March 15th, 1891 - Bartonburg

They were going into the garden, Noble hadn't been hit (beyond a shove) yet, and at least now nothing would be said so in public that it would be a whole thing. The fight with the rich man, maybe, but not anything about Noble and his potion. He had temporarily decided not to be nervous about the woman being there, but only because he was pretty sure that she was the only reason he hadn't actually gotten punched.

Also because if he freaked out about this nothing would ever get done.

Something was wrong with Mrs. Crouch, and maybe it was because of his potion. Noble didn't actually believe it was serious - more, he believed that Mr. Crouch was just overprotective, the sort of person who would come to the Greengrass home over a mild rash or an outbreak of pimples, the very mild affects of a potion that didn't agree with someone. Dramatic, sure, but not something anyone ought to be overly concerned about - except that it could reflect badly on Noble's reputation as a potioneer if people thought everyone got a rash on their arm after a draught of peace.

"What are her symptoms?" Noble said, after the gate swung shut. He leaned against the shut gate and looked at Crouch and the woman, standing in the Greengrass family side yard. He was tapping the tips of his fingers with his thumb on his right hand, and his left was in his pocket, because - he did not know what to do with his hands in a situation like this. His brow was furrowed, with a sort of concerned confusion.

He'd made a potion, there was something wrong with Crouch's wife, this other strange woman was here, he had decided to think about it like a healer. And besides that it was the natural question, and felt better to Noble than what's wrong with her?

Unless the Draught of Peace had made her so relaxed she decided to sleep with someone else, Noble was assuming this was medical in nature.

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   Melody Crouch

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Ben didn't like being walked into the garden like he was some sort of tantruming toddler who needed to be supervised, but he hadn't had much choice after Angie Swan had hexed him on the street outside. He shot her a glare as he entered. He wished she would leave, but knew better than to ask her to. They may have been out of touch for a while, but he'd known her well enough to know she wouldn't take that very well. And it probably was better that they were in here instead of out on the street, so maybe he ought to be a little grateful that she'd provided the necessary magical shove to get him here.

When Greengrass started talking, though, so cavalier — as if he didn't fucking care, as if this was just some meaningless thing and this didn't matter — Ben tensed again. He was ready to jump him, to put his fist at least an inch into that stupid patch of scraggly stubble that hadn't even fully grown in — but Angie was here and apparently ready to hex him with minimal provocation, so instead Ben redirected all his rage to his words.

"Her symptom, you fucking psychopath, is that she won't wake up," he yelled. Of course, if he was going to carry on at that volume this was hardly any more private than the street had been, so he made an effort to tone it down — but when he spoke again his voice was not only quieter, but starting to break, too. "She's — she's pregnant and she won't wake up."

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   Melody Crouch

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Angie returned Ben's glare with a bit of a smirk, but it didn't last long. She'd bested him simply because he was out of practice and angry about something. Anger clouded judgement and he was obviously, justifiably, worried about his wife; she was just here to make sure nobody was injured before the problem could be solved. Ben had been in the news enough lately, she rather thought.

It sounded serious, which Angie could understand why Ben was acting the way he was, but nothing would be solved if he beat the potioneer into a pulp before anything was actually solved. Mrs. Crouch being pregnant certainly upped the ante of the situation.

Still, she was just a witness here, so she was going to remain quiet until Ben either needed another physical or proverbial slap to the face, or she could be of use somehow.

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Noble flinched, partially but not entirely because of Crouch yelling at him - not waking up was significantly worse than he'd been preparing himself for, especially if she was pregnant. "Shit," he said, a little paler and more alarmed, the curse word coming out more as a reaction than as a thought - he pushed a hand through his hair.

Noble's mind was whirring: Mrs. Crouch's symptoms were what he would have expected from a Draught of Peace overdose, but that didn't make any sense. He'd used normal amounts of ingredients, and he'd actually undercut some of the dosage in the vial expecting that Mrs. Crouch was probably smaller than the average-sized man. (Most potions textbooks were apportioned assuming a male patient.)

He could kill a pregnant woman. He could have killed a pregnant woman and this could ruin him, could ruin everything, and Noble pushed his hand through his hair again before speaking:

"It's - shit. She's not going to die," whether this was for his reassurance or Crouch's, Noble wasn't sure. He just needed to wrap his brain around this: what the fuck could have gone wrong?

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   Melody Crouch, Reuben Crouch

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"She'd better not," Ben said, but the anger seemed to have left him and although he had intended those words to sound threatening, when they left his lips all he heard in his own voice was desperation. "She's — she can't," he managed, still sounding like he was pleading more than demanding.

If Melody died now, after he'd so recently decided he was going to get his shit together and be a good husband to her, after he'd promised her he would actually try, after he'd told her he loved her — what would have been the point? Not just of the past few months, but of everything? What would have been the point of keeping up the facade for the first eleven months of their marriage, or of lying to November a few hours ago for the express purpose of alienating her? What was the point of keeping Art at arm's length for a year — the point of choosing to stay in the parlor with Melody instead of following him out the front door, when he'd left in January? This was — everything was broken, everything was broken, and if all he had to show for it at the end was a gaping hole in his heart where Melody and his future child had once been, he just — he couldn't. He wouldn't survive that.

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   Arthur Pettigrew, Melody Crouch

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Alright, there was a pregnant woman and she wouldn't wake up, and - maybe it was something with the pregnancy, although it should not have been, or maybe it was something with an allergy, although if she had taken other sleeping draughts it should not have been. Maybe it was something with the dosing. Or maybe it was his fault.

He could brew it again and try it himself later, but that wasn't the point, right now. Think, Noble, think - think like a healer, or even like a potioneer, like someone who was not trying to go to prison for accidentally murdering someone's pregnant wife. He looked a little overwrought, like this was squeezing him.

"A bezoar," Noble said, the thought coming to him in a flash. He looked at Mr. Crouch and the woman who seemed to know him with some urgency, hoping they were absorbing this. "It might not wake her up but it's - fast, it'll help, and - you should take her to potion and plant poisoning."

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Ahh they were getting somewhere. Funny how that happened when one stopped long enough actually process the information. Angie wasn't sure what it was that Mrs. Crouch had ingested, though she gathered it had been Mr. Greengrass to sell the potion.

"Logical, I have some at home, if needed." She piped in, her travel bag was stocked with basic care supplies that could be used in the field, including bezoars. Angie was nothing if not well-prepared. "I can take a look at her too." Ang was no healer, but she was probably close to a fully trained mediwitch with all of the on-the-job training she'd gone through for cursebreaking. Not to mention years of field experience by now. It wasn't like they traveled with a full-fledged healer on assignments and somebody was always getting injured.

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"It won't wake her up?" Ben repeated, because that was the part of this exchange that had sunk in fastest and hardest despite the generally optimistic tone the other two seemed to be taking. He needed Melody to be awake again, and he didn't know how he was supposed to measure what was helpful if it didn't get her there. Helpful in what way? Was there some other danger that he wasn't aware of that a bezoar might help with? This sent a fresh spike of panic through him, because he had just assumed that she was relatively stable at the moment. That was why he'd gone to Bartonburg in the first place, instead of straight to the hospital, because he'd thought her condition was — bad, but not changing. If there was some current danger that a bezoar would help with, and he'd just left Melody alone in the house —

"What am I supposed to tell the healers?" he asked, voice rising slightly again as his panic did the same. "What did you do?"

  

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Ben was radiating panic and Angie dug her heels in deep to keep some kind of grounded in the situation. "You know what a bezoar does. It's a general antidote," Angie was keeping her pragmatic approach. He'd been out of the field too long."Anything that could have gone wrong with the potion," She cast a glance at Greengrass. "Might be solved or at least started by the bezoar. It buys time."

But Ang needed more details. "What was it she took?" Her job, her entire occupation was problem solving, but she needed the information, all of the information, before she could get the gears turning on solving the issue at hand. If Greengrass made the potion, then that was at least half the battle, but without any of that knowledge, Ang was useless. Why she wanted to be anything more that useless in this situation was beyond her, but with a history between her and Ben, it wasn't like she could just leave him to fend for himself here.

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The woman was backing him up and the man was yelling at him and that was - fair, that was valid, maybe he poisoned his wife. It was the pregnancy thing that made this all worse, and Noble looked a little undone, with his back to the fence. He took the woman's questions and worked backwards. "Draught of Peace," he answered easily, "It should have been - normal, this isn't -" this didn't happen, Draught of Peace didn't send people into an endless sleep, and certainly not when it was a mild dosage.

He was going to have to brew it again to test himself, although evidently on a very small dose.

"I can get you the ingredients list but they'll know exactly what you're talking about. I just - an awakening potion, maybe, and a bezoar. That should work." He couldn't begin to tackle the question of what did you do to her? because he didn't know.

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   Reuben Crouch

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"It'd better," he said. Again, he tried to sound threatening, and again, his voice just sounded small and anxious when it exited him. Angie talking about buying time was giving him a fresh wave of panic that he had left her alone even for as little time as he'd been gone already. It couldn't have been more than 20 minutes, all told, but what if it made the difference?

"I need to get her to a healer," Ben said, shoving his hands through his hair. This was hardly news to either of them, since they'd both said as much already, but his brain was only working as fast as his mouth was at the moment. Saying it made it feel more real.

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   Noble Greengrass

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Ben seemed to be coming around to the fact that they should probably be moving instead of just standing here. "Do you want help?" She had her doubts that he was currently in the right state of mind, but Angie wasn't sure whether or not to push him right now. She did have bezoars at home and could bring him one to get the process started, but she would need his address to floo into or something along those lines. It seemed like the safer option, rather than leaving him to his own devices at any rate.

"I can get supplies and meet you at your house?" She prompted, giving him a more concrete plan.

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In the grand scheme of things, having Angie in his house probably wasn't a great idea. Having Angie help with his incapacitated wife wasn't ideal, and it certainly wasn't improved at all by the recent Witch Weekly article. It was the best option available to him at the moment, though, because Angie was here and no one else was, and Ben didn't think he'd come down from everything enough to handle this correctly just yet. The shock of finding Melody passed out was still fresh, not to mention the fight from just moments ago. Gossip was the least of his worries, at the moment — first he needed to make sure Melody was going to get through this.

"Y-yeah," he agreed, with his hands still in his hair. "Yeah. Thanks, Ange."

  

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They were going to get supplies and the woman — Ange, maybe — was going to help Crouch, and it was fine, and Noble was going to have to move away from the gate. He pushed himself off of it and took a few steps along the side of the house, clearing space, so that they could both leave — there was some aura of unreality to this whole interaction, as if it could not possibly be happening. Noble didn't fuck up. He didn't. He wasn't a person who fucked up, he was supposed to be steady and stable and he got things right, he didn't send married women into comas.

He was going to have to test the potion himself, because he didn't believe it, but — had he killed a woman?

"I — I'm sorry," Noble said, "That should — that should all work. The healer will know what to do." The healer had fucking better, because Noble couldn't handle this if he killed a woman.

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   Reuben Crouch

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