Reporting in as required. on Hospital Wing

David Kim

June 12, 2011 3:18 AM

Reporting in as required. by David Kim

The package, weighing in at a little over six pounds and seven ounces, was sealed with yellow and black tape and clearly marked Medical Records: Sealed. David was still a good deal surprised that his mother had entrusted him with them. Out of all the packing and unpacking that had gone on during his last week before coming to Sonora, his medical records had been the one thing to never leave his trunk, the sealed envelope wrapped in five inches of bubble wrap and tucked into one of the half dozen drawers that lined that particular half of the trunk. David was even more surprised that his mother hadn't insisted on a direct on-site visit/interview/interrogation of Sonora's resident doctor or nurse or--

He paused. They were called Healers; he had read that the night before. They were supposed to be just like doctors, only they relied on their wands and various potions instead of the tools and medicines seen in the Muggle world. The word still felt strange to him, this word Muggle. It had such an odd arrangement to it, like something made-up by a child. A good many wizarding things had strange titles; it was like the whole culture gloried in the absurd. Only, he supposed, it wasn't absurd to them at all. To them. . . it was normal.

David switched the package from one arm to the other, craning his neck around the corner and hoping he remembered where the infirmary was. He had tracked it down the day prior, after dinner, knowing that he would need to report in to both the healer and his mother or face the possibility of a sudden recall home. He had dutifully promised to meet with the school healer before the end of his first week, to deliver the medical records and submit to an initial examination. David had a suspicion that like most anything else in life that he experienced for the first time, his mother felt that magic might be harmful.

He had tried to explain it to her, as calmly as possible, that as he had always been a wizard, that couldn't be possible. But she seemed to see his magic as some sort of disease and had even voiced out loud the thought that perhaps the congenital heart defects had been a direct result of said impairment. A late night spent pouring over Google search results had failed to provide any similar theories for such a corollary. David had no plans to mention it to the healer.

He shifted the package back again, stopped in the hallway, and then turned around to go back to the door he'd passed a passage down. He had missed the placard, but it was there all the same and clearly labeled. David frowned at the door, his dark eyes clouded by momentary revulsion. It was the same, even here in the middle of a desert in a magical school-- that same antiseptic feel and smell-- that he had come across in every doctor's office and hospital he'd ever visited. And in his short life of eleven years, he had been to many.

David closed his eyes, let out a short breath, and then pushed through the doorway, careful to place a loud knock of interruption before fully entering. “Hello, Medic Rocamboli? It's David Kim. I've come to bring you my records.”

He stepped deeper into the room, depositing the package onto one of the empty cots. An expert at streamlining an examination, David took a seat beside it and began unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt. He wasn't sure of how a wand examination would differ from that of Muggle utensils, but he was certain checking his heart would be involved. His fingers lowered after he unbuttoned enough to unveil the entirety of the thick, pale scar that stretch down his chest unevenly. He hoped the examination would be finished quickly, but chances were with records as thick as his, there was bound to be some time spent in their review.

A review that, unknown to David who had never been given the opportunity to read through his file, would reveal that beyond the initial three surgeries he had undergone before his first birthday, he was very much the epitome of a success story for a tetralogy of Fallot patient. The almost sole reason for his continued exclusion from physical or strenuous activities was his mother's protective vehemence and his easily cowed pediatric cardiologist. The truth was, ever since his seventh birthday, his check-ups had granted him the green light to be introduced to such things as recess or sports, as long as he was properly supervised and took things slowly.

But David was unaware of all of this, and as he sat waiting, he could only think of how very often he would end up seeing the infirmary in the seven years to come. His mother had demanded monthly check-ups, and as stubborn and willful as David could be when among his peers, he had none of that strength when it came to opposing his mother.

OOC: Most likely Mrs. Kim will have sent several copies of the same records David's porting to the school and the Medic's attention previously. In fact, chances are that she's already sent four separate packages, each one including detailed letters stating her insistence on David's exclusion from any and all physical activity, especially sports and exercise.

0 David Kim Reporting in as required. 0 David Kim 1 5

Medic Cleo Rocamboli

June 25, 2011 6:23 PM

Required by whom? by Medic Cleo Rocamboli

Medic Cleo Rocamboli didn't really get mail at Sonora over the summer. After all, she didn't live there during late June, July, or early August, so her friends and family sent their owls to her home. For the summer months, the forty-year-old lived in this lovely cottage she'd gotten the previous year. It was two acres of land set on the edge of a picturesque little lake, with a little stone house that had a flower garden in the front and a vegetable garden around the side.

Anyway, mail for work didn't really happen at all, so it had been kind of an enormous surprise when there were not one, or two, but four packages on her desk on September first. The surprise had been even bigger when Cleo realized they were all the same stack of forms. How strange.

Still, Cleo knew what it was like to be so concerned about a loved one's health. She was a medic, after all, so she'd been meticulous about her mother's and her husband's forms and treatment, for Multiple Sclerosis and liver cancer, respectively. It must, she thought, be especially hard for a mother, especially of a Muggleborn student, to send her son off to some faraway school where she didn't know what kind of care he would have. To help make Mrs. Kim more comfortable, Cleo had sent a letter thanking her for the prompt delivery of the medical records, and assured her that she would have a thorough look at all of the forms.

It wasn't just talk, either: Cleo had dutifully read the rather large stack of papers. She'd only read them once—after realizing that it was the same series of forms, sent in quadruplicate—but Cleo thought that sufficient. She'd filed them all in a separate drawer of her records cabinet; there'd been too many papers to fit in the drawer for students with surnames “H through M”. Cleo was the first to admit that she managed her Hospital Wing a lot more nicely than she managed her home. Her books at home were definitely not alphabetized. Anyway, it seemed like young Mr. Kim would need his own drawer; Cleo suspected that these weren't the last of the forms she'd be receiving from his mother.

She'd also suspected she'd be seeing the new first-year fairly soon, so it wasn't too much of a surprise one day when she received a knock on the door and heard a young student say “Hello, Medic Rocamboli? It's David Kim. I've come to bring you my records.”

Well, okay, it was a bit of a surprise that he'd brought her his records, since she already had four copies of them, but him actually coming wasn't that big of a surprise.

“Come right in,” she answered back, calling from the small storeroom adjacent to the Hospital Wing where she kept the potions that she usually only used after Quidditch matches. “I'll be out in a moment.” Since the bottles and jars didn't stay at the school over the summer, Cleo needed to replace them at the start of term. She knew she could use magic to organize them, but Cleo's non-magic mother had always taught her not to use spells when she could do without, and the lesson had stuck.

After replacing the dittany on its shelf, Cleo turned and entered the main room of the Infirmary, where the hospital cots were. “Oh! Goodness,” she said in surprise. Most of the students who came to see her hovered around the door awkwardly until she was ready to see them, so it was certainly a bit of a shock to see David already at a bed with his shirt half off.

Recovering quickly, the divorcée apologized quickly, “I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting you to be so…prepared.” Although, considering the amount of documentation on his medical file, Cleo felt now that she probably should have expected him to be ready for a physical exam. She didn't expect that she would be seeing a lot of Mr. Kim—after all, his scans and everything had been coming up clean for a few years, it looked like, and students had better things to do than hang around the Hospital Wing more often than they needed to—but since he'd never done a magical physical, Cleo felt that it would be necessary this once.

“Thank you for the records,” she said with a smile, moving the package he'd brought off to a bedside table next to the cot he was sitting on. “I've actually already gotten a copy—” Well, four copies, really— “But it's good to be thorough.” The redhead felt that this had to be explained so David would know why she wasn't immediately looking at his files. “And you can just call me Cleo or Medic Rock or something if you want; Medic Rocamboli is a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?” It was the typical introduction she gave to students. Cleo didn't think they liked trying to figure out her name, phonetic as it was, any more than she liked hearing it mangled.

“So it looks like you've never had a magical physical exam, right?” After confirmation, she continued. “From what I know of Muggle exams, they're pretty much the same. I have to do a visual overview, which involves me telling you to look at the ceiling and turn your head so I can observe your veins, stuff like that. I listen to your heart and take your blood pressure—only I use my wand instead of a stethoscope and sphygmomanometer, or cuff—and your pulse. And that's about it.”

Cleo had some friends in magical cardiology, and she'd studied it a bit for her pediatric studies. She knew how, at least, to do a cardio exam, and she knew who to contact if she needed any advice. “Do you have any questions before we start?” she asked, smiling. David was probably used to this by now, so she didn't think there'd be a lot of questions. He probably wanted to get this over with quickly.

[OOC: Yikes! Sorry for the delay. I was on vacation and forgot to notify anyone.]

0 Medic Cleo Rocamboli Required by whom? 0 Medic Cleo Rocamboli 0 5