A tour of sorts [[Combeferre]]

[adifferentlife]

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.

Comments

[adifferentlife]

She peeks over to the chair that he's set his books on, shaking her head. "Einstein? Reading of science and history that is truly the future? I think that you are extremely curious and inquisitive."

"But it can still be hard. Being here, learning what we do and how the world doesn't learn the lessons of the past." She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, knowing that there are things she'd much rather speak of. Pouring her tea, she smiles again at his compliment, not hiding her pleasure at his words. It's a nice thing to sit and talk with something, it's something she's been missing. "Well, then we should have our drinks and enjoy the day. I have promised to how the hospital, haven't I?"

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre's laugh was self-deprecating. "I enjoy reading," he said with a shrug. "And understanding a bit about how the world works helps me better find my place in it. I like to think this Einstein would appreciate that sentiment, actually."

"You did indeed promise me a tour," he said with a nod, allowing Sybil to carry their conversation towards more cheerful waters. "What is the hospital like?" Even with all the bits and pieces he had heard - phrases like emergency room and outpatient surgery and resident, he found he had too little understanding of medicine in this age to truly picture what went on within its massive walls. And yet he had spent the last seven years - a significant portion of his lifetime - studying in facilities that purported to have the same purpose.

[adifferentlife]

"My father had a wonderful library, but it was nothing like the libraries here. I love those, and spent most of my first few weeks at one of the tables in there piled high wither everything I could grab." Sybil recounts the story happily, remembering those days with the fondness that comes with distance. At the time she had been stressed and worried and out of sorts, trying to find something familiar to cleave to. "I still go too often. I love novels, actually, some of the most dreadful things sometimes."

She sips the tea, the hint of bergamot and lavender mixed with milk a comfort she can't deny. "It's large, and clean." She laughs at her own words, knowing how vague and non-descriptive they are. "Everything is metal and shining. It's silly to say but so clean. It's also distant, in many ways. Health is a business as much as anything else. They can heal many things, but some still confound."

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre grinned in recognition. "That sounds very much like my days since I have gotten here," he said. "The sheer variety alone - history, and politics, and literature, going back a hundred years or more. I saw some titles that were popular in my own time. The libraries of La Sorbonne were magnificent, of course, but these are open to everyone. Remarkable, n'est pas?" He ducked his head sheepishly, realizing how he had gone on.

'Large and clean' might have been vague, but the image those words brought to mind was decidedly foreign. Combeferre shook his head with wonder. "Nothing like the hospitals I know, then," he observed wryly. "How do they keep it so clean?" The question was half rhetorical. "I have read something about those advances. Antibiotics. Vaccines. Diseases annihilated in one fell swoop."

[adifferentlife]

"There's more than I could ever have imagined. A friend got me a record player not long after I came here as well." Sybil smiles encouragingly, knowing just how it feels. She's had that look often enough herself. "There were composers and singers and so much to listen to. We had one ourselves back in my own home, but the recordings are of such high quality it amazed me."

"Yes, but they haven't been entirely a blessing. Some have created diseases that are resistant to the very drugs created to treat them. But they are more of a gift than not." Sybil thinks the last very firmly, having seen gangrene and other infections and their toll on so many. "I would trade near anything to be able to take penicillin home with me. To help those wounded in the war."

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre nodded, once again appreciating her steady practicality. "Few things are are entirely positive when in excess," he agreed. "And treating the sick requires balance. Galen seems to have gotten that right, if he was wrong about nearly everything else." Despite his words, the young would-be doctor could only feint at such cautious wisdom. The sights and smells of epidemic were still too recent in his memories to, in his heart, think sensibly about modern medicine's miracle cures. "Cholera was particularly bad in Paris this spring - right before I got here, that is," he said with a sobered expression. "To think, we could have so easily combated it, if we had only known how."

[adifferentlife]

"I'm sorry to hear that," she says seriously, knowing how devastating diseases could be. It was a fact of life for them, and she can only imagine it would have been worse near on a hundred years before. "It was one of the things we worried about the most with the soldiers and the war. What if they brought disease? I suppose we were right because I read a few years later there was a horrible epidemic."

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre winced. "Tragedy on top of tragedy," he murmured. "And yet, I find myself surprised by how pessimistic so many here seem to be, despite their advantages. I know well that nothing is perfect, but..." he trailed off with a frown. "For example, I recently spoke to a man, another outsider here, but one whose home better aligns with this place, who claimed to be suspicious of the many services Darrow offers free of charge. And while I grant such privileges are miraculous and even baffling, but does no one in the modern world dream of a better future, or look back on all that has been accomplished already? I never thought I would see the day that medical care was provided to all without cost, but even two hundred years ago, I knew that it would happen." He shrugged sheepishly. "Am I making any sense?"

[adifferentlife]

"Yes," she responds, perhaps far too eagerly. Sybil cannot help that his words excite her, there are too few here that are from a time as far behind them as her own, and it is a perspective that cannot be easily explained away for all that she has indeed tried. "The myriad of privileges that we all have in this place stuns me, and yet it seems all people want some of the time is more of it. I know the girls I go to school with-"

She stops herself, shaking her head at what she had been about to say. Instead she chooses different words, more careful ones, leaning back in her seat. "I would happily have given up all that we had at Downton should we be able to live like this, all of us."

[jaimemieux]

But her eagerness only brought a warm smile to Combeferre's lips. He tipped his head to the side. "What about the girls you go to school with?" Though he was teasing, he was also genuinely curious.

[adifferentlife]

She looks quickly to the side before leaning forward over the table. It isn't something to be shouted, mostly because it's not the most charitable of thoughts. "They worry so much about which boy talked to them at the clubs, or how intoxicated they became the night before. Some barely scrape by in the classes and they detest all of the work we must do out of class. But to have this opportunity for an education, and to be able to help others when we are done? Isn't that a gift of sorts?"

[jaimemieux]

Well then, Combeferre thought, having to suppress a smile, men and women have even more in common than I imagined. "It is a gift," he agreed. "Though I fear those privileged with such opportunities, once they had come to expect them, rarely appreciate them to the degree they should. 'tis the price of progress, I fear."

[adifferentlife]

"I suppose that it is. It isn't like I ever offered to eschew my old life, even if I did take up work." Then, only when war prompted her. "Perhaps we do take it all for granted, but I'd rather not believe that."

Sybil won't believe that at any rate. There's too much hope in her to allow herself to think that people can't all strive to be better, or that some few could make a difference. "I remember how exciting it was to see the votes read after an election. Even if I did end up with a rather large bump on my head."

[jaimemieux]

"Why, mademoiselle, next you will be telling me that you regularly attended political rallies," Combeferre grinned. Ever since arriving in Darrow, he had not been able to shake a tight knot of anxiety in his chest, but now, here, it loosened. "That must have been quite the thing to see. I imagine ladies like yourself were not the average spectator?" He had no judgment in his voice; if anything, there was admiration.

[adifferentlife]

"We weren't. I was in rather a bit of trouble that I went at all." Sybil can't contain the sense of happiness she feels at his response, exhibiting itself in a rather large and unprepossessing smile. Even Branson had been frustrated by her decision to attend that day, and her father and sisters had not understood at all. To have someone not react in that way (and also not to seem uncaring as if there were no significance to her actions at all) was a pleasant surprise she found herself unprepared for. "I had only been to one before that, but I tried to get to suffrage meetings in London. Sadly, no one would let me out of their sight by then."

It's a frustration she had lived with, just, instead dragging her sister to all the charity functions she could manage. It was, after all, her season. "The energy amazed me. To think if we applied it the things we could all change. Perhaps we might have a world like this one."

[jaimemieux]

In all honesty, Combeferre might have reacted differently, had they been in Paris, or even England, and a young woman like the one sitting across from him had wanted to take part in a political even that might have turned dangerous. But here there was enough distance to soften such instinctual concerns, and he was left merely admiring her courage and determination. Combeferre had long insisted that women, given the smallest opportunity and education, would surely leap at the chance to have their voices heard, and provide perspective that men never could. The women who populated Darrow wore trousers, and too any number of jobs, and even held political office, and that was a wonder. But Sybil, who had lived somewhere between his own time and current one, and who had been handed scraps of rights and insisted on using them to the fullest extent while fighting for more, she was something to see.

It was breathtaking. She was… rather breathtaking.

"I like to think that is what happened," Combeferre said thoughtfully. "My understanding is that Darrow resembles our future, more or less. I think it's fair to say that the energy you saw that day did not go to waste. The People demanded what should rightfully be theirs - health, and well-being, and freedom, and self-determination - and they got it. As we always do, eventually."

[adifferentlife]

His words make her pause, her head at a slight tilt as she listens and considers. Could it have happened any other way? Could women have gotten the right to vote, or could those working in the awful factories of a few decades earlier have made any difference were it not for those that organised and spoke up. "You are likely very right. I imagine it's that so much has already changed in my lifetime, I cannot help but want more, to see it all different. Even if this world isn't the one I imagined, entirely."

[jaimemieux]

“Nothing is ever quite as one pictures it, oui? I never thought everyone would be speaking English, for one thing.” This he said with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “I have a few friends who would be utterly furious.”

Combeferre sipped his coffee and realized that in his enthusiasm for the conversation, his drink had turned lukewarm. “But in all seriousness, I do know what you mean. Even one who spends too much time thinking about the distant future cannot predict what is to come. Why, the technology alone...” He shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever entirely understand it all, a difficult thing for a scientific mind to admit.

[adifferentlife]

"Nor that I would be sitting in a cafe having a conversation with a young French gentleman unchaperoned." Sybil says it playfully, far more flirtatious than she would have ever been a year before this place.

"Speaking of the technology, I believe we should see the hospital?" It was a good segue, for all that she feels she could spend hours here talking with Henri, a feeling that is unfamiliar but very welcome.

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre grinned crookedly and ducked his head. “Touche. And in that case, I hope you report well on the experience.” That was very nearly bold, and grinned again, more sheepishly this time.

“Oh- yes, of course. That would be delightful.” Somewhere along the way, he had managed to forget that a tour of the hospital had been the ostensible reason for their meeting. You are absolutely ridiculous, Henri Combeferre, he informed himself, and rose, and gestured with a smile for her to lead. “It isn’t far from here, yes?”

[adifferentlife]

"I think that I just may have to," she says, her smile nearly shy for the briefest of moments. Sybil put her books away in her satchel and slung it over one shoulder with ease. Was she teasing him, flirting with him? She wasn't actually quite sure, it's been so long since she's tried either. Even during her season she'd never been good at it, not like Mary was. She wasn't clumsy and overbearing like Edith either, but rather genuine and wishing to engage with those who captured her interest. She liked to laugh, but more importantly she liked to talk to people who listened to her seriously, and that was a rarer thing.

Silliness, she thinks, trying to push the thoughts away and focus instead on the tour in front of them. "It's a short walk, about 15 minutes if we cut across the lawns. You don't mind?"

[jaimemieux]

"No, not in the least. I like to walk." Thus far, he had stuck to walking whenever he could. Taxis and buses - the whole army of belching automobiles that filled the streets - were a bit much, even for someone generally willing to embrace this brave new world. Not that he minded; his feet had carried him most places in his life, and he did not expect them to give out now.

For just a moment, he shifted his weight uncertainly from foot to foot, wondering if he should offer his arm, if that was even done. In the end, he clasped his hands behind his back - call it nerves, or carelessness, or merely missing the moment - and fell into step beside her. "Have you spent much time exploring the park here?" he asked. "It seems quite pleasant, from what I have seen."

[adifferentlife]

"I do too. It's a relief, and sometimes I can almost forget about all of the things that are different. There's still grass, and trees." It may be a silly sort of sentiment, but it's what she feels and she's not ashamed of that in any way.

"There's a little pond in Petros park, the ducks are there. I like to feed them, even if the signs say that we shouldn't. They're ducks, just like there were ducks in a pond at Downton, and just like there they're greedy and loud. They waddle and quack and are rather like some of the men that my father knows, if I'm honest." Sybil laughs at her own description, even though her cheeks turn pink. "Have you had a chance to see much of it yourself?"

[jaimemieux]

Combeferre ducked his head, but his shoulders still shook with his laughter. "They sound decidedly like some professors I knew at university," he told her with a twinkle in his eye. "Lectures might have been more enlightening at times, had they been led by waterfowl. My friends always insisted that the law professors were the worst - being lawyers, I suppose - but they never had to spend time with one while standing around a rotting corpse." He closed his eyes briefly, wanting to laugh with despair at himself. Jokes about the operating theater were generally not best shared with young women, not even those who had their own interest in medicine, he was almost certain.

He smiled sheepishly and cleared his throat. "I have sought solace in the park as well, yes. 'tis strange - when I first went to Paris to study, I found the city rather overwhelming as well. I do not know what I would have done without the parks, then. And I find the same true here. As you say, grass is grass, and tress are trees, miles or centuries apart."

[adifferentlife]

Sybil laughs at that, thinking of the elderly doctor who had taught them anatomy the semester before. He'd stormed on about things before finally dragging them to see a cadaver. It hadn't surprised her, the man had a peaceful death - in his sleep. She'd wished some of the men she'd dealt with had such a luxury. "It is true, though if I burst out laughing in any of my lectures, I'll lay the blame at your feet I hope you realise."

"It's peaceful. So much of this city moves so quickly, people are in constant contact with each other." She both loves and hates the little telephone that she's gotten here. It is convenient but also an annoyance. Mostly she leaves it in her room as she would a regular phone. "Being able to step away from that is valuable."