Dr. Beau Hoffman stepped into the office of the chief and had himself a seat opposite the chief's own chair. An unexpected visit, Chief Connor Plimpton took a moment to finish the form he was filling out before looking up. "Dr. Hoffman," the Chief said, "Good morning. To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

Dr. Beau Hoffman was still in his operating scrubs, the cap that covered his white hair tied on, some sort of surgical instrument peeking out of the pocket on his left chest. He looked perplexed. "I'm here to formally submit my retirement." 

Chief Plimpton, who had been quietly trying to get Dr. Hoffman to retire for over a year to no success, looked quite confused. "You want to retire?"

"Yes."

"Alright, we'll draw up the paperwork... When are you thinking? October? December?"

"Immediately."

"Immediately?" Plimpton looked confused. "What do you mean effective immediately?"

"I mean I've performed my last operation and I don't care to do any others moving forward."

"But you're scheduled out at least three months in advance... I have time to rearrange some of those surgeries but others are a bit more ---"

"Look, Chief, frankly, if I'd known what the operation I just walked out of was going to be like, I would've retired yesterday before I ever heard the name Newt Scamander."

Plimpton murmured the name in an echo. "Newt Scamander? What sort of a ridiculous name -?"

"The sort that one of them have," Hoffman answered. 

"Oh." Plimpton shifted. 

They both knew who "them" was. 

Every once in a while - albeit a very great while - there would come a day when the portrait on the wall in the Chief of Surgery's wall would shift, clear it's throat, and announce that the best surgeon and operating table were suddenly rescheduled to accommodate a pressing matter, as ordered by the medicinal relations committee at MACUSA. Usually, the patient had some incredibly strange malady, something that could not be explained by rational medical science, but whose remedy could only be solved by what the witch in the painting called "muggle medicine". As the head of the cardiology department, Dr. Hoffman often got called upon independently. It seemed Cardiology and Neurology were the two most frequently required surgeons needed by the wizarding world.

"What was it this time?" Plimpton asked.

Hoffman leaned back in his eat and stared at Plimpton. "You'll never believe it."

"I've seen a man's face turned into a bird's beak and his spinal cord impacted by a fall when his wings didn't transform all the way as he became his animal form," said Plimpton, "Try and top that." 

"I had Newt Scamander, who is what they called a magic zoologist," Hoffman said. "Mr. Scamander presented with what sounded like a common heart attack when they described his symptoms to me. However, upon inspecting closer they found that his heart valve was being blocked not by plaque or a clot or any normal thing, but by --" Hoffman paused. 

"...by...?" Plimpton pressed.

"A dragon."

"A dragon?"

"A dragon," Hoffman nodded.

Plimpton sat back. "That's new."

"Apparently it was new for them as well. They weren't sure if it was an actual dragon or if it was some virus that they called Dragon Pox which apparently makes a man breathe fire and grow scales - neither symptom of which was presenting in Mr. Scamander, making them fairly certain that it was an actual dragon, which was why they could not magically remove, and the magic zoo man had decided to take an elective open heart procedure in order to get the dragon out."

Plimpton said, "That's extreme."

"Oh, it gets more extreme, Mr. Plimpton."

"More extreme?"

"More extreme." Hoffman drew a deep breath, "It seems that Mr. Scamander had an operation in the mid-thirties on a limb that was - and he put this just as casually as I'm about to put it to you - yanked off by a particularly nasty grindylow."

"What the hell is a grindylow?"

"I have no idea. Something which can yank a man's arm off whole, though, and it had to be surgically reattached and then e-nerverated, whatever that means, and they discovered then that Mr. Scamander is allergic to what they called muggle put under elixir."

"Muggle put under elixir?"

"Anesthesia to us common folk," Hoffman said.

Plimpton first looked amused at understanding the meaning of Muggle Put Under Elixir, and then alarmed. "Wait, you're not saying --"

"Yes, we did a full open cavity operation with a fully awake man using only local - magical - numbing that the medical team on their side did by rapping his chest every few minutes with their... wands."

"So the patient was... was awake."

"The entire time."

"Unnerving."

"Especially since he is thoroughly fascinated by medical procedures," Hoffman said.

Plimpton's eyebrows raised.

"The man took notes, Plimpton. He wanted to know how to do it himself next time it came up." 

"No!"

"Yes."

"My God." Plimpton crossed himself, like the good Catholic man he was. 

"I strongly discouraged that, but he didn't seem to comprehend. My intern walked out of the OR. Said they couldn't take anymore. So there's the patient, watching us as we're wrist-deep in his chest, asking questions the entire way through, as though it were perfectly normal to be sitting there staring down while a team of surgeons saw open your sternum. What's this tool, what's that do, is that blood supposed to be splurting like that?"

Plimpton was queasy at the thought of it.

"He asked if he could hold his own beating heart, Plimpton."

Plimpton shook his head, "Is he mental?"

"All evidence points to yes."

Plimpton couldn't believe he was about to ask this next question. "And did you... did you find a - the, erm - the - the dragon?"

"Yes, sir. We found a dragon."

"An actual dragon?"

"An actual dragon. The zoo man said it was a miniature breed called a Red Vine. He then launched into a long explanation of how an accidentally severed tail of a Red Vine Dragon had been the inspiration for the Red Vine candies." 

Plimpton raised his eyebrows again. He felt he'd done that quite a lot during the conversation. But it was the sort of conversation which required such a reaction frequently.

"As we were closing him up, the man was playing merrily with his dragon, coddling over it like a mother that's given birth... naming it, the whole nine yards, Plimpton!"

"Naming it?"

"Yes. Pox. Because of that disease they thought he might have had."

"Incredible. How did it get in there?"

"They never did say definitively, but they said he might have breathed it in somewhere. Apparently it's somewhat common to inhale dragons in the wizarding world. Much like flies to the muggle world, they said. It's apparently one of the many ways they can catch dragon pox. Inhaling a dragon causes Type 2 Dragon Pox, compared to a Type 1 which is caused by coming in contact with infectious dragon scales, venom (if poisonous), saliva, or boogies. Type 1 is most common, reacts like any virus or bacterial even in the muggle world, except it responds to nothing, but with a Type 2 Inhalation, the dragon typically dies in the body and the flint remains like a cancer and that's what starts it."

Plimpton shook his head. "Incredible."

Hoffman took a deep breath. "So you see - I simply cannot do any more with medicine. I am done. Hanging up my scrubs. Finite. No more. Sayonara. You understand? I need a long vacation after that, and I don't care what kind of damned party you've planned for my retirement, I'm simply not going to be available as it will take more than the rest of the year just to forget the sight of a tiny dragon curled up in the valve of a man's beating heart."

"You know what, doctor, I honestly don't blame you... I honestly don't blame you at all."