"Petit-maître…" Joan repeated haistently.
"Good you Just have to polish your accent more, keep training and it will all come to be eventually " Elise encouraged her.
Amidst the distant rattle of carriage wheels, the whistle of the wind, and the occasional creak of the dormitory building, Elise continued to correct Joan's speech, patiently teaching her new terms Includes but not limited to hospital terminology, things that a nurse could use if necessary.
"Have you ever thought of becoming an interpreter?" Joan asked curiously.
"I did, but postponed it till I hone my english enough" said Elise laying on her bed lazily.
"Whoa, I'm jealous, at this rate, it will take me years to reach that level" Joan said jokingly.
"No need to be jealous, you are getting by just fine with your writing"
Elise saw her article draft last time she visited her room. She wasn't that surprised as there were quite a lot of women trying their luck with writing.
Although she was very happy for her to publish some of her work.
After an hour, Joan ascended the stairs from the second floor, returning to her room. Joan began to consider her progress in French, although she learned a little bit about it from high school textbooks along with some German terminology in college, she threw all that out of her mind a year or two after she started working, so she has to start again from the very basics.
Although it's not a big problem, with Elise's help her steps became much faster.
Feeling thirsty after her last bite of pound cake, Joan headed to the heating room to fill her cup.
While sipping her tea, Joan began drafting another letter.
Unlike her earlier attempts at magazine submissions, these letters were addressed directly to physicians whose names she had collected over the past weeks. Most were known for questioning established practices or for showing interest in new medical ideas.
Each letter contained summaries of patient records she had gathered from hospital reports, along with her own observations regarding bloodletting. Rather than arguing that the treatment was wrong, Joan focused on a different question altogether: why did so many patients display the same signs of collapse shortly after the procedure?
After spending days reading medical journals and textbooks, she had reached an uncomfortable conclusion. Publishing an article under her own name would accomplish very little. She was an unknown nurse, and her voice carried no authority.
If change was ever going to happen, it would have to come from people already standing within the medical establishment.
For that reason, she had sent similar letters to five physicians during her last day off.
Now all she could do was wait.
Over the past several days, Joan had begun paying closer attention to something she had previously dismissed as coincidence.
It started with Laura.
Whenever Joan spent a few minutes by her bedside, holding her hand or helping her settle down, the woman's headaches seemed to ease faster than expected.
At first, Joan assumed it was simply comfort.Patients often felt calmer when someone stayed with them.
Yet Laura was not the only case.
An elderly patient suffering from chronic joint pain had relaxed noticeably after Joan helped her back to bed.
Another woman who frequently complained of abdominal discomfort seemed to fall asleep more easily whenever Joan remained nearby.
The pattern was subtle.
Still, Joan could no longer ignore it entirely.
She deliberately repeated the same experiment several times over the following days.
The results were inconsistent, but not random.
The effect appeared strongest on patients experiencing significant pain or distress.
On healthier patients, she noticed little difference unless she consciously focused on it.
Even then, the relief was temporary.
A headache might lessen.
A patient might feel calmer.
Pain could become more tolerable.
But the illness itself remained.
No fever disappeared.
No swelling receded.
No wound healed overnight.
The realization left Joan with mixed feelings.
Part of her had hoped she was mistaken.
Another part had hoped for something greater.
Instead, what she seemed to possess was neither a cure nor a miracle.
An analgesic
At best, it was a gentle easing of suffering.A hand placed over pain rather than a force capable of removing it.
And for patients like Laura, that felt painfully insufficient.