"Head Healer, it is good to see you awake and well." Healer in Training Mordent dipped her head respectfully after closing the door behind herself to Miranda Elliot's little sideroom.

She had passed by the room on occasion, rushing between places to help with this or that, or bring newly calculated remedies to patients about the hospital. All in all, by the end of a day she had been run ragged, along with the rest of the staff. Thankfully the worst had passed and the numbers of admittances and serious cases were declining. The sleeping children were waking, and their esteemed Head Healer.

"Forgive me, I know you've not long had a meeting with the senior healers and a few representatives, but I do need to bring a matter to your attention." She clasped a file of parchment by her side. "Do you have five minutes?"

On seeing the Head Healer's reaction she gave the slightest of smiles. Indeed, Elliot wasn't physically going anywhere fast. She approached, and drew a chair to Miranda's bedside to better allow her to see what she had brought with her.

"I don't expect you to remember, but before I worked here, I worked for Drammes Apotheke for 9 years. Drammes supply the hospital with a number of potions that contain willow bark and syrup of hellebore, two of the contaminated ingredients. They also supply a number of apothecaries in London and surrounding areas with apothecary products, again containing willow bark and hellebore." As she spoke, she opened the folder, and pointed to several labels and the despatch note from the apothecary with the branding - a set of scales.

"We advised the apothecaries to dump stock the moment we identified the cause, but I confess I went past my duties as healer to visit these apothecaries outside of my shifts here to collect a sample from the batches they were dumping." She turned over to a list of apothecary addresses, ticked off, the ink smudging in places from where the weather had got to the list.

"Much as the focus is on finding what, and how to counteract the poisons, I felt I was able to identify the source once it became apparent my former employers were involved." She paused, looked up at Miranda to check she was not going too quickly, or that this was not news to the Head Healer.

Awake; yes.
Well; there was some debate.
The urge to vomit every fifteen minutes seemed to have been subdued but her healers were still reluctant (rightly so!) to give unnecessary potions. Therefore Miranda hadn’t had anything to ebb the nausea, instead it having been decided a much better idea to allow her system to clear itself. It had been enough of an embarrassment leading a staff meeting from her hospital bed wearing nothing but a hospital gown covered by a sheet without the unpleasantness of an over powering nausea.
She couldn’t eat because of it and her budget hospital lunch lay ignored on the bedside table.
It was a strange feeling. Despite having been asleep for ten days, Miranda found she was still exhausted and desperately needing to shut her eyes. She’d ignored advice from both Healer MacQueen and Ignan and hauled herself out of bed only to find her legs like jelly and her balance appalling. For thirty years Miranda had been dealing with people waking from similar comas and yet experiencing the effects first hand was a surprise to her.

Now regardless of being desperate for more sleep, Miranda wasn’t allowing herself to. She was sat up in bed, pale faced and sickly looking, leafing through various patient notes and reports that she’d asked for regarding the poison victims. Her own patient notes were at the bottom of the pile, explanation of how the house elf had brought her in that night she’d collapsed.
"Do you have five minutes?" Miranda had heard the witch enter the room, she’d heard her speak but it hadn’t completely registered. Finally, when she did look up, Elliot shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Unfortunately the Head Healer wasn’t sure how long this statement would be true. Mordent took it upon herself to pull a chair closer to the bedside and sit down with a folder. This was likely to take longer than five minutes.

"I don't expect you to remember, but before I worked here, I worked for Drammes Apotheke for 9 years.”
“I remember.” Elliot knew the histories of all her healing staff. Why else would she have allowed Mordent to restart training? “Obviously I know of Drammes.”
But Elliot let her trainee continue, keeping the quill and note parchment covered in her illegible scrawl in her lap in case the trainee could tell her anything significant.
“The tainting of these potions wasn’t accidental, Mordent.” Elliot’s voice didn’t hold its usual severity or strength. “Are you saying you know something damning about this company?” Her dark eyes looked over the glasses propped on her nose. “Something that may help us get out of this mess?”

"The tainting of these potions wasn't accidental, Mordent. Are you saying you know something damning about this company? Something that may help us get out of this mess?" Meeting the Head Healer's eye, Elixa nodded.
"Yes Head Healer, I am."

She paused just long enough to confirm Elliot wasn't going to dismiss the possibility.
"A Drammes batch number identifies the sources and route of the potion. Here," She pulled out a bottle label from the set and held it in both hands, running her nail along the code which was numbers, letters and greek alphabet.

"London the latter part - that's why the labels are printed primarily in English, then here, that they were brewed in the Paris plant. Hundreds upon hundreds of potions are brewed there every day, mind, so I contacted my old branch in Sweden and had them send me samples and labels from their stock - Paris was fine, but different source of hellebore see, compare here," she held out the Swedish label beside the English one - the batch codes differed apart from the second part.

"I didn't recognise the path beyond that, but I have managed to do some digging. Either way, all of the London stock that has had to be dumped is from the same two batches, and from what I can tell from my contacts and of the news I've scoured, that the London batches are isolated. There's no other records of this sort of sickness at other hospitals or towns that has reached the press." She was scrabbling about with papers on the edge of Miranda's bed and paused a moment to let the Head Healer collect herself again.

"But the willow bark and the syrup of hellebore tainted products both share the same originating source. I can't say for hundred percent certain as Drammes have clammed up like a duck's backside, but it looks like the one source is consistent despite the route it took after. So however or whoever ensured this, has knowledge of Drammes and the way they work, which suggests to me that it could only be someone within their company." She sorted back through things, "If I still worked for the company I'd be able to request the full paperwork of the batch right back to when it was delivered or retrieved from the grower, but since the news that Drammes stock has been dumped in London has got back to the head offices in Heidelberg, nobody is talking." She glanced up to Miranda again. "But I'm not the Head Healer."

Desperate to focus and understand exactly what the foreign trainee healer had to say, Miranda sat up further in the bed, staring intently at the younger witch. It was presumably important information flowing from Mordent’s lips but Miranda wasn’t of a sound enough mind to keep up and understand the words, let alone the implications. Having only woken up the evening before, a rigorous staff meeting about the events of the previous two weeks had been particularly taxing. Unfortunately, this caused the middle aged witch currently lying in a hospital bed to be extremely exhausted and mentally drained.

In her weariness, Miranda was at least able to identify her lack of comprehension and consider how she was going to over come it.

"But I'm not the Head Healer." Mordent informed her boss. In response to this Miranda put a hand up, palm out, to silence the witch.

“You’re not, no.” The response was dismissive, bored. She couldn’t very well tell the witch she’d not been in the right mind to understand what she’d been talking about. “I don’t need to be bothered with all this now, Mordent. Your voice should be mollycoddling a distressed patient, not berating me with theories and suggestions above your station..”

Lips pursed, Miranda reached for a glass of water from the bedside table, not bothering to glance at the other witch as she spoke once more.
“Write down what you’ve got to say and I’ll read it in my own time. Do leave me in peace.”
She took a sip of water and resumed her glancing over the patient notes and reports.

Miranda's reaction to matters surprised Elixa who recoiled to the chair beside the bed, disappointed. It had seemed that this was the right moment to discuss until then, and now her boss was eagerly dismissing her.

"Yes Head Healer," She replied, the wind taken out of her sails. She might have protested more but she looked up and took a proper look at Miranda. She didn't look at all well again. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to delay, but you're not, you've only just-." She reached over and gathered up her papers. "I'll submit it to you as soon as I can, Madam."

Away they went and she got up to replace the chair to the original place, glancing at Miranda.
"Do you need…?" At the response she nodded. Time to go.

End