#Gustav von olnhausen

[tortoisesshells]

Unusual Fic Author Asks: Perspective Flip for "Physician, Heal Thyself - Or, Our New England Cousin: Being An Unpublished Excerpt From the Lives of the Staff and Volunteers of Mansion House Hospital, Alexandria, Virginia, in the late War"

kind friend, this was SUCH fun to come back to!

men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves (Mercy Street, T, continuing the spiritual crossover with AL:VH, ~900 words)

In which something is the matter with the dead and dying of Mansion House, in late May of 1862,

or,

Mary Phinney von Olnhausen had never considered her mind particularly inclined to suspicion, and the circumstances of life in Mansion House were of such a magnitude of concern that investigating what struck her as abnormal about that place would be as futile a process as examining the strand of a beach she had once seen, grain of sand by grain of sand – she could gain little knowledge by the experience, and what she had gained would be swept away – by the grey tide of the Atlantic, which she and Gustav had watched for many hours, while hoping the unshadowed sun and clean sea air might provide some relief from the wasting disease which would, in some short months, claim him –

Her mind was wandering.

Mary pinched the bridge of her nose against the coming pangs of a headache – whether from the exhaustion, or sorrow, or hunger, or even the irritatingly tuneless whistling of the dentist’s apprentice – she could not say. There were two empty beds which had been occupied when she had performed her last rounds, and it –

It pricked at something in her. Her better senses, perhaps, or conscience.

Read the Rest on AO3!

[theenglishnurse]

Her Name Was Libby

READ ON AO3 HERE

Mary had never been a good patient. Even as a young child she would fight tooth and nail to leave her sickbed, much to the frustration of her mother. It seemed even a fever hot as a Massachusetts summer did little to slow down the headstrong and determined young girl. Only one thing had been able to settle her, that is one person. Her father and his beautiful recitation of Ulysses.

She had not remembered the fit of hysteria that had caused her to flee from her quarantine room. The head nurse could hardly fathom finding the energy to lift her head off the pillow propping her up let alone sprint down the old oak stairs of Mansion House, in her undergarments no less. Miss Phinney had been slightly mortified by that fact but had felt far too tired to grieve over such, quickly taking back to her bed with the help of the anatomist that current sketched her.

“Who did you see, miss?”

“My Father…”

The woman in pink, who introduced herself as Lisette, was far calmer than one should be after witnessing nearly half the staff being rammed into by a delirious damsel. Mary was forever grateful for her gentility and discretion as she helped her back into the plainly made bed, her chemise clinging to her body from the never-ending sweats. And yet this stranger seemed so familiar, as if she had known her her entire life, not hesitating a second over her curiosities or her to draw her in such raw form compared to the usually well-dressed nurse the hospital had come to know, expect and respect.

“My father gave me fortitude when I was sick as a child. He died soon after I married.” Mary paused, looking to her lap, suddenly remembering the spectacle she had caused. “I'm sorry if I alarmed you,” she breathed, not sure whether to laugh or cry, instead changing the subject entirely. “Why do you do this, sketch me?”

“It is my work. And my habit.” Lisette chuckled, her hand continuing to shade, not stopping even for a moment. “You care of people. I draw them. You have a husband at war?”

“No!” Mary stated far too quickly, shaking her head for added emphasis. “I'm widowed. It's been... well, quite a while now. . . “

“And your daughter?” Lisette continued to draw, not seeing the confusion and sadness that washed over the pallor face of her subject for another moment, realizing quickly she had crossed the line in the sand.

Mary had been shocked by the question, flabbergasted how this stranger knew about such a secret, on she had buried so deep, even Jed was never to know of her. It would have been one thing to seek a position as a Union nurse as a widow, but to state she had lost a child and a husband within two months of each other would have been grounds for immediate rejection by Dragon Dix.

And then suddenly it flashed back to her, the moment as clear to Mary as her father sitting in the chair, a Cherub like toddler balanced on his knee suckling a chubby hand, the sunlight peeking through the curtains dancing on the chestnut-colored curls that graced her head.

“Who did you see, miss?”

“My Father…and my daughter. “

A few moments of silence passed as Mary forced herself to speak her name out loud for the first time in a few months. Just thinking of her flooded her memories with the entire biography of the young girl’s life. Mary remembered the moment she realized she was expecting, the maid playfully noting how her sheets had gone two months without bloodstains. She remembered telling Gustav, how ecstatic he was that he nearly lifted her in the air, instead simply placing a hand on her stomach. That is where it would stay every night as her stomach grew as did the child’s movements wild whenever he spoke. Mary sobbed the first time she heard her cry, bursting into the world during the coldest of January mornings following two days of labor and three hours of pushing. Gustav however was even more emotional the first time he held his daughter, her wide eye, slated to turn honey brown, already focusing on his voice and solidifying the fact that they would be inseparable. When she was two, Mary had thought the Child had caught a cold, but that wishful thinking was quickly shatter by a rattling cough, her baby struggling to breathe. By the time the doctor had arrived, it was far too late, the unmistakable Diphtheria lesions having suffocated her. The day that she died, there little Maus, so did Gustav’s will to live. Mary had tried everything to lift his spirits, to ease him back to the land of the living as she herself struggling not to drown in the sea of sorrows. Nothing worked and now he remained in Concord, buried with the only thing that may have saved him.

“Her name was Libby.” Mary started slowly, Lisette’s pencil coming to a halt as she listened.

“The honorable Miss Elizabeth Louisa von Olnhausen… “Mary smirked, remembering the day her daughter . . . their daughter had been born, her husband Sitting behind her in bed as they simply stared at this tiny being, they had created.

“Such a big name for a tiny thing, “Mary laughed, Libby immediate grasping the woman’s finger with all her strength.

“Don’t worry, my Liebling,” Gustav smiled, planting a kiss on her temple. “She’ll grow into it.”

[jomiddlemarch]

Dust is the only secret

Tumblr is being wonky for me, but here’s a link to AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889650

Summary: She'd been able to redeem her brooch, but not her cashmere shawl.

[jomiddlemarch]

“The most romantic gesture?” Mary repeated. Emma sat across from her in the sunny front parlor that overlooked Prince Street, a tea service laid out on the table between them. Mary could make out the sound of Julia in the kitchen, her instructions to Keturah interspersed with snatches of hymns, Miriam’s occasional bright babble. Emma, despite her plain dress and worn slippers, looked as pretty as Mary had ever seen her and because she was not a saint, Mary could not help ruing a little how pale and thin she herself remained from her illness. She could easily imagine Jedediah remonstrating with her or bestowing some elaborate, expansive compliment if she ever let him know this small vanity, so she kept silent, reminding herself she had never been a great beauty and so the change would not give anyone much pause.

 “There have been so many, you cannot pick?” Emma prompted, her tone teasing and light-hearted. She had confided soon after they sat down to their tea that she and the chaplain had reached a certain understanding, a phrasing Mary knew meant she might expect the announcement of an engagement in the near future. It would not be as it had been before the War began, when there would have be teas and balls for Henry to be introduced at, uncomfortable in the most polite, formal attire that society favored, his family connections mentioned gently and skillfully so that the ladies of Alexandria would know how well Emma was to be married. Mary knew that Emma’s communication with her family was still very limited and marriage to a Yankee chaplain, a man of good family but little wealth, would not further the reconciliation. However, the change in her friend’s aspect was remarkable; with the articulated reciprocation of her deepest feelings and the promise of a true and fulfilling marriage, Emma was sunny, her quick wit more apparent, at ease with herself in a way Mary had not seen in her before. She was more apt to ask Mary’s advice about matters in the hospital and more inventive in her own elaborations to Mary’s solutions. She would even play the coquette with Jedediah if he joined them for the last cup in the pot, tossing her head and gaily chiding him so that he laughed heartily, even dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief Mary had embroidered for him.

 Now, Emma wanted to talk about love and courtship, her own and Mary’s, to share her happiness and she did not imagine what the question would mean to Mary. She was so young, Emma Green, even though she was a woman grown, and she had forgotten, perhaps, that this was not Mary’s first marriage. Mary thought, looking at Emma’s bright eyes, the dimple in her cheek, that Emma had asked to question anticipating some tale of fierce Dr. Foster on his knees reciting Shakespeare of Keats, proffering a bouquet carefully arranged to communicate his feelings, white camellias telling Mary she was adorable, lily-of-the-valley that she had made his life complete, primroses to say he could not live without her. Emma must imagine moonlight or starlight, a billet-doux signed Yours ever and only Jedediah, that the string of pearls Mary sometimes wore had been presented in a velvet-lined case, left by a great-grandmother for the next Foster bride.

 It was none of those. Jedediah would press a kiss to the center of her palm before he left the house, swiftly and simply, telling her to be well and rest. He ordered her not poetry, but mathematical texts from Bonn and Edinburgh, and brought her a length of daisy-strewn calico to make up into a dress for Keturah instead of nosegays. He was not romantic, he only loved her, and she didn’t feel the lack. She thought of Emma’s question and remembered being a young girl, a bluestocking bride. She remembered coming home and clapping her hands in glee and knew she had the right answer.

 “I’m afraid you shall be disappointed, but you have asked and I can only tell the truth,” Mary began, enjoying the memory before she spoke of it aloud.

 “Please, go on,” Emma said.

“My first husband, the Baron, he knew how much I was taken with the natural world, how I never rambled in the fields without bringing home a piece of quartz or a curiously shaped stalk, how I liked to search the sea-shore for fluted shells. I had to go away for a while, to help my sister in her second confinement, and when I came home, I found he had made me an aquarium,” Mary explained. She could see it in her mind’s eye, the glass tank filled with clear water, crabs scuttling upon the sandy bottom, some weed waving and all sorts of fish weaving through, silvery and gleaming. She had cried out with delight and felt Gustav behind her, his hands on her waist, his beard tickling her throat as he murmured Sie sind glücklich, dann meine Perle, meine Marieke and how it had felt to trace a finger across the pane, wonder and the pleasure of being known.

 “An aquarium?” Emma asked.

“It was something I had always wanted and never thought to have. It was the work of his own two hands and time spent away from his own experiments. But I understand it will not sound so very enchanting to someone else,” Mary said.

 “What happened to it?” Emma asked, surprising her a little.

 “I gave it to my nephews, for their own collections. I lived with them for some time, after I was widowed, and while I could not bear to look at it when it had been in my own home, with their interest, I could find a consolation in it that had eluded me,” Mary said. How solemn they had been at first, especially Mattie, until she pointed out the dorsal fin on the closest fish, the delicate pattern of shimmering scales and how she had recorded it in her own journal and then, how they had begun to point out their own observations, make elaborate plans of what creatures they might capture and study. She thought of them in Boston, two budding naturalists, in that way the children she and Gustav had never conceived. There was no blood relation, but she saw Gustav’s eye in Mattie, his endless questioning in Joe’s tone, the gentle way he held a specimen. They had called her Tante Perle, not knowing they used an endearment for her name, and she had not corrected them, even when it hurt her the most.

 “I think I begin to see,” Emma said softly, all her winsome gaiety gone and in its place, a subtle and mature affection. This was the woman who would be Mrs. Hopkins, though Mary hoped Henry would make sure that girlish levity remained.

 “And now, will you tell me yours?” Mary asked.

 “No, let’s not speak of romance any longer but of friendship, of the future and what it may hold,” Emma replied, looking at Mary but taking in the sitting room, the basket of mending, the sunlight on the jug of late roses. She nodded to herself, ever so slightly, the nurse’s certainty she had found the right remedy at last. “Tell me about your garden, won’t you? A garden is such a hopeful place.

“An aquarium?” Emma asked.

 “It was something I had always wanted and never thought to have. It was the work of his own two hands and time spent away from his own experiments. But I understand it will not sound so very enchanting to someone else,” Mary said.

 “What happened to it?” Emma asked, surprising her a little.

 “I gave it to my nephews, for their own collections. I lived with them for some time, after I was widowed, and while I could not bear to look at it when it had been in my own home, with their interest, I could find a consolation in it that had eluded me,” Mary said. How solemn they had been at first, especially Mattie, until she pointed out the dorsal fin on the closest fish, the delicate pattern of shimmering scales and how she had recorded it in her own journal and then, how they had begun to point out their own observations, make elaborate plans of what creatures they might capture and study. She thought of them in Boston, two budding naturalists, in that way the children she and Gustav had never conceived. There was no blood relation, but she saw Gustav’s eye in Mattie, his endless questioning in Joe’s tone, the gentle way he held a specimen. They had called her Tante Perle, not knowing they used an endearment for her name, and she had not corrected them, even when it hurt her the most.

 “I think I begin to see,” Emma said softly, all her winsome gaiety gone and in its place, a subtle and mature affection. This was the woman who would be Mrs. Hopkins, though Mary hoped Henry would make sure that girlish levity remained.

 “And now, will you tell me yours?” Mary asked.

 “No, let’s not speak of romance any longer but of friendship, of the future and what it may hold,” Emma replied, looking at Mary but taking in the sitting room, the basket of mending, the sunlight on the jug of late roses. She nodded to herself, ever so slightly, the nurse’s certainty she had found the right remedy at last. “Tell me about your garden, won’t you? A garden is such a hopeful place.”

Ok but Baron von Olnhausen was actually really precious?

Other things I have learned from this book:

When Mary did farm work she took to wearing bloomers because they made farming easier than wearing dresses.

Mary liked collecting frogs as a child and would put them in her pockets to mess with her family. It freaked her sisters out a lot.

When she and Gustav married, they filled their house with hundreds of flowers, and he did build her that aquarium to keep some fish.

They also owned a series of pet birds, some lizards, and even some domesticated(?) toads.

Mary Phinney had pet lizards and toads. I can’t stress that enough.

One of my favorite historical figures of all time, Theodore Parker, was the one to marry the pair and he was actually a really good friend of theirs.

When a nurse “from the Crimea” came to work at the hospital, she was given Mary’s ward against Mary’s will, but the first introduction the poor soldiers in the ward ever had to this new nurse was to see her being bodily dragged down the hall by two soldiers while she was drunk off her ass. Everyone in the ward wanted Mary to stay, and she’d pop in from time to time to give the boys treats.

Henry Hopkins was real, and he was an angel, apparently.

[ao3feed-marymatthew]

Through the strait pass of suffering

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2rqsKZP

by middlemarch

Each new dawn was a disappointment. That she must face the day.

Words: 2398, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Mercy Street (TV), Downton Abbey

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Major Character Death

Categories: F/M

Characters: Mary Phinney, Mary Crawley, Tom Branson, Matthew Crawley, Gustav von Olnhausen, Matron Brannan (Mercy Street), Anne Hastings, Charles Carson, Sybbie Branson, George Crawley, Anna Bates, Violet Crawley

Relationships: Gustav von Olnhausen/Mary Phinney, Mary Crawley/Matthew Crawley, Mary Phinney & Mary Crawley, Tom Branson/Sybil Crawley, Tom Branson & Mary Crawley, Mary Phinney & Sybil Crawley

Additional Tags: Female Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Widowed, Poetry, Nurses & Nursing, Tea

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2rqsKZP

[mercurygray]

That was not how I pictured Baron Olnhausen. Nopenopenope.

(Agressively ignores the props department for such a crummy picture.)

[theenglishnurse]

“And your daughter?” Lisette continued to draw, not seeing the confusion and sadness that washed over the pallor face of her subject for another moment, realizing quickly she had crossed the line in the sand.

In her sick bed, suffering from the fevers that come with typhoid, Mary is forced to confront her deepest secrets and the loses she suffered before coming to Mansion house hospital

[jomiddlemarch]

Sleep when you can

Mary knew she would have fallen if Jed hadn’t caught her, his arm around her waist the moment she stumbled on the step. He was stronger than she might have thought, balancing out her weight without seeming the least unsteady himself. The fall to the floor below might have broken her neck, if she’d been lucky.

“Mary?” Jed said, not following her name with any other question, but his dark eyes asked them all. The patience was unlike him and she didn’t care to test it.

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly, but his arm didn’t drop away as they climbed the last few stairs. Nor as he shepherded her to an alcove on the landing, where some worn velvet chairs kept company by the long windows. “It’s nothing,” she repeated, but he must feel how she trembled. He could not fail to see how her hand reached for the chair’s sturdy back and missed, her hand very white against the drab upholstery.

“Mary. Tell me the truth. What’s the matter?”

“I’m only tired, I suppose,” she said. She’d been up since dawn—the day before. The day before had been the day they discovered the chloroform shortage, the day Private Cheesebro had his life saved in a surgery that nearly killed him. Afterwards, the morphine Jed injected had given the young man some surcease from his misery and the memory of it, but Mary had not been able to sleep, kept up by the recollection of his screams, nightmares of his shrieking agony waking her as soon as she dozed off. It was his face she saw and Gustav’s, it was Jed’s face in his withdrawal, screaming at her for mercy, have mercy stop, Gott in Himmel, please Mary, no!She hadn’t woken with the dawn; it had found her waiting, bundled in an old shawl, her eyes shadowed. Cold had limned every bone, every nerve. She had laid her cheek against the windowpane and found it familiar.

“I’ve seen you, you’ve been fatigued before—you’re never been like this,” Jed replied, unwilling to accept her answer. But he was not challenging her with his usual cutting wit, no teasing riposte forthcoming. There was such a softness in his tone, such a warmth in his expression and in the hand that still rested on her waist. Even through her bodice and corset, she could feel him, keeping her close.

“I suppose—Private Cheesebro, he must have reminded me of someone from home. I didn’t sleep well…I had such dreams,” she said slowly, unable to look at him as she spoke. Her weakness was a blessing; she would have had to stop him if she’d noticed, but she’d closed her eyes, the echo of the night overwhelming—until Jed moved and took her into his embrace, both arms wrapped around her. Her face was laid against his chest, the wool of his jacket rough, the scent of him, the cigar he’d smoked, a faint herbal cologne he must use, his skin, more present than the memory of the boy’s screams, of her husband’s gasping cries. His own cursed inveighing against her, his bitter tears.

“Hush. Hush now,” he said, even more softly. It was as if they had argued and she’d wept and now they found themselves seeking a reconciliation. She felt him move to stroke her hair, careful not to undue the braided chignon. How gentle his hands were—when they did not wield a knife. If she moved away, just a little, to regard him, he would see her face turned up to his, her lips parted and her eyes apprehensive, longing. She kept her cheek against his breast, where his heart beat was regular. She let the sound of it soothe her, take her from the precipice of a faint, remind her that horrors had surcease.

“I mustn’t,” she began, a few moments later, her sense of her position and his, the windows shining black with night and the faint glow of candles around the cracks of door-frames insisting whatever was between them needed to end.

“Oh, Mary. Allow me this, allow me once to be the one who only brings comfort,” Jed said, his baritone voice rough, earnest, young. “He screamed all night for me as well. Let me have something else to dream about. Please,” he said, loosening his hold on her but not letting her go. She stood quite still and there was the light touch of his lips on the crown on her head, at her temple. She stood quite still and thought they would both dream the night away. When each woke, confused, reaching for the other, the bed, narrow or wide, would be empty, and each would wonder if the soft cry they heard was the terrified boy or the eager, hopeful lover they could not have.

[jomiddlemarch]

Doubt truth to be a liar

“Hamlet?” Emma exclaimed but more quietly, entirely audible to Dr. Foster but not loud enough to draw back Mary’s attention to them both. Emma had modulated her tone purposefully, but it didn’t stop him from glancing towards Mary as she walked out of the sitting room the officers used in the evening. In the small lamplight, the sober color of her dress and its lack of ornament were attributes, focusing the eye on the gracefulness of her carriage, the ivory cameo her face made against the dark collar and her braided chestnut hair. Matron had come to fetch Mary in the midst of the lively conversation, for some task that could not wait another quarter-hour despite Dr. Foster’s argument.

“I’ll be back directly and I’m wholly certain you can continue disputing without me present,” Mary had said as she’d excused herself. “Perhaps I’ll find some others who wish to weigh in and bring them along with the rest of the apple tart and a fresh pot of tea when I’m done.”

“I’ll cede any point as long as you leave Hale out of it,” Dr. Foster had cried, mostly in jest.

“Heavens! If I only believed that were possible,” Mary had laughed as she left the room following Matron Brannan out. Before a real silence could take hold, broken only by the homely crackle of the fire in the hearth, Emma had spoken her disbelief.

“You’re surprised, I take it?” Dr. Foster said.

They’d been making the most of the rare lull in calamity, the wards half-empty, with a debate about Shakespeare. The Bard, Dr. Foster insisted on calling him in a jovial, mocking tone that Emma knew meant he was enjoying himself mightily, much as Dr. Hale might do with a roasted pork loin and a full bottle of port. It had been some time since Romeo and Juliethad been performed at Mansion House, but the memory of the theatrical remained vivid, Emma musing about whether they might encourage the smaller group of current patients to prepare a few scenes or monologues for their edifying entertainment. That was when Mary asked her which play was her favorite. Emma’s response, a robust defense of the historical plays, especiallyHenry V, had been met with challenges by both Dr. Foster and Mary. But Dr. Foster’s jabs were all kindly teasing at heart and Mary’s questions so cleverly put that Emma was allowed to explain how she thrilled at the St. Crispin’s Day speech. And how charmed she was by the gentle romancing of Katharine and the formerly brash Prince Hal. Dr. Foster had spoken about his own fondness for The Tempest, adroitly parrying Mary’s remarks that he must identity with Caliban until Emma interrupted.

“And you, Nurse Mary—what is your favorite?”

“Hamlet,” she said simply. Perhaps she would have gone on, but Matron appeared then with her sharp dark gaze fixed upon their animated trio and had beckoned Mary to leave.

“Did she truly mean it?” Emma asked. Would she have asked the same question to Mary herself—or was it only a question to ask someone else who made a study of the Head Nurse? Someone who regarded her with an unceasing interest, an undeniable affection?

“Have you ever known her to say something she doesn’t truly mean? To speak without utter, sincere conviction?” Dr. Foster replied. For a moment, Emma wasn’t sure if he was asking her or questioning himself, but then he grinned broadly and looked so much younger, it was as if another man sat beside her.

“No. But I would not have thought it would be her favorite, not of all the plays,” Emma said. “The comedies or The Merchant of Venice—she is our very own Portia, isn’t she?”

“Quite apt, Miss Green. Your governess is to be commended,” Dr. Foster said.

“It’s no thanks to her!” Emma retorted, thinking of sour Miss Ashworth, her endless injunctions against reading too long, too widely, her determination that embroidery was worth the whole of geometry and tatting the equal of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

“Nurse Mary is very like Portia. But I understand why she chooses Hamlet,” Dr. Foster said.

“Because of its philosophy, you mean?” Emma said.

“Sein oder Nichtsein; das ist hier die Frage:/ Obs edler im Gemüt, die Pfeil und Schleudern/ Des wütenden Geschicks erdulden oder,/ Sich waffnend gegen eine See von Plagen,/ Durch Widerstand sie enden? Sterben - schlafen -/ Nichts weiter!” Dr. Foster recited. Emma could not judge the quality of his accent, but he was fluent and she was familiar enough with Hamlet’s soliloquy to recognize it. A bit of kindling caught as he was speaking, casting a clear golden light across the plans of his face, the glow reflecting in his dark eyes.

“The Schlegel translation. I don’t think I butchered it too badly,” Dr. Foster said. “She chooses Hamlet because it is not Nurse Mary who answers, but the Baroness von Olnhausen. Because there is nothing we hold more in affection than the memory of our lost beloved. Their loves become ours, so that we may keep them with us.”

“Oh,” Emma said, feeling out of her depth.

“You mustn’t say anything to her about it,” Dr. Foster said. “Not even how terrible my German is, no matter how tempted you are. It will trouble her, to know I—we spoke of it.”

“But it doesn’t trouble you? To know how she misses her husband?” Emma replied before she could stop herself.

“To know she is a woman and not a saint? No, that doesn’t trouble me—though I wonder at you, Miss Green, for bringing it up so baldly. I might almost think Nurse Mary asked the questions, not the belle of Alexandria,” Dr. Foster said, ending lightly though Emma thought she could not forget what he’d said first—and with such undisguised tenderness. No one could believe it of him, she thought, then corrected herself. Perhaps there was one who could. Who already did.

“I’d rather be Rosalind,” Emma said, pouting just a little, to remind them both of how they were meant to be talking. It was comfortable, to be flirting again with a man who understood what she was doing and how blithely.

“Yes, I can see that,” Dr. Foster said. “Though you’d never convince anyone you were Ganymede, even without your deadly hoopskirt.”

“Shall you never forget that?” Emma cried.

“No. Nor any of this, I suppose. Not matter how much I might want to,” he said.

“What you want is your dessert,” Mary interjected, having come back in without their notice, her arms full with a tray of apple tart, tea-cups, and a chipped tea-pot faintly traced with apricot roses. “‘The last taste of sweets is sweetest last.’”

“Richard II,” Emma declared, taking a bite of the tart.

“Well done, Emma,” Mary said. Dr. Foster nodded. The fire burned on, the least hungry of them all.

[jomiddlemarch]

Gilead, East of the Jordan, Part I

“I’ll go write to his wife,” she’d said and Jed had nodded, agreeing while he considered her, a look in his eyes that said he did not entirely understand how she felt but wanted to. It was a regular task of hers but this letter would be like the first she’d ever written, the one to the boy’s mother where she had searched herself to find a way to render the truth less painful, to offer comfort where she suspected there could be none. She had known a grief like that and carried it with her yet, some days in her hands as they mended a shirt, a shroud, others in her belly, a stone, the baby she hadn’t borne him, pulling at her heels, around her shoulders like a heavy mantle, the nun’s habit, her hair unbound and waiting to be brushed at night, too much her own to startle her with its weight. Did Jed know any of that? He had touched the tears on her face and she’d taken his hand in her own but she hadn’t left the dying man and she had forfeited her chance to see Lincoln as anything more than a somber figure through the curtain’s veil.

 The daguerreotype of Gustav was before her as she wrote and she imagined it was herself she addressed, describing an unwavering devotion, the final thoughts of a cherished wife that she could never be sure had belonged to her. What she wrote was the truth but the woman, Mrs. Starks or newly Mrs. Howard, prepared and eager to be another man’s wife, she couldn’t care for Philip’s suffering and she wouldn’t wonder if Mary lied when she wrote of his death, if he had wept and moaned, cried in fear, murmured her name, the many endearments a man might have for his beloved—darling, pet, angel, treasure. Had Gustav breathed Liebchen at the last or had he already been beyond any remembrance of her, entranced by another sphere? He could become so absorbed in his work, those grey eyes abstracted; had the ineffable called to the scholar within his soul with a primacy any affection for her could not match?

 It could not be so with Jedediah, she had a sudden conviction; she had felt his hand upon her gentle and she recalled how it had held her tightly and she knew whomever he loved would occupy him, push aside other concerns, if a departure was imminent and incontrovertible. He would leave with his lover’s name upon his lips, a farewell that was a benediction and a vow. She felt his gaze upon her still, a fine and tender concern she had shied away from even as her heart beat, beat within her breast for the warmth of it. It seemed Gustav retreated even further from her in his silver frame and the dark eyes she saw within her mind were no longer her husband’s. She wanted another woman’s husband and she could not deny it. She could not approve it nor respect completely the woman she was but she could at least admit it to herself, as she lifted the pen which had finished the letter without her attention, her own signature, Baroness Mary von Olnhausen, foreign again, Gustav’s Mareike distant, Jed’s Mary, his Maryland vowels languorous, the woman she woke to become more every dawn.

[jomiddlemarch]

To Entertain Strangers, Part V

At first, she had thought she would be lucky, the case mild. She would cough and she might have a difficult, restless night or two, shivering and sweating, wishing someone would bring her a cool cloth for her face, a tumbler of barley-water, the simple mercy of another body in the rocking chair, and still be able to attend to her regular duties and the improvements she had planned before Major McBurney’s arrival, altered slightly to appease him. She had thought it and told herself it wasn’t so very much to hope for in the late hours of the forenoon after Emma and Henry Hopkins had helped her to her room and had left when she sent them off, neither prepared to argue with the Head Nurse who said it was only grippe. And then the sun had passed the meridian and her fever had started to rise.

 Mary was vaguely aware of when Sister Isabella came in the room. She was half-asleep, pain running along her bones and keeping her from a true rest, the pangs in her head sharp and insistent. She was so very cold and despite the extra wool blanket Emma had thoughtfully covered her with, she could not get warm; it was its own agony, the desolation not within her blood but her marrow, coating her lungs with shards of ice that pierced every breath, seeming to limn every strand of hair on her head. Sister Isabella had tried to help, straightening the covers, seeking to collect her loosened, tangling hair to plait it, but Mary couldn’t bear any of it. She wanted to thank the nun, to tell her to leave it alone, to fetch some medicine from the stores or even what was left in the glass on her bureau, but she hadn’t the words, only a few tears and a whimpering moan.

 She was in torment. Jed was somewhere near but not near enough and she hadn’t the breath to call him even though she heard him say her name Mary and then it was as if the pain shattered the sound and she heard him say it so many times, so many ways Mary Mary Mary, when he had cried for her in his own agony and when he was sullen, when he teased and when he tried tenderness, making love to her just as she’d wanted without her needing to ask. She tried to hang onto that memory, the sweetness of it, but it was wrested from her and there was a metallic, cracking sound in its place. He was beside her then and others, women’s voices close, but he was all she cared for, murmuring to her about fever, the bed, water, his arm was around her and then he was gone but she heard another voice… It was the new Major and she felt his hands on her again, wrong, wretched, touching her face, her hair until she wanted to shriek and she heard the relentless words, “underdeveloped for sciences,” and the startling dancing beauty of Riemann’s hypothesis, the transmutation of the perfect ineffable into something the flawed human mind could perceive and not be destroyed by, as Icarus was by the sun and its leaping flames like the ones that lapped at her now, that stung like Gustav’s acid, like the bile she’d retched when she miscarried, “stronger…for the care of children,” her arms too heavy to reach for the baby, to reach for her husband in his shroud, her lover who followed her with those dark eyes and then she was in the water, a different cold, a little easier with Jed’s hand on her wrist, his face intent and she wanted to tell him she was so terribly sorry but she could only tremble, the pain in her head duller, denser, taking all she had.

 She was in the bed again, the women’s hands upon her confident as her own would have been once, and Jed was saying “You’ll be warm quickly” so she could believe it and then she heard his tone change, the discovery she had not wanted anyone to make, the diagnosis and the disposition, “isolation,” to be sent away from everyone, from him and it woke her from the drugging stupor sleep had been beckoning her with. She was begging him, the words repeated almost a hundred times within her mind before she gasped them out,

 “Please don’t let them send me away. I want to stay. Please. I want to stay.”

 With you she did not say, I want to stay with you, always and forever, please, oh please and his hand was at her neck and then her face, his touch all loving consolation, an affectionate reassurance and an ardent pledge that he cherished her, that he would keep her safe. She saw it in his eyes that he meant it, the prospect of her removal as terrible to him as to her. Still his hand kept stroking her slowly and said the words as a vow,

 “You’ll stay, I promise.” She could believe him and she did. She slept.

[jomiddlemarch]

Falsehood of Thee I could suppose

“I’ll go to the reception with you, I can pretend to be your boyfriend,” Jed announced cheerfully. Emma had been hurrying to finish her cooling cup of coffee before her next procedure and choked and sputtered but did not actually spit the over-priced, overly sweet latte all over Mary’s charts and the journal article Mary had been absently over-highlighting while they chatted about the conference coming up.

“What? Christ, no. Jed, no. Just no,” Mary said, shaking her head. His expression changed only slightly, to cheerfully, maniacally determined and she knew the battle was already lost.

 She really had only herself to blame; no one had forced her to talk about the conference, the poster she was presenting, the fact that her ex, a prominent researcher she’d made a point of never before mentioning, was going to be there, on a panel and at the fancy-pants reception you needed an invitation to, an invitation she had been sheepishly excited to receive until she’d looked over the schedule and seen Gus’s name in three or four or what seemed like a million places. She’d briefly considered not going to the reception and sort of nonchalantly avoiding any sessions where she could remotely risk running into Gus, but she’d reminded herself she was a grown-up, an attending physician, and that they’d parted on amicable enough terms to make the possibility of skulking around trying not to see him the bigger embarrassment than any encounter could be. Until Jed proposed being her fake boyfriend. The potential for embarrassment in that scenario could only be expressed asymptotically, proving there was a use for calculus after all.

 “No, it’ll be great. I promise. We’ll be there together anyway and I’ll be on my best, fake-boyfriend behavior. And I can be the designated driver,” he wheedled. She’d thought he traded far too heavily on sarcasm when she first met him but found he really was an excellent physician and his patients loved him, so she’d given him the benefit of the doubt about as often as she gave him a piece of her mind, and they generally got along well but his suggestion was frankly ludicrous. If she’d said that out loud, she’d have to quickly add, “Not the rapper” before he could somehow use it against her.

 “I don’t even want to know what constitutes your idea of a good fake-boyfriend and the reception is at the hotel we are staying at, no one’s driving anywhere anyway,” Mary retorted. She could see failure barreling toward her at top speed but she couldn’t resist putting up a fight.

 “I said ‘best fake-boyfriend,’ Mary, you don’t have to settle. I’ll come to your poster session and ask a good question if no one else does and make sure no randos try to make a move. The reception will be cake. I kill at cocktail parties,” Jed announced. Emma rolled her eyes but Mary knew she liked Jed, just like everyone did, except Byron Hale, who was the living definition of gauche. And feckless. In fact, whatever feck was, Byron Hale had absolutely none of it. So, really, being disliked by him was the equivalent of being adored by someone great. Mary noticed she’d let herself wander away from Jed’s insane proposition and tried to formulate some new argument to stop him when he interrupted her avoidant meandering.

 “So what’s the deal with your ex? It’s von Olnhausen, right?” It could have been totally obnoxious because it was nosy and Jed was exceptionally good at being exceptionally obnoxious when he chose but it just wasn’t. Something about the way he asked, a careful neutrality she knew he’d had to work for, coupled with the knowledge that he’d been through a divorce, a fairly unpleasant one reportedly given that there were no kids involved, made the question tolerable.

Emma stood up then, shook off the crumbs of her lunch, said pointedly “I’ll text you later” and tossed her empty latte cup in the garbage before leaving for her one o’clock. There were a few minutes to spare before Mary had to gather up her things and trudge over to clinic, where nothing would be on time and she’d have barely a moment to think about what Gus’s office must look like, how big the window would be and how impressive the view that reflected off the monitor, the long, sleek L-shaped desk, the glowing Hereke rug hanging on the wide wall across from the door. She didn’t really care about her own crappy office, the window that was almost too small to keep a philodendron alive, the 1980s era furniture—she cared, a little more than she should, about having to come face to face with Gus again and about facing up to the fantasy she’d never quite let go of, the one where they stayed together, worked in the same hospital, hosted much-talked about dinner parties and found some hobby to share that wasn’t related to medicine, like running or cooking authentic Moroccan food, laughing over how to make preserved lemon when neither of them liked it. What could she say about him, about them—what could be distilled into a few minutes before an afternoon of getting swamped in clinic, what was honest and yet what could she tell Jed that she wouldn’t regret?

 “Nothing very exciting. He’s a very nice person but it didn’t work out. For us. Bad timing, I guess,” she offered. She braced herself for some derisive comment about what she’d said, probably about calling Gus “nice,” but it didn’t come. Jed was quiet, listening and looking at her in a way she usually didn’t let herself acknowledge. He had beautiful dark eyes, darker than Gus’s had been, and sometimes she wondered about him. He was so self-assured and bright, brash whenever he felt like it but she always thought there was something he concealed, a vulnerability he wouldn’t risk. He liked to play Schubert when he operated and Liszt, not the 70s rock that she would have expected and she’d seen him a few times, after he lost a patient, staring somewhere she couldn’t see, his hands white-knuckled in front of him.

 “Sometimes, well, a lot of the time, I think surgery is easier than relationships. At least for me,” he replied slowly, then paused. Mary was torn; this was the most real conversation she could remember having with him and she found she wanted to keep talking, but there was clinic to get to and the setting, the staff lounge where anyone could, probably would, walk in didn’t lend itself to further confidences. She must have let her uncertainty show on her face and he must have been looking, something else to mull over on her commute home, because he spoke again before she could, “But fake relationships, I’m a rock star there. Don’t worry about that. Hakuna matata.”

 She laughed then, at the whole thing. The crazy fake-boyfriend set-up, how insistent he was on pursuing it and how he sang his own praises, the idea that she would worry about him failing at being a fake-boyfriend as the deal-breaker.

 “I can see I can’t stop you. I’ve gotta run, I have clinic,” she said. He smiled widely, victorious and handsome, and there was something else—mischief or glee or surprise than she would allow it that was incontrovertibly there but that he’d deny if she asked.

 Emma was easier to read— because they were closer friends and because they conducted the whole exchange by text over the course of the synchronised re-watch of an episode of a Downton Christmas special that they both knew by heart.

 U said no after I left

 It was pointless

 WTF, Mary?

 Em, you know Jed, I wasn’t going to waste my breath

 Srsly u agreed?

 I mean, yes. It’ll be all right. Say it’ll be all right. Jed’s not a monster. Or a moron.

 Don’t say I didn’t warn u [followed by about twelve wagging finger emojis]

 That is not the reassurance I was looking for. It’s not like I said yes to Byron

 Fine. It’ll be all right (not) What’re u going to wear then?

 That was a question Mary had to think about and ultimately decide via a series of selfies she took in what felt like her entire wardrobe, which she then messaged to Emma for feedback. It was a reception at a conference, so Mary ignored Emma’s pleading for the one shouldered red dress Emma had endorsed with sriracha bottle emojis, and kept resending the same three little black dress variations. Emma couldn’t huff as effectively in a text but Mary knew her friend was put out, so she purposely asked her to recap the last season of “Call the Midwife” and promised, again, to watch it. She then tried, with all her might, to forget about the conference, the panel, Gus and Jed; she was only partially successful, but it was better than nothing. She couldn’t really do much about any of it until the conference anyway, other than what she had expected to do, which was pore over her poster and review articles, so she stuck to her original plan. Mostly.

 But not entirely, which was why when Jed came to her hotel room to meet her before the reception, he saw the red dress on the unused double bed and why she didn’t have a snappy comeback ready when he whistled expertly at the sight. She managed not to blush.

 “You probably made the right call,” he said, startling her. He’d followed through on his promise and she couldn’t complain about his fake-boyfriend performance over the past two days, even if she had never asked for it. He’d been just the little bit more affectionate in his collegiality in sessions, stood a half-inch closer, let his eyes rest on her in a way that was readily observable and he had asked a very good, actually very interesting question about her poster that she enjoyed answering and which had given her the idea for a possible brilliant research proposal. But this was going to be the real test, tonight, the reception where she’d have to talk to Gus instead of giving him a half-smile at a distance or a little wave she pretended was a knock-off of the Queen’s impartial greeting. Avoiding him tonight wasn’t an option, not if she wanted to retain some sense of being a grown-ass woman, and she hoped Jed could just continue to act like a normal person and not do some over-the-top chick-flick boyfriend impression. She really, really didn’t want to be called “babe,” not even once.

 “I mean, that other dress—wow! But it doesn’t exactly scream stuffy conference reception,” he added. He was appropriately dressed in a very expensive grey suit with an unobjectionable silk tie, neat and tidy and she missed the Jed who wore a ratty old fleece vest over his scrubs, perpetually in need of a haircut, with an oversized “I heart my charge nurse” button weighing down his ID lanyard.

 “I don’t know why I packed it,” she admitted, pulling the door closed behind her and slipping the key card into the dressy beaded handbag she’d slung over her shoulder. She had imagined it as a mature version of Hermione’s magic bag when she picked it out though she refused to confess that to anyone, even Emma.

 “S’good to have options. Can I say—may I say, as your fake-boyfriend, you look great?” he replied, adding “I’m a Method actor,” as if an explanation was required.

 “You already did. But thanks. Emma will be glad, she voted for this outfit,” Mary said.

 “She has good taste. But it’s not just the dress,” he said. “Or those heels.” They were entering into a weird zone now, which Mary knew was saying a lot because unasked-for-fake-boyfriend-at-professional-conference-where-hugely-successful-ex-is-presenting was already, by definition, a weird zone. This was a statistically significant weirder zone that that; this felt personal and not-fake and she didn’t quite understand why she wasn’t shutting it right down. She could imagine the text advice from Emma in all caps and a zillion exclamation points making smoke emerge from the iPhone’s ports

 SHUT IT DOWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 And she was ignoring said advice without letting herself pay attention to what it meant that she liked the compliment and even more, the serious tone he’d used to deliver it, the fact that there was no audience to play to. She liked walking down the carpeted hallway with him towards the elevators and she liked that he was not even bothering to sneak his glances at her. Every minute she didn’t tell him to cut it out was going to be a major problem when they were back at work but she still didn’t.

 Nor did she tell him to stop it when he touched her forearm lightly but definitively before walking over the bar to get her a drink, absently telling him “A white. Red gives me a headache,” when she spotted Gus across the room and caught his eye or when Jed had remarked, “Okay, princess” with a wink in response. She let herself hope that he’d make it easier to get through the conversation with Gus, whatever they could come up with after the comfortably easy greeting, the brief kiss on the cheek that had never been part of their actual relationship. She’d been sticking to professional topics, praising Gus’s work, the panel talk, avoiding any questions he asked about her family, how she liked Boston, whether she’d gone to Barcelona after all, but it was hard. She hadn’t expected it to feel so familiar and so foreign to talk to him again. She discovered she didn’t want to look too closely at Gus’s eyes; she didn’t want to see his old interest returned and she could hardly bear to see his polite, bored fatigue. It felt like when a procedure started to go wrong, the anatomy atypical, a vessel nicked, the field obscured; she recognized the growing tension that she used at work to focus herself, her voice similar to when she called clearly and urgently for more gauze or another suture, but here it was only making everything increasingly impossible, each next word coming more slowly.

 “Mary, there’s something I’ve wanted to--” Gus said into the silence between them, as ephemeral and present as smoke. She was going to have to look at him, that man she had loved so much and still left, who hadn’t wanted her enough before either, and then she didn’t have to at all, because Jed had come up behind her, a warm hand on her back, bared in the most daring feature of the demure black silk dress, and quickly kissed the side of her neck, murmuring softly “Mmm, you smell so good,” in a tone to be half-understood by her, by Gus, before moving to her side and handing her a glass of wine; he remarked in his normal volume, “Sancerre, they had it, who knew? I thought it was worth taking the chance it would be a good year. Excuse me, Jed Foster, Mass General, nice to meet you,” extending his hand to Gus to shake while she did everything she could not to.

 “Gus von Olnhausen, I’m an…old friend of Mary’s,” Gus replied. Mary focused on the feeling of the wineglass in her hand, the shape of the stem and the difference between the glossiness of the glass’s belly and the sheen of the pale gold wine it held. Jed wasn’t touching her anymore but her skin didn’t seem to know that; she felt his palm open against her spine and the softness of his lips, the tickle of his beard, against her throat.

 “Right. You’re still at UCSF? Gorgeous out there and that department is stellar,” Jed said. He sounded entirely untroubled and she noticed he hadn’t bother to define their relationship, more convincing than if he’d uttered the words, “Mary’s boyfriend.” She sipped the dry wine and wondered how he knew she preferred it, if he’d guessed or asked Emma. Method acting, he’d said, and a devoted boyfriend would know his girlfriend’s favorite drink, would know enough to mention it as an aside.

 “Until a few months ago. Mayo called and I couldn’t pass it up. I’m reacclimating to winter though. Hadn’t missed that.”

 “That’s a shock to the system,” Jed said. “They know how to deal with it out there, though.”

 “Yes. I’m getting a lot of invitations to go ice fishing. I suppose I’ll have to try it, I’m going to run out of excuses,” Gus said. If she’d been willing to be the trailing spouse, she’d be the one fielding those calls, agreeing to go “just the once” while he scowled at her behind his laptop. Would she be happier, cobbling together a secondary career, fitting herself in around him? He’d been too far ahead of her, professionally, for it to be otherwise, a post-doc much in demand when she was about to enter med school, already first author on several papers; she could never have caught up, not without him making sacrifices she hadn’t want to ask for and which he’d never offered to make. She knew it was pretend, but having Jed beside her made it easier to admit the doubt and to decide she wasn’t sorry she’d said no those years ago or not sorry enough.

 “You’d like it, schatzi. You always liked the cold weather and snow,” Gus remarked.

 “If I can move around, yeah. Ice skating or skiing. Just sitting over a hole in the ice doesn’t sound very appealing,” she replied quickly. She hadn’t expected him to use the old nickname. It suggested an intimacy between them that hadn’t existed for years or that he’d like to rekindle it. He’d never been the kind of guy to be concerned with establishing dominance, at work or socially; she didn’t know what to make of his comment, the endearment, but she felt Jed shift closer to her and without thinking, she leaned into him a little, almost touching.

 “To the point as ever. One of your best traits, I always thought,” he said, further confusing her. She tried to imagine what he was getting at, what he had planned when he first saw her name in the official schedule. Not this triangle, any chance of suggesting a reunion or nostalgic, rueful reminiscence blocked by Jed, his relaxed smile, his Oscar-worthy performance as Mary’s successful boyfriend.

 “I’d have to agree-- though Mary is so perfectly wonderful, it’s hard to decide,” Jed replied, grinning at her. She batted at his arm with her free hand. Emma would say “I told you so” in about twelve languages when Mary described the scene to her but there was no going back now.

 “Jed! Enough, you’re embarrassing me,” she exclaimed. It was true but she thought she sounded like the actress, not a particularly good one, miscast as the smart-talking ingénue. Something changed in Gus’s eyes then and once she would have known exactly what it meant. Once, but not now. Now she knew what it meant that Jed nodded and grazed her hand, the one that she’d hit him with, before she drew it back.

 “I’m afraid I have to go. It was so nice to catch up a little, Mary. I’ve missed-- I’m glad to see you happy,” Gus said. He didn’t try to kiss her goodbye, the way he had those years ago when he’d whispered against her mouth “I thought you’d be crying now” or even the way he had said hello to her tonight, just touched her shoulder briefly as he walked by, to some other destination she didn’t bother to identify. She drank the rest of the wine in the glass in one swallow.

 “Are you?” Jed asked, turning to he face her. It was his normal voice and she thought he’d dropped the fake-boyfriend thing for the moment. He seemed curious and concerned and it wasn’t that Gus had never sounded the same way but it hadn’t been enough or at the right time, too soon or too late, but right now, Jed Foster sounded just right and she couldn’t tell him that.

 “How’d you know I like Sancerre?” she answered instead. The glass was empty now and she wished there was a place to put it down. She didn’t linger on it though; she sensed she had a lot of wishes just waiting for her to pay attention to them, wishes that could wreak havoc worse than anything Jed had done or said.

 “A few months ago, when we went out for Belinda’s birthday, you mentioned it. I remembered,” he said. Belinda’s birthday was six months ago and the bar had been crazy crowded; she’d hardly been able to hear herself speak, let alone anyone else. But Jed had listened. And remembered. What else did he know? What else had she revealed?

 “I think I am. Happy,” she said and tried out the smile that wanted to go with the words. It felt good and so did seeing his response.

 “Do you want another?” he asked, gesturing at the wineglass.

 “Who’s asking? My fake-boyfriend or Jed?” He hadn’t expected that but she could see he liked it, he’d already said he liked her directness and she couldn’t resist asking.

 “Who do you want to be asking, Mary?” Jed pushed back. It could have sounded coy but it didn’t, not at all. She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Fuck it, just me. It’s just me,” he said with his familiar impatience but she understood he was frustrated with himself and not her. That was new.

 “Good. The fake-boyfriend was getting a little too rom-com Ryan Reynolds for me,” she retorted and he laughed, amused and relieved, still more nervous than she’d anticipated.

 “I don’t want another,” she said. Let him figure out what he wanted from that. Maybe he could tell her when he did. “But dinner would be good, don’t you think?” He raised an eyebrow then and his mouth turned up in a smile as if he’d won something.

 “Not a date, Jesus, just friends, okay? Real Jed, real Mary, no pretending, I don’t care who tries to sit down or make a pass at me,” she said hurriedly.

 “What about Byron, I saw him, he’s had a few drinks I think, liquid courage—I’ll just step aside then, so to speak, if he--”

 “No. Fine. If shitty Byron Hale tries a pick-up line on me, you’re my fake-boyfriend again. Otherwise, no. Can we get some dinner now?”

 “Of course. Schatzi,” he replied. She sighed heavily and she felt his hand at her lower back again, his fingers against her bare skin, the dress making his choice even more fraught that it was already. “Mary,” he said without anything needing to follow it, beginning enough.

[jomiddlemarch]

Mary’s ballgown was blue.

Again.

She was not sure if Jedediah would remember the dress she’d worn to the Green’s ball during the War, the one that had been ruined during Aurelia’s emergency hysterectomy; it had been an extravagance to bring a taffeta ballgown to the hospital and she could not regret its loss very much, though it had reminded her of who she had been before she had become Nurse Mary. It was Mrs. von Olnhausen’s best dress, because she had never been called Baroness by anyone in Manchester, not even in jest. Gustav, at his most mirthful, might call her meine Baronin in a very grave tone; this was most often when she was scrubbing the kitchen’s flagstones or red-cheeked in an apron, stirring something on their temperamental stove.

The dress she’d brought to Mansion House Hotel was watered silk in bleu de Lyon, a hue richly deep and vivid, darker than the dusk of summer sky but with something of that light in it. Jedediah, a Marylander brought up on the bay, preferred the seashore but she was reminded of a lake she’d loved in the New Hampshire woods, the blue of the irises that her mother had grown. Mary did not care for the elaborate styles of fashionable dress, preferring narrow plaits instead of wide, lace or bows but not both; she had acceded to the dressmaker’s insistence on trimming the dress with silver lace and velvet insets with as good grace as she could muster, reminding the woman she would be wearing a collar of moonstones and matching earrings. She was lucky her hair curled naturally, so she did not require the assistance of a maid to arrange it in the intricate, artful style of braids and falling ringlets required for an evening reception. She’d wear a comb inset with moonstones at her crown and long for the moment she could take it out.

Jedediah would prove an adequate aid in her toilette. She did not need her corset laces tightened and she had been able to manage her silk stockings and their garters on her own. The bodice of the ballgown wasn’t terribly complicated, though he was quite good at finessing something complicated with his surgeon’s hands; he much preferred demonstrating this in removing her clothes, providing her with a running commentary on his incomparable skill. Or rather, he had done, before Johnny’s birth. It seemed likely he would return to his amusing self-adulation while helping her getting ready for Alice Squivers’s ball for Byron Hale, ignoring Alice, ignoring Byron, most studiously ignoring his first wife, his voice just that much louder than a murmur against her bare neck; he would rest his hands on her shoulders after he secured the clasp of her necklace, then let them slip to her waist. She was still slender after the babies, which she should not be proud of but was, and they both knew how much the other liked his hands there, keeping her close.

Mary’s ballgown was blue. Again. And she hoped, not devoutly but sincerely, that this one would not be stained with blood. Jedediah had not attended the Greens’ ball. She hoped this time, she might have at least once waltz with him.

[jomiddlemarch]

Pack Up Your Troubles

“What if we blow off the opening, Mary?” Jed asked, loosening his collar. He had to know how she felt about that, it must be affecting how slowly he let his hand work at the cloth, letting her imagine that hand, somewhere….else. He must have heard how she caught her breath when he snuck a hand to the knotted tie and wriggled it free, letting his hand graze the silk before it slipped back to his lap instead of the legal pad on the Formica table-top. They’d been working on the museum’s World War I night for the past three months, weekends and evenings and interminable board meetings where Mary’s gaze drifted to the windows that overlooked the lake and he smiled at her secretively, slyly, an expression he never used when he showed up, inconsistently, at the latest period re-enactment, always calling her “Phinney” the first time he saw her, before he was carefully, precisely in character as an era-appropriate military physician, “what my mother always wanted for me, before I went into history and all the hurdles to becoming a curator, all those terrible piss-poor Chardonnay soaked events, God, Mary, how do stand them?” asking with those dark eyes looking at her intently, his dimples mostly hidden by his nearly trimmed beard, that she found herself wanting to touch, even though it wouldn’t be appropriate in any era. Now he was waiting for her, patient as he rarely was, so appealing she wondered that she hadn’t already taken that half-step closer.

 “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jed,” she answered carefully. Blow off the opening and then what? He’d said “we,” which meant he imagined the two of them together, doing something, he wouldn’t have bothered to use the word if he meant they would each sit at home catching up on their respective Netflix queues, Mary slurping leftover pho from a carton in a role-reversal, Jed tucking into a single chicken breast garnished with glossy mushrooms, broccoli a Vitamin A-rich forest to the right. He’d said “we” and that meant he had something in mind that he hadn’t said yet, that she very much wanted to know but knew she shouldn’t ask.

 “No, it’s not,” he agreed, startling her with how readily he accepted her demurral. She was also startled by how disappointed she was that he had given way to her dutiful push-back. He was watching her expression, she could tell; he grinned merrily, wickedly before he spoke again,

 “It’s an excellent idea. Right up there with germ theory and checks-and-balances, it’s a Leonardo’s notebook caliber idea and don’t you try to tell me anything different.” She couldn’t help laughing then and his smile changed, became warmer, lighting his eyes.

 “How can we? Summers is expecting us there and Bridget too. Actually, Bridget is the bigger issue. If she gets wind of this, I’ll be stuck trying to fix Byron’s latest grant proposal and you wouldn’t know it, but that makes sticking forks in your eyes seems like a trip to Aruba,” Mary said.

 “Aruba, huh? I would have pegged you as an Antigua kind of girl,” Jed interrupted.

 “I’m neither. Nor am I a girl, we’ve been over that and I know HR covered it too,” Mary snapped but without the edge that had colored all their initial exchanges.

 “I stand corrected and I apologize. Truly,” he replied, his tone making it clear he was sincere, his fingers drumming on the legal pad a tell. She made an encouraging gesture and he began talking again.

 “It’s not a big deal, Mary. Henry can do it, I checked with him, and he’s actually…excited? I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t going to be, well, whatever he is looking forward to so much,” Jed explained.

 “I don’t know,” Mary said slowly. She’d been expecting to spend the night directing middle-aged women to various exhibits, subbing in for Emma when she needed a break at the display about WWI era nurses, eluding Byron Hale, the best example of nepotism Mary had personally met, in his perpetual but sadly-predictable pursuit, and silently congratulating herself for re-negotiating the cases of wine with the man who’d replaced the vile Silas at Carlyle Liquor, so they were not stuck with vinegar or the weakest Chablis that a vineyard ever produced. She’d planned to have an extra tall latte the next morning as a reward, with quantities of whipped cream than might make even Leslie Knope raise an eyebrow in respect-slash-astonishment, and spend the weekend recovering with Sidney Chambers flickering Anglican-ly, handsomely across her TV screen.

“Where’s the woman who announced her first day she knew right from wrong and we were not, I repeat not, going to have an entire wing devoted to the 17th century without adequate representation for Native Americans? Who told Anne Hastings to get rid of the collection of, and I quote, ‘endless tatty, moth-ridden bonnets of unknown Northern European provenance’ in favor of the authenticated and dated Ojibwa canoes she’d convinced an elder to loan us? Because I think she’d know,” Jed said, looking at her intently. She didn’t blush much anymore, thank God, but she felt the color rise in her cheeks as he spoke, at the memories he’d evoked and also the understanding that he had been noticing her since she’d first arrived, noticing and taking her seriously, even if he had teased and mocked her those first few weeks, months after she’d taken the job.

 “What would we do instead?” she asked.

 “Oh. Um, I didn’t think,” he said, as awkward as she’d ever heard him and she decided to help him out a little. A sort of help, like when she gave him the instrument he requested at the re-enactment, knowing it was the wrong one for the procedure, anachronistic or just plain ineffective, enjoying the consternation that accompanied his barely tamped fury when he hissed, “Nurse Phinney! The Bard-Parker scalpel!”

 “You didn’t think I’d say yes? Or you didn’t think of what I’d rather do besides spend my night at the opening?”

 “Yes,” he replied, taking her aback with how quickly he capitulated, how his capitulation made her into a persnickety schoolmarm, a woman she didn’t want to be.

 “Coffee, we could go out for coffee, there’s that new place on Third,” he tried, scrambling when she didn’t immediately acquiesce.

 “I think ‘Topper’ is playing at the Odeum, if you like that, I thought you’d like that sort of thing,” he went on. He’d rarely looked so worried, not even the few weeks when they thought the cuts would be passed in the State House and there was a sense of dread hanging over everyone.

 “Tapas? Toro, everyone loves that place and they don’t take reservations so not having them won’t be an issue,” he suggested, nearly desperate. She had the sudden impulse to reach across the table and take his hand in hers, to hold his wrist lightly first and then more tightly. She wanted to stroke her thumb across his palm and look to see whether he bit his lip or held his breath.

 “This is harder than you thought, huh?” she said.

 “You must have noticed, Mary, these past few months, you’ve had…an effect on me,” he replied.

 She hadn’t let herself admit it, not often anyway, but she had noticed how he teased more gently, found more clever ways to praise her, but also, listened to her; his own work had become more culturally sensitive, more creative. He had spent less time mocking Summers’s nephew Byron and more recruiting Sam Diggs to stay after his internship. He’d stopped being a man she was attracted to and annoyed by in nearly equal measure and had become Jed, her lunch companion and interdepartmental ally, the person she most looked forward to seeing when she walked in and whom she always tried to say goodbye to before she left, willing to risk that quizzical look above his glasses when he’d spent three hours leafing through primary source material and planned to spend another two before he left late. He wasn’t just a friend but he hadn’t become anything more, not yet, even though Char groaned whenever Mary told her about the latest near-miss, declaring “Mary honey, life is not a period drama. Y’all are wasting a hell of a lot of time with all this repressed dancing around and neither one of you is even British.” Not until today, which was edging towards tonight.

 He’d had an effect on her too, a whole kit and caboodle of effects, and the collective impact was what made her think about what he’d offered and how. Tapas reminded her of Gustavo, the chem grad student she’d met when she was a shy freshman turning up at the first ballroom dance club meeting; they’d ended up living together, unofficially, by the time she was a junior and had only broken up when he’d gotten a tenure track position in Miami, too close to his home, too perfect to pass up but only for him, not close to perfect for her. They’d parted well enough that she could remember all the nights they went out dancing with bittersweet nostalgia and she’d kept her favorite pair of heels…

 “If we’re blowing off the opening, I want to go salsa dancing,” she announced. She might well have said she knew what happened at Roanoke, where Al Capone was, and that she knew the ending to Edwin Drood given the expression on Jed’s face.

 “Are you, are we up to that?” he asked.

 “I suppose we’ll have to find out. You seem to have a decent sense of rhythm, you clap on the right beat and you did okay on the ropes course,” she replied, knowing what would come next.

 “Okay? I killed on the ropes course!”

 “Fine. If we’re not actually staying here for the event, can we leave? It’ll take me a little while to get ready.” He nodded and she wondered what he thought was going to happen. What he hoped. Evidently they had both been rather far off the mark, based on his reaction when she opened the front door an hour and a half later.

 “Jesus fucking Christ!” he exclaimed.

 She would have been offended if he hadn’t also started to reach for her, his hand grazing her bare arm and lingering, as he took in the tight dress somewhere between magenta and fuchsia, the 21st century equivalent of Perkin’s popular aniline dahlia shade of the 1860s, the ruffles at the mid-thigh hem, the undeniably impressive results of the thirty minutes she’d spent with her curling iron and some Aveda hair spray, the heels she’d had resoled twice instead of replacing, and quite a bit of bare skin, liberally dabbed with the Samsara she saved for special occasions.

 “Language, Jed,” she scolded without thinking, not shifting away from his hand on her, liking the shadow at the open neck of his grey shirt, the line of him in the dark jeans even more appealing than when he wore his Army uniform as Dr. Foster in a field that was supposed to resembles Ypres or the banks of the Meuse.

 “Sorry. I just didn’t know, I didn’t expect,” he said. It wasn’t insulting because his eyes were so soft, his hand warm, his lips curved in a smile that said it was the best surprise yet. He wouldn’t stand as far when he brought her home, she knew that, and she was glad of the perfume behind her ears, between her breasts, in the notch at the base of her throat.

 “You thought there would be a cardigan,” she teased and he laughed. “I get it, you didn’t think there was a Mary Phinney who wasn’t an earnest historian or Scrabble aficionado.”

 “I didn’t think…but I hoped. And if I’m being honest, I dreamed,” he said.

 “Keep being honest then,” she replied. “A dream isn’t a wish, it can still come true if you talk about it,” she added and he laughed again, a lower, richer sound that matched the feeling that came with the music, how she wanted to move when she heard it.

 “Boy, do I owe Henry one,” Jed said.

 “Yeah, but that’s always true. Let’s see how you do on the dance floor, then I can decide if I owe Henry one too,” Mary answered, pulling the door shut behind her, letting her hips swing a little as she walked down the steps, letting Jed’s fingers twine with hers. She hummed under her breath, “Smile, smile, smile…” 

If you’d like to join a bunch of progressive liberal women doctors in saving the flipping PLANET, please donate through the link to Sierra Club. There is a 100K match and you don’t have to be a woman or a doctor to join the party. If you donate more than $30, you get a neat tee-shirt too. If you let me know you donated, I will write you a 3 sentence fic (minimum) featuring your requested pairing and nature. 

[jomiddlemarch]

Excerpt:

Gustav von Olnhausen had not thought to hear something so familiar and painfully lovely— ah Sehnsucht! as he walked back to his boarding house after a long day in the mill’s laboratory. He looked about, confused as to the source of the lyric, but it could only be the young woman just in front of him, deep in conversation with her companion, another young lady, their wide, dark skirts dragging a bit on the planked sidewalk, their faces hidden by the full brims of their bonnets.

[parkersrevenge]

Ok but Baron von Olnhausen was actually really precious?

Other things I have learned from this book:

When Mary did farm work she took to wearing bloomers because they made farming easier than wearing dresses.

Mary liked collecting frogs as a child and would put them in her pockets to mess with her family. It freaked her sisters out a lot.

When she and Gustav married, they filled their house with hundreds of flowers, and he did build her that aquarium to keep some fish.

They also owned a series of pet birds, some lizards, and even some domesticated(?) toads.

Mary Phinney had pet lizards and toads. I can’t stress that enough.

One of my favorite historical figures of all time, Theodore Parker, was the one to marry the pair and he was actually a really good friend of theirs.

When a nurse “from the Crimea” came to work at the hospital, she was given Mary’s ward against Mary’s will, but the first introduction the poor soldiers in the ward ever had to this new nurse was to see her being bodily dragged down the hall by two soldiers while she was drunk off her ass. Everyone in the ward wanted Mary to stay, and she’d pop in from time to time to give the boys treats.

Henry Hopkins was real, and he was an angel, apparently.