FIC : ♍
[Title:] ♍
[Setting:] AU. Modern day.
[Character(s):] OC - Mireille & Jean Louis
[Summary:] He doesn't usually admire people.
[Author's Notes:] Prompt, "the virgin maiden".
Aldrik doesn’t usually admire people. Some individuals demand respect - he likes to count himself amongst them, but there’s a vast difference between the two. He admires his wife, for dealing with a husband who is working up to 60 hours a week while taking care of a teenage daughter and a 10-year-old boy who constantly gets in trouble. He respects Michel Lavreau for patching together a shoulder that had basically been reduced to Swiss cheese.
When he stops in the doorway to ward 409, or suite 409 as it’s been dubbed by the nurses, however, he takes the time to watch the scene playing out in front of him. Mireille sitting on a chair near the windows, reading aloud from Der Zeit to Duroc who is clearly dozing off rather than listening. Either she hasn’t noticed or she simply doesn’t care. He wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the latter. Duroc has popped his pillow up against the headboard, his arm in a sling for the third time this week, because he apparently finds it very difficult to comprehend that typing on his computer doesn’t hurry the healing process. Workaholism isn’t foreign to him by any means, but the man mostly manages to paint himself stupid. Overworking himself and having to beg for an unhealthy load of painkillers afterwards.
Really, Duroc is an impressive composition of extreme severity and immaturity in overabundance.
Mireille finishes the article she was reading, looking up at her husband who’s now fallen asleep completely, sprawled out across the sheets. Only halfway sitting up. Her expression softens visibly. It’s rare - most of the time, she nurtures a demeanour that he imagines would be seen as detachment, but looks more like blankness to him. He has never shown great interest in the constant attention paid to them by the media, but it seems to be common knowledge at this point that Mireille Duroc is an ice queen. She isn’t, though. Not in the privacy of her relationship. The transformation is… Well. Interesting.
He doesn’t work everyday shifts in the ICU anymore. As he’s crawled the ladder, his duties have become mostly administrative, but he remembers watching the bonds that you only see amongst people who have or are facing death. Outside those premises, he doesn’t think he’s ever met a dedication like hers. Perhaps even in the ICU, it wasn’t quite as distinct. She lives in the hospital. Sleeps in a hospital bed next to Duroc and works from an improvised office set up in the emptied utilities room next to his ward. She’s getting a lot of critique for it, too. The public finds it snooty, withdrawing from society like that just because you have the money to do so. Can’t be bothered with your responsibilities to others. Et cetera, et cetera. He doesn’t agree.
She’s put her life on standby, for the sake of a man who is - if you ask him, at least - the most ungrateful person imaginable. It’s not because he and Duroc are still playing warlords to determine who runs the hospital and who doesn’t. He’s not that petty, even if he finds it ridiculous. But he has yet to experience a situation that she hasn’t entered with determination, from cutting out Duroc’s food for him the first few days after his operation to this. Creating a context that isn’t dependent upon the fact that they will be restrained to the hospital for another month, if not longer.
Putting the paper away, she stands up. Walks over to the bed. Looks at the sleeping man in silence, before turning to the large bedside table where they’ve abandoned a matching set of plastic plates sporting an only half-eaten portion of stew each. She picks them up, obviously meaning to put them away.
“Let me take those,” he says, stepping into the room, taking on the role of waiter, because Duroc expects room service 24/7. It isn’t provided, of course. There’s a limit to the luxuries. She doesn’t object and he doesn’t mind the degradation to cleaning lady. It isn’t an indignity when it concerns her.
While he tries balancing the plates in one hand and simultaneously fishing Duroc’s pills out of his breast pocket with the other, she turns her gaze back on the bed.
“It’s time for his medication.” He holds the pill box out for her to take.
“I'll wake him up in a moment.” She accepts it, her grip around the plastic soft.
No, Aldrik doesn’t admire a whole lot of people and he certainly doesn’t admire Jean Louis Duroc, but his wife is another matter and he shall gladly admit that he harbours the deepest respect for her unwavering commitment. He might just be lucky, seeing it from a front row seat, but you have to be blind to overlook it completely. Like the public does. And like that husband of hers whom she’s so loyally serving.