This is my first fanfic ever, enjoy. More chapters to come.
1915 - It was little before half past seven in the morning as a young woman darted across the tram and motor traffic on Gower Street. She walked briskly, meandering through the passersby that crowded the sidewalk. Turning right she headed toward the large hulking edifice of the military hospital that sat at the end of the side street. The mid-October air was beginning to possess the coolness that fall often gets when it draws its breath from the coming winter. As the young nurse climbed the hospital's cascading stairs, Sybil Crawley pulled her light grey wool coat tight to keep her warm against the crisp morning air.
Once inside the great entrance hall she greeted the front desk receptionist, the attentive Mrs. Starr, with a respectful "Good day Nurse Starr." And marched quickly down a long corridor that led to the ward's offices where the nurses maintained a small area for themselves. Here she could leave her coat, hat, and purse, and sit down for a tea before she commenced the list of tasks the head nurse would most surely have prepared for her the day before.
"Morning Sybil," she heard from a woman who entered the room as Sybil hung up her coast. "How are you this morning," the woman followed her greeting in lilting tones of Welsh accent, "it'll be gettin' a bit chilly soon no?"
"Good morning and I am well Louisa and ready for a cup of tea to warm me up," Sybil said turning around to warmly greet her co-worker who was now unpinning her large brown hat.
The persistently cheery Louisa was a fellow junior nurse. A robust woman in her late 20s, she was from Wales originally, but had been the head housemaid for several years at an exclusive hotel on Cavendish Square. The war had forced its owner, Mrs. Trotter, a rare female chef de cuisine, to shutter its doors until the conflict ended. So with her maid duties greatly reduced, Louisa put her many skills to good use working days at the hospital helping the wounded and the convalescent.
Determined and focused like her, Louisa had become Sybil's comrade-in-arms on the front-line of the ward. But she had also become a friend, one of the few at the hospital as Sybil tended to mostly keep to herself. She spoke very little to the other nurses unless it was about a specific task or to pose a question. Her new found reserve was not because she was unfriendly, quite the contrary she was certainly of her three sisters the most genial and outspoken. No it was because she feared her distinct accent and naivety about how to do certain things would out her aristocratic upbringing.
By donning the same pale blue cotton frock and white apron as the other nurses she believed her uniform would equalize such differences, at least for now on the face of it. Sybil Crawley, and not Lady Sybil the third daughter of the Earl of Grantham, was determined that she not stand out but be able to channel all of her energies to the men who desperately needed her care.
It turned out that her friendship with Louisa had become a welcome diversion in what were always demanding day shifts as the casualties kept streaming in from the Western Front. In their conversations over tea or while walking home, she often had queried Louisa on what Wales was like, the landscape, the houses, food, people, her family, everything imaginable. It wasn't that she wished to pry, but rather that she wanted to construct in her mind a vivid image of these faraway places.
It was a habit she had developed from her many talks with the family's chauffeur Branson. The young driver regaled her with tall tales of great deeds in his homeland of Ireland, (some of which she did quite believe, but nonetheless went along with willingly because she found him so warm and engaging, and at certain moments, when she daydreamed also found him quite handsome.) For the little traveled Sybil these stories from others became a vicarious way to tour the world.
When they had a break from their taxing duties Louisa proved to be a great storyteller. She would tell Sybil of the many escapades of the hotel's wealthy and titled patrons. These anonymous accounts of the outrageous and bawdy behavior of the lords and ladies of her own class always made Sybil roar with laughter. For both young women a dose of humor was a healthy way to break the pall of human suffering that cast itself over most of the wards, whose needy patients benefited from the care and kindness these dedicated nurses administered to their battered bodies and tattered souls.
But Louisa's stories about the frivolities of the elite classes, (while their fellow countrymen and women were trapped in lives of drudgery and poverty,) also affirmed for Sybil the absurdity of the notion of inherited rank and excessive wealth. She often thought to herself as she tended to the men of her ward, "weren't injured bodies, whether duke or lawyer or footman, all the same? At war or at peace weren't they all human beings in the end?"
Sybil efficiently finished her morning tea. And as she had done for the past eight months, she arrived on the ward floor by 8AM sharp ready to get on with the days work.
A large rectangular room, the North Ward had high ceilings and tall windows on three sides that allowed fresh air to circulate in the summer months. There were 16 beds in the ward. Between the beds were small tables, roll-able screens, and chairs for visitors. The head nurse, the stout and sturdy Mrs. McBride, was stationed at a desk in the middle so that she could easily keep watch of the patients and oversee the duties of the ward's four nurses.
The soldiers were convalescents who came to the hospital in need of additional surgery for their injuries. The patients in Sybil's ward had suffered mostly bullet and shrapnel wounds to the torso, so post surgical care was their primary duty. After they left the ward, the lads would be either sent home (but only those with the most debilitating wounds,) or to another military hospital for additional rehabilitation, or mostly likely back to the Front.
She worked in a teaching hospital with some of the best physicians, surgeons, and nurses in the country. Sybil was junior nurse (as was Louisa,) so her duties were to assist senior nurses with various routines, but she was learning a great deal about the latest medical techniques and patient care.
"Good morning Nurse McBride," Sybil delivered in her most confident voice as she walked up to the desk.
"Good morning Nurse Crawley," Mrs. McBride replied with a slight hint of a scouse accent that betrayed her northern roots.
She handed her junior nurse today's list. And peering above her spectacles perched on her nose, Mrs. McBride then added, "I've taken notice. Ya've become quite good at dressing tha lad's wounds. We'd like ya join the training team ta teach basic skills ta volunteers once a month in tha evenings, if ya don't mind lending a hand."
Mrs. McBride had a reputation as a stern taskmaster and as such, compliments from her had the rarity of the finest pink diamond. But her demanding ways were only because, as Sybil soon realized, developing a steely constitution was a requisite part of being a nurse during wartime.
"I'll gladly help. Thank you and I will work to do my best," Sybil responded.
Unfazed by the long list of tasks the head nurse placed in her hands, she took a deep breath and headed toward the first bed to change bandages.
It was the end of the day and early evening had drawn a shade of darkness outside the ward's windows.
With the last patient seen, weary, aching, and in need of a hot meal, Sybil was nonetheless pleased with her choice to come to London and to become a nurse.
Returning to the nurse's area, she put on her coat and then grabbed her purse and hat off the hook, bidding goodnight to other nurses also leaving their shifts.
She stopped at the small mirror that hung over the sink and tidied her hair before pinning on her hat. Staring intently, she observed that she exuded a confidence that had not been there a year earlier at Downton—what seemed like an eternity ago and worlds away.
"What would they all think of this Lady Sybil," she thought—as her mind next wandered to her spirited Irish driver (and friend) who had opened her eyes to all that needed to be done in the world.
She tilted her head slightly and blushed, "what would Branson think of this Lady Sybil?"
She was perhaps the most proud of her effort to chart the course of her own life (unlike her two sisters Edith and Mary, and much to the chagrin of her mother Cora and grandmother Violet.) Indeed, as she eased into the bustling evening crowds on her way home, Sybil Crawley was proud to strike a blow for women's independence.