Plot Thread :: Wiki Entry ::  Adaptive Body Armor

This thread is totally open to anyone who happens to be in the hospital at this time or is a healer. The patient at the end of the thread is a direwolf and is going to start changing abnormally, and several other patients will follow suit and things will get chaotic, and we'll see how well the healers did to prepare for wolves! Have fun with it!

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After the werewolf attacks in March the Board of Warlocks voted on reorganizing the hospital staff to focus on the first floor, Creature-Induced Injuries, They preferred to make short-term solutions rather than long-term plans. Address the symptom, not the cause. The failure of any medical world that digressed beneath the interests of the patients.

However the Board's plan rarely coincided with that of the healers who functioned in the hospital. The overtime was exhausting, the floor was chaotic, and the patients were skittish--the health of the whole floor was compromised. The next full moon had gone and went with few issues, with most of the infected being at the ministry that time, but the hospital still needed to be properly staffed and the patients still needed to be safe.

That need led to Delilah, Jason, and a few other healers getting together to come up with a few solutions: a base for throwing together a quick sedative that can be slapped to a syringe and injected immediately, and an adaptive suit for protecting healers against bites that was tested with bites from well-bred cordoba crups to Delilah's own crocodile.

Many of the suits were hanging in the locker room, the sedative was running around the hospital between Vivienne and a few other healers, and Delilah helped some Goblins running about fixing up some safe room with the sweetheart politician, Persepolis Zephyr, curiously followed and chatted in the healer's wake; if it were only so simple. Zephyr never struck Delilah as a whimsical witch, and she questioned why a Hogwarts Governor would be at Mungo's unless there was something on the other witch's personal agenda or there was something bigger going on. She couldn't just be curious. Politicians never were.

Despite all that, Delilah was a hospitable host, and had been weaving the witch between scampering Goblins since her arrival, and letting the witch's warm smile fill a patient's heart with comfort like she filled every curve of her robes. The witch with tight dreadlocks outpouring from her ponytail couldn't deny the infectious spirit Zephyr brought with her.

"'Dey're working on some doors, walls, an' lifts," Delilah's voice finally swung in response to the Goblins moving around, and possibly Persepolis' curiosity, "Can' never be too careful after March." A  small humiliated smile nestled on Delilah's robust lips as she helplessly  turned out one of her palms.

A sleeping patient had then levitated next to them in a Gurney as a mediwizard fired of a few questions for Delilah as the Jamaican peered at the patient's clipboard. "I'll put him in a room, go get Marren."

The nurse scurried off and Delilah gently tugged the patient by a room before she turned her attention to Persepolis Zephyr again, "But we get by..."

Delilah's dark eyes them moved from the female patient to the clipboard, distracted by some minute detail she didn't remember on the papers. She picked up the clipboard and began to leaf through the notes, potions, remedies, illnesses, and injuries. There was something about a glumbumble sting, but the witch on the gurney had no marks, and she seemed much more frazzled from the "sting" than expected.

The patient then churned out a very unnerving gurgle. If Delilah didn't know better she'd mistake the poor girl for a crocodile. But Delilah did know better.

With a dull half-lidded stare falling on the patient Delilah brushed her hand against the hospital logo on her green robes, calmly alerting other healers to a potential problem. The witch then completely ignored the patient, put a hand on Zephyr's shoulder, and gestured down the hall as if they were continuing a tour, "We're onto 'di lifts now, Governor."

Being the Chair of Hogwarts had its advantages.  Despite no formal relationship with the illustrious hospital, the Governors had cause in the past to visit as noted guests.  In the past a Governor had visited to inquire after the preparedness of those entering the hospital after leaving Hogwarts, or to recruit and inquire after the school's own Infirmary needs.  Persepolis was visiting today as a guest of the hospital - a curious desire to see how things were going since the horrible events of March.

Despite vague yet grim pretenses, Zephyr's mood was high and she very happily tailed Healer Foley around, marveling at her deft management and triage, and nodding appropriately as she detailed the recent and coming changes.

"We're all relying on you," she'd said to Madam Foley, "I think I speak for a great many witches in wizards in that St. Mungo's hasn't let us down.  How could anyone have been prepared for that strange night?  It's just so reassuring to see you all taking such important measures."

"Oh my..."  Zephyr had paused and put her hand to her chest when a gurney stopped them.  The witch looked quite desperate although no apparent injury could be seen. 

Then the patient gurgled and took on a haunting, vacant expression.  Even as Persepolis was being shuffled off, she tarried for half a step. 

"Will she be all right? That sounded quite ominous.  You know I saw what was clearly a rune shadow in my tea leaves this morning - do you think this could be related?"

Despite the superstitious mentality that many wizards held in England, not many seemed to hold a lot of respect for Divination; but the world and all its devices intertwined with each other in an unexplainable way, and so there was a pattern to all things, if one could find it. So Zephyr's comment only gave Delilah's suspicions reason to overtake her gut, "I don't doubt it," she said with calm firmness, "but she's most likely better off between us t'ree."

Long heavy gloves slipped from the tall witch's sleeves and were immediately slid onto her hands as she continued to guide Zephyr down the hall through the disappearing green robes and reappearing bulkier robes, hanging from healers, with the recently made body-armor beneath them, that immediately tended to the gargling gurney. Then they all disappeared into their own room.

A haunting silence seemed to crawl through the first floor, but then the room for the gargling gurney patient gave a creeking lurch, echoing throughout the ward. Anyone else remaining in the hall immediately put a hand to their badge and hastened their pace in the opposite direction, and any remaining confused goblins smartly followed.

The gloved hands of the healer-in-charge then unsheathed her wand from her dreadlocked weave of hair, "As I said..." she gestured down the hall again. Then, like an un-tuned organ coming to life key by key, the air rose with howls mixed with a rabid concoction of  human whooping and snarling. And was immediately followed by a voice booming through the floors:

"First floor, be aware that there are three partial direwolf transformations taking place in the Rehabilitation Ward. The appropriate staff members will handle the situation. Please take cover in any rooms that are multiples of seven. Do not interact with patients. Do not approach the Werewolf Injury Ward. The WCU will arrive shortly."

Delilah finally finished with her, now,  very obvious take on the situation, "We could be better off."

Zephyr was not slow to draw her wand as well, even as she was being shuffled off amid waist-high goblins.  In the blink of an eye Healer Foley had become covered in garb that looked like a muggle automobile and Persepolis frowned deeply at it.  It looked absolutely absurd.  But now was not the time to make comment on such things and instead she held her wand before her as any witch or wizard was taught to do - it was a defensive posture.  But Persepolis was not a witch handy with spells, the last defensive magic she'd done was during the war over a decade ago.  And even then - it was only wards and hiding enchantments. 

Hesitant to even speak to the Healer now that the announcement had gone off, she almost laughed.  "You're calling them 'Direwolves' too, now are you?"  The Ministry of Magic abhorred the term, but the media adored it.  "Seems a little... hyperbolic?  Thank Merlin for the WCU..!"

Even as she opined from her soapbox, her wand hand was trembling.

"'Dere are times when delivering a medical diagnosis should be done wit' subtle political correctness ," Delilah informed Persepolis in an light tone, as if they were strolling through a beautiful park, "An' other times you jus' need to say it, 'den get it done."

As the situation spiraled out of control, Delilah held on firmly to her calm demeanor. Perhaps it was from years of handling a ridiculous assortment of pets from her relatives and her own home, or perhaps it was from commonly experimenting and applying spellwork to breeding projects, or perhaps it was from raising a wild batch of her own offspring--but come what may Delilah was determined to see it through until the end, and at her absolute best.

"We can call them pups if 'dat sounds better?" Delilah's voice was lower now, but she hadn't lost her ability to couple a gentle comforting tone with a lick of sarcasm.

A shadow loomed across the floor and wall of the hall in front of them, and the door from earlier, that was now far behind them, gave a distant, sickly, and forceful metallic creak before it sounded like it was tore off its hinges and smashed into a wall. Delilah's eyes swept around the hall before she guided Persepolis down a side corridor and into an open room, (number forty-two), and gently pulled the door shut and pressed her head against the doorframe.

The sounds of large creatures stalking the halls and of low growls creeped from beneath the door, but Delilah's thoughts didn't rush to self-preservation or survival--she thought first of the healers, who first secured the now half-lycanthropic patient lurking in the halls. The chances of their being dead was high, but there was also a small possibility they were alive. That small possibility was all that mattered.

However, there was the problem of a Hogwarts Governor in her presence. Once the hallway quieted Delilah took out a compact mirror from inside her robe and held it under the door. It reflected the hallway, which was mostly empty save for a curious direwolf curiously digging under a doorframe.

"Were-clot[1]... I need t' get back to 'dat room we were first at," Delilah pressed her hand up against her badge without taking her eye off the reflection. Hopefully someone would respond, at least without getting chased by a wolf. "Seems like a strong ward's on 'di room down th' hall--on a scale of trying your chances here or recklessly getting to safety, which would you prefer, Governor?" Delilah, with her eyebrows carving her face a strong and stoic firmness, finally turned to face Persepolis.

1.	She's cursing