Becoming Jane

Epilogue

***Read the Author's note for a sneak peek of Unchaining Alice***

---

Epilogue

Six Months Later

 

The wedding had been a small affair. Little J wasn’t much for big parties or ballrooms, so they’d trekked up to Yorkshire and married in the same little church that her parents had married in. Her family and Harrison’s father all attended.

To society, she’d eloped, but to Little J, she’d had the intimate, personal ceremony that she’d always wanted.

Instead of having a fine dress especially made, she wore her mother’s gown, just like Kitty had done. Though it was technically outdated, the dress was timeless, and to her it meant a lifetime of happiness.

She felt like a floating angel walking on clouds to marry her true love. They’d exchanged traditional vows and had kissed before her family.

She was ready for an eternity of wedded bliss, working in a practice with her husband, treating the sick and helping the poor. It was to be perfect.

But how easy naïve dreams flitted away.  

After a month long engagement and five months of marriage, Little J and Harrison’s relationship had become strained. She hated herself for it. She hated her jealousy. She’d worked with Harrison in his practice for five months and not one patient had asked to see her. They wouldn’t even be treated when she was in the same room. She was a joke to them.

And she was a horrible person for taking it on Harrison. He was ever so good, always asking her advice on what she thought was wrong with a patient, and he always let her review his notes before he filed them away. But how she envied the trust his patients had in him.

Little J hated herself. She hated the horrible person she had become. But most of all, she hated the fact that Harrison never stopped trying. He should hate her too, but he didn’t. He had faith in her, but she had none in herself.

She sat at her obsessively organised desk one Tuesday afternoon. She’d ordered and reordered her office several times over, but there was only so many times one could organise empty patient files. One actually needed to have patients to have patient files.

To stop herself from losing her mind, she stood up from the desk and walked over to her examination bed. The sheets were already as tight as could be, but she untucked them and remade the bed. Once it was all perfectly smooth again, she sighed, not knowing what to do with the rest of her time.

Her framed medical degree hung pride of place in the centre of her office wall – a gift from her father – but none the coming patients even believed she was qualified. Harrison had even gone to the trouble of advising the patients to see his colleague, Doctor Jane Gray, but they refused. It was enough to make her feel useless, as well as worthless.