Phillip Hughes, M.D, S.J. (fidesetratio) wrote in whatprice, @ 2009-04-29 23:19:00 |
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Current location: | MI7 |
Current mood: | anxious |
Entry tags: | phillip hughes, romilda vane |
Competing loyalties
Who: Phillip Hughes and Romilda Vane
When: Early April, 2009
Where: MI7 facility
What: Phillip goes to do some investigations on one of MI7s patients. Things are not as they seem - the two discuss bible stories, God's plans, hope, and the plight of wizardkind and the question of evil. Phillip endangers his job at MI7 with a few slips of the tongue.
They had come to her room in the morning, waiting patiently for her to turn over in bed and focus her eyes so that they knew she was listening. Someone wanted to talk to her - some priest she'd never heard of before, let alone seen. It was easier just to agree than bother to ask questions they weren't going to answer - How did a priest end up working for these people? What would he want with her that she hadn't already given to the dozens of people that had poked, prodded and questioned her over the years? Mild curiosity and complicity with her situation won out over any misgivings she might have had, and the illusion of choice was one she occasionally liked to maintain. So Romilda nodded her head, and she was treated to a needle in her thigh that took her away from there, if only for a little while.
Romilda had no idea how much time had passed when the door to her room opened again, casting a rectangle of light from the corridor over part of her bed and the floor until the lights in her room were switched on. The fluorescent light was harsh, and did her appearance no favors, making her elbows look as sharp as the angles of the one chair in the room. She sat up slowly, skin flushed and breathing shallow from the drugs that they'd given her.
Phillip entered the room with Romilda's file and his medical kit in a shoulder bag. He wasn't wearing his collar or his labcoat, favouring instead a simply black dress shirt and black trousers.
"Hello Romilda, I'm Phillip. Do you need a hand getting up?" he asked, his voice full of honest concern as he made his way towards the bed. It wasn't in his habit to refer to patients by their case file numbers. These were human beings, no matter what their abilities.
"I was wondering if I might talk to you a bit."
"I'm fine," she replied automatically, and really, she was better than fine - she was high as a kite. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks, though it was hard to tell against eyes as dark as hers.
She looked him up and down, though it wasn't clear exactly what she was looking for. "You're the priest?" she asked.
"Priest, doctor, scientist. All rolled into one. I prefer to go by Phillip though," Phillip explained, giving her a smile. "I brought some juice if you'd like some."
He didn't like what he was seeing - that she was on some sort of substance was obvious and he'd read her file - he didn't agree with the methods being used on her.
"Have you ever been tested for AIDS?"
It was a blunt unprecedented question, but she was in a high risk category, and perhaps she could provide the link he'd been looking for. It would have to be on his own time, of course, but it might be worth it.
She couldn't say that she agreed much with the methods being used on her either, though when they actually gave her the drugs instead of torturing her with withdrawal, she certainly preferred it to being put under the Cruciatus curse. No matter how bad things were, they could always get worse.
"Yes, please," she answered to his offer of juice, her mouth dry as cotton from the heroin. His question surprised her, though not because she didn't know what AIDS was. She'd lived long enough as a Muggle, and in the right sort of circles, to have known more than one person who had contracted it. Or someone who knew someone.
"I wouldn't know," she replied, almost wryly. "You've got my file, I'm sure. If they've done one, that would be the place to look for it."
Phillip pulled out two small bottles of juice and handed one to Romilda.
"They haven't done one here. They probably don't think it worthwhile. But your high risk habits were before you came here. Did you ever get tested outside? If not, I'd like your permission to test you for it, and perhaps to study your blood. "
With some effort she twisted the top off and down half of it in one go. "Apparently they put a lot of big assumptions in my file. I didn't use needles to get high until I was brought here." She wouldn't have known how to use one. The only needles she'd been poked with before her stay with MI7 had been while in the hospital giving birth to Jonah - which was something she absolutely had not talked about during any interrogation. If they'd deduced that she'd had children at some point, it wasn't through any admission on her part.
"But if it will make you feel better, I can't see why not. Not like me saying no will stop you or them from doing whatever they want with me anyway."
"If you say no, I'd respect that. You're a human being, Romilda, nothing more. If the drugs weren't intravenous, then did you engage in any other high risk practices? Unprotected sex?" he asked curiously, frowning at the file that seemed to be woefully inadequate.
Romilda had a hard time believing that anyone in that place actually had respect for anything but themselves, but she kept the thought to herself. "I told you that you can run the test. Somehow I think that tales of my possible exploits might make you blush." She wasn't just saying that because he was a priest, either; she didn't know enough about priests to make that kind of assumption.
"I've heard a lot of stories, have worked in the inner city and rural country in England, Brazil and India. Not much can make me blush. Thank you, for letting me run the test. But knowing a bit more about you might help fill out this inadequate history they have of you here," he said.
"And why would I want to do that? Help them," she asked point-blank, almost frighteningly alert for the moment.
"Help me so I can help you," Phillip said, returning her glance. "I'm not intending to hurt you, regardless of what others have done to you here."
"Is helping you going to get me out of here?"
"I don't know. I don't have the power to make those decisions right now, only recommendations. There's more to life than your next high. There has to be." He was worried about her. About her in general and about what this place had done to her.
"There used to be," she agreed. Even after she'd started using, she still had her kids, and D. "Maybe when you've been here as long as I have, you'll change your mind too."
"And there will be again. You have to believe that. I have to believe that," he said, offering Romilda a small genuine smile.
Romilda laughed, though not meanly. "I'm afraid the optimism's been driven right out of me. They don't intend to let me live, Phillip; at least not a life anyone wants to live. I'm disposable to them. Ironic, really, since some of my fellow witches and wizards felt the same way."
"You are not disposable, Romilda. You're a human being."
Phillip huffed out a sigh in frustration.
"I'm sorry. I don't suppose I'm being helpful. "
"It's okay, I wasn't expecting any help." It was odd, offering up a piece of comfort to someone else. "They'd probably stop you if you managed, anyway." Her voice turned wry then.
"I think they'd kick me out of Gryffindor if anyone found out how defeatist I've become. It's all bravery and daring in Gryffindor, you know."
"No, but as a priest and a doctor, my duty is to help others. Not simply to take advantage of their situation and exploit them, even if it might help in the future. Like your blood, if it turned out that it was resistant to the AIDS virus, that would be a huge medical breakthrough that many people might be able to profit, but losing you to cure them would not be the solution."
He paused as he recalled the rest of her words.
"Gryffindor?" Phillip asked in confusion. "I'm not sure I know what that is. Some sort of organization?"
"They don't tell you much about us before they let you in here, do they?" Which seemed dodgy of them, really. "It was the house I was sorted into in school. Some Muggle schools have houses, don't they?"
"Cambridge had colleges, yes. Each one with a different feel to it. I... I came here late, simply for medical research. They courted me because of some research I'd done and published," Phillip explained.
"What kind of research?" She was a little curious as to what would put him on MI7's radar.
"My main research interest has always been AIDS, but last year I published an article last year on the physiological implications of the paranormal," Phillip said. "I did some work with Shamans in Brazil and then with victims of exorcists and possession here in London."
"Did you check to make sure your employers didn't go back and question your former study subjects themselves?" She wouldn't put it past them. It would be out of their jurisdiction, of course, but then she was fairly sure that what they'd done to her was well outside it as well.
Phillip gave her a confused look.
"Why would they? The work I did is so basic compared to the level of things I'm doing here.." Phillip began.
"You don't think they'd do anything would you?" Phillip asked in shock.
"Look at me, Phillip. They grabbed me off the street and brought me here, they keep me locked in this room, no clothes of my own, no possessions of my own, nothing sharp so I can't hurt myself." Again. "I was 23 when they took me, and barely. All because they figured out somehow that I'm a witch. If you think they wouldn't check up on your past little forays and experiments and do whatever they damn well please in the name of...whatever excuse they give themselves when they wake up in the morning, you're more pathetically naive than anyone I've ever met." She grinned then, and it was a pleasant expression. "And that's saying something."
"Names were changed, they shouldn't know who was actually profiled in my reports," Phillip said, blanching at the thought of his colleagues here getting their hands on anyone that he'd worked with through the church. Or worse, some of his patients in Brazil or India.
"I believe there is good in everyone," Phillip said with a shrug. "Perhaps that makes me naive, but it is part of what I feel I am called to do."
"Well. How comforting for you." It wasn't like she really cared one way or the other. She didn't have it in her to care about things like that anymore. Hypotheticals, people she'd never met, the whole lot. "I've seen a little too much to agree with you, but even if I did, everyone having at least a little good in them doesn't stop there from being a lot of evil in them, too."
Phillip thought of his time in India and, more recently, the things he'd witnessed at MI7.
"True, but.. "
He sighed and took the occasion to fiddle with the cuffs of his shirt.
"It's not comforting, really. It's more like desperation at times. Foolish optimism," he said with a wry chuckle.
"Life is hell sometimes. Shit happens, as they say. I'm not sure which is easier to understand and cope with - a bad situation with no cause or the knowledge of just how evil some people can truly be. But then, as much as I try, I can't save everyone, and I've lost a lot along the way."
Phillip didn't quite know why he was unburdening himself to Romilda, but it was a sign that he was being overworked.
"Then here's some advice: Don't get your hopes up about me. Just add me to the lost causes list, and get away from this place before you turn into one of them. Assuming you aren't one already and just a really, really good liar." She blinked slowly, seeming to space out for a long moment before coming back to herself. "Though I have one more thing to ask. Do you know the story of Jonah?"
"I can't give up on you yet. Sorry," Phillip said with a small smile before nodding.
"Yes, I know the story of Jonah and the whale. What about it?"
Romilda shrugged. It was his effort he was wasting. "Can you tell me it? I heard the name in a church once and I liked it, but I could never remember the story."
"Of course," Phillip said with a smile, relaxing and easily slipping into his caring priest mode. Biblical stories were things he was used to telling.
"Jonah was one of the Jewish prophets from Galilee. God came to Jonah and told him to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria - which was the main enemy of Israel and the Jewish people. God wanted Jonah to go to the enemy and preach against their wickedness - and tell them to repent or else. Well, Jonah wasn't really in agreement with this plan. Instead of heading for Nineveh, he took off for Tarshish, Spain. Jonah also despised the Assyrians and probably would have liked to see God punish them. Yet, Jonah knew God’s nature. He knew that if he preached repentance to the Ninevites, they would repent and God would spare them."
Phillip smiled as he continued.
"So, in trying to run away from God he gets on a boat. God figures this out, of course, and at night, a huge storm comes up and tosses the boat wildly. The sailors are afraid and all start to pray to their gods, while Jonah sleeps soundly below deck. The captain goes down to Jonah’s cabin and pulls him out of bed. Everyone's trying to figure out why this storm came on them. They cast lots and survey says it's Jonah's fault. The sailors get upset and question Jonah who confesses he's running away from God. He tells the sailors to spare themselves and throw him overboard. They do."
He paused.
"And this is the part most people know - While he's sinking he gets swallowed by a whale/big fish/whatever. But he doesn't die. He spends three days and nights in the whale's belly, praying. God makes the whale spit Jonah out on shore. Of course, that's not the end. God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh again. Imagine being Jonah, walking into a city of your enemies and telling them to repent. It's like suicide. But Jonah does what he's told this time. Amazingly, the people listen and repent. God decides to spare them. Jonah walks away from the situation mad at God. He builds himself a little shelter outside of town and pouts. He thinks that God should have destroyed the Ninevites rather than spare them. So angry is Jonah that he says he’d rather die than live! He begs for God to take his life because he thinks it's unfair that God let his message be spread to the enemies of his chosen people."
Phillip smiled.
"Take from it what you will but there's a lot in there."
Romilda closed her eyes as she listened, trying to hold back the flood of thoughts about Jonah - her Jonah. Did he pout and complain, or was he a good boy that did what he was told? Did he have that capacity for hate in his tiny body that seemed to be built in to wizards and Muggles alike, and which was he, anyway? It hurt, to think of her little boy, not knowing where he was or if he was okay or even how old he was, and she had to swallow hard before she opened her eyes again, to keep back the tears. "I think I'll take the part where I'd much rather be in Spain than here."
"I know it sounds trite, but maybe God brought you here for a reason. Although, honestly, I can't fathom what it is. Don't lose hope, Romilda. There's a chance someone up there knows what they're doing," Phillip said quietly, trying to reassure both of them.
"I think it's entirely possible your god brought me here for a reason - to help destroy the wizarding world. Which I suppose by your definition is his right. Not much reason for me to hope, though, and certainly not a reason for me to not hate him, if he exists."
"Ah, but see, what I take from that story is that perhaps God brought you here to get me to quit - maybe to help save the wizarding world."
He couldn't believe he was saying this aloud.
"I cannot believe God would want any part of his creation destroyed - wizarding or muggle."
Romilda's eyebrows went up in surprise. "And will you? Or are you just saying that to placate me?"
"I don't know," Phillip said, playing with the cuffs of his sleeves again. "It's currently a grey area and there's a lot at stake."
"Not least because they're probably listening to this conversation," she pointed out. "I told you not to get your hopes up, Phillip. Sometimes we do what we have to, to stay alive." By then she was talking more about herself than about him.
"That doesn't make it right. I'll return when I have some test results for you," Phillip said as he got to his feet, knowing he'd said way too much.
"I don't want to know if I'm sick," she called after him. "I have enough horrible things to think about." Knowing she had AIDS would only make it all worse.
"I'll come back if I have good news," Phillip said as he left her cell, hoping he hadn't just ruined his career.