adifferentlife | A tour of sorts [[Combeferre]]

A tour of sorts [[Combeferre]]

Sybil was serious about her offer to show Henri about the city should he wish, and the hospital and college in particular. There's a cafe at the college she's suggested they meet at, a place where the tea is finally acceptable after a year of her patronage. It's a beautiful day, there's a crispness in the air that can only herald the onset of autumn. She loves this weather, it's her favourite time of year, and something she's very glad still happens here in Darrow.

She has a table outside, a pot of tea sitting half-empty in front of her. The sun is warm enough that she's slung her cardigan over the back of her chair in a manner she considers rather haphazard even still. Her notes for pharmacology lay in front of her, mostly untouched. It's too nice a day to study and she's rather looking forward to the company she's been promised.

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His look alone is enough to make her smile as wide as she can manage. It's endearing and sweet, as well as a relief. It doesmake her feel uncharitable for wondering if he was perhaps too interested in these things a moment becore. "It's fine. Truly, I don't mind a distraction or two."

"Thank goodness." Combeferre shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck, the same sheepish grin still tugging on his lips. "I suppose I should have warned you - I have been accused of madness on occasion. By my friends."

This time, as they started to walk again, he summed up the nerve to offer his arm.

The gesture is a welcome one and yet somehow still a surprise. With some friends she would not notice at all, in fact with Kaine she nearly insists that she tuck her hand in the crook of his arm when he walks her home. With Henri it seems sweeter, and as shell her hand in a familiar manner on an unfamilar

The gesture is a welcome one and yet somehow still a surprise. With some friends she would not notice at all, in fact with Kaine she nearly insists that she tuck her hand in the crook of his arm when he walks her home. With Henri it seems sweeter, settling her hand in a familiar manner on an unfamilar arm.

"Do they? Should I be worried?" She asks playfully as she leads the way across the solid drive of the hospital, pausing to wait for a car. "You've not exhibited any signs that I know as of yet, but care of patients with mental maladies isn't until next semester."

Combeferre had been half-expecting her to refuse. Not outright, of course, for Sybil was too well schooled for that. But he had feared she might look askance, or keep what distance she could, or even laugh at him. A woman might reject a man's arm in a hundred ways without outright refusing it.

But Sybil did none of those things, and Combeferre flashed her a smile full of warmth as they walked towards the hospital. "My behavior thus far does not warrant concern? Here I am in the company of a lovely woman, and all I can do is talk of insects."

Well schooled, yes, but also charmed and enjoying herself a great deal. Sybil had never considered refusing, thinking his gesture meant that he was also having a pleasant time. His words cement that belief and it's not artifice that brings colour to her cheeks, though she shows no other sign of embarrassment. "After we spoke at length of history, literature, and social justice. At least one of those topics would not be considered appropriate for a social afternoon and yet I wouldn't change a moment of this day."

"Only one? I must be losing my touch. As you might have gathered, I was considered quite radical, once." His tone was light, though something like loss or homesickness flickered in his eyes. Combeferre still found it strange, even unsettling, to think of Paris and his work there as an artifact of another life.

Sybil nearly says that she wanted to be a radical, but her parents wouldn't allow her, only thinks better of it. It's not entirely the right sentiment, either, especially when she sees that familiar lost look in his eyes. Sybil squeezes his arm before speaking. "My father tried to keep me in the house when I wanted to go to political meetings and my mother wasn't fond of my becoming a nurse at the beginning. As it was they thought all of my causes were so dreadfully boring. But I was hardly a radical. I wish I had stood up more for things."

Combeferre shrugged. "Not everyone can play the same role in the progress of a people. Even I fell into politics largely by chance - and that was when you could throw a stone in the Latin Quarter and hit half a dozen radicals." He smiled at her. "You can imagine a better future, for both yourself and others. And you want to fight for it. That is more than most people."

"You are kind," she says, even though she can see the truth in his words. A tug on his arm stops them just out of range of the automatic doors. "Are you ready for the future that we have?"

"Ah, but that does not make me wrong." Combeferre gazed through the wide glass doors with a wary look in his eye. He had spent weeks in a strange new world, and in that time had read book after book about all that had changed in medicine. The discoveries had filled him with wonder, but also with a kind of dread. What if he never caught up with all these was to know?

He took a breath and flashed Sybil a grin. "The future it is, then. Lead the way, mademoiselle."

The doors open with their customary swish, and Sybil tugs a badge out of her pocket that has a rather stern looking image of her on the front as well as some other information. Clipping it on, she leads him to a desk, smiling at the security and offering his name in order to have a temporary one handed over. "May I?"

Sybil doesn't wait, clipping the badge to his vest and patting it to make sure that it sits straight. As much as she still smiles, she's in her element now, her already straight shoulders straighter and her chin that bit higher. "I thought we might start in the short term ward, and then move on toward radiology and -ography?"

The hospital's interior was starkly clean, unnaturally so under the harsh electric lights that still felt terrible foreign to Combeferre. He understood now the importance, of course, having read about germ theory and the like, though he still marveled at how the staff ever managed it. Medicine was messy business. And that messy, human, business happened here, in a building made of glass, and metal, and tile, that seemed the furthest thing from the living and the breathing?

Here was one more thing he would have to get used to, then.

But at least he had a guide. Tearing his gaze from the walls and ceilings, Combeferre smiled as turned his attention back to Sybil and she pinned the badge to his shirt. If she had been lovely before, now she was radiant. "Yes, certainly. That sounds wonderful."

"Is there anything specific you have an interest in?" She had meant to ask it earlier, and realises now that she's been remiss in finding what he wishes to do, planning instead what she finds fascinating. "We have time, and this place is large, though I am told nowhere near as much as some place that exist."

"I would not know where to begin," Combeferre confessed ruefully. He scanned the lobby once again, but found no answers there. "I do not even understand- where do doctors see their patients?" He smiled crookedly. "I fear I am wholly reliant on you to guide me."

"Then I shall do that." She touches his shoulder, nodding down the hall. It's exciting and yet a bit trepidatious, wondering if she'll show things that he will appreciate as much she does. There's a great weight but one she is willing to bear.

"This is the short term patient ward," she says as the door slide open at her swipe. "The people here are often in for observation when we are unsure of a diagnosis, or need medicine for a brief time or are recovering from surgery when it will take more than a few hours."

Much of the room was sectioned off with curtains, though a few were open, revealing empty beds or, in one or two cases, a doctor or patient talking quietly. Aside from the metal and bright lights, this, at least, reminded him of the hospitals he had known, where calm doctors examined nervous-looking patients who perched on uncomfortable beds. He nodded, eyes alert and curious. "You mentioned another ward - something-ography?" Now that sounded wholly unfamiliar.

It has all become familiar to her, the way patients are assigned, the nurses and doctors on rounds, the beds and rooms that seem lavish compared to her own hospital experiences from home where as many men were fit into a room as possible. "Radiography. Downstairs. I thought I might show you X-rays and some of the other scans that let us see inside the body without invasiveness."

Combeferre's eyes lit up. "X-rays! Yes! I have read about those. What a simple thing, and yet so utterly remarkable." He laughed a little and ducked his head, only belatedly halting his outpouring of enthusiasm. "I would very much like to see that."

"They are, but there is also a danger in them," she says as she smiles at a curious looking nurse at the desk as they pass. "Hello."

Sybil swipes a badge past the door, waiting for it to beep and swish open. She can't help but steal a glance at Henri as it does. There's a delight in experiencing some of the technology that exists in this place. "The rays themselves are dangerous, and whilst a small amount will likely not cause harm, prolonged exposure to them would be ill advised."

Combeferre nodded, remembering much of this from the books he had read. "Pierre and Marie Curie made that discovery, yes? They built their x-ray machines, and then used them so often that they were poisoned. Killed by their own invention. Mary Shelley would be unsurprised." The last he said in a thoughtful murmur.

"You like Shelley?" It is a surprise, but a pleasant one for Sybil. She bites at her lip to stop the wide smile. "I loved Frankenstein. I read it when I was too young and likely had far too many wakeful nights because of it. But I read it again after I came here and it seemed so very different."

She leads them down a hall to an elevator, another swipe of her card required before she can choose the floor beneath them. "It is like that, yes. There are safeguards, and other technologies that can be used, but x-rays are still the simplest for showing bone problems."

"Shelley is… interesting. I had a friend with a particular fondness for both Mary and Percy, and he gave me Frankenstein to read years ago." Combeferre said with a curve of a smile, remembering Prouvaire's eagerness to share the novel as soon as he had read it himself. "I enjoyed it." Beyond that, well - the obsession that a certain sort of English poet had for all but dripping feeling on the page in blood was not quite to his taste, though he could admire their artistry. Despite that - or perhaps because of it - he had an easy time imagining the woman beside him as a girl, eagerly reading by candlelight in some hidden corner, and paying the price in childhood nightmares. "You must have infuriated your parents," he teased with a twinkle in his eye.

His thoughts returned quickly enough to science. "Remarkable, then, that the discovery endures, after all this time. What other kinds of scans exist?" Sybil had mentioned something about other devices, but had not elaborated.

Her parents had indeed wondered about her choices in books, among other things, but in the end had usually decided there was little harm in her sometimes odd habits. "I suppose that I did. But I think in some part they enjoyed it."

Sybil knew that her sisters and she had all been different and had each presented their own challenge, and that their parents had loved each of them very much. It was a relief, in many ways, to have come from the family that she did.

"There are, and a great many. The CT is based off the same radiography as the XRay, there's nuclear bone and blood imaging, but I think you'll find the Magnetic Resonance Imaging the most fascinating. There are some happening today too."

"And - could I see some of this Magnetic Resonance Imaging?" He knew it wasn't an entirely simple thing he was asking, for he was no doctor here, and knew nothing of the technology involved. They may have been in a hospital, a place of healing, but this was not his world. He wondered if it ever would be.

"You have learned much in your time here," he noted, real admiration in his voice.

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