Emotional Connection

princess

There were only four Healers total at the hospital, including Ashley, so she only met Pete, the head of the hospital as the other two were on the night shift. Seeing as it was fairly slow that early in the morning, they had plenty of time to become acquainted with each other, and Pete asked nearly too many questions about her travelling with her father, trying to find out the extent of her experience with healing and medical care.

Soon enough though, her skills were put to the test after a few of the trainers got themselves into an accident and had to be carried in to be treated.

Ashely took a deep breath, tracking people with her eyes, finding out who had the worst injuries and going from there. "Ok, let's take a look at this, ok." She spoke soothingly, trying not to convey her alarm to whoever was lying face-down on the bed with half their back burned off. "We can sort this don't worry, are you in pain?"

Whoever it was nodded, trying not to move too much, and Ashley gritted her teeth, trying to sort everything in her head out, moving mostly on instinct and muscle memory to get the pain under control and then patching up the wound. Having sorted them quickly, making sure they were comfortable and the treatment was working, she moved on, treating everyone who came her way as quickly as possible, trying not to pay too much attention to the burn treatment she used tearing away the skin on her fingers, having already burned through too many pairs of latex gloves. She wondered if anyone would have a spare pair of dragon-hide gloves, considering her last pair literally got destroyed in Italy. Probably not the best thing to ask right then and there though.

"Hey, Ash, Redhead at the entrance!" Pete yelled over to her as she was nearly finished with another patient. She glanced up to see whoever it was leaning nonchalantly against the doorway, though she could clearly see he was a lot more injured than he was letting on by the way he was holding himself. As quickly as she could, she finished up and jogged over to him.

"Wanna get to a bed for me so I can check you out?" She smiled as he nodded, limping over to the nearest available bed. Her gaze shifted to his leg where it looked as though his clothes had been melted into his skin, giving him possibly the worst burns she'd seen.

"It's pretty bad, I know." He grimaced, sitting back, letting her examine him. "Probably should have dived out of the way quicker."

She raised an eyebrow, grabbing a pair of gloves from the side, "well, it's definitely not good. What's your name?" She asked, trying to distract him from what she was about to do.

"Charlie." He grinned, "nice to meet you. Definitely not how I usually introduce myself to new people here."

She smiled a little hardly listening, "ok Charlie, this is going to hurt like hell." She gave him something for the pain before grabbing some tweezers and pulling the melted clothing from his burn. She could feel him tensing, and it took everything in her to carry on instead of stopping, knowing that if she didn't remove it, things would go south for him very quickly.

Barely five minutes later and she was finished, having removed all the melted fabric from him and applied burn ointment and wrapping the wound to make sure it stayed clean of infection. "Ok, well you're benched for the rest of the day because if you get that burned into your skin I'm just gonna have to cut the leg off." She sat back, looking around at the few people left who had been admitted either by her or by Pete.

"Benched? No, no I have to go back out, I've got a class-"

"Cancel it." Ashley raised an eyebrow. "

"But-"

"Look, I don't care if you were supposed to become the new queen of Scotland, cancel your plans. You're here for the night at least, end of discussion, princess."

Charlie looked torn between being scared and outraged at her audacity, but Ashley could see Pete laughing out of the corner of her eye. "I... But what about the babies?"

Ashley looked away from his pleading eyes, standing and walking back over to her cubby to put away her things. "Someone else can take care of them." She looked at Pete, who was failing badly at stifling his laughter. "I'm assuming you don't listen to instructions all too often?" She turned back to Charlie, who already looked bored.

"He doesn't." Pete stood next to her, arms folded, looking amused. "There have been times that I've turned my back on him for no more than thirty seconds and he's already gone back to whatever landed him in here in the first place."

"Hey! I'm not always like that!" Charlie protested. "It's just that Laura and James really don't like me and I don't want that all night."

Pete laughed, shaking his head. "Well, that's your problem, not ours. Besides, it's their job to look after you."

Ashley sighed, checking the time. They had nearly two hours until the end of their shift and James and Laura would take over from them. "Well, you have two hours to come up with an alternative solution that we approve of. After then, you just have to suck it up."