A/N: Give it a chance. She's not my favorite either, but she grew on me as I got to know her through writing. ;)
Also, this IS a one-shot, because it just follows one day and night in Cho's life, but I broke it into three parts because it just felt right!
(All things created by J.K. Rowling.)
The Patient In Room 17
Part One: Tiny Acts of Kindness
It was a quarter to eight when Cho apparated from the absolute chaos of Wizarding London, into the even greater chaos of the St. Mungo's arrivals room.
Once she had acclimated to the sound of utter confusion trapped inside of high stone walls, she was able to pick out the slightly more organized sound of Hippocrates Smethwyck gathering all the Healers together, and managed to excuse herself through the crowd to join them. Palms sweating cooly, she slinked into place among them as inconspicuously as she could, trying her best to take in what he was saying without giving away her complete sense of panic.
She took the lime green robes that were passed out, and changed in a rush in an empty storage room with a few other girls. Opening the door, she tried to make her exit like she was a professional and had not just pulled borrowed robes on, over her oldest and ugliest slip, in a closet.
She made her way up to her assigned ward- Fourth Floor, Spell Damage. The hospital was in such overcrowded pandemonium that she actually suspected that most of the floors were dedicated to Spell Damage at the moment, but she felt relieved in any case, to have been given the ward where she felt most at home.
"Chang, here please."
A voice called her, as soon as the doors to the lift opened. The disarray up here was different. It was not as physical as the bustle of people downstairs, waiting to be seen and directed; but it assaulted Cho with ten times the force.
Up here, were all the people directly affected by The War. She knew many of them; their faces strange and unrecognizable with grief. There had been so many visitors that the hospital had not been able to keep them at bay, so they sat, consoling and heartbroken outside the neat numbered doors, practically lining the walls.
Cho felt her legs begin to tingle as her heart started to beat with dizzying speed. This is what she had dreaded.
She forced herself to walk tall, and tried not to meet their eyes, knowing if she did, she would be sucked into the familiar well of hopelessness; she would betray her weakness. She was here to help- to care for them, she reminded herself. She felt faint.
She crossed the short hallway in what felt like slow motion, and stood in front of Healer Stout.
"Very good, right- I need you to check in with patients in rooms ten through twenty-one," he said distractedly, eyes glued to a stack of memos that hovered before him, "make sure they're stable, and tend to any new cases that come in- Mary will let you know when they arrive. I have to join the Healers on the Remedies ward- five more cases of this imitation Cruciatus Curse, and no one knows what to do."
He blinked very red eyes, and Cho wondered if he had slept at all in the three days since the Battle of Hogwarts.
"Right, Sir." She managed to keep her voice clear as she took the stack of memos for rooms 10 - 21, which had separated from the rest as he spoke. He gave her a small and very weary smile of encouragement, and turned for the lifts.
Cho felt absurd, dressed in Healer's robes, and holding a stack of patient files. Like a child playing in her mother's clothes, who had been suddenly scooped up and asked to host a dinner party. I've trained for this. I know what to do, she told herself.
She had trained of course, but only in the one year since leaving Hogwarts. Healers generally had to study for at least two years, three, if they wanted to work on a ward, like she was about to do. The final battle at Hogwarts, and the subsequent outbreaks all over England- not to mention the wild celebration that was now blazing through the country- had called for emergency measures and all possible hands on deck at St. Mungo's.
Like a sleepwalker, she drifted towards the door of room number ten. She didn't recognize the people waiting outside of it, and thankfully did not know the patient either. She was able to hold it together.
Burying her nose in the memo almost the entire time, she was able to re-issue a soothing spell for the angry red burns running down the young man's torso. When she chanced a glance up at him, she saw that his face was a little strained, but his eyes were full of relief. More, she thought, for the state of the world rather than his own pain levels, but either way she was comforted.
It was the pain in others that she could not bear. Her greatest fear was that she would walk into a room and be met by a patient she knew, or a patient in so much suffering that she herself would break down, exposing the weakness of heart that she felt sure would be her ruin as a Healer.
She excused herself kindly from the room, and took a deep breath. There. That wasn't so bad, was it?
Slowly, throughout the course of the morning, Cho's confidence rose. She lost herself in the little tasks; the cheering charms, the bone binding spells, conjuring water, and summoning food. By 11AM, she felt quite relaxed, and was even able to tend to Hannah Abbot's little sister with a calm hand.
She had worked her way up to room 17 already, and was starting to pride herself on the fact that Healer Stout had given her the whole day to tend to eleven rooms, and here she was, mid-morning and nearly through them all.
She glanced quickly down at the ailment box on the memo. Immitation Cruciatus. There wouldn't be much she could do for this one- short of a dose of pain potion. There was no one waiting outside this room, and she felt a tiny stab of sadness for whoever was inside. She went in.
She was struck by a surge of sickening alarm at the sight of red hair. It was Charlie Weasley. Her throat grew tight and her heart beat painfully somewhere just below it. She had hardly been able to stop thinking about Fred and George Weasley for the past three days. Mortified by the thought of what it might do to him if she burst out in tears, she gripped the cold steel of the door handle as she closed it, and willed herself to remain steady.
He hadn't noticed her enter; he was staring in the other direction, towards a hardly touched plate of home-cooked food. He didn't look over as the door closed with a gentle 'click', nor when she took a few steps towards the bed where he lay propped up on a magically enlarged cushion.
"Charlie?"
He turned his head, and Cho could see a distant flicker of recognition in his expression. She had been in his company only a few times before, but he gave her a very strained half-smile of greeting all the same.
" 'Lo," he said, a little hoarsely.
"I…" she trailed away softly, not knowing what to say. She had hated hearing 'I'm so sorry for your loss…' over and over again when Cedric had died, "Is there anything I can do for you?"
He smiled the half-smile again.
"Some Firewhiskey would be nice." He shifted his bodyweight on the pillow, wincing slightly.
"Do you need more pain potion?" She asked immediately. He shook his head,
"Nah- 'ts not that bad."
She knew he was lying by the very fact that the same curse he was experiencing had a man crying out in perpetual pain a floor below, and a woman sobbing feverishly just two doors down. It was new magic that was baffling the Healers- called the 'Imitation Cruciatus' because of the similar effects it had on the nervous system. Except where the Cruciatus Curse electrified a person's whole system in bursts, this curse was what Healer Smethwyck called 'a slow burn'. She bit the inside of her lip, dithering.
"Well, I at least need to take a look." She crossed the room quickly, mustering her sense of authority, "Where were you hit?"
Distantly, he motioned to his ribcage on the right side, paling a bit at the effort. There was an awkward pause as she wondered what to do about his shirt- simple professional tasks were always much more ungainly when you knew the patient. Seeming to understand, he eased his arms up to unbutton the crisp hospital shirt himself.
"No, no- I'll do it," Cho waved his hands away after only a button or two, when he wasn't able to hide his blanch of pain. He dropped his arms, and was silent as she finished the task. Underneath, the effects of the curse were glaringly obvious against his fair skin. Dark purple lines streamed from a single bruised patch over his ribcage, mapping out the spidery webs of his nervous system- all the way down his stomach and around his back. Cho frowned at them, wondering for the third time today what kind of a curse could possibly cause such a physical display. She ran her finger gently over the bullseye bruise, and he drew in a sharp breath.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, eyes wide. "I need you to tell me if the pain worsens as I travel down the lines, okay?"
He nodded vaguely, and she ran her finger along the web from his ribcage out to the center of his back, where the lines faded and disappeared. He grimaced, staring down at the bedclothes. Then he shook his head,
"No… it's not as bad the further out you go. Just in the center."
Cho nodded encouragingly, feeling relieved,
"Okay, good! That's really good." She made a note on the memo still hovering beside her.
"Oh, good," he repeated, faintly. She saw the attempted half-smile again, but only momentarily. His face still retained its natural, good-natured expression, but it stopped at his eyes. Those were unguarded, and filled with sorrow. Cho's heart ached unbearably. Here she was- bumbling around uselessly- and here he was, her patient- full to the brim of pain and still trying to humor her with a smile.
"Is there anything else I can do?" she asked, knowing the answer, and wishing there was something better she could offer him.
He shook his head with a soft 'Thanks'.
She nodded and tried to smile warmly. Then she turned to go. At the door however, she stopped; it was awfully dim and gloomy in this room. She remembered a day in the summer before her sixth year, just after Cedric's murder. She had not left her room for days- sick with shock and grief, the weight of what had happened had seemed to press down on her unbearably whenever she ventured from the safety of her bed. She had drawn the blinds tightly closed, and just sat in that dim light for days. Until one day her mother had come in, and instead of trying to talk to her, she had simply opened the curtains, and left a bouquet of beautiful fragrant flowers on Cho's desk. And to her surprise, these two small things, those tiny acts of kindness, had been the first drops of life back in her veins.
In Room 17, Cho turned and walked resolutely to the window.
She pulled open the dull blue curtains, and tied them back with their matching sashes, into tidy bows. She heard a grunt from the bed, and looked over to see Charlie squinting in the sudden spring sunlight.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, "aren't I meant to rest? Looking out on a war isn't exactly my idea of relaxation."
"Nonsense," she replied, quietly but firmly, "The worst is over. It's light again."
He gave her a look bordering on a glare, but it too was halted at his eyes.
She thought for a second, and upon deciding, conjured a bouquet of fire red Anthuriums next to the plate of cold food. Then she left.
A/N-
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