Alec Scudder (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roughandugly) wrote2015-02-14 11:53 pm
roughandugly) wrote2015-02-14 11:53 pm
Entry tags:
there is at times a magic in identity of position
"That'll be six dollars and twenty five cents."
Alec paid for his tuna salad sandwich and banana. He also had a chocolate bar in the pocket of his work jacket, something with a shiny blue wrapper which had caught his eye from behind the glass of the vending machine. The hot food options were tempting, but he'd tried a few before and found them all to be too salty. Unfortunately, much of the food in Darrow was either too salty or too sweet for Alec, and he hoped he would grow accustomed to it soon.
Another minor annoyance which he hoped to grow more accustomed to were his three co-workers. The other members of the hospital groundskeeping team were all much older than he was, as well as married with children, and he therefore felt excluded from many of their conversations. Sometimes they made jokes which he laughed at, sometimes they made jokes which he found close to cruel, but half of the time they made jokes which made no sense to him at all. They spent every lunch break together at the picnic table by the garage which stored the ride-on lawnmowers, but every single day, Alec found himself wanting not to join them. He always did, though. If they somehow found out that he had chosen to avoid them by sitting alone, it would only make his relationship with them even more uncomfortable.
Slowly making his way toward an exit, Alec looked around at the people sitting in the cafeteria, which was open to patients, visitors, and staff. He focused on a husband and wife sitting with their two young sons, one with a bandaged arm, and found himself thinking fondly of his own family. Behind them sat two older women, their physiognomy leading Alec to suspect they were either sisters or cousins. The two women were gripping tightly to one another's hands and both looked to be on the verge of tears. Alec quickly looked away from them. As he did so, his eyes fell on someone sitting close by. She was a pretty young woman, wearing scrubs, and Alec realised that he had seen her once before. On the day he had arrived in Darrow, she had been one of the people to help him.
He stopped walking and stared, trying to decide whether or not he should go over to her table and say something.
Alec paid for his tuna salad sandwich and banana. He also had a chocolate bar in the pocket of his work jacket, something with a shiny blue wrapper which had caught his eye from behind the glass of the vending machine. The hot food options were tempting, but he'd tried a few before and found them all to be too salty. Unfortunately, much of the food in Darrow was either too salty or too sweet for Alec, and he hoped he would grow accustomed to it soon.
Another minor annoyance which he hoped to grow more accustomed to were his three co-workers. The other members of the hospital groundskeeping team were all much older than he was, as well as married with children, and he therefore felt excluded from many of their conversations. Sometimes they made jokes which he laughed at, sometimes they made jokes which he found close to cruel, but half of the time they made jokes which made no sense to him at all. They spent every lunch break together at the picnic table by the garage which stored the ride-on lawnmowers, but every single day, Alec found himself wanting not to join them. He always did, though. If they somehow found out that he had chosen to avoid them by sitting alone, it would only make his relationship with them even more uncomfortable.
Slowly making his way toward an exit, Alec looked around at the people sitting in the cafeteria, which was open to patients, visitors, and staff. He focused on a husband and wife sitting with their two young sons, one with a bandaged arm, and found himself thinking fondly of his own family. Behind them sat two older women, their physiognomy leading Alec to suspect they were either sisters or cousins. The two women were gripping tightly to one another's hands and both looked to be on the verge of tears. Alec quickly looked away from them. As he did so, his eyes fell on someone sitting close by. She was a pretty young woman, wearing scrubs, and Alec realised that he had seen her once before. On the day he had arrived in Darrow, she had been one of the people to help him.
He stopped walking and stared, trying to decide whether or not he should go over to her table and say something.
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Some days she liked the peace of eating alone. Yet seeing a familiar young man glancing her way made her smile, raising a hand toward him and beckoning him over.
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"What do you do here? Are you a nurse?"
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“I am,” she says, happy to talk of her work and her study. “At least, I have been the past year. I started out working as an aide. Too much had changed since 1917 for me to go straight into nursing.”
The cafeteria was but one thing that was so different than the wartime hospital she had worked in Downton. She glances at the ID they all must wear, smiling. “And you? Are you working here as well?”
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"Groundskeeping. Mostly jus' been shovelling snow so far. I'm sorry, but did you say nineteen-seventeen? It was nineteen-thirteen where I come from. You're the only person I've met to have come from the same time and place as myself. Unless a lot changed in those four years."
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The entire world had changed in those years, and Sybil wonders if it shows in the way that she looks at him gives her thoughts away. She can't not ask him, though her heart is heavy as she does. "The war, had it started yet?"
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“No, not in England though it felt it sometimes.” Rationing aside, the hospitals filled with the wounded had brought the fighting home to Sybil. It’s a hard thing to tell someone, especially someone from the cusp of it. Her own memories of learning of the war still feel fresh to her, only a few years before. “Germany and France. Even Belgium, they fought there. It felt close. Too close.”
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"It's fine," she insists, as time had helped with these wounds, as her mother had always told her it would. Strange to think how upset she had been then at each letter that brought news of injury or death, and how distant it felt now. "A very many. My sister's fiance, some of the men from our house, and too many I had met in London during the Season. It seemed at one point that every young man I'd ever known had gone to the war."
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"Is the war why you became a nurse?" he asked, putting the pieces of information together. "I jus' noticed that you don't exactly speak or act like nurses did in those days."
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