Closed What's all the fuss about?

[Jacob Kingsley]

Jacob did a few circles with his shoulders, testing out the work that the healer had just performed to put his shoulder back in place. He'd taken a turn much too quickly during his most recent mission and learned that steel was not very forgiving. It was the easiest of the damage he'd taken to fix, and the Auror tried to be still and calm like the Healers ordered while he waited for someone to come take a look at his other injuries. Jacob wasn't too worried about most of them, scrapes and cuts would heal. But one of his wounds was a magical injury and of much more concern to him. Jacob touched it and winced before laying back on the medical chair to wait.

The man was busy thinking about the paperwork he'd have to do and acknowledging the fact he'd probably be on desk duty for a bit as he healed. He sighed. He hated that part of the work.

 

[August Chase]

One of the first things he'd learned as a trainee healer was to expect the unexpected. Like the fact that even though he was still in his trainee-ship, he would sometimes be expected to work on patients with strange or interesting magical wounds. It made sense, he supposed, since he'd elected to study in potions and spell damage, but that didn't mean he'd expected to be set to task immediately. It was really true that they did things so differently on this side of the pond. Or... really big body of water.

His green healer's robes sat slightly off of his shoulders as he walked into the main department, being gestured to the closest case. He cast a cursory glance over the man's body to see him favouring his side and stepped over quickly, a frown etched on his face. "Auror?" he clarified, though given the section of the hospital they were in, that was probably a given. Most Aurors had a bed with their name on it here, another difference between this place and America. Must have been a strange kind of a thought for them, he supposed.

August pulled his wand out and touched it gently to the man's head and then swept it over his full body for a diagnostic, frowning at the result. Hm, interesting. "Protego wasn't good enough for you huh, decided to dodge into a curse?" it was... sort of a joke, though he realised as he said it he didn't know the man, and had no way of knowing whether or not he would take a joke well. Ah, well he'd said it now, no point in agonising over it. He waved his wand again and summoned one of the basic healing potions, and something to numb the pain. He'd been hit with a ripper of a curse, probably on the job if it was anything to go by, so this might very well take a while. August was going to have to carefully and intricately remove the spell work layer by layer. There goes his lunch break.

@Jacob Kingsley ​

 

[Jacob Kingsley]

"Healer" Jacob replied back without missing a beat and before he'd gotten a good look at the person who had spoken. If he had looked first, Jacob wasn't sure he'd have addressed him by that title. He sat up slightly, skepticism written across his face. "You...are a healer, right? Not some student just volunteering because you want to be in training one day" he quipped. It wasn't really a quip though. Jacob was a bit concerned though a moment later his worries were lightened as the very young man got to work.

Jacob tried to stay still but the injury was ailing him, somewhere between a burning sensation and something he couldn't quite explain. "You should have seen what my shield charm stopped" he laughed and then regretted that decision immediately. He didn't know why he laughed anyway. His shield charm really had stopped something that would have landed him here if he was likely but probably would have resulted in a much worse fate. His mother would be quite unhappy that he was joking about such a thing, but really it was one of the only ways to make it through the tough parts of the work. "Don't make me laugh anymore" he jokingly scolded the Healer before giving a quick 'cheers' and downing the pain potion. The relief was instant and Jacob smiled. Magic was great.

@August Chase

 

[August Chase]

When asked if he was a healer (though not in so many words apparently), there was a tiny part of August that immediately wanted to play it up that maybe he wasn't a healer, but the point of this job is not to upset the patients, it's to fix them and he couldn't do that if he had a panicking auror on his hands. Besides, he could kind of understand the hesitation, he was only a couple of years out of school and this guy seemed to have a couple years on him already. August certainly hoped he kept his smooth, pretty face, he didn't want to end up like this poor fellow. "Well, I'm definitely not a student, though admittedly I was until more recently than you," he said. He felt an odd sense to call the man sir, since the age difference was fairly clear, but he bit back on that particular urge almost as swiftly as it had been upon him.

As he continued his diagnostics, nodding every now and again at the results, he snorted. "True enough, just judging by this, I don't think I want to see what your shield charm stopped," he'd not seen something this bad since his actual book days. Though there had been that unfortunate potions accident the other day. Spell work was far more insidious in his opinion and it certainly coloured his opinion of Aurors and others who worked with spells a lot more frequently than he did. He had never been a particularly good duellist, but he was better than some of the other people in his family, excluding maybe January, but she intended to make that a profession. There was a question, how would an Auror hold up against a Professional Duellist? Did they have to be better because their opponents were often attempting to kill them, or did the duellist have to be better because they arguably duelled more frequently than an Auror? Well, he didn't know that for sure. Maybe Aurors did a lot of duelling on the side, he didn't know any Aurors, only a couple of duelists.

August smiled then, "I'll do my best, do you want the healers oath about it?" He didn't usually find himself particularly funny, certainly not among his family, but it was nice to have a joke with someone on occasion, it meant the guy had a sense of humour at least. Probably had to in that job. "I'll have a second potion next to you, because this next bit will hurt, and your pain tolerance will potentially make this worse or better, let's hope you're good with pain, huh?" he asked before summoning another pain potion and then a chair so he could sit beside the guy now. He looked up at him, shaking out his hands before taking a deep breath. "Alright, you ready? This might be a bit," he said, waiting for the go ahead before he started messing about with the actual cursed wound itself.

@Jacob Kingsley

sorry about this cyndi, apparently Jake is old now ;(​

 

[Jacob Kingsley]

"Ouch" Jacob said at the young Healer's words. He'd never been called old before and though he technically still hadn't, the intent was there to and, boy, had he felt his soul wince at those words. Immediately, all of the times when he'd made similar snide comments talking about his parents or friends of his parents or anyone who looked more than a decade older than him hit him like a ton of bricks. Is this what it feels like to have an existential crisis?, the Auror thought to himself. He lost track of what the Healer was saying for a few moments, but tuned in just in time to hear him talking about pain tolerance and realized he had better pay much better attention.

Jacob took hold of the pain potion, quickly chugging it down. He only just stopped himself from slamming it down on the table as he would a drink on the bar before asking for another. "No problem, let's get this done" he nodded. Jacob had a fairly high tolerance for pain, but this was more of a thing to get through than to try to determine if he could get through. It needed to be done and he would bear it. "Is this like one of those tasks where you need all of your concentration on it or can you distract me with a story about your life? I'm fine either way though for obvious reasons would prefer the second option...if it's an option" he rambled, a little loopy from the pain potion's effects.

@August Chase - so very sorry for the delay.

 

[August Chase]

August did his best not to chuckle at the way his joke went down, glad that he hadn't entirely offended the poor guy, one had to be careful at his age, they did say it was all down hill from there. Still, best not to keep trying to offend him, he had a job to do and he might still be a trainee healer, but he was good at his training and he'd been working hard since he could even think about wanting to be a healer. There were more than a couple of times he'd wondered if he'd chosen the right path, but all that mattered was that he was good at this, he enjoyed this kind of meticulous work, and he wanted to continue it for the foreseeable future. Once January had graduated he could think about other things, but for now, this was his main focus. She wouldn't leave America though, she loved her home there even if their parents were driving her crazy. August watched the Auror swallow the pain potion and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Honestly if this hurt as much as he thought it was going to, he didn't envy him. August was a wimp when it came to pain so he was glad he was on the other side of it, that was for sure.

He laughed slightly and positioned himself on a stool at the Auror's side. "I have ability enough to distract you, sure, story of my life though? Afraid it's not terribly exciting, probably not to an Auror anyway," she said, frowning slightly in conversation as he kept his eyes trained on the magical wound to started stripping back the curses layered on it. Thankfully, though this was a big job, it wasn't an intricate one that would have likely called for someone with far more experience. It always clearly wasn't some kind of creature which would have required a consult or collaboration. The pain potion was clearly taking affect, which was good, so it was probable that regardless of what he said to him, he probably wasn't going to pay much attention. Which was helpful, August was generally a pretty private person, but if his patient wanted a distraction, he wasn't going to turn it down. "You can probably tell from my accent that I might have grown up outside of New Zealand, I was born and raised in California, actually, Manhattan Beach specifically," he had no idea if the guy had ever been there, he didn't really care either way, it was just talking, filler, something to say. "After me there was my sister January, then June, March my only brother and November, youngest sister." He snorted slightly at that, "before you ask, my parents weren't very creative, I was even born in August, that's my name, by the way, August." He said, taking a moment to concentrate on a particularly difficult section of the wound, and giving the auror a moment to process and catch up.

@Jacob Kingsley ​

 

[Jacob Kingsley]

Jacob winced at the first pass but then the pain become more manageable, and he was able to settle in for hthe process. The healer was right, his story wasn't terribly interesting to start but Jacob pretended to be interested anyway. "Ah, my dad's from America, one of the Carolinas. That's close enough to California, right?" he queried. He'd been to California as a very young child, and he was struck by the fact that he should make it to see his grandfather again some time soon. Jacob was trying his best to stay still but his nose was beginning to itch. He wriggled it in the hopes it would help and continued to listen.

Jacob laughed out loud at the guy's introduction, his story just becoming far more interesting. "You're kidding!" he said loudly. "That's too bad. Would've been hilarious if they'd named you Joe or Max or something way off base. Though it's at least an uncommon name. My name's Jacob, bet you've met at least half a dozen Jacobs in your life" he stated. Jacob liked his name well enough but it definitely did not have a fun story like August did. "What led you to healing?" he asked. He'd just caught sight of his arm and immediately regretted as a swell of panic crept up. He took a breath, remembering that he needed to trust the process and hope he'd have a working arm by the end of it all.

 

[August Chase]

August had to spend an extra moment trying to recover from the short snort he almost gave when Jacob Kingsley whose Dad was from America asked him if either of the Carolina's were close to California. "Yeah, sure, let's go with that," he said, though considering they were on completely different sides of the map, he didn't really consider that to be close. Not even closeish. Maybe one of the midwestern states (though doubtful) or even the southwestern states. It was fairly clear that Jacob had probably never spent much time in the country, but it made sense since most people who weren't from there hadn't, why would they need to when they had their whole lives here? If he hadn't felt he needed to leave himself, he would probably still be there honestly. "To be honest, they're kind of on opposite sides of the country, Cali is west coast, your Carolina's are both considered Southern states," the geography maybe didn't match up, but he was a healer not a geographer, it wasn't his job to explain how that worked. These days he thought it was more cultural and political than anything else. Nearly four hundred years of history would do that.

"Asking for uniqueness from either of my parents would be a bit much, even my middle name isn't very original, it's Benjamin, take a wild guess what my dad's name is." he said rolling his eyes. "The rest of my siblings are all either named after my mother, January Kialla, or Aunts and Uncles on either side of the family," he hoped that Jacob's parents at least had more original names for their families. "I might have gone to school with a couple of Jacob's, but I don't really consider it a particularly common name in the wizarding community, you'll more likely run into people named Hadrian or Melrose, maybe a Zannon." he admitted, laughing slightly. That was one thing he could say about the wizarding world at large, there was a real thing about the names not appearing so common, which was a bit of how his mother had put it. Sometimes he wasn't entirely sure how his father felt, but the man always seemed to defer to his mum.

He focused back on the task at hand and shrugged. "I bet there's a lot of people who can tell you a story about why they wanted to be a healer and why it was important for them, but, it was always just something I knew I wanted to do. Almost from the time I could walk and hold a wand I knew that was what I was going to do when I finished school. Be a healer. I had initially imagined I would be in America, but here seems to be just as good and the training program doesn't make you specialise until the end of your rotation, which I think makes more sense so you know what you want to do before you do it. Bit of try before you buy mentality there I'd say." he sometimes couldn't find the right words to describe having a calling, which felt like a bit of nonsense to him. He didn't believe in that kind of thing, but sometimes that's how it felt. "Why'd you decide on being an Auror?"​

 

[Jacob Kingsley]

Jacob was trying to stay focused on what August was saying, it was helpful to forget the burning sensation he was feeling. He nodded his head, gritting his teeth through some pain. He hadn't been to the United States in years and years, so he accepted the information and moved on. Jacob chuckled softly at the description of magical names. He and his siblings all had fairly boring names by wizarding standards. He could say he'd had a much easier time learning to spell his name than many of his wizarding friends, at least.

The burning pain was subsiding, which Jacob was quite thankful for. He shifted in his seat. "That must be nice. To have always known that this was what you wanted to do" he added. Even though he'd expected the question to be volleyed back to him, and he'd answered it numerous times before, he took a moment before responding. "I can't say that I always did want to be an Auror, but I also can't say I didn't. My dad had a pretty high position in the government here when I was a kid, and I guess seeing everything he was trying to do for the magical community in general, not just here, and my mom being a Head of House, and both of them just being the kind of people who always wanted to help others, made me want to do the same." He hadn't ever really stated it that way before, but he realized that he quite resonated with it this time around. "I didn't want to do the same exact things they'd done though, and I liked the idea of adventure and problem solving and...yea, the danger, involved in being an Auror. I can agree on the training being top-notch too. It's been quite the experience stepping into all of this" he mused.

 

[August Chase]

Keeping him talking is currently his priority, so he nods and listens as Jacob talks about why he'd chosen to be an auror. People had stories, he realised and it was sort of nice that it wasn't always just something to do, though he can't say as he has always come across that particular case. The fact that his father was high up in the government makes him pause for a second trying to puzzle out who it might have been, but he doesn't know enough about local politics for it to mean anything. He hasn't met anyone that went to the school either, even though his mother did, so he didn't know any of the professors either. "Maybe your mum was there when my mum was there," he muses, but doesn't really continue on the line of thought. His mum would have to be really old if that was true, because his his own mother had attended years ago, more than twenty he's pretty sure, but he doesn't really know. It's not a priority to know. "Helping people is important, it's how society continues, moves on," he says, looking over the rest of Jacob's wound to make sure that there was nothing there that shouldn't be and then summons a blood-replenishing potion, handing it to him. "You'll be sore for some time, the after-effects of the curse you took, but you should be fine to return to work the day after tomorrow, I would recommend stretching out those core muscles, just until you think you're feeling better, and take this too," he says, standing up and walking over to the cupboard. "Take an invigoration draught too," he says walking back and handing it over, "put a bit of pep back in your step."​