January 20th, 1891 — Hogsmeade Hospital

"Don't worry," he offered with a comforting smile, "this is not the first such case I've seen, nor is it likely to be my last."

His patient (hopefully) reassured, Gideon Browne returned his attention to their arm—or rather, where the arm ought to have been, the limb in question (as well as the clothing that had covered it) having utterly vanished. The nice thing about vanishing cabinets is that things didn't vanish so much as go elsewhere, but for the most part, the healer deemed them far more trouble than they were worth.

"I must ask, though—was this a cabinet you had used before successfully, one you acquired from some sort of dealer, or one you were...endeavouring to prepare yourself?" the healer continued, now prodding lightly at the patient's shoulder with his wand tip to ensure it remained sound. Unlike a splinching, the sites of these sort of unconventional amputations were fuzzy, both in appearance and their connection with reality: no blood, no nerve endings, just a vague sense of something being amiss. 

  

Walt was reassured to hear that someone had experience with this, because it was certainly the first time he'd ever had a limb go on a walkabout. This was not the sort of thing that was likely to happen to someone in the Muggle Liaison Office; the biggest hazard he had typically faced in his job prior to this was having a startled Muggle throw something breakable at his head. The magical catastrophes had typically been handled before he'd gotten involved, particularly once he'd been promoted to Head of the Office where he'd primarily been tasked with oversight, paperwork, and getting involved in cases where there were a large number of particularly disgruntled Muggles. He had known, of course, that the nature of his work would change when he ascended to Assistant Head of the Department a few months prior, but he had expected that mostly that would be in the sorts of reports that went by his desk. He'd thought Assistant Head was still primarily an administrative job, and at least in theory, it was.

"That's, ah, complicated," he admitted. He didn't know where to look; he wanted to see what the healer was doing with his arm, but looking where he expected his limb to be and seeing nothing was making him feel decidedly unsettled. He shifted his eyes to the ceiling, instead. "It had been — tampered with, and it was supposed to have been set back to rights." It wasn't his cabinet at all, but rather one his department had mended (ostensibly) and was about to send back into the world. He'd been performing a routine quality check to ensure their work was up to par, and based on the results he had some serious concerns about all of the things he hadn't quality-checked in the past few months. At the very least, he was going to have to look a little closer at this particular employee's work. Hopefully nothing else would see him (or three quarters of him) back in the hospital.

  

Though he did his best—with mixed results—to maintain a neutral expression, Gideon's eyes grew decidedly concerned as Mr. Brownhill spoke. Impossible? Not in the least, but the situation described was far from a simple fix.

"That is unfortunate..." Gideon murmured, more to himself than to his patient as he gave the missing arm one last probe. To Mr. Brownhill, he asked, "Might word be sent to your offices that the offending cabinet be delivered here?"

  

Unfortunate was a very mild way to describe this predicament, but the word choice made him a touch nervous all the same. It was not quite so reassuring as the tone Mr. Browne had assumed a moment ago, when he'd said this was something he saw all the time. Walt wasn't prone to panicking, but it was slightly worrying that this injury may have been more complex than what the healer was accustomed to.

"Of course," he said with a nod, before realizing that he didn't really have the means to accomplish that particular task at the moment. "Er, do you have an intern or someone who might go fetch it?" he asked. "Normally I'd send an owl, but my writing hand is..."

He nodded vaguely at his missing arm.

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   Gideon Browne

"Of course," Gideon affirmed, giving a semi-reassuring smile before ducking into the hallway to fetch an intern and give them strict instructions not to return without the cabinet—and that if they did not return within the hour, they would be tending to bedpans without magic for the rest of the week.

Returning to his patient, Gideon offered, "are you comfortable, Mr. Brownhill, or would you prefer to wait with the aid of a mild sleeping draught? Many in your particular situation find it...unsettling, to say the least."

  

"Unsettling is saying the least," Walt agreed with a quick nod. Aside from a few quick glances when the healer had been prodding at it, Walt had decided to keep his eyes up at the ceiling so that he wasn't tempted to look over and confirm, once again, that it had disappeared. The idea of simply going to sleep and hopefully waking up with it restored, however, was not a particularly appealing one. It was not that he didn't have faith in Mr. Browne's healing abilities, but — well, just on the off chance that something went awry, he would prefer to be conscious for it. Not that he would be of much assistance, but he would prefer to know what was going on.

"I'll be fine, though, thank you. It shouldn't take long," he added optimistically. Only as long as it took the intern to go and return again. The cabinet itself was sitting essentially right in the middle of his department, so it wasn't as though anyone would have to go looking for it or try to track down the paperwork to see where it had gone. In fact, he was willing to wager that half the department was still clustered around it at this very moment, gossiping about the way he'd been carted off to the hospital and perhaps speculating on whether or not he would return. Hopefully only speculating — he knew it was too soon to hope that any of the employees he hadn't worked with before would like him, but he did hope at least that they weren't yet rooting for his untimely demise.

  

The men sat for, according to Gideon's pocket-watch, forty-two minutes making idle small-talk, interrupted only when the healer nipped briefly across the corridor to assist an intern who wasn't off on an errand. Sleep would have been preferable, but he understood that not all patients preferred to opt for such loss of control.

At last, though, the intern returned, the cabinet in question levitating front of him. It took a bit of maneuvering to get it into the small examination room with its requisite equipment and two full-grown men, but Gideon was able to dismiss the intern swiftly enough.

"Well, this should make things rather easier," Gideon offered Mr. Brownhill brightly, wand in hand as he approached the open cabinet. "Accio arm!"

A long moment passed with Gideon not quite sure he had been successful, but then the arm shot from the cabinet, and Gideon's long arm reached to catch it. The arm, still fully clad and with the same fuzziness at its base as Mr. Brownhill's shoulder, looked decidedly unharmed other than its disembodiment.

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   Reuben Crouch

The young man really needn't have stayed with Walter the entire time they were waiting, but he was grateful that he had. He must have had other business he could have attended to (or at least, that was the indication Walt got from the fact that he looked several times at his pocket watch), but it was a pleasant distraction to just talk about nothing very important and be able to not think about the fact that his arm was missing. When the cabinet arrived and they had to shuffle things around Walt caught sight of the empty place where it ought to have been a few times, and that same nervous roil bucked through his stomach, but he managed to keep himself together.

He was relieved to hear that things ought to be easy, but had not quite expected them to be so easy. The arm soared out of the depths of the closet and into Mr. Browne's waiting hand. Walt couldn't keep himself from staring at it, feeling disjointed and strange. His arm, over there, but he could still feel the pressure of the other man's fingers on his arm although it was disconnected.

Before he could think better of it, he moved his detached hand in a quick little circle, just to see if he could. He could — but the sensation and the strangeness proved too much for him, and he found himself lurching for Mr. Browne's waste basket as the contents of his stomach worked their way forcefully back up through him.

  

Gideon waited patiently and politely averted his gaze as he allowed Mr. Brownhill to finish retching. Frankly, it was a wonder the man hadn't done so sooner; while Gideon might be used to seeing things such as this, he doubted very much his own stomach could have handled it were it happening to him.

As the tell-tale sounds ceased, the healer nonchalantly extended a handkerchief to the older gentleman.

  

Walt was terribly uncomfortable with having made such a display in front of a relative stranger, even though as a healer he was sure Mr. Browne had seen worse. He accepted the handkerchief and looked a little skeptically at the waste basket, wondering if he ought to retrieve his wand and try to vanish the mess. It did seem a little distasteful to just... leave it there, but as his wand arm was still not attached to his body he would probably only make things worse if he tried to do something about it. And, anyway, a trash can was the only acceptable place for something of that nature. '

"... Thank you," he said after a moment. "Is it — a simple process, to see it reattached?"

The sooner he could have it back on his body, the better. He had stopped vomiting because his stomach had emptied itself, not because he was feeling any less unsettled by the sensation.

  

"Simpler even than retrieving it," he confirmed as the intern returned, though Gideon did not mention that the 'retrieval' process against which he was measuring did include the physical fetching of the cabinet. Though he did not think Mr. Brownhill had much left to vacate from his stomach, he did not wish to set the other wizard off once again.

Gideon moved to a cabinet of the non-vanishing variety to fetch a suture kit, the arm still tucked under his own, moving his stool into position as he returned. Perched now upon its surface, Gideon murmured, "You might be happiest, Sir, if you look away," before setting about his task.

As the intern held the arm where it ought to be (the healer checked the placement thrice, just to be sure), Gideon began to sew it back in place—undoubtedly more painful an experience, physically, than losing it had been, but he found such pain often grounded patients experiencing emotional distress.

  

Walt certainly didn't need to be told twice, after losing his lunch only moments earlier. He trained his eyes on the same spot on the ceiling that he had been looking at on and off this entire time, to avoid looking at his arm. He was getting to know that spot on the ceiling fairly well. He probably could have sketched it from memory, after this, if he was the sort of man to sketch.

Mr. Browne might have warned him about the nausea, but he hadn't warned him about how much it would hurt. However much he would have liked to remain stoic through the process, Walt found himself jumping slightly when the first stitch went in. Was this going to mean his arm was crooked when it was back on? Merlin, he hoped not.

"Sorry," Walt said, a little embarrassed but still looking determinedly at the ceiling. "Pinched a nerve, I think."

  

"I ought to have warned you," Gideon admitted sheepishly. "It is best if you remain as still as possible, but I shall not be reattaching it permanently until I am sure your arm is lined up as it should be."

He continued working even as he spoke. The sutures were not as close together as they would have been in muggle healing, to his understanding, but were rather more akin to the roughing in required to piece together Dr. Frankenstein's monster. It was not pretty, but it was temporary and so looks hardly mattered.

  

"Great," Walt said, hoping his tone conveyed more confidence in the procedure than he was currently feeling. He was very determined not to look at it, which probably made it worse when Mr. Browne made comments about making sure things were lined up. Even if his arm was lopsided and half an inch too low, though, he would rather have it than not. And he was sure Mr. Browne was capable of this, or else he would have asked for help from one of the other healers — that was what professionals did.

Of course, his own staff at the Ministry seemed to think they were capable of repairing the vanishing cabinet, which...

Walt bit the inside of his lower lip, hard, to try and draw his attention both away from the pain in his arm and from such thoughts.

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   Gideon Browne

His needlework done, Gideon scrutinized the arm from multiple angles before nodding to himself in satisfaction. With a murmured, preemptive apology, he jabbed, rather than tap, the ersatz incision with his wand tip, deftly murmuring the trio of incantations required.

"That should do it," he offered brightly as he began wrapping a bandage around where arm met...the rest of arm. "You shall need to change the bandage twice a day for three, perhaps four days," the healer explained, "and do not be alarmed by any purple...ooze. It is relatively normal, and entirely harmless unless you choose, for some unknown reason, to eat it. You may find you suffer bouts of numbness in the limb; if such numbness does not go away after an hour or so, or continues appearing longer than a fortnight, you would do best to return to see me."

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   Walter Brownhill

It was good that Mr. Browne was telling him about the purple ooze, because Walt would almost certainly have been alarmed (though he doubted very much he would have been at all inclined to eat it). His heart picked up a bit at the mention of a fortnight, because he was momentarily concerned it would interfere with his upcoming honeymoon, but of course that was silly. A fortnight was a matter of weeks, while his wedding was still two months away. He'd just been waiting for it so long that it felt as though it ought to be imminent — but, being an older gentleman and a widower, approaching a marriage was different this time around. He'd been anticipating the wedding more or less from the day he asked to court Gertrude; he would not have begun the process had he not been sure about her.

"Alright," he said, when he was sure he understood the directions. "Thank you, Mr. Browne," he said, extending his hand to shake the healer's — now that he had a hand reattached and ready to shake.