"You're up early, Pats." Delia said the name with a daring gleam in her eye.
"Of course I am. One must make sure everything is spotless, shiny, and ready to go."
Delia loved the smile that snuck onto Patsy's face whenever they saw each other after a long shift. She also loved it when Patsy's eyes looked as if they were still trying to awake, her voice still cracking slightly. "Please tell me you got enough sleep last night," she chided, accepting Patsy's warm, lingering kiss on her cheek.
"More than the night before when you were off, darling." She glared at Delia mischievously.
"It did take you a while to learn that card game, didn't it?"
Patsy rolled her eyes. "So, Nurse Busby, how was the London last night? Any fascinating tales to tell?"
"Oh you know, the usual. Except I couldn't get a blood draw this morning to save my life! It was beyond humiliating."
"Really?" Patsy raised a surprised eyebrow. She had seen Delia save the day on many occasions when other more experienced nurses couldn't get a drop.
As a matter of fact, Patsy herself had no success one evening when on male surgical.
The patient yanked his arm away from the villainous needle. "You thieving blonde bat! You might as well just saw off my whole bloody arm!"
She shot Mr. Bumbleworst a look of woe and was quite angry that, in return, he managed to move her with his tear-filled eyes. "I will come back in a swift second, Mr. Bumbleworst. Do behave and stay put in the meanwhile?"
Patsy grabbed Nurse Winters by the arm before she bustled out of the ward. "I can't find Mr. Bumbleworst's vein at all. I would ask you, but you wouldn't be able find it, either."
"Oh, thanks a lot," Nurse Winters replied, resting an indignant hand on one hip.
"It's true! I can't tell Matron. She'll dispatch one of her high and mighty glares."
"Don't knock yourself out Goldilocks. I'll ask Nurse Busby to sneak in after her shift on the next ward ends."
Delia burst through the double doors like a little Welsh sunbeam. "Now where exactly is this elusive vein hiding, Nurse Mount?"
Patsy returned the flirtatious grin while trying to keep from fainting. Stay calm, Patsy. Stay cool. "If I knew where it was hiding, Nurse Busby, I would have found it by now." Oh dear lord, that was pathetic. You're an idiot, Patience. But Patsy's face was the picture of stoic control. Mona Lisa would be a little jealous.
With a bit of smile still contained between her lips, Delia popped the needle in and got the job done. "There you are, Mr. Bumbleworst. The worst is over. At least for today."
"You're an angel, dearie. A pretty little angel."
Patsy would have given Mr. Bumbleworst a territorial glare if it wasn't for the fact that she agreed with his statement.
"And you, sir, are quite the flatterer. Nurse Mount, would you mind applying the bandage? I'll take this hard-won tube of blood down to pathology."
"Hard-won, indeed. I've got the battle-scars to show for it, Nurse."
Patsy looked down at Mr. Bumbleworst's bruised arm and felt horrible for being responsible for said battle scars.
The man gestured violently for her to come closer. "Hey Nurse," he whispered. "Does that little lovely thing have a fella?"
Aside from the fact that Mr. Bumbleworst had to be approaching sixty, Patsy wanted to declare to world-or the ward- that Delia did, indeed, have a someone. Never mind that I haven't asked her on a date or even told her that I adore every step she takes. Every smile. Every look of confidence when she walks into a room. That my stomach flutters every time she flirtatiously calls me Nurse Mount when we're off duty and walking back to the Nurse's Home in the dark. Never mind that I haven't told her thank you for going out of her way to take me out when I'm having an off day—that I haven't found the courage to acknowledge the fact that she's the only person who has ever looked beyond my cool exterior enough to know that I'm not okay.
"Pats, are you listening? You seem a little distracted."
"What? Oh, yes. Let me guess... it was an elderly man. Dehydrated and sedentary?"
"Very good! You should be a nurse."
"I have given it a thought. Did you end up getting it at last?"
"Well, he refused to drink any water preferring black pepper ale. After informing him that ale wasn't going to hydrate him or make it any easier to get his blood, he told me to sod off!"
Patsy smirked. "He could have said worse. Did you ask him to pump his hand?"
Delia shook her head. "That didn't even make the vein visible. So I had to ask Matron to attempt it. Her face turned tomato red when she wasn't successful, and Mr. Ale called her a..." Delia suddenly looked sheepish.
Patsy waited with wide-eyed expectancy trying to contain her amusement at the fact that Delia couldn't utter vulgarities without being a little embarrassed. "He called her a what?"
"Well, we are in a convent. It was enough to inspire an evil glare from Matron. I don't think it had the intended effect on Mr. Ale, because he gave her a wink!"
"Oh dear. Poor Matron," Patsy replied in between gathering bandages from the shelf along with other odds and ends.
"Poor Matron, indeed. Not like she hasn't seen it before."
"Haven't we all. I'm surprised you've been able to stay on male surgical this long, Deels." Patsy gave her bag one last once-over before buttoning it up.
"It's only for another three weeks." Delia took in an excited breath. "Even though I will have to do weekend shifts while attending midwifery training."
"And next week?"
"Hmm, what could be happening next week? I'm sure nothing in particular." Delia's mischievous smile gave her away as she slinked over to Patsy.
"I'll go to Paris with myself and leave you to enjoy the company of all the lovely gentlemen on male surgical who are dying to sweep you off your feet," Patsy teased, squishing Delia's cheeks between her thumb and fingers. "You do look tired."
Delia stole Patsy's hand and gave it a kiss."You're doing it again, Pats."
"Doing what?"
"You're giving me the examination with your critical nurse's eye. The dark circles are from working a twelve-hour shift and being up ten hours before that. That also accounts for the paleness."
"And what about the sparkle in your eye?" Patsy said, wrapping her arms around her girlfriend's waist.
Delia's mouth formed a ridiculous grin. There was no such thing as composure when Patsy looked at her like that. "They don't have a cure for that, Nurse Mount."
"No, I suppose not." Patsy took in a deep, contented breath.
It came to her while riding her bicycle; that look in Delia's eyes that she didn't have time to place while in the supply room preparing for her rounds. Her thoughts could never rise above Nurse Crane's voice trumpeting out the morning schedule. But the memories would show their faces in the most mundane moments.
Thankfully, her times with Delia were starting to cover up the more nightmarish memories of her childhood. The clear windows had been blown out and left in broken bits on the floor. Now Patsy felt as if they were being fit back together; slowly and painstakingly like an impossible puzzle.
Patsy wasn't the same person she had been as a girl, though. Even her personality had changed from light and carefree before the war to a more guarded and jaded woman—but somehow more loving. The window was no longer crystal clear, letting the whole world be seen through it just as it is, and no longer content to remain broken. Now it told stories. Now it had lines and shapes; jagged edges and colored light.
Standing back and looking at the work in progress, what could Delia see exactly? What did she see when Patsy first spotted that unapologetic sparkle in her eyes?
It was a rainy spring night, and Delia had opened the window to sneak through it into her shared room at the nurse's home. Having assumed that Nurse Winters was off with her junior doctor boyfriend, Delia had climbed through the window and landed on her room-mate's bed with two mud-coated shoes.
Delia didn't realize that Nurse Winters was curled up in the bed in a warm, cozy ball until her foot caught on the silent bundle's leg, and Delia flailed to the floor with a thud. The bedside lamp was turned on. Two sleepy eyes were rubbed. One eye was opened. Delia bit her lip.
"What on earth are you doing on the floor, Delia? You didn't sneak through my window again, did you?"
Delia would have replied, but she could only focus on the mud prints left on her room-mate's brand new white bed cover that her mother had just given as a birthday present. "When I saw it, I thought of you, my darling. May you cherish it always and keep it spotlessly clean," the mother had said.
Delia's eyes drifted up to the window to make contact with two large blue eyes trying to send her a telepathic message. The message was, it's raining, and I'm wet, dammit.
"Delia?" Nurse Winters looked up at the window behind her. "Oh for fuck's sake, Delia Busby. You two sneaking around at odd hours of the morning again?"
"If you say one word, Bonnie Winters, I won't hesitate to spread the word about finding you and Ronnie in the cupboard last month!"
"Don't be so touchy. One would think you two had been up to something naughty. Were they junior doctors or some blokes you found at the pub?"
Delia smiled weakly remembering that her and Patsy had only been at a diner for some fish and chips. "I'm afraid our night out was quite uneventful, Bonnie. Now help me open the window so Patsy can come in out of the rain."
The fringed brunette said that she needed to walk Patsy back to her room by way of an apology for leaving her in the rain, and they tiptoed gingerly down the hallway. When they reached the end, instead of going to the stairs to Patsy's room on the second floor, Delia grabbed her hand and quite briskly pulled her into the kitchen.
"Delia, what are you doing? We already had fish and chips. No need for a late-night snack. Besides, between the fish and being soaked through, I feel a bit like a dog left out in the rain for too long."
"Shh! Look Pats, I'm in a bind," Delia whispered, leading Patsy to the other side of the room.
"Oh, what is it?" Patsy didn't hide her annoyance. Her bed was calling as well as the reality that she had an early afternoon shift, and she wanted to be up in enough to time to have everything in order for the day.
"Well, Bonnie Winters is going to have my head if she finds me tonight, that's what."
"What? Why?"
Delia's alert eyes shifted to the kitchen entrance as her body stood as still as a rock. "Oh damn."
Delia swore. Patsy knew this must not be good.
"Footsteps. She's coming, Pats!" Delia quietly but swiftly opened the broom closet door and pulled her partner in crime inside, closing the door just as Bonnie Winters peaked her head in the kitchen.
Patsy prepared to voice her complaint over suddenly being squished in a closet, but Delia covered her mouth. "I think she's in the kitchen." Delia's mouth was far too close to Patsy's ear causing Patsy to catch her breath, and Delia was practically sitting on her lap. Patsy resolved to bolt out of that closet as soon as the coast was clear.
"Delia Busby, just you wait! You're buying me a new bed cover!"
The two stowaways heard footsteps echoing up the stairs, and Patsy cringed to think that Bonnie might awake her room-mate and cause a raucous.
"I think we're safe for the moment," Delia said, breathing in relief.
"Delia?"
"Hm?"
"Are you planning on staying the night in here?"
Delia heard the rigid tone in Patsy's voice but carried on despite it. "Do we really have a choice, Pats? Besides, it feels a bit like a camp out in here. Just a little cozier," she replied with happiness in her voice.
Patsy tried to shift her position and then felt something tickle her forehead. She quickly reached up to brush the impostor off and ended up hitting Delia in the nose.
"Gosh Pats! If I knew you were that angry with me..."
"Oh shit. Sorry, Deels! I'm not angry with you. Not really. I felt something crawling. Are you alright, dear?"
She called me dear. "Yes, I'm alright. My nose might be a bit bruised in the morning. Oh, look Pats. It's just a feather duster above your head. No fangs or long, furry legs."
Patsy felt silly. She was always calm and collected on the surface, but her reflexes took over if something managed to catch her off guard. She would overreact and someone or something would almost always get hurt in the process.
"Crawly things always make me nervous. You should see the spiders in Singapore. Absolutely mammoth!" Patsy's heart raced a little when she realized she had mentioned the place she had known as a child. She knew it would probably prompt questions that must remain unanswered. But she might answer them due to her fatigue.
"Singapore, eh? Is there anything else I don't know about you, Nurse Mount?" There were plenty of things Delia didn't know about Patsy, though. She was desperate to ask her a million questions. Or just one.
"I was only there as a child," she said with an unintended broken tone. Patsy shifted uncomfortably, feeling more and more claustrophobic. She cleared her throat. The silence amplified the rain strumming against the outside walls—the ticks of the clock on the wall above the corner table.
Delia let it go. She didn't like to pressure Patsy into talking about herself or anything that made her uncomfortable. But it was so hard to predict the subjects that could make her tense up and sometimes shut down altogether.
Singapore, though? Delia suddenly realized that Patsy had probably been there during the war as a child. God, how terrible.
Steps were heard coming down the stairs across the hall. Footsteps stopped in front of the kitchen and then disappeared down the other end of the building.
"Sounds like Bonnie went back to her room, Pats." Delia realized the proper thing would be to let Patsy go back to her room, but she wanted to be with her after this new revelation. She wanted to understand her if Patsy would let her in.
"Pats?"
An apprehensive hm answered.
"Let's be schoolgirls for a few minutes and play a game."
Patsy sighed and decided to humor her friend. "Alright, what's this game then?"
"So, I'll tell you who my first film star crush was and then you have to tell me yours," she said playfully.
"Delia."
"What?"
"Okay, fine. Who was your first film star crush?" A smile slightly overtook Patsy's sleepy, claustrophobic mood.
"Well. I first thought it was Mickey Rooney, but then I realized I just thought he was funny. He'd make a good friend, you know?"
Patsy nodded in agreement.
"But one day I remember sitting by the creek near my house. I named it Cobra Creek because it winded around the rocks like a snake. And Cobra Creek sounds adventurous, doesn't it? It was actually called Stony Creek. How boring. Anyway, I started thinking about it, and I realized that I actually cared more about how Patsy Barton felt than I did Mickey Moran. I cared more about Betsy than I did for Andy."
Patsy sat quietly.
"And then I realized that if I was given a choice between having to marry Mickey Rooney or Judy Garland, I would choose Judy Garland." Delia paused for a moment but decided to press on. "Maybe it was how funny or talented she was. The fact that I was entertained by her one moment and then just wanted to hug her the next. There was always a sort of sadness behind her smile. But I also thought she was beautiful. So there it is. Now it's your turn."
What was Patsy supposed to say after that? How could Delia just come out with it like that? She confounded Patsy with her thoughtless boldness.
"I can't remember."
"Nonsense. Alright, let me guess then. Was it Marlena Dietrich? Lauren Bacall?"
Damnit, she knows me too well. Patsy felt her face become a flame. "Delia." She couldn't look at her even in the dark space. "You really should be more careful."
Delia breathed in deeply and let it all out. "I'm tired of being careful, Pats. I'm tired of holding it all in. What's the point?"
"The point is, you could lose your job, your reputation—everything, Deels. It's not worth it." Patsy shifted again. She had to get out of there but couldn't will herself to make Delia move from her lap.
Delia could tell that Patsy was enormously uncomfortable, but she also knew that they had to have this conversation. She would never forgive herself if Patsy went away one day never knowing how she felt. "It is worth it, Pats. You're worth it."
Patsy's stomach tensed. She swallowed hard. There were no words. No going back after the things were said.
"Look at me, Pats."
"Why?" Patsy asked, exasperated. The frustration wasn't so much pointed towards Delia as it was her own inability to express her feelings.
"Just try," Delia replied softly.
Patsy knew what she wanted to do. Ever since they met it felt like there was some sort of magnetic force drawing them together. Maybe Delia was right. What was the point of fighting it? And as she looked at Delia's eyes in that dark space, she saw, more felt, that spark. For the first time, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to freefall. To feel. To soar.