Chapter Text
”Oh Therese, you should have been there! Stine fell asleep with her head in the soup!”
Ida’s laughter sounds foreign to her own ears as it echoes against the filthy stone walls of the Charité. Maybe it’s the late hour. Maybe it’s the fact that Ida is more sad than amused. Or maybe it’s because Therese is unable to laugh with her.
Therese is not even awake. Her breathing is ragged, her forehead covered in sweat in spite of the chill in the room. Charité might welcome the poor, but the conditions for patients and staff alike are grim. And Therese is both: A nurse with consumption. Her Mother Superior wanted to send her to the Mother House 500 kilometres away. Ida, a secular nurse herself, had to fight just to get Therese a sick bed. Even Ida’s stubbornness could not, however, secure the tuberculin that is being tested at their very hospital. The experimental treatment is reserved for interesting patients, which to male professors does not include a poor woman with no family other than the sisterhood. The fact that said woman fell ill while working selflessly for the same male professors matters little.
There is neither sense nor justice in the way women are treated, Ida thinks to herself. What she says is: ”You have to get better, Therese, you can’t…” She leaves the sentence open-ended, like an outstretched searching hand. How could she finish the sentence when this… thing between Therese and her is so clearly unfinished. Undefined, even. While Ida frowns, her thumb automatically caresses Therese’s limp hands, neatly folded across her chest as in prayer; even on the brink of death Therese manages to appear contained (Therese always seems to somehow hold back). Except for her hair: long, golden, unruly curls spill around Therese as if taking advantage of their freedom from the usual pins and headscarf. Even on the brink of death Therese is beautiful.
Therese is one in three people Ida has kissed in rather rapid succession.
Behring, twice her age, had been demanding in is kiss if not in his words. She felt overwhelmed by his strong smell and prickly moustache as he pushed his lips against hers, pushed her entire body backwards. Behring has offered to support Ida financially through medical school, but she is sure there are strings attached.
Tischendorf, only a few years older than Ida, seemed surprised by her kiss. She was honestly a little surprised herself. After all, less than twenty-four hours had passed since she found him utterly ridiculous. He has proposed to her in a back alley, dead drunk and sporting a fresh cut from a fencing match. Apparently he wanted to show her he could be knightly. Ida would have preferred it if he had done his duty at the hospital so she wouldn’t have had to help deliver a dead baby in severed pieces.
Therese kissed Ida, but only after Ida had hugged her closely. She had just shared her dreams of becoming a doctor, and Therese had listened without judgement. The moment had felt intimate, and Ida suddenly wanted to hold the other woman. Therese had been momentarily stunned before returning the gesture. Then, there had been no space between them; their cheeks had touched (soft skin against soft skin) and Therese’s lips had been upon hers. Therese had fled moments later, clearly afraid she had done something horrible, but looking back Ida thinks she herself was at least partially responsible for initiating the kiss.
She fails to grasp the full implications of any of the kisses. She knows Behring and Tischendorf want more from her. She thinks Therese merely wants her to be happy. When Therese offered to pay for Ida’s ticket to Zürich she clearly expected nothing in return. “What do you want?” Therese, feverish and pale and short of breath, had asked what neither of the men had. “What about your dream? Do you want to give up medical school? If not, then you can’t marry. You need money to study in Switzerland. You can have my savings. I won’t need the money.”
“I don’t want it, I want you to get better,” had been Ida’s response.
If Ida could choose between Therese’s survival and her own dream of becoming a doctor, the decision would be easy, but it is out of her hands. However, she wonders if Therese – unconscious and fighting for her life – is right in her other assessment: That Ida will have to choose between marrying and following her academic dreams; between her heart and her head.