian saw a wand and a bone stamped on the chest of the garment with the word ‘Secouriste.’
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Matthieu asked.
“You know what I mean,” Jean-Loup answered, “Does it hurt anywhere except your wrist?” he asked, his tone back to its usual gentleness, and Dorian realised he was talking to him. He shook his head.
“You can’t just-” Matthieu began.
“We’re done,” Jean-Loup cut him off firmly, “I have a patient to look after, and you are getting in my way. Go away.”
“Fine. If you want him to be your problem, be my guest,” Matthieu managed, after a few seconds of stunned silence. “But if he seems brain damaged, be aware that’s perfectly normal for him.”
“No, that would be you. You sodding great monkey,” Jean-Loup muttered, but quietly enough that it didn’t invite any retort as Matthieu was already skating away. “Right, I’m going to immobilise your wrist, that way it won’t move accidentally as you stand up because, as your brother just kindly demonstrated, that hurts you a lot,” he tapped Dorian’s wrist, and he felt it become rigid. “That was a no on other injuries?” he checked again.
“I think so. Except, I guess I… passed out? Did I hit my head?”
“I don’t think so. Severe pain can make you faint.”
“I fainted?” Dorian repeated, sounding vaguely mortified, as Jean-Loup helped him sit and then stand back up. His wrist was still throbbing worse than any degree of pain he’d ever felt before, but he’d been spared the sharp shooting increase of pain that had happened when Matthieu had jerked his arm. The immobilising charm was clearly doing its job, though he suspected it also helped that Jean-Loup was considerably more gentle.
“I’ve fainted when I’ve broken bones in Quidditch,” Jean-Loup assured him. He was now waving his wand across Dorian’s clothes, and he felt them dry and warm up, realising as they did so that he’d been shivering pretty badly. “So has your brother.”
“It’s broken?” he confirmed. It definitely hurt enough to be broken. And, in some senses, he was weirdly comforted if it was. Breaking your wrist did sound pretty serious. It did make it seem a little less like he was just being horribly pathetic right now.
“We’ll have to get it checked out properly, but I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s a medical tent at the end of the ice. You got your feet back?”
Dorian nodded, although he felt Jean-Loup keeping a steadying hand on his back as they slowly skated the short distance to the medical tent.
Inside they were greeted by a witch in a purple gilet that declared her to be a fully qualified healer. They established the basics of who Dorian was and why he was here, and now she was taking his hand - which in spite of her doing so very gently, made him wince sharply - and was running her wand along it.
“Is this your wand hand?” she asked, as red lights pulsed around his wrist.
“Yes,” he replied, slightly concerned by her tone, “Does that make a difference?” He wanted to ask ‘Can’t you just fix it?’ but was aware that might sound rude. But there was a spell for healing broken bones. It was just a wave of a wand, and the only reason Jean-Loup presumably hadn’t done it was because he was a first-aider and not a fully qualified healer.
“Wrists are complicated things at the best of times. And when it’s your wand hand, we want to take extra care. The fracture mending spell rejoins two separated pieces of bone. But your wrist is made up of lots of separate bones, and it stops being much use to if your bones end up fused together. You’re better off with the healing serum - we’d wrap your wrist in some bandages soaked with the potion, and they’ll seep in gradually. It specifically targets damage, so there’s no risk of overdoing it. It would take a couple of hours. We’ll also need to align your wrist properly first, and we’ll give you some strong painkillers to manage that process. They can make you a bit disoriented, so someone would need to keep an eye on you. Could you call your house elf, and have them fetch one of your parents?”
“My mother is in China, and my father has meetings all day,” Dorian replied. It was rare that his mother travelled when they were home for the holidays but that too had been an emergency.
“Is your brother here?”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Jean-Loup promised.
“If you just fixed it, how likely is the fusing thing?” he asked, “If it’s just a risk, and it might not happen, and then… then we can do that, and I don’t need anyone to look after me,” Dorian suggested. Admittedly, he didn’t like the sound of his wrist no longer working, but he also did not want to be drugged up and losing his grip on reality.
“I’ll be right back,” the healer stated, as someone stepped into the tent with a bloody mouth, “You talk it through with him,” she requested of Jean-Loup.
“I don’t mind looking after you,” Jean-Loup assured him.
“It’s not that. Well, not just that,” he did feel like was inconveniencing him somewhat but he could recognise that being inconvenienced by sick people was literally what Jean-Loup had signed up for, “But being disoriented. I… We took confusing solutions in class ones to test their effects. It wasn’t good.”
“I’ll be here. We’re not going to let you wander off into the wilderness and get eaten by bears.”
“No. I know but-” he was about to say that it would almost be worse to have someone there, but he was aware how unkind that sounded. He didn’t want to be on his own, but he was worried about someone being there too - he just plain didn’t want to have to be in that state, much less to have it witnessed. “I just don’t like not being in control of my own mind. I behaved super weird in that class. It was really embarrassing.”
“I would never make fun of you. I hope you know that anyway, and that that’s true in general, but if it makes you feel better, it would, under these circumstances, be unprofessional of me to do so, and anything you say or do is covered by patient-healer confidentiality. Well, patient and first aider, I suppose, but the point is, I have a job here and that job is looking after you.”
“I got paranoid. And rambly. And irritable,” Dorian warned him.
“And I can deal with that for a couple of hours if it means you have a fully functioning wrist for the rest of your life,” Jean-Loup assured him. “So, can we do it our way?”