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A gentle knock on the door yielded no response, though he hadn’t been expecting one. He opened the door and scrutinised the dimly lit interior with its slumbering patient carefully. No disturbances, nothing - their patient had probably not woken up at all since yesterday. If he had gotten a response, then recovery would have been progressing faster than expected, but given the age of the patient that was not likely.

He checked through the notes at the end of the bed, only having heard sparse details from the healer on yesterday’s long-term ward rounds. An unfortunate accident; patient had accidentally consumed aconite ointment meant for external use. Not critical, but it would take a few days to flush the poison out of their system. Nothing out of routine then. A blood check had already been done earlier and antidote administered - he mulled over the toxicity levels in his head for a bit. Enough to knock out this patient for a day, but recovery time is roughly give or take twenty-four hours to start. Sounds about right.

Arcturus closed the file and slotted it back in before heading around to check the patient’s vitals. Most of the patients here have more life than what you’ve got, including this one, sneered the little voice, apparently unable to resist the temptation of mocking him in the quiet of the hospital room, shut off and isolated away from the busy floor outside. It was, admittedly, a conducive environment for the mind to fill in the empty spaces that should have normally been filled.

“Will you stop that,” he muttered under his breath. It had been a tetchy week of denying the one day of the year that marked time truly passing. Another year, a little older, and he was not one bit entertained at having gone past another marker. Better to focus on others than the passage of time, but that said... he had to truly look into himself as he wondered if it was ever effective in the long-term. The second voice was having a free-for-all with his moodiness in the interim, not helping one bit on lowering his overall temperament. His life couldn’t get any worse right now.

January was the month that felt like it would never end. Miranda had started the month with her 49th birthday, and her husband coming down with, what people had labelled, magical measles. A ridiculous name when no measles were actually involved. The 10th had held dreadful news of Alec, her youngest older brother. This news, Miranda had been reeling from as she tried to continue on. As the Head Healer of such an enormous wizarding hospital, she’d not been able to afford to shut down with grief. It had meant, however, a harsher rule and a lot of staff being put in their place.

It was a few weeks prior that Healer Hollingbury had been brought to her attention, and unfortunately for the young healer (or perhaps fortunately), he’d fallen off her radar in all of the distraction. Now, however, Miranda was trying to get herself back on track, and her next stop was the Third Floor.

The Head Healer, Satan, The Ice Queen, was often heard before she was seen. She wore black stillettos and her emerald and gold robes over a knee length black dress. The heels of her shoes were heard along the tiled corridors as she made her way through the corridors and wards to the private cubicle that the mediwitch directed her to.

Miranda stood for a moment at the door. A voice suddenly reached her mind. Hollingbury’s voice.
“ Most of the patients here have more life than what you’ve got, including this one,”
It was harsh, sneering.

With a frown, Miranda knocked once, a gesture of politeness for patient privacy. This particular patient, however, was in a coma, and the healer within was clearly struggling to keep his thoughts to himself. Inside the small room, Miranda pushed the door shut and set dark eyes on her colleague. He looked tired, strained. Like life was getting a little too heavy.
“Healer Hollingbury.” She greeted. "You look tired."

He lifted his head from the notes at the knock, still preoccupied, and glanced her way. Then his eyes figuratively kicked his brain, and he physically jumped at the abrupt epiphany about the figure who had just entered the room. The folder nearly slipped out of his hands; he quickly caught it, thankfully.

"Head Healer. Uhh." There was just something about her that made her unreadable, and therefore someone who admittedly made him a little more afraid of her than he wanted to be. "I... it's been a busy month." He would say more, but Arcturus knew that no one was busier than the head of the hospital herself. He also wasn't ignorant of recent happenings, having taken up the habit of reading the Prophet in the morning before work no matter how much he despised the paper.

"Are you here to check in on the patient as well?" he asked, forcibly relaxing his shoulders. "Or... were you looking for me? I was not aware." If it's the latter, well done, your life is about to get worse, answered the second voice mockingly. Better brace for the flood! He could already feel the anxiety lurking in a pit in his chest. Keeping his silence, the healer tried to shut down the other voice, not an easy battle in and of itself.

The shocked expression upon seeing her in his vicinity; it was a look she’d never grow bored with. Each staff member’s reaction was slightly different. Her middle leadership, healers in charge, they didn’t jump in surprise. They’d learned how to approach their boss, and when the avoid her. It was the minions, the regular healers that seemed to fear her. Miranda knew the names her staff had for her. Ice Queen was still her favourite. She had, after all, built a palace made of ice in her own mind.

Hollingbury’s eyes had gone wide, greeting her in tired surprise. A busy month. Every month was a busy month at St Mungo’s. Every day hosted a new disaster. Clearly, it was taking it’s toll on this wizard.

“I was loo-” Miranda froze mid words as the same snarky, cruel voice invaded her mind once more.

“If it's the latter, well done, your life is about to get worse, Better brace for the flood!”

“I was looking for you, Hollingbury.” Her voice was softer, less cold. Was this voice plaguing him all the time? With a sigh, Miranda lowered herself into the visitor’s seat a few metres from the bed. “What flood?”

“I was looking for you, Hollingbury.”

He couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows, somewhat alarmed that the answer had been the latter. Arcturus preferred keeping his head down to avoid any attention drawn to him, which was not hard to achieve in the hospital - there was always much to do and that he could do well. This was very much news to him.

Ah hell. Evidently the voice in his head shared the same desire to have the answer be the former. Despite the constant infighting there were still some things that they - he - shared in agreement.

“What may I help you with?” Then his tired smile faded in the slow but inevitable revelation that she’d just heard what the voice in his head said. Could it be? Another one? An image of the eccentric man he had met atop St Mungo’s - Morgenthau, that was his name - flashed past. But the inner voice remained deeply sceptical despite, he personally felt, all evidence to the contrary.

The healer glanced towards the patient to check that they were not abruptly joining the conversation as well. He wasn’t quite certain on how to deal with this. On one hand, she’d repeated what the voice had said. On the other hand--

Paranoia. Anxiety. Despite not doing anything wrong, it’s always something I dread when she wants to see me... You know, if you act as if she hadn’t heard your thoughts, you might just end up burning another bridge. But hey, what do you know, that’s all I seem to be capable of these days.

If she heard all of that he’d definitely know for sure, for he could not bring himself to speak the answer. Dread in the pit of his stomach swelled a little more, rising to weigh his chest like a leaden weight.

What could he help her with? Miranda resisted an urge to roll her eyes or sigh. It most evidently wasn’t her that needed the help, was it? But in his current mentally compromised state, he would hardly take her usual harsh reaction quite as well as others had learned to. So, she just sat calmly in the chair, resting her hands in her lap.

The voice continued to pierce her mind, grating, harsh, anxious. As if he was internally arguing with himself. Just wonderful, one of her usually decent staff members was losing it. Now, Miranda did sigh. Right now, she would need to engage with Healer Storm and not the ice-cold Head Healer that was his boss. No one appreciated being told that they were mad; and contrary to popular belief, Miranda did actually have a heart deep in there somewhere. Surprisingly, it wasn’t made of ice.

“Is there something you might wish to tell me, Healer?”

“You can hear it.”
He paused, shook his head. “Of course. Of course you can.”

“Is there something you might wish to tell me, Healer?”

His mind went entirely blank. Where did one start with this sort of thing? It was also not something a person would pour out immediately, boss or not, even if he trusted and respected her opinion.

“I can’t say for certain,” he began, thinking back of when all this started, “but after I-- the dementors, memories have been slowly coming back to me. Things that I might have forgotten for a reason.” It was a suspicion, nothing more, but he felt it prudent to mention. “I haven’t been able to manage them-- the emotions I get when I have to deal with them. I just can’t really talk about it, it’s… difficult, nerve-wracking, uncomfortably so.”

Because you don’t want people to see how vulnerable I am when it’s that bad. You’re afraid of people for reasons you don’t know and can’t figure out why. It’s a confusing time when you have to figure out where the feelings are coming from, and you don’t want to be a burden to others when you have no answers to give. Ultimately you feel that you should take on the fight head-on because it’s your problem to bear alone and everyone else has their own lives to see to.

Bitter bile boiled and buckled in his gut. But he forced it to stay down, averting his gaze from his superior. He knew she’d hear - was that the right word? - the thoughts resulting from the internal reflecting as he had sought for answers for the past half-year. Along with it the apprehension in anticipation of the response. It was irrational and he hated that.

“You can hear it.”

Biting back a sarcastic response, Miranda simply nodded.

As the wizard continued, the Head Healer tried to keep her expression perfectly plain and free of emotion. As one might expect, it was hardly a struggle for the ice queen. The mention of dementors caused a marginal twitch of the fingers in her lap, however. Miranda had had enough of her own struggles with dementors in the preceding year. Her main focus of magical study at the moment, however, fell very much in line with the problems Hollingbury and his inner mind were sharing.

After a moment of silence, Healer Storm withdrew her wand from the pocket of her emerald and golden robes to point to a stool near the foot of the bed. This stool, with a twist of the witch’s wand, transfigured itself into a chair at the same level with the one she’d chosen to occupy. Next, she pointed her wand at the hospital bed containing the comatose patient. Very slowly, a thin blue veil moved down over the bed.

“We still don’t know what people hear in their sleep.” She explained, probably pointlessly. “Take a seat Hollingbury.”

Is this where I determine that I’m in deep sh-- trouble?

That was a united thought. Arcturus had, apart from his impromptu trip to Malaysia a while back, kept his head down in a bid to maintain a low profile in front of his superiors. It was out of a  self-imposed principle from pride, pride that he needed no supervision to be competent and accomplish his work. Thus any sort of attention from the higher-ups was always, for him, expected to be some sort of reprimand for something.

Aware that he had stood there just a little too long, he silently slipped into the seat, suddenly very still and uncertain of what was next while gently pushing away the silhouette that accompanied the darker voice in his head to some inconspicuous corner of his mind. Am I in trouble? The unspoken words hung in the air above his head like Christmas tinsel strung up until now.