literature

Alice in Baker street // Chapter 1

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Welcome back to the motherland. Mum.

 

The small beep and vibration of her mobile phone receiving the rather cold text was enough to make Alice jump out of her uncomfortable drowsiness, just as the head hostess announced they’d started their descent towards Heathrow. She was knackered, completely.
Ten-hour flight with crappy blockbusters to watch and a total of approximately 20 minutes of sleep. If one could call that bone-breaking somnolence sleep. She regretted, now, having being a bit stingy and not booking in first class. Anyway, it didn’t matter much, now; London Bridge was almost in sight. And her mother, with her incredible foreseeing, was right on cue, as soon as they could pick up signal from the skies. She couldn’t ignore the sarcasm and irony of the text and it amused her just enough for her to stretch out of her cramped up position and try and enjoy a little bit that she was, indeed, coming home.

 
On firm ground, the back lash of that excruciating flight hit her with all the weight of gravity itself. Thankfully, she only had to pick up a small suitcase; the rest of her belongings were on their way in a container ship and would be graciously delivered to her front door – once she had a front door of her own, that is. Alice didn’t worry much about details like that. Finding a flat in a new city would just be routine. Stepping out of the airport, her eyes focused on the heavy mattress of grey hanging above her. She shivered. It was hard on her, to switch so quickly, it seemed, from the warmth of California sun to the chilly European autumn.

Why was she even here again ? Oh. Right. She’d been invited to conduct parts of her research in London, her internship in the United States having ended after a few years of some of the most interesting work. All good things had an end, she knew. Yet, why couldn’t she have been called in a more pleasant country? Right. Catherine. Her dear mother, undergoing a mid-life crisis in her own special way, protesting she’d pulled strings for her to finally come home for a while. Alice knew better than to torment a fifty-something renowned psychologist, most likely also going through menopause. So she left her team and life she’d almost grown fully accustomed to in Santa Barbara as to calm her inwardly hysterical mother. She’d come over just so she’d settle down, and as soon as they’d discussed a way, possibly through drugs, for her mother to bear that weird time, she’d been out of here, sure thing. And before Catherine’d unfolded any stupid lecture about settling down and ‘starting something solid’, something she felt she had to say to her daughter, even though she only half-believed it herself. It would save them both plenty of awkward moments. Alice could already feel the trap of her mother’s insecurity profiling itself and she refused to fall for it. Australia was unknown ground, still. Australia was warm and sunny, and so far away from here. She heard they had a promising fellowship in Perth. Next destination, maybe, the sooner the better. Everything sounded good in that thought.

On the curb, hailing a cab, having no particular place to go, she decided she’d go straight to work, if only to check out the place. She told the cabbie to head straight for St. Bartholomew hospital, and dozed off against the car window where drops of good old English rain started drawing runny little circles.

 

Upon arrival, she had to present herself at the front desk like any other visitor. No one was waiting for her. She hadn’t expected a committee of any sort, but she grew perplexed when the secretary said she hadn’t had any information about her visit and had trouble finding her name registered anywhere. A quick look at the young flossy girl behind the desk told Alice she was going to have a bit of a hard time convincing her she was legitimately here. The kind of basic young adult clerk, probably a part-time job, not even an trainee within the hospital itself, had no idea what to do beyond handing out registration forms and calling for the emergency staff if needed. Usually, she’d put up with it; letting them work their way around a task outside their comfort zone. But her patience was quite thin that day, and growing thinner due to being woken from another restless nap when the cab had gone on a honking spree in the middle of traffic. They were in the central area of the city. She’d stared out at lost familiar places as they worked their way through peak-hour traffic : the end area of Shoreditch, quick look to Chinatown, Holborn Park, Oxford street, Piccadilly square...it was blackened with people, dark umbrellas and tourists in bright plastic raincoats. Rather than calling back familiar memories, all that silly effervescence in this weather had disheartened her.

She almost started a small administrative row when the flossy lady refused to call the director; he’d know who she was, he invited her, after all. Luckily for her, he happened to stride by and she leapt at him, only to avoid outright yelling at the stubborn secretary. He recognized her immediately and invited her to step into his office, not before a quick scolding at the young secretary, which made Alice wickedly pleased for a few seconds. Official presentations were made; they talked briefly about Alice’s mother, small talk, and a few papers were signed quickly, the head doctor having an ever-busy schedule. He was courteous, but not too much, not too friendly, not obsequious, and quite quick to the point. The perfect modern English man, the right amount of candour and reserve. He’d expressed how pleased he was she’d accepted to come study in his hospital for a while and assured her the neurology team was excited at the idea, but all and all, it stayed quite informal. Alice liked him and his efficiency. After about half an hour, he told her he was scheduled to supervise an operation and had to rush, wondered if maybe she’d like to come and watch, since she seemed so eager to get to work. She kindly declined, protesting jetlag, scared it would be a tedious operation that would simply bore her to tears. He insisted she discovered her quarters, at least. Exiting the classy office, he grabbed a random passing intern and handed her over the task of showing the new recruit around. Alice was too agreeably surprised to learn she had her own office to really listen to the intern’s name when the director interjected her. As the man strode away swiftly, Alice was left with a rather disorientated-looking young girl in the middle of the empty hallway. The young woman looked a few years younger than her, had long brown hair tied in a quick ponytail and a ghastly choice of clothing under her medical blouse, which bore no tag to indicate which division she belonged to, nor even a name. She looked out of her depth, darting her eyes around. Since she didn’t straightforwardly introduce herself, and Alice had no intention of doing so either for the moment, she simply stared at the girl blankly, tipping her head.

 “Shall we, then?” she asked casually.

 Snapping out of her internal panic with a light jump, the girl gave Alice a small awkward smile and a nervous nod and silently led the way.

 “I’m not someone so important, you know...No need to be all stressed out like that.” Alice called out from behind the girl who trotted straight ahead in the labyrinth hallways.

 “Oh, okay, right, sorry...”

 Her smile was a little less tense this time and accompanied by a muffled chuckle. An improvement. She loosened up along the way. As they walked around, she cheerfully pointed out the different sections, operation blocks, on-call rooms, patient quarters and so on. The hospital was buzzing; some staff members took a second from their tasks to merrily hail the young girl and throw in a polite nod to Alice. Finally, after what seemed like a hike to Alice, they arrived in a less crowded part of the building, in a long corridor filled only with a set of similar white doors aligned on one side of the hall like a hotel, all offices, apparently. They stopped in front of one near the end of the corridor, differentiated from the others only by a little “42” inscribed on it.

 “Here’s your office, then,” the kind intern said.

 “Ah...”

 Alice peeked into the little room and looked around. It was indeed quite small, for a start, and it made her frown a little. A basic industrial desk faced the door, white-covered OSB wood, coated in that unbearable grainy coating that reminded her of her primary school desks, and a few drawers in its side. A single medium window with a blind behind it, not really right behind but oddly placed to the right. In the left end corner, a couple of shelves, just as plain and basic as the desk, and hardly sufficient to welcome all her books and documents she planned on moving to her working place, by the look of it. The only two things that differentiated it from an accountant’s office so far were a great big corkboard for gathering research and a light box for x-rays hung up on the wall. The floor was beige linoleum, the kind that made shoes squeak. She quickly looked down at the entrance door itself; it didn’t quite touch the ground. In fact, it was almost half an inch above it: she’d have drafts in the winter. She sighed. She liked basic, usually. Basic and functional. But not that cold, room-in-a-kit, pre-fabricated kind of basic. A little aesthetics never hurt anyone. Something at least the Americans had... She remembered her office in California. She had to share it with someone else – an astrophysicist, of all people... – but it was large, bright and white, with everything she needed and little spaces to collect her stuff and overlooking an evergreen park. Now that she looked closely, that shitty little window was only a few meters away from another building’s wall.

 “It’s...not luxurious or anything...” the intern girl started.

 “Thank you. It’ll do fine.” Alice lied.

With a couple hundred modifications But she wasn’t going to fret over interior decoration for hours. She stepped fully into the little room and, gratifying the intern with a quick forced smile, shut the door. After hanging her beige parka on a little hook behind the door, she immediately took on making those few crucial changes. She wasn’t going to linger on decorating, so the faster she set her environment right, the faster she could get to work. For starters, she pushed the whole desk and chair to the end corner of the room, cosily set right into the corner of the wall, aligning it more or less with the window. She needed natural light to study and hoped to get the little she could from that embrasure by sticking her desk to it.  She could spend hours sitting at her desk, and over time, neon lights hurt her eyes. Then, she also shifted the shelves to the nearer right corner, so they were hidden by the open door, leaving the left part of the office empty. Finally, she took mental notes of what needed to be brought in. A carpet, absolutely. Definitely more shelves. A frame or two, something moderate. And something that could work out as a practical working table; just a big old piece of stainless steel on two trestles would already be great.

With another heavy sigh, she decided to go seek out the labs, nearly completely depressed by that silly closet of a room.

Ooookay…

So this fanfiction is ready to go !
Haven't much to say about it…er….
It was a blast to write !
Waiting for feedback; it'll give me the motivation to write some more and fill in those damn plot holes…

Beta-read and corrected by Isis1975  Heart 

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and I don't shave for him, either…
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Pikku-Piru's avatar
Je m’arrête avant de passer au chapitre 2, c'est très prenant comme début, on veut en savoir plus ! :D (est-ce que c'est Molly? L'interne ? je suppose que je le saurais au chapitre suivant ^^)
Et ton anglais est plus qu'impeccable wow !!!