[For Flavia]

[adifferentlife]

Tutorial this week was much of the same, if only for one exception. This was the day Sybil has brought Flavia with her and their teacher seems determined to impress. Not that they wouldn't be studying biological oxidation-reduction reactions but it does make a few hours of carefully monitoring and recording all the reactions.

Once they're done, Sybil takes her time cleaning up their station, letting Flavia approach the unit leader with all the questions she might have. The girl's curiosity is only to be encouraged, she thinks, and she's glad to have had any part of it.

"Should we get lunch? I've work this afternoon, but I thought it might be nice," she says when Flavia eventually returns. "Or do you have to get back to your regular classes?"

Comments

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"You help people," she says. "You know what to do to make them better, if they're ill or hurting." The stricken face of Grace Ingleby floats up into her mind's eye, then, and Flavia recalls the panicked minutes in the dovecote, the woman's head cradled in her lap, waiting for Dr. Darby to come speeding up the lane.

"It's very noble."

[adifferentlife]

"Perhaps you're right," she says, considering Flavia's words the same way she would consider a peer. "It's hard to think about sometimes, when you're in the moment. I do love it, nursing, working as one. I feel as if it has meaning, even when I'm not sure it does."