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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"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.

"MRI," she says with a smile, and nods. "If we're lucky, yes. I've a friend in that lab too, and she should be working this morning. As long as she doesn't mind, it should be fine."

Sybil can't contain her smile, nor the flush of her cheeks. She has learned a great deal and it's something she's proud of. "It's been a rather lot of work, but I admit, I love it. Even when it seems a mountain of knowledge I'll never be able to scale, and I'm frazzled from examinations and all the things I have to remember and how different it all is, I still love it."

“Your determination is commendable. It might have been easy to take some other course of study, or to have found some other profession that has not changed so much in the intervening years. I am sure you have many talents, after all.” He had not meant the last to sound so flirtatious, and blushed faintly. “And yet here you are. I will find myself in need of your insight before long.”

“MRI,” Combeferre echoed the word, committing it to memory. “And this machine shows a different look inside the body?”

"I think another thing my parents would have told you is that all of the Crawley girls are remarkably stubborn." She says it with a measure of pride, knowing that it was a decent enough quality when it meant sticking to what they truly desired. "I will admit, worked as a nurse when I first arrived but was out of my depth. I had to hear it from a Doctor before I moved myself to an Aide and started studying more fervently. If- If there's any advice I can give, I would be more than happy, but I'm sure that you'll manage well yourself."

Sybil means the compliment, and likes the way that his cheeks show a hint of colour. She takes the opportunity to be forward herself, having decided at some point that she would like to spend another day with him. "Perhaps if you are lucky, you'll find out for yourself."

It's almost a challenge to bring her attention back to the medical equipment in the rooms surrounding them, but the whirring of machines is distraction enough. "It uses magnetic fields to get pictures of the body that are unlike anything I've seen before. If you're lucky you may get to see a brain. You can hear it running now, that buzz and whir down the hall."

Combeferre chuckled. "I might manage on my own, but I think I would find the endeavor significantly more enjoyable with your assistance. If you would allow it, of course." He allowed himself a flash of a grin, barreling on before he could lose his nerve. "Perhaps you might allow me to buy you dinner, and share something of what you have been studying. Or... anything else you might like."

Honestly, he was glad for the speedy distracted. Perhaps he had read her wrong. Perhaps she was only being kind, offering a tour out of politeness, or professional camaraderie at best. He did not think this was the case, but, well, Henri Combeferre had never claimed to be an expert on women.

And so instead of worrying about whether or not he had just made a complete fool of himself, he struggled to imagine the whirring machine that waited so close by. "C'est vrai? Le bon Dieu." He exhaled. "Pictures of the brain."

"I would be happy to," she says quickly, perhaps too quickly she wonders after? Sybil has never understood Mary's ideas about leading on a potential suitor, it has always felt too much like lying to sit quite right with her. That he's asked has set off an entire flock of butterflies in her belly, a feeling she's nearly forgotten. "To have dinner, that is, and to help you. Both, I'd be happy to do both."

The MRI is nearly forgotten, the clunk of the machine reminding her. "Should we go see what they are scanning?"

"Good. Wonderful." Now, Combeferre couldn't stop grinning, and he ducked his head with a small laugh. "But please, lead the way, mademoiselle. I- I hate to think what the inside of my head looks like right now, of course. Thoroughly addled, I am sure." He clasped his hands behind his back, fingers twining together with nerves. Even now that she had responded, his head was spinning, as though to make up for his uncharacteristic boldness earlier.

It's sweet that he's so pleased by her answer, almost as if he didn't expect her to wish to spend more time with him. It's not a reaction she's used to and it charms her entirely. "Then we won't scan yours today, I promise."

Sybil taps at the door before pushing it open and saying hello. The woman working smiles at her and after a few quick words she nods to Henri. "We can watch, if we promise to not touch anything."

"I promise," Combeferre said, offering a warm smile to the stranger. Almost immediately, this vow proved more difficult than expected. The machine's monitor glowed faintly with a strange image, its controls varied and strange. Childish as he knew it was, some part of him wanted to press every button, just to see what would happen.

Keeping his giddiness in check (a feeling that, admittedly, had to do with much more than hospital technology), he settled for studying the machine from afar. "When would a patient need to be studied like this?"

It is an urge Sybil doesn't feel. She knows the machines do a great many things she doesn't understand, and wouldn't dream of touching anything unless she were instructed. "Usually after other scans have been done and been inconclusive or shown little. It's sad, but usually it's the worst cases that get seen here. Those who have severe breaks that have torn muscles, tumours and growths, strange headaches that have no cause."

Combeferre nodded eagerly. "But with this, they can find the answer, where before only mystery and hopelessness awaited in such cases." The other woman gave him an odd look, but he barely noticed. X-rays were miraculous in their own right, and surely a help to doctors, but a good physician could learn a lot about a broken bone without one. This spectacular machine could provide information that even the best doctors could only guess at without it. "What do the scans look like?"

"Yes," she says, the one word weighted with understanding. Sybil has known those who wasted away to nothing for no reason that any could ascertain. She nods at the attendant, sure that she will have to offer a better explanation later. "Could you show us?"

A nod and then the images pop up as they've been scanned already, one moving into the other in a way that is not yet seamless. That will take more work by the woman at the controls. There's a darkness in the bone as it turns and that can't be ignored. "There. You can see something."

Combeferre's smile as he met Sybil's gaze with understanding was bright and excited, the earlier sheepish nerves gone. She was lovely, yes, and clever, and seemed to enjoy his company, but it was this shared sense of wonder that had made him truly want to see her again. How could he not wish to spend more time with her?

He watched the image with wide eyes. It was clearer than any x-ray he had seen, the image sharper, delving deeper. He nodded slightly, transfixed as the lesion came into focus. He had seen men on the dissection table with bones horribly mottled, and wondered if the same fate awaited this person. "Is it cancerous?"

"I couldn't say," she admits, though Sybil expects that it is. A look from the attendant confirms it for the most part and she is glad that these booths are soundproof and the MRI so loud. "Likely, but they will review them with a doctor before they decide."

Sybil thanks the woman working, moving them back toward the door and the hallway. They've taken enough of her time, she thinks, and seen enough to at the least demonstrate what is available. Though if Henri is anything like herself it will only whet the curiosity he already has. "The technicians don't diagnose," she says once the door is behind her, "but enough time working with these things and it becomes more apparent. I admit, I'm still new to it all."

"Yes, yes, of course." Combeferre nodded politely to the technician as the door swung shut behind them. He wondered what fate awaited the patient with the unsettling lesions, and made a mental note to research treatments for cancerous bones and other masses. Even if they had been able to diagnose something like that in his own time, doctors would have had no course of action. Knowing would be like bestowing a death sentence. But so many changes had come to medicine, perhaps here some hope was warranted. "Do doctors see patients very often, or do they only analyze results?" With so much data to examine, and so much additional staff to manage a patient's care, he could see how doctor and patient might rarely interact in a place like this. The thought was terribly strange.

"Both, though it does depend. Sone will see patients all day, in a practice or offices they keep, as well as having time in the hospital, usually in the emergency unit. Other, more specialised doctors split their time between analysis, procedures and operations and seeing to patients." It's a system that she's comfortable with now, after her time here. "I suppose there's more specialisation now, than there was. I also think it's why nurses have become more important in this system. We deliver more of the day to day care. Under instruction of course."

Combeferre nodded. Aside from the strict (and, Combeferre always thought, nonsensical) divide between physicians and surgeons, no such divisions had existed in his own time. "Even the structure is different than I knew," he observed thoughtfully. "Though with so much more information to learn, I understand the need."

It wasn't the most romantic turn of the conversation. But if Combeferre thought there was something strange about discussing the nature of medicine directly after asking a woman to did, he made no sign. He was too caught up in the moment for that.

"There are many different specialisations. In fact, there are doctors for each of the different types of cancer that they know, and the treatments can vary as well." Not a great deal from what she has seen, it seems to Sybil they are all fairly similar. But then again, that is one area where she feels still an outsider, her focus of study much more general.

She doesn't mind the turn of conversation, pausing them in the hall as a doctor and technician put x-rays into lightboxes. This is exciting in its own way, and it's something that they are sharing, which she enjoys as well. "It looks like a broken fibula," she says softly.

Combeferre nodded eagerly, eyes sharp as he watched the doctors examine the images. He had to resist approaching to speak with them; even in medical school, he had too often interrupted a lecture with questions, or attempted to direct the discussion in a dissection room to something more substantive than anatomy. Perhaps he would have an opportunity, some other time, to learn all these men (and women!) had to teach.

"I must return to school." With a shake of his head and a small laugh, Combeferre realized he had spoken aloud. But he had spoken from the heart, too - for all his misgivings, the tour had solidified in him his wish to return to this world.

His words are a pleasure to hear, clasping her hands and smiling widely at his pronouncement. "I understand. There is something about this place, about what they know and all I could hope to do to help heal people. So much to learn."

The pleasure of learning for its own sake is something she's begun to love here, too, though a spark of it always existed in her.

"Precisely," Combeferre said, his eyes bright with their shared understanding. "And without you, I might not have had the opportunity to see all this. Merci." He offered a playful bow, though he knew how ridiculous such a thing would look in their surroundings. A passing orderly even shot him a baffled look.

Combeferre couldn't say that he cared.

Nor did Sybil, her curtsey a well-practiced movement, though she had little chance to use them these days. “Abientot, but you give me too much credit.”

Sybil nods toward the elevator, thinking their tour very likely nearing a close. “Should you like to see anything else? Or would you perhaps care to walk me home?”

Combeferre might have stayed there all day, had he been allowed, peering into every exam room, asking a thousand questions about every apparatus and piece of technology, wondering about methods, and diagnosis, and work habits of the people who worked here. But now, something else entirely had a pull over him - or someone else, more accurately. "I would be delighted to walk you home," he told her, smiling brightly.

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