June 1962 (during S6E3)
In the heat of the street, Patrick had felt cold – now, in the cool, murky darkness of All Saints church, he felt too hot, by far – as if a fire burned where his stomach ought to be. He had flung himself across the front pew, arms outstretched along its back, hat dangling absently in one hand, as the tears streamed down his face.
He had come because he knew nowhere else to go. Shelagh herself would have come here, or to the chapel at Nonnatus, if she were able – perhaps that was what impelled him. It certainly wasn't the strength of his own faith. Shelagh seemed almost to know the Deity personally – today, he rather envied her spiritual peace.
She hadn't looked peaceful when he left her in St Cuthbert's, though.
Their child! His child…and, what was more, her child. The child that shouldn't have been possible. And, for all her love for Timothy and Angela, he knew – the secret dream of her heart. Their child hung in the balance on her narrow hospital bed.
Patrick was unused to prayer. Before his marriage, even during the crisis of his first wife's death, he had stayed away from the stale ritual of religious observance, preferring instead to act, to seek aid from the rational skills he knew as a healer of bodies. And then, Shelagh had come into his life. He had grown to know her in those moments of action, but he had learned, gradually, how all her industry and ability were underwritten by moments of profound tranquility. She drew her strength from something outside herself; and yet, this same peace was part of her, body and soul. And now she lay there, putting a brave face on the sorest worry of her life – and he was helpless! A healer of bodies who could not heal the body inside of hers! Absolutely powerless to help her, or his child – his fist pounded the pew, and his breath caught raggedly.
Prayers – he hadn't known how to begin them. Since their marriage – since even their engagement – he had known that this was important to her. He had made a salvo on the very first Sunday after she had accepted his ring. He figured if he was going to marry an ex-nun, at least he and Tim had better get used to the idea of occasionally frequenting a church. So, against protests, he had rousted a sleepy Timothy and snuck, with surprising timidity, into the back of the service. They found her there, in the very last pew. It had surprised him, then, not to find her in the front pew beside the nuns, but instead lurking in the back like a common doubter. But then, she hadn't yet relearned who she was, outside the habit but inside the church and the family of God. With a pained smile, he remembered the expression on her face when he had tapped her shoulder, and she had seen him and the boy in church – the way she lit up in her own little pool of golden joy.
Since that day, the Turners had, when the medical vagaries of Poplar permitted it, attended church as a family. Tim was wont to nod off – Patrick had taken to covertly tapping his foot to wake him. The doctor himself usually spent the whole time letting his mind wander to his latest conundrum with a patient – Shelagh knew it, he thought, because she knew everything about him. But she never pushed; never pried.
That was the thing about the religious sisters. They understood that a call from God was a great and mysterious thing – and not a vocation which could be forced by man. He'd met common zealots among his patients who gave him far more trouble about his unbelief than ever the nuns had. He had even laughed at a few of them, once – but he wasn't laughing now.
Perhaps there were things on which it was worth staking even your reason. He had found himself in love with a nun – a fruitless hope if ever there was one, and yet now she lay in a hospital bed tenuously carrying their child. Only once in all this time had he really tried to pray for her, before – sitting in his car with the rain pouring down, he had entreated her life in the battle against tuberculosis – nothing more. And here he was, once again, confronting a situation of life and death – and, as he had said to the doctor at the hospital, no amount of medical expertise ever made it any easier when it was your family that hung in the balance.
Shelagh! His heart tore at the memory of her face – so stricken, yet so brave.
"Lord," his voice cried out softly, lips cracked and miserable. Was that even the way to start? Perhaps he should say God, or even Christ – though somehow that sounded too much like an oath. Tears pressed at his eyes and overwhelmed them. Streaming grey eyes traced the altar, the candlesticks, the cross. Help wasn't in any of them – he knew that. But, so did she. Where did she look, when her own face glowed with unearthly light? Up; just up, and out into something he couldn't quite see. His heart was breaking. He would have given it for her, and for their child – he had given it to her. He would give it again now, had he anything left to give.
For Shelagh. For our child! For my own…utter inadequacy in the face of this…why…why…? Help us!…help, if ever you helped anything…WHY?!
No words left his lips, yet he knew the cry of the heart was all he could manage, and more real than any pretense at liturgy would have been. For her, for their child, he would give anything, entreat anything, offer – everything. He had given his heart to her. He would give it again in this wordless prayer to the great Light that sustained her, though but poorly and awkwardly he came to make supplication.
Anything to get them through this moment. Anything to hold her and this child in his arms.
End Notes:
Besides my general interest in Shelagh and Patrick's (largely unexplored) faith vs. doubt dynamic, I think this piece was to some extent inspired by the Regina Spektor song "Laughing With," which contains the lines: "No one's laughing at God in a hospital; no one's laughing at God in a war." Spirituality often takes on a different cast in times of crisis.
This is my first attempt at posting fic, so I hope it all formats properly and you like it! I have no beta, and no idea how to obtain one, so any typos are my own.