Author's note:
Dear reader,
First of all thank you for your support for this story. Because of the number of reviews and alerts this initial one-shot has received, I decided to continue it. I hope you will enjoy this second (slightly macabre) chapter, which delves a little bit further into Combeferre's thoughts (I do hope he is in character!)
Once again thank you for your support!
Yours faithfully,
The Author
16th of December 1830
Nothing in life is ever certain. Nothing except that no matter how long the journey takes, it ends in death.
Nothing in life is ever just. For some, the journey might be pleasant. For others it might be can only be found in the unyielding eternal sleep, the mound of dirt that covers the body, the stillness of the is the ultimate form of democracy.
Someone as partial to philosophical platitudes as Combeferre could not help but notice the aforementioned in light of what had just happened. Especially while he watched his best friend fall into a restless sleep, the child still firmly in place on his chest.
Testament to the ambiguous nature of life, nothing that had happened during the previous day would have hinted at the predicament they were in that very moment. Nothing.
It had been a perfectly ordinary day. He had gone to classes together with Joly. He had had lunch with Enjolras and Courfeyrac. They had met Les Amis for a round of discussions later during the evening. At that point in time, the only thing which had been plaguing his mind had been where to find a trusted printer to print the new pamphlets Enjolras had requested.
Then they met the girl and his comparatively simple life was turned upside down by a flurry of activities which resulted in a corpse and an infant whose life depended on the decisions the two young men would make.
For a moment, Combeferre fought the urge to turn his eyes form the pair sleeping on the armchair. He could honestly say that he had never seen Enjolras as emotionally invested in another human being as he had been in the past few hours. Even now, in sleep, as he held little Francois in his arms his features held a strange sort of gentleness. It was as if some instinctual need to protect the little infant had been awakened within the younger man. He guessed it to be some sort of animalistic tendency to ensure the survival of the species. Combeferre, who had always secretly thought that Enjolras' detachment towards living things was slightly detrimental to his friend's wellbeing, could not say that he disapproved.
That being said, the appearance of the child in their lives did bring about a multitude of problems. For starters, there was the matter of what to do with the child. His first thought was that they should leave the child to a foundling house. Yet, it was common knowledge that the circumstances of hospices in Paris, or in any part of France for that matter, were not good. In fact, leaving an infant in the care of such an establishment was tantamount to condemning him to death. Hospices were cold, dirty and generally unpleasant places where half the infants met with an untimely death before their first year of life was over, mostly because of unsanitary conditions and starvation. Wet nurses were in short supply in such a place and while they were supposed to care only for one child, they often ended up trying to feed four to five new-borns. This meant that some of the infants did not have access to breast milk and succumbed to starvation. Even if the child did manage to get nourishment, foundling houses were ridden with infectious diseases like syphilis and small pox which considerably decreased the infant's chance at survival.
If he was right about Enjolras' newly found tentative attachment to Francois, he suspected his younger friend would be reluctant to leave the child in such a dangerous environment. Not that he, himself would be too thrilled about it either. He was more than unwilling to condemn an innocent human being to a life which was perhaps more miserable than the child's mother's had been.
That particular line of thought suddenly reminded Combeferre that he had a more pressing matter to attend to. After all, he could not take decisions regarding Francois' future on his own. Enjolras would have to get involved, and maybe his friend, always so logical, could find a better solution than he could.
He rose from his own armchair and found, with some surprise, that his legs were numb. For how long had he been sitting there? Minutes? Hours? He turned towards the window and he could spy the first rays of dawn showing themselves on the dark sky. With a tired sigh, he took one last look at the two figures sleeping on the armchair and could not help but offer a genuine, albeit worn-out, smile.
Enjolras seemed to have finally fallen into deep sleep. His sharp features, always slightly tense, were much more relaxed, the creases of his wide forehead almost invisible now. His blond hair fell in curls around his face and his mouth was parted slightly in sleep. On the man's rather thin chest, little Francois was contentedly propped by his protector's arms, the dark blanket falling almost entirely from his tiny form. One of his small hands was clutching at his friend's jacket while the other rested comfortably under Enjolras' chin.
Combeferre took the dark blanket and covered both of them as gently as he could so as not to disturb their sleep. Then he made his way towards the other room in the apartment and his mood sobered instantly.
Ever since he had been five years old, Etienne Combeferre had wanted to be a doctor. It was a strange choice of a career in one so young, especially when most of his playmates wished to be pirates, princes or fairy-tale heroes. It was especially odd because doctors of the time mostly lead long lives plagued with the frustration of only being able to offer moderate relief to their patients. Of course, young Etienne could not have known that. In his mind he associated the image of a doctor with the only person he completely respected to the point of worship: his father. It was because of his father, his own personal fairy-tale hero, that he had unequivocally decided to pursue this particular path.
Not once, not even when the object of his motivation had died in a pointless carriage accident, had Combeferre doubted his career choice. That is, until now.
As he stood vigil in the room that his friend had so graciously offered to the young woman, Combeferre found that he could not tear his eyes away from the prone figure on the bed. It was such a different picture from the one he had witnessed in the other room that the young student could not help but feel a pang of pain course through every fibre of his being.
The apartment seemed much too abruptly split in two: one part the world of the living, the other the realm of the dead.
The girl hadn't been particularly beautiful in life and she certainly wasn't making an attractive corpse. Her pale face was already tinged with blue, her cheeks were more sunken in death than in life, and her jaw was set, a trademark sign that rigor mortis was taking its natural course. The vivid red of the blood on the sheets had dulled to an unappealing brown colour and was no longer contrasting with the woman's skin. Instead, it seemed to be blending with it.
The young doctor took one of the few remaining clean cloths and started the painstaking process of cleaning the girl as best as he could.
In a twisted sort of way, Combeferre found the process of scrubbing dirt and dried blood off the girl's already rigid legs soothing. Tackling particularly difficult stains offered him a momentary distraction from the quandaries that had plagued his mind for hours. He could not quite understand why the girl's death was affecting him. After all, he had seen death before, both at the barricades of July and during his various internships in Parisian , what had happened the night before was in no way extraordinary. Women died in childbirth, it was a fact of life.
Maybe it was the fact that this had truly been the only moment in his life when a defenceless creature had placed her life in his hands? Before, when dealing with wounds and patients, he had always had someone looking behind his shoulder, making certain he did not make mistakes. This particular time he had been alone. That simple minded girl who was now reduced to a rigid, cold, mass of flesh, had trusted him implicitly with the only thing she had to offer: her a certain extent, although he knew there had been nothing more that he could have done, Combeferre felt like he had somewhat betrayed that trust.
Finished with the girl's legs, he started cleaning her dark blond hair, wondering if she had ever cleaned it herself.
It wasn't the fact that the girl had died which made Combeferre doubt his abilities as a future doctor, but the feeling of remorse the situation roused within his chest. Feeling remorse, guilt even, went against everything he had been taught. Time and time again, his professors and supervisors had told him that a doctor should not get in any way attached to a patient. Patients were nothing more than faceless individuals whose lives and deaths were, on an emotional level, absolutely inconsequential. Combeferre reckoned that in certain respects, such a doctrine had some merit. Medicine was a science where the balance of failure and success was severely skewed towards failure. Doctors experienced the death of a patient more often than they experienced his complete recovery. It would not do to mourn every single patient. It would not do to feel guilty and second guess oneself.
Thus, if his heart was laden with an inappropriate amount of guilt because of the death of one woman in childbirth, Combeferre could not help but wonder if he was truly suited for his profession. That being said, Combeferre was very aware that it mattered little whether he was suited to be a doctor or not. His life, their lives, were dangerous ones. Of course, none of his friends, not even their marble leader, dared to admit it outright.
In all truthfulness, the chance that he would actually get to fully practice his chosen profession was rather small, if the political situation continued as it was.
Blood from the piece of cloth and dirt form the girl's hair turned the water in the basin into an unappealing greyish mixture. Combeferre decided to change the water before proceeding further. He went to Enjolras' washroom where he found another bucket of clean water. He emptied the basin and, for a second, was inclined to heat the ice-cold water in the bucket before using it to clean the girl. Then he realized that it would not would not be able to feel it anyway.
Back in July, they had fought for a republic but they had gotten a new king. While he liked to think the best of people, Louis Philippe seemed hardly more competent than his predecessor and this would undoubtedly stir displeasure within both the population and Les Amis de l'ABC. Furthermore, Enjolras was not as conciliatory as Combeferre himself and would accept no compromise. For his friend, it did not matter if the ruler was called Bonaparte, Charles or Louis Philippe. As long as France was not a republic, the system needed to be overturned.
While he did not share his friend's so very zealous behavior, Combeferre knew that he would fight for the French Republic, not only because of a deep sense of loyalty towards Enjolras but also because of his own values which were geared towards an egalitarian system. As such, the issue was not whether they would fight or not. It was when they would fight. Potential death or life imprisonment considerably lowered one's chances to fully be a doctor.
Combeferre would have continued to ponder the realities of his life had he not noticed that he was already finished with what he had been doing with his hands. He had managed to clean the girl to the best of his abilities. Unfortunately, he had been unable to do much about the wretched, greyish dress she was wearing and the blood with which it was imbibed. He resolved he would go buy a new dress before they decided what to do with the body. Of course, it was wasteful but he did feel that, after all the misery she had suffered in life, the girl deserved the courtesy to be buried wearing something decent.
Outside, the feeble winter sun was shining and Combeferre wondered for a second what change would this new day bring in their lives. Yet, before he could get lost in another round of platitudes, the young doctor heard the sound of loud knocking at the apartment door, muffled voices and the sharp scream of a baby.
It seemed he would find out what the new day brought sooner than expected.
A/N: I know that this chapter was a bit of a filler, but I still hope you have enjoyed it. Please review and let me know what you think.
It not only motivates me to write the 3rd chapter faster, but also Les Miserables is a new territory for me and I would love to know your opinion.
