A/N: those of you who follow me on tumblr know that I lost my own hair last year, and this chapter is in many ways a reflection of my own feelings on that matter.
6 June 1959
While it did not perhaps qualify as a miracle in the traditional sense Jean could not help but feel as if the new medications Lucien had prescribed for her were themselves, well...miraculous. The thalidomide tablets helped to settle her stomach, not always, not every time, but enough so that she could eat more than she had done for weeks. The other tablets, the ones he had delicately informed her would assist with hormonal imbalances had done their work as well; her body temperature seemed to settle, no longer flinging her from frigid to sweating and back again in the space of an hour, or at least not so frequently as it previously had done. If those little pills also settled her mood, took some of the bite out of her tone when she spoke to him and restored a little of her patience, she kept those thoughts to herself. Acknowledging the improvement would have required her admitting to her previous changeability, and she was far too proud to concede that he had been correct on the matter of her disposition. It did seem to her, though, that Lucien was looking a little relieved, these days, as if he had taken some sort of gamble, and found it paying dividends.
That was not to say that everything was rosy, for Jean. She was still weak, still tired, still oversensitive to light and to noise, given to nausea, given to anger and despondency as she found herself unable to carry out her usual duties. The other medication, the one Lucien administered twice a week from the comfort of the surgery, was doing its terrible work, fighting a battle within her body, a battle for her very life, and she was left wrung out and aching as if she were wielding a sword herself. Her joints pained her, and her legs did not always want to hold her, and she was growing frustrated with the entire bloody business.
Still, though, she was determined to go to church, if she could. Lucien had taken to driving her there, walking with her to her customary seat on the pew near the back of the congregation, though he left her there, and retreated outside once she was settled. Where he went while she was praying and listening to Father Morton's homily Jean couldn't say, but she rather suspected he simply sat in his car until the service was through, and went to fetch her again when the first of the parishioners began to stagger out into the sunlight. Jean had invited him, more than once, to stay and hear the mass with her, but he had turned her down gently every time, and she didn't quite know what to make of that. Really, she didn't quite know what to make of him.
The question of Lucien Blake and his strange behavior was not one she hoped to answer any time soon, and so she focused instead on those matters that could be addressed. It was a fine cool night at the start of winter, and a Saturday at that. She'd gone two whole days without treatment, and managed to eat enough of her supper to make Lucien smile. She felt well enough, and so she began her usual preparations for church on Sunday. Having always been an organized sort of woman she liked to lay out her clothes the night before, to make sure her dress was not in want of pressing, that her best silk stockings hadn't run, that her black widow's veil was neat and tidy. She chose a handbag to match - not that she needed one, really, since Lucien would be driving her and she needn't carry anything, even her housekeys - and buffed the toes of her sharpest black pumps. Satisfied that all was in order there she made her way across the studio to her little bathroom, and stepped inside intent on doing something about her hair.
A wash and a set on Saturday nights, that was her way. She'd stopped curling her hair weeks before, however, dismayed by the number of strands she found stuck to the curlers come morning, but however thin it got she could hardly stop washing it; Jean had always valued cleanliness, and tidiness, and could not abide disarray in her personal appearance. It had been hard enough to garner respect as a poor farm girl, married quick with her belly grown big too soon afterwards, and harder still as a poor widow, without status or money or a man to bolster her reputation. Plenty of women worked, these days - most of them had gone to work during the war, and not gone back after - but not all of them, not even most, and those in service, like her, were still looked down on, generally. Owning a business, like Mrs. Murphy the florist, was respectable; cleaning other people's unmentionables was not. Jean would not give the high class ladies in town further reason to disdain her by turning out for church looking anything less than her very best.
Only she was finding that somewhat difficult, at present. In the solitude of her bathroom she untied the kerchief she kept wrapped round her hair, and studied herself for several long moments, despairing. Her face was paler than she'd like, the rise of her cheekbones and the cut of her jaw made sharper by the recent fluctuations in her weight. Her eyes still shone brightly, and the curve of her hips below the neat tuck of her waist was still attractive, she thought. But oh, her hair; it was beyond salvaging.
There was simply too little of it left. It was thickest round the curve of her ear, at the nape of her neck, but from her hairline to the crown of her head the barest patch of wispy hairs clung on, dark against the paleness of her scalp.
I might still be able to make something of it, she told herself. Carefully she ran her hands over her hair, smoothing it this way and that, trying to fluff it in places, to cover the worst of it, but it was simply no use; however she moved her hair still her scalp was visible, and when she took her hands away a few more strands clung to it.
Tears gathered in the corners of Jean's eyes as she stared at those fine dark strands draped across her fingers. Her hair, soft and shiny and so long a source of pride, was fast deserting her. It had been for weeks now, but in the beginning it had not been half so noticeable as this, and around the house she wore it covered, out of sight for Lucien and Mattie, and for herself. She had not realized, not until this moment, just how dire the situation had grown; perhaps, she admitted to herself, she simply had not been looking close enough.
There's no hiding it, she thought miserably. And come tomorrow, they'll all know.
They'd all see her at church, for the first time in a fortnight, half-bald and thin as a post. And they'd avert their eyes and tut sadly to one another. What a pitiful creature she would look, then, her poor scalp visible for the first time in her life, clinging so wretchedly to what once had been, fallen so far from her former beauty, weak and broken.
I'll not give them the satisfaction, she thought, her heart suddenly full of fire. Her hair was leaving her, like rats jumping a sinking ship, and to continue to carry on as if nothing were amiss would be to her mind a foolish attempt at staving off the inevitable. Jean had never been one to ignore or try to sugarcoat her circumstances, and she decided that this time things would be no different. Her hair was falling out, and she could not stop it, but she likewise could not keep it neat and tidy, could do nothing to make it beautiful. She would not wait for fate to take the last of her beauty from her; she would be the arbiter of her own destiny.
Under a full head of steam, then, her heart pounding madly in her chest, Jean wrenched her thin blue robe from the back of the bathroom door, wrapped it tightly over her thin satin chemise, and stormed out of her room, heading straight for the surgery.
She wasn't certain he'd be in there, not at this time of the evening, but she knew he had not left the house and he was working a murder investigation for Matthew Lawson, and so she supposed that was good a place as any to start looking for him. To her relief she found him sitting behind his desk perusing a file with a glass of whiskey close to hand when she burst through the door.
"Jean!" he called, startled. "Is everything all right?"
"Are you sober?" she demanded breathlessly.
Lucien glanced uneasily from her face to his whiskey glass and back again.
"Mostly," he admitted. "Jean, what's this-"
"Are your hands steady?" she asked, waving him off impatiently.
"Steady enough," he answered, and rose from his chair, his expression perturbed. No doubt he thought something dreadful was the matter, and of course there was something dreadful the matter with her, and Jean fought a sudden, wild urge to laugh.
"I suppose you have a straight razor somewhere?" she asked him. In all the time she'd known him Lucien had kept a beard, but he kept it neatly shaped, and he would have to have something sharp close to hand to maintain the sharp lines of his beard.
"I do," he said slowly, and as he looked at her, worry written all over his face, understanding seemed to dawn in the depths of his bright blue eyes. Jean knew how she must look, bare-legged beneath her robe, her hair a pitiable mess, her own eyes wild; there could only be one reason she was asking him for a razor, and he knew it, now.
"If you're not terribly busy," she said, her own hands shaking so fiercely she had to clasp them together in front of her to hide the evidence of her anxiety, "I think perhaps the time has come for me to...well...face facts, as it were. My hair is falling out, and I will not go to church tomorrow looking like this. But I don't think I could manage the back on my own. Do you think...could you…"
"I would be honored to, Jean," he said, very softly. "I think that's a very brave choice, and I would be happy to help in any way I can."
"I don't feel brave," Jean confessed. What she felt, in truth, was mad. She had never in her life dreamed that she would ever do such a thing, shave off her beautiful hair and leave her face to stand on its own, the sharp lines of her features and the delicate wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth no longer softly framed by her curls but instead stark and undeniable. She wasn't even entirely sure it was the right choice in the moment, not sure by half, but her hair wasn't coming back, and she could not bear the sight of it as it was now. Perhaps she might regret it the instant it was done, but in that moment, standing, trembling, in front of Lucien, she could not back down. This dreadful disease would not get the best of her; this one choice she would make on her own.
"I think your bathroom would be best," he told her. "I'll go and fetch my kit, and I'll meet you in there."
"Right," Jean said tightly. She felt as if her heart was on the verge of bursting out of her chest, hysteria and doubt and wild, eager certainty tearing at her. The thought crossed her mind that if she couldn't control her trembling he might well end up cutting her. You must be calm, Jean Beazley, she told herself.
"Thank you, Lucien," she added, and then she turned on her heel and marched out of the surgery, filled with a fierce, grim determination. The choice had been made, and the thing would soon be done, and then there would be no turning back.
