" —— have you noticed anything odd in the hospital lately? "
annabelle stopped reading, lowering the book she had been a reading. it had been given to her by professor styrne, along with the sharp remark that she should read it to fix the gaps in her knowledge made evident by the exam she had sat with the woman, and as much as the blonde hated to admit it — it was shedding light on the things she did not know, was clearing up the things she had been confused about.
it was an odd thought that the oldest doctor at st. john’s knew fully well what was required to make the younger ones better, though annabelle supposed that the professor took a certain amount of pride in it —— which might explain the grim glares dr hunter received frequently, given that she was one of two who had passed the exam with a perfect score, something most people thought to be completely impossible.
but … back to ami’s question. annabelle had not paid much attention to anything unusual, lately. she had gotten used to a certain amount of oddities. if dr rosen returned from her lunch break in an exceptionally good mood that even dr sanchez could not tamper with, the blonde had learned not to question her fellow frenchwoman; the answers she had gotten had been cryptic at best and downright confounding at worst. if the drs piece and severin shared a glance in the hallways, moments before dr sanchez screeches because someone had messed with his shampoo, well — it was business as usual.
“ what does even still qualify as odd in the hospital, ami? ” the blonde asked as she carefully closed the book and set it aside, running a hand through her tangled hair. “ dr styrne smiling? sanchez not being a horrible human being? ”
annabelle had grown up surrounded by a certain amount of — weirdness. there had been the old family rule few other families in their social sphere had been able to understand, the rule that dictated that she was to inherit her father’s spot instead of one of her older brothers. there had been her mother’s insistence that her manners would be just as flawless as her living space, lest she wanted to face the wrath of mailys martell — and her mother was not a woman annabelle would ever want to cross. little had changed when her brother had had his accident, only that her mother was worried nowadays more often than not and had seemed to age ten years in a week, but annabelle was confident that with time, the old fire would return to her mother as long as gabriel recovered fully which he, according to his doctors, would.
but the degree of weirdness she found herself confronted with at work was different. for one, it was nothing she had expected when she had decided that she would spent this part of her training at st. john’s instead of at their sister sister? brother? sibling hospital, st. damian’s. although — if dr rosen and dr hunter were to be trusted, the people at the other hospital were no less unique. and while rosen’s knowledge of st. damian’s made sense as she had brothers working there, hunter’s did not, though annabelle figured that before the blonde would let anything slip, one had to get her drunk, very drunk.
absentmindedly, the surgeon-in-training braided her hair into something messy, something that would fall apart soon, though she did not care about this now. “ i mean, if you have noticed something unusually weird, i’ll listen, ” she said, hoping that her initial words had not seemed unkind or lacking in interest. “ it’s just … i think my perception of what is normal has been … altered since i came to st. john’s. ”
