Sorcerer's Apprentice

Robert was spending this evening doing duty in the Emergency rooms. He had sent Khaat home. Robert had been out of town for a few days and Khaat had simply parked herself at St. Mungos and had spent almost 3 nights here, only catching a few winks on her office sofa here and there. He had returned and had decided to send her home for long evening at home with Brian and Abbey and Dakota. If he knew Brian, Brian would either grill some steaks for the two of them or would order takeout from Sparks to make sure Khaat got a good meal. The young auror under his employ would pamper Khaat tonight. Robert didn't mind working an evening here. He enjoyed the work.

It was summer, and the ER was filled with not illnesses but accidents. Some that were just natural consequences of human stupidity, and others were incidents in which the patients had been taken completely blindsided. Magical accidents tended to be more of the latter. And it was amazing how many magical accidents were happening from students. Robert wasn't usually surprised, but for such a forbidden rule as not practicing magic away from the school, there certainly seemed to be a rampant rash of it. There were a lot of silly jinxes that students had cast that they did not know how to undo. That, and there were a lot of interesting transfigurations gone wrong. Robert did, mostly, manage to keep a straight face when he saw someone part wizard, part teapot. Undoing that one had taken just a little skill. He almost felt sorry for the young man, whose parents dragged him back out, once Robert had restored him, each parent clutching an arm of the young man, both of them shouting lectures into his ears. The young man looked sorrowfully back at Robert as if to say he'd rather have been the teapot. Robert managed a sympathetic smile at the young man and then turned back to the nursing station to complete his charting on the young patient.

Spencer....had been experimenting. As he normally did, he was used to singing and burning himself. After all they would heal in time, or he'd call his mother and she'd fix a few bad things. Things he couldn't managed himself after all. But this time he had been experimenting with something rather dangerous. It was a mixture of veritaserum and a small scale luck potion. However things had gone wrong, as they normally did. But this time, he had REALLY gotten messed up. If it wasn't for the fact Aimee was stopping by to check in on him in his apartment he might be dead.

His potion had pretty much blown up, luckily Aimee had walked in just as he was being thrown into a wall by the blast. He was hurt, he could tell he had broken a few things. He just hoped it was cureable. But he really didn't think that much, the pain was way too much to think. Aimee had done what her instincts told her, apparate to St.Mungos and take him with her.

When you have a new plant to show your best friend you hardly expect him to throw himself into a wall as a result of a potion disaster. The Venus flytrap didn’t look to happy about being left in a room covered in iciness but if Audrey II was anything like the flytrap in Little Shop of Horrors then she’d definitely fair well. Of course, Aimee had been excited about showing Spencer the plant that she’d convinced the shop owner to sell her. She had planned on dragging him away from his cauldron and out to dinner somewhere so she could go into depth about the plant as well as feed her friend, knowing full well that once he was immersed in whatever he was doing with the cauldron then there was no getting through to him. Aimee just hoped that maybe once Spence was all fixed up again that he wouldn’t automatically go back to what he was doing before. She didn’t want to walk into his apartment and find diced Spencer on the floor. That would hardly be the highlight of her day.

“You do know you could have picked a better time to throw yourself into a wall, Spence.” Aimee chortled, grinning widely at her friend. “We could have gone and eaten something good like a Chinese or even some pub grub but noooo...someone had to just throw himself into a wall. Spencer sometimes I wonder what goes through your head.” She smiled and patted him on the head. She pulled him over to some of the chairs and sat him down in one, deciding that it was better if Spencer sat down before he fell down. He didn’t look like a happy camper from what Aimee could tell.

Aimee strode back over to the desk and looked for the medi-witch that would usually be there. She was probably on her break so Aimee figured she’d just take liberties. Her plant was alone in a room caked in potion and her friend was sitting broken and bruises in a chair. That was hardly something she needed right now. Aimee put her hands either palm-side down on the desk and pushed, propelling herself onto her stomach so she was more or less laying on top of the desk. She reached over and picked up the bell that was on the desk near a stack of papers and she pressed the button repeatedly in an attempt to get the attention of a healer.

But clearly Aimee had not balanced her body weight well enough so she careered forward, off of the top of the desk, past the inside one and onto the floor with an almighty THWACK. She’d let out a half-squeal, half-scream in the process and wasn’t incredibly content with the position she was in. Laying on the cold tiles of St. Mungo’s was hardly something she wanted to do but clearly it was something she had to do. “Owwies.” She mumbled, rubbing her head slightly.

Robert had had to go to his potions lab downstairs to get a vial of a special potion he had made at the beginning of warm weather for a young Ravenclaw who had somehow managed to secure himself a place on the far side of Black Lake and then fell asleep for nearly the entire day while he was wearing little more than swim trunk. The result had been a severe case of sunpoisoning that had made the unfortunate young man very, very ill indeed.

As he was returning up to the emergency ward, he heard a distinctive "Thunk!" not far from him. He frowned and came around the corner to see a young woman rather twisted into a graceless position, laying prone on the wrong side of the desk on the tile hospital floor, rubbing her head.

He crouched beside her, slipping the vial back into his pocket. "Can I help you?" he asked gently. "I'm Robert. I'm sorry no one was at the desk when you got here, but I'll try to help you. What seems to be the problem?" He reached out his hand to her to help her up. She didn't look signficantly hurt, but she did seem to have gotten a slight bump to her head. At the moment, he wasn't seeing much else amiss with her.

Spencer tried to tell Aimee off but he just couldn't. Granted if he could laugh he would, but something seemed to give whenever he tried. Getting thrown into a wall did that to a person. Luckily it didn't affect his hearing skills or eyesight so he seemed alright. And he could feel his legs, they seemed to be on fire. But all he could do was silently screem, he couldn't seem to speak. He could move his head so looking at Aimee as she fell was quite entertaining. But now was one of those perfect times to reflect on the past.

He had never really thought of Aimee of a friend but he was thinking he might be wrong. She was the only one nice to him all through his past years. He knew his arm was broken, it had happened many times. Aimee certainly looked pretty today. But he was worried about his head that hurt so much. He probably cracked his skull, Aimee was funny. Wait, now there was someone standing over her.

He looked like a healer, from what he was wearing anyway. He groaned to try and get his attention. Aimee might've already told him about Spencer, but was a little embarassed that she might tell him what happened. After all he had just gotten his experimental potions permit. And he was going for his licsense as a potion master soon. It'd take a while to get his licsense, but even longer if they got wind of this. But then again he might be wrong, after all he was new to the whole experimental potions idea. All he really wanted right now was for the pain to go away. It was killing him, literally he thought. What if there was internal bleeding, but he was probably overreacting is all.

It was times like these, when Aimee was face down on the tiled floor of St. Mungo’s, that she actually began to wonder how she stayed up on her feet without tripping over. Flat surfaces, surfaces with bumps and tiles with cracks in them – they were all her worst nightmare and it seemed as if desks were going to be added to that list. Well, desks that didn’t break her fall that is. Aimee heard a voice from above her and she looked up to see a healer kneeling down in front of her. She blinked a few times and threw herself back up onto her feet, managing to knock a vase off of the desk in the process. She let out a squeak and quickly gathered the fallen flowers. She fiddled with the petals a little and held them out to the healer. “Uh...Happy...summer?” she said weakly, her face turning crimson. “Bamboo supposedly brings good luck...it’s better than lilies. But I’m not saying lilies aren’t beautiful – they are – but in hospitals wouldn’t the extra luck be helpful? I carry Alfalfa – it’s lucky too. Spencer probably needs a vase full he’s not very – oh! Right! Spencer! Um, I’m fine! Well, your plants aren’t and neither is my friend.”

Her babbling was unstoppable it seemed but Aimee managed to real herself in a bit and get to the point of the whole thing. Flowers weren’t what she was meant to be talking about but the lilies were very pretty and they smelt divine so why not talk about them? Right, because Spencer was in obvious pain and needed medical treatment. As much as she wanted to she couldn’t talk about plants. “Uh, right. My friend. Spencer! He’s over there. I think he’s broken a few things. He’ll be okay though right? I mean, I dunno what I’d do without Spence. No one would listen to me go on about plants! And...and...uh...” Aimee felt her cheeks heat up again and she tugged on her earlobe in an attempt to sort her thoughts out. “Could you please just sort him out for me? I’ll, uh, fill your hospital with bamboo?” She said weakly. “Well, maybe you don’t need good luck but something pretty to perk everyone up. Lilies are pretty but not as pretty as some..” She trailed off and clamped her mouth shut, determined not to detract from the fact that Spencer needed to be healed.

Robert saw an assistant healer return, and he reached in his pocked for the green vial and handed it to the assistant. "Please take this to the patient in room 5," he asked quietly. The assistant took the vial, nodding, and disapeered.

"Well," Robert said, returning his attention to the young woman, "I like bamboo, and you're right, we need all the luck we can get, especially in this department. And if ryou have nice bamboo, I'll buy it from you. You don't have to donate it. But for now, I think I should go see your friend Spencer and see about putting him to rights. Shall we?"

Robert walked over to the young man who sat, watiting on attention. Hm...Potions mishap. That was more than abundantly clear. "Spencer? My name is Robert. Your friend here says perhaps you need a bit of patching up. Mind if I take a look? Unless I miss my guess you had a bit of potions mishap. Can you walk to one of the treatment rooms with me, and then you should tell me exactly what you were trying to do."

Spencer nodded, but he had to grab onto the shoulders of Robert to keep from falling over. He could feel his left leg hurting, obviously broken. He could speak now, his headache had subsided...slightly. "I was, ergh! Trying to mix a small luck potion with Veriteserium!" he groaned through the pain. He limped with Robert to the room and sat on the bed. "There should be some remnants in my house," he told him. "Man I should be used to this by now." he muttered.

OoC:Sorry it kinda sucks....

Aimee’s mouth fell open and she nodded reverently. “I have very nice bamboo.” She mumbled, not really sure what she was supposed to say. It wasn’t a lie but no one really wanted to buy her plants, ever. She grew a little bit of everything but no one ever wanted to buy what she grew, they just looked at her as if she was crazy. Okay, so maybe she was – Who else had ivy growing on their staircase? – but that didn’t make her a bad person. “I’ll, uh, cut some soon. It’s nearly fully grown...” Aimee’s cheeks flushed red she and held the lilies close to her. She followed Robert over to where Spencer was and Aimee looked worriedly at her friend. She detested it when he hurt himself. She wanted to throttle him herself when he hurt himself but it was only because she cared about him – a little too much. Aimee looked at the Healer when Spencer had finished speaking and asked, “He’ll be alright won’t he?”

"He'll be fine," Robert smiled at her. "I'll take good care of him." He looked at Spencer. "Luck serum and Veritaserum...Good idea, but the ingredients don't meld together well. Even a small amount of those can cause an enormous BOOM, as you found out. And that BOOM is even bigger if you try to heat them while you mix them. But I like your creativity. Let's fix all the injuries first. " Robert looked at a wheelchair sitting ideal against the wall of the hallway. "You!" he spoke to it in a commanding tone. "Get over here!" he motioned to it, and the chair obeyed quickly.

"Shall we perhaps not walk on all of that painful business?" Robert asked to the young man. "Let me help you into the chair and let's see what all the damage is." He carefully helped the young man into the wheelchair. He walked ahead of the chair, ordering it, "Room 3, please." The chair followed obediently. Robert took Spencer into the treatment room and helped him out of the chair onto the table.

He examined the young man carefully. "Broken arm, Broken leg...2 broken ribs, a good hard bang to the head..a lot of cuts and bruises and a few chemical burns. You'll be fine, but you'll be my guest here for a couple of days. I'm going to use a sleep spell to make the setting of the bones a lot easier. When you wake up, you'll be in your room and no doubt feeling a lot better. I appreciate your energies and your creativity with potions, but if you're going to do that, you really should have someone teach you how to do that. Let me know if you're interested. I could maybe give you enough pointers that you perhaps avoid blowing yourself up again. Among other things, I am a potions master."