Forever Yours

22. Declaration

"Eat all you want," he told her.  "I brought a little bit of everything.  You haven't eaten in four days and I know you're hungry."

"Starved," Lucy confirmed.  "But I can't eat all of this, Severus."  She smiled.  It was very generous.  There must have been one of everything they had that morning in the tray plus a glass of pumpkin juice and milk.

She started to eat and he watched her curiously, but only when her eyes were on her food.  He was so glad to see her awake.

"Lucy, when you finish I would like to take you on another walk like we took the last time you were here," Severus suggested.  "There's something I would like to say to you."

She nearly choked on the bite of bacon she had in her mouth.  Hurriedly she swallowed a drink of pumpkin juice to wash it down.  Did Severus suspect something of her condition already?  No, she realized a few seconds later.  This wasn't about her illness.  This was about something else.  Lucy smiled.

"Actually there is something I need to tell you too," she told him.

He smiled at her and then quietly excused himself.  He didn't want to hover over her while she ate.  Instead, he did what he had become an expert at every since the night she blacked out.  He paced.

~ * ~

The halls of St. Mungos Hospital were busy.  Chad gone off to work that morning with a new agenda.  There was something going on with Lucy and it was driving Jo crazy not knowing what it was.   He planned on finding out what was the problem even if it meant invading Lucy's privacy.  He couldn't stand to see Jo so stressed out.  So when his lunch hour came around, he decided to do some sleuthing.  He was particularly good at being sneaky ever since his childhood.  He thought that maybe one day he would be something like a detective for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but the position of Healer had appealed to him more than the latter.

He strolled lazily down the halls of the hospital and slipped quietly into the records room when the receptionist wasn't looking.  Dr. Adam Winston was the only one that was ever supposed to go in there besides the head nurse.  He had imposed that rule once he had become the chief of the medical staff at the hospital.  Chad thought it was arrogant of him really, but who was he to question the boss?

He closed the door together quietly and immediately started to look through the D's for Lucy's name.  He didn't even know why he thought she would have come there, but where else would she go to the doctor for black outs?  Chad frowned.  She could have gone to a Muggle doctor, but it wasn't likely.

Finally after nearly a five minutes of searching, he found a folder with her name on it.  He pulled it out and laid it carefully out the desk.  The file had only one page inside of it.  Chad recognized Adam's writing right away.  He had written about a tonic he gave her for black outs.  But that seemed to be it.  He scanned the page again to make sure.  That is when he saw the note at the bottom.  

Suddenly, the doorknob jiggled and it startled him.  He immediately knocked out the lights with his wand and fumbled around in the dark to put the file back.  He disapparated just as the door opened.

The nurse turned the light on, walked in, and looked around.  Satisfied that she saw no one, she turned the light back off and left the room completely unattended.

Chad reappeared in Lucy and Jo's apartment.  He knew every inch of it from where he had stayed there.  He immediately headed for Lucy's room.  He wasn't sure what he was doing there, only that he had to see if she had that tonic Adam had prescribed.  It was strange that he had taken care of her himself and not let one of the other doctors do it.  He saw it almost as soon as he walked into the bedroom.  The empty bottle sitting there on her bedside table had the St. Mungo's rose on it.  That had to be what he gave her.  He picked it up and examined it, took the cap off and sniffed what had been inside.  It smelled a little bit strawberries and mint.  He frowned.  It was the standard treatment for black outs.  He let out a sigh.  All that snooping and nearly getting caught for nothing.  There was one thing he found out though, the one thing on the bottom of her chart that had bothered him.  He had to go find Jo.  Maybe she could make sense of it.