Chapter 7
Better news was coming. France was recovering lost positions and the Germans retreated. The mood was changing, but it was impossible to evade the reality that Poplar was a place full of children and widow women. From time to time some husbands arrived, only to recover a few pounds, leave more children, and return to the battle front.
Shelagh decided she did not want to leave nursing. It was what she knew best, she felt useful and saw that her work helped people in a direct way. But sometimes, the fear paralyzed her with memories. Several times her hands suddenly shaking as she took a needle or bandaged a patient's wound. So she decided to take a new course. It was not long ago that the midwifery became a profession, thanks to the struggle of the nuns who had been attending births for decades in the humblest neighborhoods of the country.
After a short test, she began her specialization as a midwife at the London hospital, a whole new world, filled with doctors' scornful looks and complicated examinations to make her leave her studies. In spite of everything, she felt that she had found the true path and that the incipient career filled her with joy. She had already attended death, now she wanted to attend life. She felt well surrounded by women who, despite the circumstances, were happy with their pregnancies and their babies. With them, she shared the hope that their men would return, and that a better future would come.
"Seeing your face, I conclude you did quite well on that exam" Sister Evangelina told when Shelagh came back from the hospital. She gave Shelagh a cup of steaming tea, which she welcomed with joy because she was hungry.
"I never answered such complicated questions in my life."
"They do it on purpose, they're bastards."
"But I think I did it well."
"I don´t doubt it, you've done nothing but study. I imagine when you finish the specialization, you will stay here. You will be the first of us to have a diploma as a midwife."
"Of course I'll stay, sister. This is my home. I don´t know where else I could go," suddenly a torrent of tears crowded in her eyes and she had to lower her head so that the nun would not discover them, although she obviously did.
"Oh no, child," the sister took her hand.
"I'm starting something new and I'm excited and I shouldn´t feel that way when I still don´t know anything about him."
"Shelagh, you can´t shut yourself up and cry your whole life. You have to keep going."
"But it's not the right thing to do. I must look for him."
"Where? Don´t you know that look for someone at this moment is a chaos? We should wait until the war is over."
"But it seems it will never end."
"You must have faith, girl."
"That is being useless! All I do is wait and pray and nothing happens, there is not a single word, I'm tired of the faith!" she set the tea cup down on the table and ran to lock herself in her room.
"What was that?" Sister Julienne asked, entering in the kitchen.
"She's furious and she's right. You and I know well that sometimes faith is useless and she is realizing that."
x
The next day, Shelagh decided not to enter in the hospital and skip her classes. She wanted to take advantage of her trip to the city centre and her full day. She saw her few companions enter the hospital but she did not follow them, wondering where to start her search.
She soon learned that not only was her faith useless, but also walk all over London looking for answers. She stepped on every office they mentioned and repeated Patrick's name countless times, she waited in hard chairs while apathetic employees scrambled papers and files to just answer a brief "No". No one knew anything about him, there was not a single word, and more than once they told her that she should have be content with the telegram, because most people did not receive it.
At the end of the day, she had grown tired of the nonsense and the faces she received when she mentioned that Patrick was disappeared. She knew that for most people that word meant the same as dead, but she did not want to give up.
"Don´t answer that! I want an answer, I want you to look for him, I want to know what happened to him!" she shouted, pounding the desk of a frightened employee when he was again evasively answered. However, the answer did not come and when she returned to Nonnatus she felt more defeated than she had ever been in her life. Her heart ached because she was beginning to believe what everyone seemed to say: Patrick was dead.
November, 1916.
When she arrived on her bicycle at Nonnatus, the morning was radiant despite the cold wind coming from the river. She had spent the whole night attending her fourth delivery as an official midwife. She felt calm despite the fatigue, the cold and the hunger. Everything was fine, the mother and the baby were perfect and happy.
She chatted a lot with the mother who had her second child. She was younger than she and her husband was disappeared in France two months ago and the girl was relieved to know that her midwife could fully understand the distress she was feeling.
Shelagh discreetly wrote down the things she could ask for in Nonnatus to donate to the girl, who had few possessions in her small flat. She wanted to help her in another way, but some material things and share her pain, was all that she could offer.
She left her bicycle in the shed and entered Nonnatus, knowing that she arrived at breakfast. Her stomach rumbled at the thought.
"Good morning Shelagh, how was it?" Sister Julienne greeted her.
"A 7 pound baby. Mother and baby are fine."
"I'm glad. Shelagh ... this came for you."
Her smile fell when she saw an envelope that the sister pointed on the table. She looked at the nun and could not decipher her gaze.
"I don´t want" she said, hearing her own voice tremble from the trembling of her body, "I don´t want to read it."
"Take it, my dear" the sister gave it to her, and she shook her head, pressing her lips together. Suddenly, she did not want to know the truth.
"I don´t want to know. Please."
"Shelagh, you must. Come on."
She took the envelope and read it. It was a white envelope, small and a bit dirty. She looked at the sender and shouted.
"God!"
Sister Julienne only smiled.
"It is…It is from him" she whispered. She looked at the date in the envelope, did not want to fool herself with a letter from months ago. But it had been sent two weeks ago.
She opened it and found a paper a little stained but with the Patrick´s calligraphy that she knew very well.
"Shelagh:
I was taken prisoner and I am bribing a soldier who I treated an infection to let me write to you. I hope he keeps his word and sends this letter. I'm fine, don´t worry. I don´t know when this will end, but I assure you that I will return. I can´t write much more, but wait for me.
I love you,
Patrick."
"He´s alive!" she threw herself into the arms of Sister Julienne who laughed with her.
"I knew this would happen" replied the woman, stroking Shelagh´s tears.
"But he's a prisoner" Shelagh's face was filled with shadows again, "that's no good, anything could happen at any moment. What if, when they are losing the war, they decide to kill them all the prisoners? What if…?"
"Shelagh calm down. You have an answer, try to focus on that. There are many prisoners, Patrick is not alone, and besides, we know that at least he has an enemy on his side. Trust in his knowledge as a doctor that can help him gain more German soldiers. He will get out of this."
"But I must help him. I don´t know how, but I must."
x
With reluctance, Sister Evangelina erased the name of Shelagh in the board. The girl asked for the day free of rounds and deliveries to do something for Patrick.
Early in the morning, Shelagh went to the first of the offices. She was determined to be heard.
"I want to talk with the chief of this place," she said when she entered in the office, "I need help for my fiancée, he´s a prisoner".
"There are thousands of prisoners" the clerk replied.
"I know. But he managed to communicate with me. You must do something to free him."
She repeated her request and showed her letter all the day. The result, again, was null. Some of them did not even hear her, she was not Patrick´s family, only his fiancée. Shelagh realized how little she knew about Patrick because she did not know any relatives who could help her. However, he chose her to communicate. Others wrote down the letter, looked from where it was sent, but Patrick's name was not in the prisoners' files. An inquiry was made to the International Prisoners of War Agency in Geneva, but any information would take weeks to arrive.
Shelagh felt sinking into desperation. They would let him die there, and she could do nothing.
"I must go, I must go."
"Shelagh, what are you saying?" Sister Julienne took her by the elbows, when during dinner she told what happened in her day, "You can not go back there, you know how it is."
"But they will not help him. They'll let him be killed, or starve, or…And it's not just him, they said there are thousands. Are those thousands worth nothing?"
Sister Julienne hugged her, and she began to cry again.
"I miss him so much...I love him, sister. He saved my life, I can´t leave him."
