AN: I started writing this just after the end of series 4, when Delia was newly injured and we didn't know the outcome yet, so it doesn't follow canon beyond that point. It's been on tumblr since then, so to those who have seen it there – no it isn't a new story (although I am editing and adding bits as I go), I just thought it was finally time to get an account on here! Also this is my first time using the site so if anything is skew-whiff/I accidentally breach site etiquette in any way I'm sorry, I'm still getting the hang of it! (please feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to put it right).
Oh also, it's in italics because that's how I'm differentiating the letters that aren't actually posted from those that are (as will become obvious as the story continues), I'm not just doing it to be annoying!
To my dearest Delia,
I'm sorry if this is hard to read. I have just come back from the hospital and no matter how I try I can't keep my hands from shaking. I am in our flat, sitting on the blanket where only hours ago we were sharing the best day of my life, before it became the worst. I can't bring myself to tidy our picnic away, not just yet. Delia, I wish I had told you then that I love you with all my heart. I know you knew it (no that's wrong. I know you KNOW it somewhere inside, no matter how deep it's buried) but I wish I had told you anyway. I have always had to keep up a front, show a brave face to the world and never let myself be vulnerable. You broke through so much of that, but I wish I had been as brave as you were and thrown caution to the winds. I wish I had been the one to take your hand more often. I wish I had told you how the whole world seems to light up when you come into a room, how just your name on my lips (Delia, Delia, Delia) makes them want to curve into a smile.
You are alive Delia and I am so very glad, but you are hurt. So hurt I'm afraid you may not ever return. If I am never more to you than a 'friend' you can't remember or the strange girl who sat at your bedside and wept about the dirt under your nails it won't change my heart one jot. I am still yours, for now and for always no matter what. When I first saw you there and held your hand in mine, for one brief moment I thought we had been given a reprieve. You were bruised and sore but already I could see what would happen next. I would visit you every day, and when you were well enough we'd go home to our flat. It seems rather foolish now, but in those few seconds before I knew (no one told me before I saw you, no one warned me what your 'bump' really meant) I made such plans. I was going to work hard all the hours I wasn't at your bedside (somehow I forgot all about Nonnatus for a while) so that when I carried you across the threshold you would see the home we dreamt of, right down to the geometric designs on the china. I was going to help you to the chair I had picked out in my mind just for you, and then I was going to go down on one knee and ask you to marry me.
Now don't give me that look (but oh how I wish you would, because then you would know me and I wouldn't just be imagining your face), I know. There isn't a place on earth where that could happen. But do you remember what you said to me last time I said those same words to you? (well I shall remember twice as hard for both of us so you don't have to). 'There must be, somewhere. And until we find it, we'll just have to dance together inside our heads'. Well who says we can't get married the same way?
That's what I was thinking, as I held your hand and, as an excuse for the contact, mentioned the dirt still there from the road. When you asked if I was a nurse I thought you were teasing me, but then… oh Delia. Then I looked into your eyes and the love I always see shining back at me was replaced with polite confusion. It was the look that you (sweet, tender hearted darling that you are) would give a stranger. I know I am good at keeping up appearances, since I was a little girl I've learnt to tuck emotions neatly out of the way, dust off my brave face and keep hospital corners on my mind. Even so, I don't know how I didn't break down right at your bedside when the full extent of your injury hit me. I feel broken into a thousand fragments beneath the surface even now. Tomorrow you are to start for Wales and who knows when I will next see you? I will write you letters of course, (that at least your mother has allowed) and they will be cheerful and terribly proper - letters from the girl who you volunteered with from time to time, because your family will be the ones to read them to you. But how can you recognize me from letters that I won't even see myself in? You are the only person who has known all of me. You will get letters from Nurse Mount, and you will know someone in London thinks of you. But how will you know the rest? How will you know that Patsy's heart is breaking beneath each of those carefully penned lines?
It's getting dark now, but I can't bring myself to move because as long as I am sitting here writing to you it doesn't have to be really true just yet. I can pretend you will read these words and it will all somehow be alright. This place was to be so filled with love and instead there are just the echoes of the sobs I can't keep inside. Do you know what makes me saddest right now? We never did get that dance. There is nothing in the world I want more in this moment than to be holding you, well and safe and happy in my arms while we move round this room together to the sound of our new record player (I feel I would spend the last penny I owned to get one, just to dance to it with you).
I won't give up on you Delia, I promise. One day I will take your hand again and we will have our dance.
A foxtrot maybe, or a waltz. Even a tango.
All my love,
Patsy