#phoster off-screen

[jomiddlemarch]

Best Things dwell out of Sight

Dr. Hale was to blame for it. He had never had Dr. Foster’s compunction about making sure his instruments were properly cleaned and stored after a procedure, which only flagged when they were overrun with boys hemorrhaging to death in the hallways Emma had once skipped along. Nor had he Dr. Summers’s unexpectedly intrinsic neatness about a surgery, disturbing his surroundings as little as possible, in only that one sphere as his desk and personal linen attested. Dr. Hale had left a jumble after Private Campbell’s amputation, scalpels swaddled in discarded bandages and cotton lint and the chaplain had been too quick to help the orderly lift the boy, now lighter by a leg but with a chance to live in its place; the chaplain had cut his right hand cleanly but deep, across the palm and into the base of the thumb. Dr. Foster had sewn it up, taking as much care as when he operated on a man’s eye socket, and it was expected to heal, but in the meantime, Mr. Hopkins was forced to accommodate the dressed wound as best he could. This meant he must return to his proper responsibilities, to pray with the boys and prepare a weekly sermon, to greet and console visiting families, and that he could not assist in any other medical care, nor even any labor in the contraband camp. Dr. Foster had been quite clear about that, having found the chaplain standing beside Miss Jenkins, ushering him back to Mansion House and promising an orderly would come in the forenoon to help with the patients. Since Major McBurney’s hasty departure, Dr. Foster had become the chief medical officer again but during this second tenure, the hospital and contraband camp were more harmonious in their co-existence and Miss Jenkins was known to take tea with Mrs. Foster on Thursday afternoons when she could be spared from the camp.

 What would Mary have said to find herself in such a situation as Emma did now? The thought was as fleet and flickering as a lightning bug, words spilling from her lips before she could imagine stopping them, “Dear Lord, Henry, what are you doing? Stop!”

 “You’ll cut your throat!”

She’d run to him, the short distance across the drab room nothing to her urgent fear, and held his wrist in her firm grasp, the razor poised but motionless against his throat. Not against against, a feather’s-breadth away, as she was from him but no blood had spilt, not even from her own bitten lip. They were alone, Henry having chosen the little closet Mary had once used to see the camp women in, and the sound of her voice still echoed around them.

 “Emma?” Henry said, stopping her, asking her a question, more than one. More than one she couldn’t answer, might not. Must not.

 “Whatever were you thinking?” she replied, pausing to consider what he might say. She thought of how dark his eyes could be and how hopeless, how he sometimes prayed besides a man’s bed for hours, how he sat there after the man died. “You didn’t mean to-”

 “No! No,” he repeated, more quietly the second time but more conclusively. “I only wished to be rid of this beard. I find it doesn’t suit me,” he added, his tone easier, with a hint of the humor that had become too rare. She noticed then the small looking-glass he’d propped against some books Mary must have left behind, the titles lengthy German, the gilt flaking, the basin that held water half-obscured by the clouding of soap. He’d draped his coat on the back of the chair and had done what he could to roll up his sleeves, the bandage on his right hand dry but not the snowy white it should have been.

 “You must ask for help then, not risk your life with your injured hand,” she snapped. She was relieved and irritable with it. She felt the urge to stamp her booted foot and made an effort to restrain herself. He somehow saw both and failed to hide his grin.

 “You would volunteer?” he asked, an unseemly request but the world was no longer seemly or fair or orderly in any way. He must have expecter her to refuse but Needs must, she thought, and conveyed her answer with the slightest lift of her chin.

 “You would trust me?”

 “Of course I would, Emma. I do.” She nodded in response, as he could not, the razor still too close to his carotid artery. She felt his awkward grasp on the razor loosen before he let go. Then she felt the weight of it in her own hand, across her palm, warmed by him.

 She set to the task, telling herself it was no different from changing a dressing, from removing stitches from a wound hastily sewn at a battle-field clearinghouse, but she knew she was a liar. This was not any boy, any soldier, it was Henry whose face she held in her hands as she had once before. This time, there was sunlight and the sound of the hospital wards not very far away. She glanced at him and saw, this time, his eyes were open, watching her intently, gentle and perhaps something else she should not admit, even to herself.

 “Are you going to watch me the whole time?” she blurted out, half-angrily. He was so handsome, even half-shaved and unkempt, and that dark gaze…

 “You do have a knife at my throat, Emma,” he replied equably, as if he were only pointing out the most anodyne fact, the day’s weather or the edition of a book. “I shall try not to trouble you though.”

 She returned to her work, drawing the blade through the whiskers on his cheeks, along his jaw, as they crept down his neck where the skin was more delicate. The soap had not lathered all that well but the razor was properly sharpened and she found, after a few tentative strokes, the pressure and angle that was best. There was a strange, compelling peace to it, the faint rasp of the steel against his skin, the scent of the soap, her fingers turning his face this way and that, commanding him, keeping him safe. How handsome he was, how well-made, healthy and whole and desirable, if she could allow herself to even think that scandalous thought! She did not admire him in this moment as a Godly work of art or for his ideals, his compulsion to help and to serve; she was entranced with the fineness of his skin, the way the shaven beard cast a pale blue beneath his cheeks, the fullness of his lips and the bridge of his nose, the shadows that began behind his ears and dropped into the open neck of his linen shirt. She leaned forward, to address the challenge of shaving the underside of his jaw, her own mouth pursed with the effort, and suddenly felt his uninjured hand at her waist. She would had thought he meant to steady her, to help her, except for how his hand trembled; that she felt in her hips and her belly, a warmth that lit her skin from within, that held her by the throat. He pressed his hand against her, to stop it from shaking perhaps. His voice was even when he spoke,

 “You have such gentle hands.”

 What could she say? There was no etiquette for this moment and she was afraid she might say anything that was true—that she cared for him, worried over him and prayed every night for his safety, that she longed to be told she was his only beloved as much as she knew it was a frivolous wish in the middle of a War, a terrible wish when she was a Southern woman and he a Yankee. She could not confess the horror that had taken her when she thought he meant to harm himself or the desire she felt to drop the razor and hold his face in both her hands, to kiss his mouth until they both laughed at the soapy bitterness on their lips, until she only tasted Henry. She said what she could.

 “Hush, Henry. You’ll make me lose my place, we’re nearly done.”

 “Are we?” he murmured, making the words small and quiet, moving his mouth as little as he could, she thought, while leaving her to grapple with the question, as encompassing as anything could be. She finished drawing the straight razor across his throat, once, twice, ending where he had thought to begin, then wiped it across her apron and set it down on the table.

 “There now,” she said, hearing how she was breathless, had held her breath, and looked into his eyes. He was shy and sad and hopeful and she acted before she thought better of it, touched his smooth cheek, below his eye, across his cheekbone, in a gesture that was only a caress. She managed to stop before she could bend toward him for a kiss, but they both felt the slight movement she made, her body nearer to his, her face angled with one intent.

 “Thank you. I’ve taken up too much of your time,” he said.

 “You lived to tell the tale, which was all I’d hoped, though goodness me, if you should tell Nurse Hastings, how she will squawk! She’s worse than a pea-hen!” Emma replied, finding she spoke the truth and also attempting to find a way to alter the charge between them, enough to let them part.

 “I wouldn’t, I won’t tell anyone, you needn’t worry. This will be only between the two of us,” he said solemnly, as if they had become engaged without permission, as if he had compromised her, ignoring what she had said last. It was too much—her hope and her fear and something she couldn’t ask for. Something she could hardly bear waiting for—and she might wait forever. She thought of Mary and Belinda, both happily married after delays and suffering, and both so wise.

“A secret?” she asked, trying for her old flirtatious tone, one he was unfamiliar with but could recognize. She even batted her eyelashes a little though she let him see her expression as she fluttered about.

 “Our secret. I’ll clean up here,” he offered.

 “No, you may cut yourself again. Let me do it, you’re needed elsewhere, I won’t be missed another few minutes,” she replied, lifting his mended coat from the chair’s back, offering it up to him to put on. She left her hands on his arms longer than she needed to, shorter than she wanted, and did not rest her cheek against his broad back in its woolen carapace, she did not feel the wing of his shoulder blade beneath her lips.

 “That’s not true, I’ll-” he said, then smiled instead of finishing. “But I’ll go. And I’ll make sure Nurse Hastings is suitably diverted until you return. She’s been wondering how I hurt my hand and I think Dr. Hale must finally have his comeuppance.”

#mercy street #emmry #emma green #henry hopkins #romance #henry with a beard #emma takes matters into her own hands #always byron's fault #phoster off-screen #post-canon

[andthenwedance]

On the 25th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Sorry this has taken so so so long @broadwaybaggins! I blame too much international travel

Forewarning this is actually my first Mercy Street fic and I don’t totally have the character’s voices in my head. Yay for the show coming back this week to amend that!!

Phoster College AU basically just based this on things that we both love- ie Notre Dame tailgates and theater and Hamilton. Happy Belated Christmas Allison :)

Jed Foster watched his breath fog before him as he opened the car door. He pulled his gloves firmly on his hands. The snow on the field where he was parked was fresh and downy, surprising for the amount of traffic that was traversing the field. He tucked his blue and gold scarf on tighter- if it was going to be this cold all day, then it was going to be a long day.

 He checked his phone for the location of the tailgate, “Stadium Lot, look for a Green SUV and a Chicago flag.”

 It had been a while since Jed had been on campus, and he’d never actually been a student at the university, but he thought he could manage to make his way to campus. He could see the infamous Golden Dome in the foreground, flanked by the church steeple and library top. It gave him a tingle of excitement, as did the bustle of game day as he approached the campus. It was early, nearly 11AM, but there were plenty of students bundled in game day attire, blasting music from dorm room windows, and others grilling up messes of smoke at handmade concession stands. He admired the students’ stamina, as they’d been undoubtedly up late the night before be it partying or studying. He remembered being an undergraduate, at a much smaller school, but just being on campus here recalled several memories of both the stress and camaraderie of college. Not that med school was any less stressful, but the environment was different than undergrad.

 He navigated his way to the stadium, hard to miss with excessive construction tangled around it. Behind the stadium was a massive parking lot brimming with activity. There were cars as far as the eye could see, each with a tent set up outside, often with grills of their own and copious amounts of alcohol. It’d been a while since he’d been a football game and he was eager to get into the game day spirit. And, as the holiday season was approaching, he was also ready to welcome the Christmas spirit.

 Jed wandered through the aisles of tailgates, trying to find the Green family’s spot. They were old friends from back home who’d reached out to offer Jed an extra ticket with the hope of him hobnobbing with a doctor friend of theirs, who might be a valuable networking connection or something like that.

 After passing a handful of Chicago flags, he located the Green family’s tailgate.

 “There’s the good doctor,” A voice called to him, waving him over.

 Jed chuckled and turned to their spot.

 He took in the family and their milling friends and family around them. He recognized Emma at once. Their daughter was a year younger than him and he knew her pretty well. He had met her years back. Her black curls were dancing under her bright green Santa hat. Leave it to Emma Green to own green everything. She was talking to someone else, another girl with dark hair and bangs. The girl was a taller, a fierce look on her face. Jed instantly thought she was gorgeous.

 He took one glance at the chattering group of adults, all of them engaging in drunk networking, and he moved over to where the girls were sipping drinks.

 “Oh hey Jed,” Emma called, “I’m glad you made it.”

“Me too,” He said.

 “Here, have a pretzel necklace,” Emma said cheerfully, putting one around his neck, “It’s our mom’s new tailgating brainwave.”

 “Uh, thanks,” He said, with a chuckle.

 “This is my roommate, Mary,” Emma said.

 The dark-haired girl rolled her eyes as Emma gave her a bump towards Jed.

 “Hi,” Mary said.

 “Mary is going to be a doctor too,” Emma told him.

 “I have to get into medical school first,” Mary said carefully, “But yeah that’s the plan.”

 Her voice was low and straightforward. He liked that.

  “I’m sure you’ll get in,” He said, trying to sound hopeful.

 “She totally will,” Emma gabbed, “She’s got amazing grades. Plus, she’s also doing a theater major.”

 “You act too?” He asked.

 Clearly Emma’s friend was a wealth of talent.

 “Yeah, I do,” She said.

 “You guys should really talk about doctor things,” Emma said, “I’m going to go figure out where Alice went. Last time I saw her she was heading towards a USC tailgate. Our rivals, really? Seriously, I can’t keep that girl out of trouble. Byyyyeeee!”

 Jed was thrown for a moment. It seemed that Emma was up to some amateur match making, but this could be very awkward- especially for her roommate who seemed a little shy.

 “So uh,” He said, “Is it hard balancing theater and medicine? Like do you have time for plays and all the homework?”

 Mary blinked up at him for a moment and then cracked a smile, “Wow, a lot of people don’t think of that- but yeah it can be sort of stressful. But, I’ve it this far right?”

 Somehow the awkward tension between them dissipated into friend chitchat. She told him about the play she’d been in, most recently playing the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods. So clearly, she could sing as well. He prodded her on the medical schools she applied to, schools all over- but three in Chicago. He imagined what things might be like if they lived in the same city. They might be able to give dating a real chance.

 In exchange, he talked to her about his first year of medical school so far- the struggles, the excitement, the new friends he made, how he liked living in a big city. He gave tips for interviews, though he could tell already that she had what it took. Applications were definitely a toss-up, a gamble- but he believed that

 It was after nearly an hour of chatting that her phone started ringing.

 “Damn, sorry, I forgot I promised another friend I’d go to her tailgate,” Mary said, “I really liked getting to know you. I’m sure I’ll run into you another time.”

 She gave him a hug and then ran off. He watched her run into the crowd. Her dark head and navy jacket stayed in focus until it didn’t- blending into those around her.

 He wondered if this was what Great American love stories were like today. Boy and girl meet, not at all ball, or a hospital during wartime, but at a college football tailgate. Their both well educated, highly driven. Is this what everyone strived for?

 But as he gazed at the throng of beer-soaked, gold-and-blue dazzled game watchers, he realized that if it was his all-American love story, it didn’t have a happy end. He’d already lost her.

 “Hey, Jed, come over here I want you to meet someone,” A voice beckoned him to further networking. But he felt a sense of loss settle in his chest as he took one final glance at the crowd.

 --

 By the third quarter Mary was freezing. She was normally good about staying for games- the whole game. It was tradition: standing on the benches, singing the Alma Mater with her friends, and then racing to the dining hall for candlelight dinner.

 But well, the team was losing. Mary’s feet were numb, and had been since the first quarter and her fingers were also losing feeling. In addition, her boots were covered in goo from the marshmallow war that that had taken place during half time.

 And well, she couldn’t stop thinking about Emma’s cute friend. He had been an interesting person to talk to, cute too. She felt antsy about the fact that she was unlikely to see him again. She didn’t meet intelligent, medical students everyday- especially ones that were as down to earth as he was.

 It didn’t matter because she was never going to see him again. It was best to head back to her dorm now before she needed to be taken to the hospital for hypothermia or something. She bid goodbye to her friends, despite their intense protests, and headed out of the stadium.

 She was exiting when suddenly- there he was.

 “Jed, right?” She asked.

 For as cute as he was, his name kinda sucked.

 “Yeah, Mary,” He said, his eyes lightening up.

 “Why aren’t you in the game?” She asked.

 “Too cold,” He remarked.

 “Same,” She agreed.

 “Could you direct me to the nearest Starbucks?” He asked.

 She smiled and nodded, “Yeah there is one in the student center.”

 “If you show me the way, I’ll buy you a coffee,” He offered.

 “I suppose I can be convinced,” She said, giving a smile.

 They walked across campus, despite her frozen feet, to the Starbucks. She watched him order a plain coffee and a caramel macchiato for her. They settled in the main area of the student center where they could still watch the game on the large TV there.

 She listened as he told her about how he decided to become a doctor. His brother had his leg amputated when he younger and Jed had felt powerless. He decided to become a doctor soon after. Mary shared her story in exchange- how the death of her high school boyfriend had prompted her take an interest in medicine as a way to make up for it.

 “Well, it seems like we have a fair share of sad stories between us,” Mary acknowledged.

 “And guilt complexes,” He added.

 Her phone started buzzing with just as the feeling came back into her feet. She knew that her friends were calling her about dinner plans.

 “Wow,” Jed said, nodding at the screen, “Would you look at that- we won!”

 She glanced at the TV and indeed they had pulled out a victory.

 “Who would have thought?” She said, breaking into a huge smile.

 She leapt forward and gave him a hug. He pulled her tight. And dang it, she really liked being in his arms.

 When they pulled back, she awkwardly looked at her phone and saw a flurry of texts from friends, beckoning her to dinner and celebrations.

 “Look,” She said, “I need to go. But, I think we should stay in touch.”

 “Actually, I have extra theater tickets for next weekend, if you want to visit Chicago,” He offered.

 “Hmm,” She said, “Next week is reading weekend, exams are important for doctoring and such- but I might go if the show is good.”

 “Well, they’re Hamilton tickets,” He admitted, “But if you really need to study…”

 “You have extra Hamilton tickets? Who are you?” She gasped.

 “They were a gift from a friend and I was going to invite a friend from class, but something tells me you’ll appreciate them more,” He told her.

 “Yes, I’ll be here,” She said. She could hear her voice getting a little squeaky with excitement.

 “Great,” He said, “You can study the rest of the weekend if you wish. I’ll be studying too.”

 “A studying and Hamilton date?” She said, before taking a shaky step forward to him and putting a kiss on his lips.

 “So that’s a yes?” He said.

“Definitely a yes,” She agreed, “Merry Christmas.”

#mercy street #ms ff #phoster #but honestly this is a very bizarre and specific AU #mercy street secret santa 2016 #also not very well edited bc i wanted to get it up before i fell asleep on my laptop again #jet lag is not treating me well

[jomiddlemarch]

Somehow myself survived the Night

“Shall I give you an order then, as your commanding officer?” Jed asked, managing to infuse the words with something resembling wit despite the brutality of the past thirty-six hours. Or perhaps it was thirty-seven, Henry couldn’t recall. Still, they were both standing and alert enough to converse, while Emma was fast asleep tucked up in the corner of the bench that stood in the back hallway. Her face, exhausted even in her sleep, was pillowed on one hand, and the line of her neck against her tumbled chignon reminded him of Ayres farm. It seemed a lifetime ago and yet he could still feel her soft, chapped lips, how shockingly eager she had been for him. The War had brought them together, parted them and now held them like shy partners in a country dance. It was the War, Antietam, that brought them together now, nearly a trio, having done what they could for the men and boys half-destroyed by the battle. Henry had found him standing in front of Emma, unable to walk away, unable to wake her or carry her to her room. The older man had quickly divined his dilemma but was slower than usual to offer a sensible solution.

 “I don’t believe you can order me to carry a young woman to her bedroom, Jed,” Henry replied. He rarely considered his commission, a chaplain first and last, and none other than McBurney had ever used his rank. Jed gave him a half-smile and Henry was struck again by how fatigued the man must be, no sleep and near-constant surgeries over the past three days as they tried to slow the procession to St. Peter.

 “Damn,” Jed cursed, but without any ire or bitterness. It was barely a transgression given recent events, though once Henry would have recoiled to hear such language. “Not even in extremis?” Jed added, tilting his head towards Emma.

 “This could hardly be considered life and death,” Henry said. Emma shifted, murmured something unintelligible. She was safe and healthy, her sleep would be restorative, and she would wake to straighten her collar and tend the boys, a comrade if nothing else. Jed glanced at him, then ran a hand through his ruffled hair, rubbed the back of his neck.

 “She’s going to regret sleeping there in the morning, for all it’s only a few hours away,” Jed replied. “And it’s unnecessary, Henry. If there was a woman about, if Mary-” he added, pausing after he said her name, Nurse Mary who was never very far from his thoughts, who would have helped Emma to her room, even to a more comfortable chair in the officers’ parlor but who now was making a slow recovery in Boston.

 “I should hate anyone to think I was taking advantage, for Miss Green to think it,” Henry said.

 “Well, you needn’t. No one would, no one will. And if it’s what you require, I’ll chaperone you to her door. Now, will you?” Jed said, half-bemused, half-exasperated, laying a conciliatory hand on Henry’s arm. Henry nodded and stepped over the bench, easing his hand behind her back and beneath where her knees were bent, picking her up. It should have felt awkward—he had never held her this way, Jed Foster watching them both with an atypical gravity, his own body aching from the hours of hard labor, but instead it was effortless, entirely natural. Emma nestled her face into his shoulder but her eyes stayed closed. She was warm against him and he felt the loveliness of her shape, looked down to see the delicate line of her cheek, the bridge of her nose, her lips parted as she breathed easily. Despite the hour, the desperate days of work, she carried the scent of rosewater about her and he thought she looked like a little white rose in his arms.

 “I’ll bring up the rear,” Jed offered “There isn’t room to walk two abreast.” It was not quite true but Henry didn’t argue. He turned and climbed the stairs, each step the opposite of a demand upon him, strength returning to him even as he heard Jed sigh, not only with fatigue, a sigh that would not be answered by the voice he wished for. The older man stopped a few paces from Emma’s door, the room that had once been Mary’s.

 “You are a man of God, honorable—you can see her safely settled. I can’t—I can’t go in that room,” Jed said and made no explanation. Henry looked at him and saw the man’s age and care on his face, in his posture, knew how little it would have affected him if there had been a Yankee Baroness waiting in any room in the hospital.

 Henry laid Emma down on the bed. It was neatly made and he didn’t want to wake her to get her under the covers. The night was warm enough. He took off her slippers, wondering that she had not worn sturdy boots but glad of it. There was a shawl at the foot of the bed and he drew it over her, brushed back the strands of dark hair that had come loose at her crown. He would not risk a kiss, his unshaven whiskers might be too rough against her fair skin, but he let himself say what he wanted, what she would not hear when the sun shone.

 “Good night, angel. God keep you safe.”

#mercy street #mercy street pbs #emmry #jed foster #henry hopkins #emma green #phoster off-screen #vignette #carried to bed #jed as chaperone #antietam #season 2 AU #basically fluff #civil war chaplains were commissioned officers

[jomiddlemarch]

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Part 3: Sister Isabella and Matron Brannan

The nuns rejoiced, quietly, that she had found her faith again. Bridget knew it, knew she was remembered in their rosaries, and did not disabuse them. She wore her own rosary around her neck, under the layers of her bodice and shawl; the beads were visible, dark against her white throat, but protected as they wouldn’t be wound around her wrist, unremarkable to any who were not cognizant of their meaning. She took them out when the wards were subdued or when there seemed little chance she would be interrupted at her prayer. Mary had found her with them once and reached out a tentative hand to graze the curved belly of the carved wood as if it were the finest jewel, a baroque pearl or a ruby, saying “It’s a very beautiful ritual, isn’t it? Very…compelling.” She’d learned something during her illness, Bridget thought, something about pain and abandonment and what salvation was and though she spent less time at the hospital since her marriage, she was still in some way its anchor and compass. Certainly Jed Foster had altered since they were wed and Bridget had not been able to keep herself from patting Mary on the hand and praising her for it, noting “He’s finally become what he ought to be, eh? Make sure he gives you the credit you’re due, Mrs. Foster,” enjoying Mary’s response, a knowing smile that did not obscure the softness in her dark eyes. Bridget wondered who would be bettered by Anne’s marriage to Declan, her son or the woman she’d never imagined as a daughter.

 It was the most predictable prayer she made and the one she might admit to the Mother Superior if the other woman inquired, God’s blessing on the upcoming marriage. Little Sister Isabella, who’d once had an eye for the Major in his plume and brass buttons, was less easily answered. Was it the nun’s youth or her curiosity? Bridget imagined how her hazel eyes would widen if she told her the truth: that she thanked God for taking her son’s eye, making him lame and weak, ruining his right hand, saving him from another battle. She prayed Anne’s drinking would not become Declan’s, for he was always the worse for gin and had never learned to apologize properly. She addressed the Holy Mother, asking that Anne not be sent a child at all if she might die of it, unable to bear another loss herself, to see her son suffer as she had, even if Anne begged for a baby of her own. She prayed for forgiveness for not seeking the deferment her boy had asked for, as if his honor was worth more than his life, as if her own virtue was worth more than his life, his body unfamiliar since manhood except that she knew those eyes since they’d looked up at her from her breast and the way his hair curled at his nape. And she prayed for absolution for searching the inventory for some additive to Byron Hale’s chicory that would make him ill unto dying and remove any chance he would try to interfere in the wedding, a bottle she’d put back when she found the man in his cups, muttering to himself “She’s gone, s’too late, too late, might as well take the transfer to Hell.”

 She remembered Byron Hale in her prayers she told the little nun, for that he was a fine physician and had no helpmeet as had Dr. Foster, and her son and the woman who would be his bride, and winking, said she prayed for them all since they were shortly to lose the light of the Crimea herself and as she’d been telling them all since she arrived, however would they manage?

#mercy street #st. patrick's day #anne/declan #alternate universe #post-series #matron brannan #sister isabella #mary phinney #prayer #guilt #phoster off-screen

[jomiddlemarch]

What worries you, masters you

It was a Tuesday, an ordinary, unprepossessing Tuesday at Mansion House, a day of day-old mutton stew and boiled turnips, of gangrene and two leg amputations, the laundresses in the side-yard wielding their paddles against the cauldrons’ sides and Anne Hastings wielding her seemingly infinite spite indiscriminately. Jed was tired and his right wrist ached, an old man’s ailment. He wanted nothing more than to retreat to his room with the French journal he’d saved for just such a grey afternoon or to sequester himself in the library with the limp, week-old newspaper a pretense to ensure he’d be left alone by everyone except Mary. She had a way to telling from only a glance whether he needed to be cheered or soothed, whether he would welcome the latest anecdote about cheeky Private Caldwell or might be better suited to expound on some surgical advance he recalled from the Paris operating theaters. She hardly ever came to him without some token—a bit of biscuit wrapped in a cloth, an apple still blushing, a slim volume of verse or a delightfully fat edition of Dickens she’d discovered tucked in a glass-fronted bookcase—and she always managed to graze his hand with hers as she offered her prize. She could not, did not, disguise the small curve to her lips his touch brought her and if he was not satisfied, he could at least accept that she was not either, but that she might one day be, though no calendar held the marked date. Not now though, not while he waited for Eliza to send her response and not now while Mary was out on a rare errand in her best bonnet and pelisse, sallying forth to the general store, the postmaster, some other cobbled-together tasks she had put off for days or months of days when she was working on the wards, rising before dawn to begin again, even on Sundays.

 He had to remind himself that Mary was not at Mansion House when he glimpsed the dark-haired woman bent over a book at the far side of the library. The waning light was diffuse, catching the chestnut sheen of a chignon, the faint sprigged pattern on the calico blouse, the delicacy of a slender hand turning pages. Something about that hand, flicking through the pages impatiently, telegraphed a frustration he recognized and he found himself stepping into the room and closing the door behind him softly.

 Emma was so absorbed she did not look up until he stood beside her shoulder. Jed didn’t try to make out the title or the text, more interested in the darkness of Emma’s blue eyes, the way she bit her lip and lowered her brows. He’d never seen her so unconscious of herself.

 “Has it said there are no happy endings?” Jed asked, meaning to tease, to mock her gently but finding his question was more serious than he’d intended. That it revealed more of his own fears than his experience. Mary would have noticed and noticing, would have made an apt rejoinder, understanding that he wanted to be consoled with wit, all her affection in her tone and not her words. If Emma apprehended his concern, it was nothing to what compelled her.

 “Dr. Foster, do you ever think, do you find you don’t understand anything at all? That everything you thought you knew…was wrong?” Emma answered. He could not have been more taken aback had she spouted Beowulf in Old English. He found himself at a loss for words.

“I have been reading everything that I could find in my father’s library since I was a little girl, you see, and I have been reading and re-reading Locke, John Locke, and I think, I don’t know anything. Nothing that I thought I did,” she went on, as if he had encouraged her instead of standing silent, managing not to gape. It was the longest conversation they had ever had. She was usually taken up with nursing the Confederates or making oblique little comments in the direction of Henry Hopkins, as arch as she dared. Jed hadn’t had time for her nor she for him. And yet, now, this confession—

 “The hoopskirt assassin a bluestocking? Will wonders never cease?” he quipped, unable to resist. She gave him a look then, one which Mary would have nodded at and Matron guffawed and so he made a gesture of apology with his aching right hand before he spoke again.

 “I admit, I am surprised you’re asking me. Of all of Mansion House’s residents,” he said.

 “But you are the only one who would understand. The others, they’re Yankees. Or the nuns, they might as well live on the moon! They couldn’t understand what you can, what we can, Southerners born and bred,” she said earnestly, pointing out a truth he had never bothered to see. Or had known it would be too painful to confront, just as he did his damnedest to forget his mother and brother, the plantation he’d grown up on, his inheritance. Even now, he turned from it and her remark.

 “Dr. Locke is giving you trouble, then?” he asked.

 “Once, everything he wrote seemed so clear to me. How he described the world and men so aptly and now, if I consider it carefully, it seems to make the world nothing but confusion. Terrible shadows. Sin,” she said.

 “The world has always been complicated, Miss Green. Before, when it seemed it wasn’t, that was because you were young. A child, reading an adult’s words with a child’s eye, a child’s mind,” he said. She had seemed nothing more than a pretty child when she came to Mansion House that first day, all pink ribbons, white frills, her little nose in the air and her curls bobbing. The girl had gone by degrees. Now, there might be nothing of her left.

 “Nurse Mary said, that first day, she said it was time to put childish things away. If I was to stay here, work here,” Emma said. He could hear how Mary would have said it, not harsh but direct, offering a suggestion in the midst of all her other work. Her hands would have been busy with a task, possibly one he’d set her. She would have quoted the verse perfectly but so easily it would not have seemed she was reciting another’s words but sharing the gospel as if it were a cup of tea she offered to a friend.

 “But I don’t know how to do that. Or rather, I don’t know what to do, how to understand how the world works anymore,” she paused, as if she meant to disclose something even more personal. The entire conversation was without precedent; he braced himself for what she would say next. “I thought my father was just, a kind man, but he has not treated our slaves as a kind master should. He hasn’t looked after them—they’re only numbers in his accounting book! All these boys, all broken, Tom dead—what for? Our Cause, how can it be worth dying for, suffering for—when it means so much suffering? I thought I knew right from wrong, that I did right but I can’t tell anymore,” she said.

 It was impossible to answer her as he had earlier so quickly answered Mary when she spoke of morality. He had once been the same as Emma, confident in his own vision of the world, and then he had gone abroad and come back, heart-broken, had married a woman he didn’t love and left his family behind as much as he could, except when they came to him, he couldn’t turn them away. He had fallen to the needle’s lure and lashed out when he was challenged, even in the mildest way, and he had helped Samuel save Aurelia. He had realized the other man was the better surgeon. The better man. He was still, by law, a married slave-owner, in love with a widowed Abolitionist and he had no better understanding of the world than the young woman in front of him, who was twisting a loose strand of hair around her finger like a worried child.

 “I can’t help feeling Nurse Mary or the chaplain could help you more,” he said.

 “She is all goodness and he’s faith. They couldn’t-- but you,” she said, breaking off.

 “I’m neither, not good nor devout, eh? Well, you’re right there. I think you are more right than you know, except that it’s painful to allow yourself to be right. To have been wrong or blind, to know that even when you’re right, you’re still likely mistaken in some way and to find it, you’ll have to risk exposing just how,” he said. She nodded, acquiescing even if she didn’t entirely agree. He knew that expression, the patient who took the medicine, wanting it to work even if he suspected it wouldn’t.

 “The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting. That’s Abelard, Heloise’s lover,” he added. Once, a girl like Emma Green would have blushed to hear a man who was not her husband speak to her of lovers, but she did not even blink at it.

 “He abandoned her, didn’t he, Peter Abelard?” Emma said. She was well-read, almost as erudite as Mary and Jed nearly laughed aloud to consider the company he found himself in; the hospital filled, unexpectedly, unimaginably, with a minister trained at Williams College, nurses who read Locke and Euler, nuns who spoke French, a matron who sang Robbie Burns’s songs when she got the chance, a clay pipe clenched in her lips.

 “Yes. Yes and no. They wrote to each other, didn’t they? I think his point stands, regardless of his other actions. That your questions, your confusion, may lead to clarity. A relief, for those of us who can’t help doing otherwise,” Jed said. Finally, Emma smiled, a smile that would have delighted Henry Hopkins into speechlessness or made Mary’s eyes twinkle.

 “I suppose I must thank you, Dr. Foster,” she said.

 “You suppose you must?”

 “You never answered my question, not directly. You talked a great deal, though, and you listened. You didn’t laugh at me or tell me that I was being silly or wasting your time,” Emma replied.

 “You didn’t waste my time. And I’d venture, you’re not wasting your own either,” he said.

 “There doesn’t seem to be much of it to waste. I hadn’t realized how precious it is. I hadn’t realized how precious so many things are and how worthless others,” Emma replied. She didn’t sound as tormented as she had when she first spoke; now, he heard a certain reflection in her voice, the putting-away of childish things Mary had advised. That Henry would find a way to praise when he noticed it.

 “I’ll leave you to your reading then,” he said. She smoothed a hand on the open page before her and he saw its whiteness, how finely made she was, how unscarred. He thought of other hands—Mary’s and Matron’s, Aurelia’s with the marks left by lye and blood, his mother’s and his mammy’s, all testaments if he would only attend.

 “Miss Green, you wanted an answer before. Yes. I’ve discovered I have been wrong, so many times. Too many times,” he said.

 “Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues, Dr. Locke says. That I have always understood and grasp it daily, more and more, Dr. Foster. As should you. As you do,” Emma replied. Then she turned back to her book, dismissing him without words, no longer the supplicant. He had meant to leave and now he did, knowing that wherever he went, his feet would lead him to Mary, whose convictions were a beacon, whose goodness was the balm of Gilead.

#mercy street #emma green #jedediah foster #off-screen phoster #mary phinney #henry hopkins #john locke #philosophy #discussion of slavery #abolition #fanfiction #emma green gets the tiniest bit woke #written for dancingontheedge #hoopskirt assassin

[jomiddlemarch]

And rued the thirteen clocks that would not say, Part II

They had called it surgery, what they’d done to the man, they’d called it saving his life and Jed Foster thought he’d never heard such arrant lies from another physician. Even Hale at his worst couldn’t have stood back from flesh so poorly cleaned and stitched and considered it a passable job. The man breathed and had managed to retain the wit to speak, if not to know himself, and now Jed must undo all that had been done and give him some chance to regain his soul. Henry Hopkins could say he hadn’t lost it but what did it mean without identity? Even a newborn baby had some sense of who he belonged to, the beginning of relationship to other and thus self, before God mattered a whit. Mary would say the baby mattered to God even if God did not concern the baby, she would argue the point about the nature of the soul and where it was seated, as she dripped chloroform onto the cloth, but she was not assisting him. Emma Green stood across in a dress he thought she once would have pouted to have worn, handing him the instruments too slowly. She was abstracted today, he thought glancingly, though perhaps it was only that she was not Mary, who had been able to anticipate his every request, following the steps of the surgery, the shape his hands took before he articulated the need he had, who had known he always preferred the gold-tipped scalpel and exactly how long he preferred the suture to hang from the driver. The work was delicate and demanding and beneath was his desperation; his inchoate anger found an object.

 “…please be more frequent with the dry lint. I should like to save him, you know,” he muttered, wishing the image of her unmarred face could somehow transpose itself to the ruin he was trying to delineate and repair.

 “Yes, Dr. Foster,” she replied, dabbing at the most egregious exudates.

 “I need that tenaculum now! Perhaps if you decide the boy is a Confederate, you might bestir yourself enough to help me. If he’s in butternut, maybe he won’t end up in a Green pine box, eh?” he exclaimed, hearing how she took a swift breath and handed him the instrument, how contained her voice was when she answered.

 “Yes, Dr. Foster.”

 Lisette had come in sometime while he was berating Emma and settled herself at the foot of the table, observing closely and sketching. The sound was not ordinarily an unpleasant one, the rasp of the pencil against the heavy page, but everything seemed to conspire against him. It was intolerable.

 “Mademoiselle Beaufort, this is a surgical theater, not an atelier,” he said dismissively, expecting she would take up her things and leave with an expression that said she found him wanting, rude and selfish. She only laid down one pencil and picked up another, her wrist moving quick as a hummingbird as she captured something, her lips curved into the half-smile that meant she was satisfied with the line.

 “Am I interfering? I cannot see how I trouble you,” she said evenly. Once they had worked together in a shared room, he with his lecture notes and she with her palette, but that time had passed and it was as if it had never been. Now, she was a distraction, for herself and also that she was not Mary, as Emma was not, nor Anne, a reminder that what was most necessary to him was far away. There had not been another letter from Mary and the worry of that was bile in his throat, sleep that would not come.

 “That we are having this conversation, by nature, is interference,” he said, turning to tease a suture free from the man’s cheek. “Kindly take your canvas and let me attempt to recreate the shadow of the Lord’s effortless perfection before this man hemorrhages.”

He turned back to the nameless patient, thinking Lisette would take his meaning and understand she must go, but there was only the sound of her pencil rubbing on the paper, the rustle of her silk sleeve. He whirled around.

 “I asked you to depart,” he said, allowing his wrath to bring out his Chesapeake accent, an echo of his father in a rage.

 “You said something poetic and complicated, no? As you always liked to, for the sound of the words. You didn’t mean it,” she replied, not quite airily, but not distressed at all by his affect, ignoring his order as if he were a child.

 “Did you think I was jesting? I can assure you, mademoiselle, I was not. Miss Green took my meaning, didn’t you?” he declared.

 “I couldn’t say, Doctor.”

 “Seen and unheard, a joy absolute,” he remarked curtly, seeking to keep his temper in check. Mary would have chided him long since but he would only have been intrigued by the man’s case if she were assisting, if she’d been busy on the other ward, even lying in the white bed a floor above.

 “No need to mock the girl for your own amusement. Your quarrel is not with her,” Lisette scolded and it was enough, the moment that made the petal drop from the bud, the strike of the flint.

 “Damn it, get out!” he shouted, throwing the gold-tipped scalpel across the room, not near enough to hit her but close enough to make all three women gasp, Emma clearly horrified, Anne and Lisette more indignant and offended.

 “Nurse Mary wouldn’t allow that!” Emma cried, silent no longer.

 “She’s not here!” he shouted. The response was even more marked than when he had thrown the knife, the way Emma turned her face away and Anne looked down at the dozing old officer, the way Lisette gazed at him steadily, appraisingly, her chin raised.

 “Get. Out. Vous me comprenez maintenant?” he said, his voice flat, the French rusty but serviceable. “All of you, out. An orderly can assist me or Mr. Diggs.”

 Anne looked at him in disbelief and he gestured her out as well, Emma Green having left before he’d finished his sentence, Lisette gathering her things with an overstated formality and care. He turned back to the man on the table, the man he was supposed to save when he himself was so close to the edge of losing the integrity he’d found he couldn’t do without. When the orderly came or preferably Samuel Diggs, he could cross the room to retrieve the scalpel but he already knew what he would find—the gold blade bent, imperfect, useless, a casualty and a message. He must do his best to mend the patient and then write another letter to Boston, send a telegram to Jonathan, read the Donne she had left him “He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot/ Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not,” anything to get word of Mary, to know what he could not bear unknown.

#mercy street #mercy street pbs #season 2 AU #episode 5 #unknown soldier #jed foster #emma green #lisette beaufort #surgery #phoster #angst #donne #yes jed throws a scalpel #no stupid absquatulate line #identity #soul and memory #mary phinney off-screen #but not forgotten!

[jomiddlemarch]

To Entertain Strangers, Part IX

She hadn’t decided when he had simply been there, on the other side of Nurse Mary, doing far more than his fair share of helping the ill woman to her room, his strength effortless, the easy flow of his conversation helping bridge the awkwardness of Mary, trembling with fever and embarrassment, Emma’s own inability to manage the assistance by herself. It wasn’t when he had smiled, grinned really, at the announcement that her request had been granted, to be a proper nurse at the hospital and not merely the former belle tending the Confederates that washed up on Mansion House’s veranda, teased and barely tolerated for her hoopskirt and airs. It wasn’t when she could not help comparing his respectful hand stretched out to help her through the crowd and how Frank had treated her with abandon, gleefully greedy for her as if she were a sweet to be consumed, how she had had to stop him and he had been unable, unwilling to conceal his frustration which was all about Frank’s venal desire, entirely unlike Henry’s arguments in the ward about duty and justice, what sacrifice meant.

 She hadn’t decided she wanted to marry Henry Hopkins until she’d been sent down the darkened staircase by Dr. Foster, the door to that golden room closing behind her, and she’d found Henry dozing on the bench by the front door. He’d woken when she took the last step, though she would have sworn her Morocco slippers were silent, and had blinked hazily at first though his eyes were the only aspect of him that was not perfectly correct. She had been startled and he had been standing beside her before she knew it. He’d answered readily when she asked,

 “Why, Mr. Hopkins, whatever are you doin’ here?”

 “Waiting for you, Miss Emma. You mustn’t walk home alone, it’s too late.”

 She’d been so taken aback she’d spoken without thinking.

 “But, you needn’t have waited up yourself! You might’ve asked an orderly or a servant.”

 “No, that wouldn’t do. I shouldn’t rest if I didn’t make sure myself you got home safely,” he said seriously. He looked at her intently and she thought she might blush. “Have you a shawl or a wrap? I’m afraid there’s a chill tonight.”

 She knew then she was in the most terrible trouble. She could only marry the man beside her and he was the enemy. The realization was a relief and a whole world of misery, as Belinda would say, and she couldn’t regret any of it. And she couldn’t let Henry see, not yet, and perhaps not ever.

#mercy street #mercy street pbs #season 2 AU #episode 2 #emmry #because I know how much this means #emma green #henry hopkins #phoster is off-screen #hurt/comfort #frank stringfellow #romance #fanfiction