10.45pm


He made his way down the corridor with a couple of hardbacks tucked under his arm, eyes sliding over numbered doors. Robin had just gotten off a night shift and thrown on a fit for a looksee at The Closet - not his kind of haunt at all but he had it from a reliable source that the place was as good as any to test the waters of their local queer community.

But his last patient, an emergency, had asked if he'd be kind enough to drop by a family member on the third floor because they couldn't attend tomorrow's standing appointment . Some long-term patient long lost to a coma, who liked being read to.

Robin couldn't say no. He was in no rush to investigate Soho anyway; it made him feel old, seeing himself in the bathroom mirrors of nightclubs, wrinkles amplified by thumping music leaking through busy doors and younger faces swimming past.


"Oh," the wizard hesitated as he stepped into the private room, surprised to see a green-robed Healer[1] at the bedside. "Sorry, am I interrupting?"

She had stepped back from the comatose wizard almost as soon as she clocked him, which was a little weird. The witch smiled, herself surprised, but recovered quickly. "No, of course not. Not at all. But it isn't," she gestured, confused, "it isn't visiting hours, sir."

"Oh I'm not... well, not technically," Robin laughed at his own incoherence as he joined her on the opposite side of the bed. "Healer Louvelle. Robin Louvelle," they shook hands over the oblivious patient. "Promised a lady I'd read some Whitman to her old uncle here. Should I come back?"

      "How kind of you," she remarked with that same smile - a pained smile, he thought, and felt worse for getting in her way. "Healer Fudge. Elliot. I'm just on my way out, you needn't trouble yourself."

There was something about her. He couldn't put his finger on it. Direct as she was, a kind of evasiveness. Robin mirrored her smile with his own genuine one, nodding.

"Thanks Elliot," he tested her name as she came round the bed. "Nice meeting you."

Healer Fudge left and he stared at the closed door for a moment. She seemed to be in a hurry to get away. Robin wasn't used to people not liking him, he thought he was pretty gifted at making small talk and getting to know folk. But to each their own.

He pulled a chair up to the bedside and tied his hair back. The English were funny like that. Cold fish. Robin chose one of the two anthologies he'd been given, opening it up to the first page as he drew breath.

1.	Healer Elliot Fudge,  a senior Poisonings Healer and Legilimens.  Creator and drug lord behind Muse.