The teal green walls of the hospital corridor seemed to go on forever. Each foot was the same walnut colour with a small curtain across the window to its right. The curtains were green also, but not quite the same green, not so different it was obvious but not so similar you would miss the difference.
There were slates on the front of each door containing a number and underneath stating the name of the patient.
I glanced at the door next to me, curiously eyeing the slate. The name read, as I had expected, Miss Delia Busby. The writing style was messy and callous and written in childish, yellow writing. There was a squeak against the window frame of her room, I turned to look at it but there was no sign of movement.
Suddenly the door was wrenched open. A woman wearing a green beret stood in the doorway. Her eyes were red, a deep Crimson which slowly changed. The colour became wider and wider, metamorphing slowly from scarlet iris' into full on flames, burning slowly in her eyes.
The woman, whom I had began to realise was Mrs Busby, whipped out a red wooden scarf and lassoed it around my neck crushing my throat so I had no choice but to step closer. The heat from the flames radiated onto me. The eyes grew closer, making my face hot and sweat run down it from the bright red orbs which descended. In the fire came, closer and closer and closer and then they were so close I couldn't escape. I tensed waiting for the searing pain that would come from being burned.
A shock of icey cold hit me full-on and I was standing in the cold. The bridge loomed in front of me. And there she was lying in the cold: Delia. I tried to get to her, seeing a pool of blood like a pond seeping from her filling the street.
I pushed forwards but arms grabbed my wrists, I pulled and twisted,
"Delia!" I called out in desperation, my voice cracking. She was in agony, I had to get there, I needed to help her.
The thing pulling me back held tighter, my legs began to feel restricted, like I was running in mud.
"Patsy!" She called, her voice firm and angry, blaming me for not coming to help her.
The vision merged, becoming a strange blur of white, I squinted my eyes, looking up and watching as my eyes focused and I recognised the ceiling.
I was at home, Nonnatus house, in my room. Then I remembered, and as soon as I began to remember I also recognised there was weight on my legs, a heavy numbing weight. I felt myself grin wildly as I looked down my nose and into a pair of beautiful eyes.
She was safe; she was home.
It had taken so long, so many months before she was even half-balanced again. Delia's perineal tear had been a bad one, a severe tear which had needed stitches, skin grafting and toileting catheters for a good month. At first she wouldn't eat or drink, she couldn't talk about the event and she began to have vacant seizures once more.
The nurses had her on a half-hourly obs schedule after her skin graft, checking and cleaning the wounds. She was on an intravenous drip on fluids, electrolytes and glucose.
I didn't have a choice to love her. I had to be what I was, a Nurse. I had to be the friend that I was seen as by all of Delia's family. I had to be the very close friend that everyone at Nonnatus saw.
Sister Julienne had me taken off rota for ten days after it happened. I barely slept. I barely ate. Everyday I was in to see Delia; every day no response. Sister Julienne couldn't miss me anymore and I was happy to get on with things.
Exactly a month after the event, Delia's catheters were removed. She steadily began to walk around,
She was given toileting aids in the way of medication, slowly her physical wounds were healing but her mental wounds would leave her scarred forever.
After three months in hospital there was talk of sending her to a psychiatric asylum- a place she would be safe. The day they told me I felt my heart crumble like a stale biscuit, I knew she didn't belong there, that would be blaming her, treating her as if she had done something awful rather than be an innocent standing by.
Her parents agreed to send her to somewhere she would feel safe, feel comfortable to express her fears and psychosis a little further, maybe one day give Sergeant Noakes some kind of identification of the man that did this to her. When asked where she felt safe, there was no hesitation from Delia, her words were simple but firm.
'With Patsy'.
It had been five months exactly since Delia had came home. Seven months since the incident. She would never be the same again, but looking up at her in her salmon pink pyjamas- top button undone- while she straddled the bottom of my legs, she would always be mine.
"Pats, you were having a nightmare again," she stated, carefully running the tips of her fingers up my cheek.
I cupped her hand, relishing in the feel of her skin, reminding myself she was here.
Her big eyes met mine and I barely noticed as she lent forwards, tilting her head ever so slightly. Then my eyes were closing, my heart beat thrumming and our noses brushing.
Her soft lips pressed lightly on my own and lightning burst through my, making me shudder in delight. A small sound escaped as her lips left, a sound of annoyance, which must have resonated in my expression.
Delia, hands still clasped to the sides of my face, laughed and came back for more. Her lips slowly rubbed away from mine, encouraging my mouth to open and our kissing to become wet and loving. Delia whimpered before pulling back for breath,
"I don't know how you do this Patsy Mount," she sighed with a luxuriously husky voice. Her eyes were glazed like cherries and her pupils dilating fast.
I looked up at her, trying to stop my groin from determining anything, and used my eyes to ask her.
We hadn't had a roll in the hay since a good while before the accident and I didn't want her to feel she had to.
She nodded, leaning forward once more and taking my ear lope between her teeth. She sucked for a second then let the cold air hit my ear love before she whispered, gently and sweetly, "take me."
I didn't need her encouragement to take me further. My hands scrambled forwards, burrowing into the pyjama shirt, trying to find the skin of her hips. A spark ran through me the second I found it, and a little gasp of appreciation left my mouth.
It didn't do anything to restrain my hands, my fingers ran up her skin like little legs until I reached where I wanted to be.
Delia gave an undignified moan and thrust her hips forward. My finger tips edged over her aerola, finely circling her very erect nipples. She leaned in, crushing my hands between our chests, as she gently probed at my mouth with her tongue until I accepted it into my mouth. My body was burning by this point, I was so desperate to feel something there, something from Delia, her hands; her mouth.
My hands slipped down her front to her planed stomach, to the edge of her pyjama bottoms.
That's when she stopped.
She pulled away from me violently, looking down at herself and cradling her own body in her arms.
"I'm sorry Pats," she breathed before her voice broke and she looked up at me through tears.
"I can't."
"Oh Delia," I sighed, feeling all the fire slip from my blood stream to be replaced with guilt. I reached out my arms, urging her into them. Like a weary traveller she accepted my offer and lay her head with a soft thump on my chest, cushioned by my breasts.
She burst into tears. Tears running down her cheeks and onto me. I shouldn't have been so selfish. Delia wanted this just as much as I did, but I couldn't force her, and shouldn't ever have made the first move. I knew that made matters worse. I was a selfish idiot.
But the damage was done and all I could do was rock her in my arms, hold her while her tears soaked into our clothes.
"What if I'm never able to do it again?" She asked, her voice crackling. She tried to hide the question, tried to hide the fact she had worried about this many times.
"Then," I breathed, taking in the loss as the words left my mouth,
"Then we live without." I paused, thinking, "Delia, there are so many ways of sharing love, it doesn't have to be physical."
She didn't reply but I could tell she was listening. After a moment she mumbled against the skin of my breasts, "so you wouldn't leave me for something else?"
"Something else? What, a man with his funny shaped sausage, no thank you!"
Delia giggled, pulling her face from my cleavage in order to look me in the eye.
"Delia Busby, I never imagined I'd fall in love at all, not with a girl, and least of all with you. Things happen, we are tried and tested and we try our best to get through. That, my love, is life."
She offered me a faint smile, and burrowed back into my chest. I smiled into her hair, kissing her scalp and smelling her clean hair. My hand wandered down her side, slowly covering her waist.
They always say bad things come in threes, and in that second my world fell apart for the second time in seven months.