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UnBroken	By : OddDoll Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 6174 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Unbroken
By Odd Doll
Chapter 4

On her return to the hospital, Phoebe stopped at the nurses' station to check in. Behind the pink Formica counter was a lone nurse in polka dot scrubs. Phoebe recognized her from the night before. Her name was Dottie, she recalled, and she had worn polka dots on the previous day as well.
"Hello, I'm just going to visit with the John Doe for a while."
"You can't go in there now. The doctor's with him."
"Is there a problem?"
"No, just checking on the sutures from the surgery he had yesterday."
"Surgery?"
"Well, yes." Dottie looked up from the files she had been sorting and leaned forward. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "He had some internal bleeding, and they had to stitch him up a bit. He'll be all right, though. None of the organs had damage that won't heal." She looked around and added. "We're not supposed to talk about the patients' conditions, but you've done so much for him, you're almost like family. Just don't tell anyone, okay?"
"Does he have any other injuries?" Phoebe didn't want to sound like she was fishing for information, which she was, so she added, "I can afford the care, but I just was wondering how much it will run."
"The poor man has loads of old injuries," Dottie said, warming up into her best gossip voice. "Some of them look like they were never treated. He has a fracture of the occipital bone that never healed properly. I heard Dr. Johnson saying that he must have headaches all the time. Ruptured eardrums, some poorly healed bones in his hands, and the scars all over..."
"So, I guess he'll be here for quite some time," Phoebe said as soon as Dottie paused for breath, if only because she couldn't bear to listen to any more.
"It depends upon whether or not they talk him into further surgery. You know he's refused it, don't you?"
"No. I was unaware of that." But it made sense. "I'll have to talk to him."
She waited in the hall until the doctor and a nurse left his room. The nurse greeted her, which made the doctor stop and look her over. He ordered her to talk some sense into their stubborn patient and then walked off. She made a face at his back before she opened the door.
She found the patient alternating scowls with grimaces as he shifted in the bed.
"Let me help." She helped him roll onto his right side and then moved the chair around so he could look at her face while she talked.
"I've got you some things." From her handbag she took a small bag and a hospital brochure. She enlarged the bag and showed him the clothing inside before she stuffed the whole thing into a drawer at the bedside. "Muggle clothing, I'm afraid, but it's probably better if you try to blend in. Speaking of which, I put an anti-Muggle spell on the rental car, so I can park as long as we need without attracting notice." She showed him on the map the deserted corner of the parking lot where she intended to wait for him. "I can't wait too long, though. I should be back in my hotel, in case any questions are asked."
He nodded. She stared at his pain-filled face. "Are you sure you can get that far?" He nodded again, but closed his eyes. Phoebe sat silently for a moment. She didn't know what he had been like before. None of her British friends were young enough to have been his students, although some of them had been his classmates. All she knew was what lay before her, a man broken in body and spirit. He cooperated with her but showed no real interest in his rescue. He let her make the decisions and made no suggestions. And this was the man who planned and executed the escape from Hogwarts.
"There is something else I want to give you." She slipped her fingers into the sleeve of her jacket and took out her wand. "You'll need this more than me. Try it. See if it will work for you."
He took the wand and held it up, staring at it. A faraway look came into his eyes, and then they narrowed. Pointing the wand at his mouth, he mumbled a charm. A crackle of static, and he spit out bits of wire into his hand.
"Ah, thank God." He winced, grimaced, and moved his jaw in slow circles.
Phoebe smiled at his obvious relief. It was as if a candle had been lit inside him. A small one, for sure, but a light nonetheless. "When the nurses come in you're going to have to remember to keep your mouth shut."
He merely nodded, her humor not engaging him.
"Are you sure you can make it out of the hospital? You're a lot sicker than I realized."
"I will make it."
Confident words, but his face expressed neither doubt nor conviction. It made Phoebe uneasy. She decided to get things moving. "I'll go now. Wait a while, maybe until after a nurse has been in here, before you follow me down." She glanced down at the shopping bag. "You'll have to dress yourself. Can you manage?"
"I can." He stared at her for a moment, so intently that it left her speechless. "But not now."
"What?"
"Later. Tonight. When the hospital is less crowded."
"I really think we should do this right away." His sudden interest in how things would be run threw her off-balance. "I don't know how long it will take the Ministry to latch on to you. Maybe several days, maybe a month. I don't know. But the Muggles aren't going to leave you alone for long. Your not talking only makes them suspicious."
"My leaving will make them more."
"Then why are we doing this at all?" A touch of impatience gave her voice a sharp edge.
It took him far too long to say, "I want a real healer."
Phoebe watched him as he stared off into space, but he completely baffled her finely tuned ability to read others. Judging by his expressionless face, he might have sunk back into apathy the moment he spoke. She looked away, taking a deep breath to steady herself, and inhaled the mingled odors of sickroom, stale and sour, and the hospital smells of antiseptics, plastic implements, and the ozone of warm electronics from the monitors. Everywhere she looked were machines and devices that screamed "Muggle." It must be like being trapped in a foreign prison for him. She looked down at him again, seeing as if for the first time how terribly battered he was. "Okay. We'll do it your way."
His eyelids dipped a fraction as he nodded.
"Is seven okay? I'll park where I showed you on the map and wait for you to arrive. Okay?"
"Yes."
She said goodbye and left, wondering what would happen if he couldn't make it to the parking lot.
*****
Severus studied Phoebe's wand, thinking about what he could do if he were to acquire one of his own again. His old wand had been ironwood. He remembered the look of pride in his mother's eyes when the ironwood wand chose him. Black, straight, simple, and close to unbreakable, an ironwood wand could handle massive charges of power. At times it felt like grasping a thick, live electrical line pulsing with thousands of amps when it was just a piece of wood three-eighths inch thick at its base. It was a hard, tough wand that did not nick, break or bend with ordinary use, but the right force would cause it to shatter beyond repair.
Phoebe's wand was as different from Severus's as it could be. Willow wands swayed and bent, and could even be folded double without breaking. When they did break, they never severed completely and could often be repaired. They did not wield as much power as Severus's old wand, but were much more durable. A willow wand could do almost anything you asked of it.
He thought about what the wands said about their different personalities and could not help but wonder if Phoebe's had been the one more worthy of pride.
He set those unproductive thoughts aside.
Later that afternoon, after the nurses had come to take his vital signs, Severus rolled off the bed, clutching his injured side, and stood on shaky legs beside it. He needed to move slowly. Exertion increased his need for oxygen, and the deep inhalations brought on excruciating pain.
Severus sealed the door and went down on his knees to get the telephone book from its place on the bottom shelf of the bedside table. When he tapped the book with the wand, it shrank to the size of a small pocket notepad and the text changed to the copperplate gothic used in many wizarding books. It was now a directory of wizards and witches, and their businesses, in the area the Muggle phone book had covered.
He took the shrunken bag, the phone book, and the wand with him, leaning on the bed as he made his way across the room. He could still walk, only because the Russian had tried to kill him, beating his head and vital organs, but never bothered with his legs. Severus gave the dead bastard silent thanks.
In the bathroom he rested with his back against the wall. As he expanded the bag he shivered and his hands shook. The white t-shirt went over his head without too much difficulty, but the shorts proved impossible. He could not bend enough with tight bandages around his ribs. After trying to sit on the lid of the commode, he finally settled on the floor. He leaned as far as he could and cried out when he felt something tear beneath the thread the Muggles had put in his side. New pain erupted when he collapsed onto the floor, the side of his face slamming into the cold tiles. If he were a weaker man, and not grown used to torture, he would have cried like a child.
Severus lay with his eyes closed, gagging on the nauseating scents of disinfectant and pine, but the nausea mostly came from a flood tide of pain. After ten minutes, during which the throbbing beneath his suture subsided, he started again. Forget underwear, the pants had more fabric to work with. He tossed them at his feet and used his toes to pull them on. They were dark blue sweatpants with a drawstring waist. He wondered why she would choose such a thing for him until he put them on and discovered that, even at a size smaller than he used to wear, the waistline was enormous on his emaciated frame. By drawing the string tight, he could ensure that they stayed up.
Severus rested for a few minutes before taking up the next article of clothing. The socks thwarted him, and he resorted to putting on the shoes without them. These were sneakers with elastic vents instead of laces. He stood and slipped his feet into them without trouble. Phoebe had thought of everything.
He heard knocking on the door while he put on the t-shirt and coat she provided. After a check of the room for anything he might have dropped or left behind, he put the last of his belongings in the bag, shrank it, and put them in his coat pocket. A glance at the clock told him he had spent forty-five minutes in the bathroom.
Severus made himself invisible before unsealing the door. Within seconds it burst open and a frantic Nurse Dottie ran inside. While he stood silently in the corner, she checked the bed, the bathroom, even under the bed, before running out the door. Knowing that more nurses would be coming to verify what she saw, he waited a few minutes longer. He didn't want to be run over by a stampede of anxious females as he made his slow progress from the corner to the door and out into the hall.
The nurses came, looked, and muttered among themselves in tones that ranged from concern to anger. When the room was quiet, he started his long slow trek to the parking lot.
*****
Phoebe waited under the deep canopy of an oak tree. Even though she knew he was invisible, she stared out the windshield toward the yellow splashes made by the sodium lights. She kept her hands on the wheel, slapping them now and then in bursts of nervous energy. Her stomach fluttered and she decided it was a good thing she'd had no appetite for dinner. Her scalp itched, a sign of growing anxiety. Just in time, she remembered not to scratch with her nails, and rubbed at it instead.
The minutes crawled by. The evening grew cooler, and every time she looked up, more fog hovered in the lamplight. She had to fight the urge to get out and pace. The parking lot was quiet, but she didn't trust the anti-Muggle charm to cover her if she wandered too far from the door.
I can be anxious and still focus.
I can be anxious and still focus.
The self-talk Phoebe used on a daily basis took on an urgency. It had been so long since her last panic attack that she had stopped taking medication several years ago. Knowing that the fear of having an attack was as likely to trigger one as any external cause, she forced herself to use breathing and relaxation techniques she had learned in order to cope. She wished she could get out and move around, but she didn't want to draw attention to herself. After many minutes, her shoulders relaxed and she felt in control again.
As eight p.m. passed, she watched the second hand sweep through the hour on her watch and started to weigh her options. If he was still in his room, well and good. If he had tried to make it to the car, and could not, she could try to find him. But that would raise suspicion when the police went looking for him. And they would, she knew. He could be hurt, a voice in her head said. He could have taken off with your wand, another voice said. At eight-fifteen she got out of the car and walked around to the front of the hospital. I’ll just say I came to see him one more time before he went to sleep for the night.
Two patrol cars flanked the hospital's front entrance. Inside she found a uniformed officer stationed by the door. A few patients lounged in the waiting room with bored expressions, but she saw clusters of nurses and orderlies deep into whispered conversations. She didn't know if the charge in the air was due to normal activity or her anxiety.
On the second floor another officer stood watch by the nurses' station. The nurse at the desk pointed toward her and said something to the officer that Phoebe did not hear.
"Ms. Baher," he said. "I'm Officer Ring. I need to ask you a few questions. Can you come with me?"
"About what?" She followed him to John Doe's room. I am not going to lose it. At the sight of his empty bed, she nearly did. Her pulse pounded in her head and the light around her darkened.
"What happened? Is he all right?"
"Ms. Baher, the John Doe patient disappeared earlier this evening. At this time, we are trying to figure out where he could have gone and if he had any help. Can you tell me where you were from five to six p.m.?"
Phoebe frowned. It took only a second for the truth to hit her. He'd run out on her. Damn the fool!
"Um, I was at dinner." She looked up at the officer. Time to put on the show. "What's the big deal? Can't someone walk out of a hospital if they want to?"
"Well, I suppose they can, but under the circumstances, him being involved in a murder case and all, it does seem highly suspicious. Can you verify that you were at dinner?"
"I might have the receipt." Of course she did. She'd kept it on purpose. She took out her wallet and removed a stack of receipts. Some of them were six months old and she had the ridiculous thought that she ought to clean her purse. Phoebe found the receipt, glanced at the time, and handed it to the officer. She paid her bill at 5:53 p.m. John Doe had timed his departure with precision.
The officer examined the receipt. "Do you have any idea where he may have gone, Ms. Baher?"
"No. If he has a lick of sense he'll bring himself back here."
The officer excused himself, asking her to wait.
Phoebe went to the window and looked out at the small, darkened park that surrounded the hospital. The site was on the northern outskirts of Plymouth, in a suburban area. From this height she could see a scattered glow of warm lights, stretching out toward the brighter lights of the city. There was little of interest to a wounded wizard. Had he been aware of that when he left the hospital? She knew too little about his past to even guess. She doubted he could have Apparated. In his condition, with an unfamiliar wand, it would have been suicide.
"Where are you?"
"That's what everybody is wondering," she heard from behind her. She turned to see Chief Inspector Dunst standing in the open doorway. "We thought you might be able to tell us, Ms. Baher."
He entered the room and walked up to stand beside her at the window. "It's damp and chilly tonight. Not the best conditions for a sick man on the run." He turned his intelligent gaze upon Phoebe. "Unless of course, he has someplace safe and warm to go."
Phoebe forced herself into a calm state. "I hope, for his sake, he does." It was no lie.
"For now, we are going to accept your statement that you do not know where John Doe went, Ms. Baher. However, I will be stationing an officer at your hotel, just in case he decides to show up there. I would appreciate it if you stayed in your hotel tonight as well." He smirked. "For appearances sake, if nothing else. Good night."
She said nothing as he walked out of the room.
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