"Was it Medusa where you cut off one head and two grow back in its place?" Delia's taking the news of Mr Tracy's departure as only Delia can. "It's the same with surgeons. Cut off one beastly head and half a dozen grow back, worse than before."
"Medusa's the snakes," Patsy says, playing idly with the rim of her coffee cup. "Hydra has the heads."
"You knew what I meant," Delia grins at her irrepressibly. "And besides, they're so snake-like, snake-ish, some of those surgeons, it suits them rather well."
It does something to Patsy, that grin, something to her insides, and usually, she can't help but return it. Not today though. Instead, she says, quietly, "I went for a job interview."
"When? Pats, why ever didn't you say?"
"I'm saying now. Last week."
"In a different hospital? But why, Pats? Not because of Mr Tracy?"
Patsy takes a deep breath. Whatever answer Delia's expecting, it won't be what she's about to hear. "In a florist's. In Chelsea."
"You did what?" Somehow the mug that Delia slams down on the table doesn't shatter into a million pieces.
Patsy winces almost imperceptibly, doesn't answer. Delia heard her clearly enough, and she's not saying it again. "I didn't get it," she says instead. "They wanted someone with more experience. Apparently arranging flowers in vases for invalids didn't really cut it..."
She trails off, offers a weak smile and a shrug. Delia's looking at her, horrified. That look does something to Patsy's insides, too. Breaks her heart, possibly.
"A florist's? In Chelsea?"
This wasn't the way their first proper conversation since she got back was supposed to go.
If being home for a week achieved anything, it was to make it abundantly clear to Delia how she felt.
She'd known it pretty much well enough before she left for a week in Wales. But a week at home - with her mother and father, the dog and the cat, her aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and great aunts - had been a week of enduring a physical ache for someone who was not there, an ache of longing, an ache of - let's not be coy - lust, an ache of - let's be frank - love.
The question, of course, was whether that longing, that lust, that love, even, was requited or not. When she thought about it, sometimes, she was sure it was: the way Patsy looked at her, sometimes, when she thought Delia was not aware of it; the way her face lit up when Delia came in the room; the way she flushed when Delia flirted. At other times, though, she was less certain. There had been moments, days, weeks sometimes, when Patsy closed down on her, when Patsy's smiles were stilted, her confidences restricted. But then again, knowing Patsy as she did, Delia knew that wasn't exactly evidence against her feeling the same. It wasn't entirely evidence for it, either, but it certainly didn't rule it out.
There was, Delia had decided one evening, fretful in the tiny bedroom of her childhood, only one thing for it. She had to do something, to move beyond their current impasse. She hadn't been sure what, precisely, she would do but she knew she had to do something.
And so, she'd come back to London, full of excitement and fear and longing and wonder, only to find no sign of Patsy. Not that first evening back - there was no answer when she knocked at Patsy's door as she usually did for a chat lasting five minutes or an hour or all night. Not the next morning either - Patsy wasn't to be seen at breakfast, or lounging at the bottom of the stairs ready to walk with Delia to the ward. And then, as their shifts started, Patsy was uncharacteristically late, and when she did appear she refused to catch Delia's eye, leaving Delia with the troubling sensation that Patsy was trying to avoid her.
When she'd imagined their first conversation after she got back, Delia had thought she might not manage a grand declaration of love, but she hadn't thought it would go quite like this. She hadn't imagined having to work quite so hard to get Patsy to agree to come for a coffee with her after their shift. She hadn't imagined the awkwardness and angularity of the walk to the cafe that would follow that reluctant agreement. And she certainly hadn't imagined Patsy saying that she had been for a job interview in a florist's in Chelsea.
"I didn't get it," Patsy says again.
"But why, Pats?"
"I told you. They didn't think I had a delicate enough touch with the gladioli." Delia shakes her head crossly. Patsy knows that's not the question that was being asked.
Patsy could've kept this quiet: she didn't get the job, she's not leaving the ward, she's not leaving nursing, so there was no need to say anything. Anything at all. Patsy knows this is going to end in tears - Delia's, perhaps, her own, certainly, when she's alone and there's no-one around to see - and yet there's something driving her on.
"To get away from Mr Tracy?" Delia asks again. "I leave for a week and this is what happens? Honestly, Pats..." Delia's face does something between a grin and a grimace, battling disbelief, entertaining the hope that this is some whim, some mad plan and fearing that it's not. "Are you really that unhappy?" she says, quiet now.
Yes. Patsy wants to say. And no. She doesn't say anything.
"Nursing's all you ever wanted to do. You said."
Delia's trying to catch her eye; Patsy's trying her best to avoid the gaze that'll see right into her bones, right into her soul, all the way through her very being. She says nothing.
"Why, Pats? What's going on?"
Patsy risks a glance up at her, looks away. Looks into her coffee. Still can't speak.
"Pats, not...Pats, not to get away from me?"
"I didn't get it," Patsy says once more, as if that'll make a difference.
"But you wanted it?"
Patsy shrugs. She wants to say that she has no idea what she wanted last week or what she wants now, but it'll be a lie. She knows exactly what she wants. Who she wants. But she knows she can't have it, can't have her, so that's that.
"But Chelsea? Half way across London?"
"It's not that far."
Delia looks at her in disbelief. Technically, no, it's not. But they both know that with the hours Delia works, if Patsy'd got the job she might as well be on the moon as be in Chelsea.