Summary: Nurse Training School - The London Hospital

Disclaimer: Call The Midwife belongs to the BBC and others - I am simply borrowing their wonderful characters.

Author's Notes: Heartfelt thanks as always to Sittingonthis for making me think through every line, and to Jlynsca for her editing skills (I too am prone to comma abuse!) Going by word count, this is now by far my longest Call the Midwife fic. I hope I haven't lost you all yet, as I still have some way to go with this...

Despite every instinct telling Patsy to go straight to the Nurses Home and Delia, Patsy forced herself to see the Ward Sister.

"You're asking to leave the department so you can check on a work colleague?" Sister Marshall looked confused.

"Yes, Sister. Of course, I wouldn't normally do this, but I've only just found out that she's unwell."

"What does this have to do with you? Can't you just ring the night Matron and ask her to check in with her? I can't afford to lose nurses on a whim."

Patsy swallowed. She had anticipated that the conversation would go this way. "Yes, I could, I suppose. But they only allowed Nurse Busby home because she told the Matron I would keep an eye on her. I feel like I'm letting everyone down."

Sister Marshall had barely heard the last part of Patsy's conversation. "Nurse Busby? The small Welsh girl who was at the rail crash?"

Patsy nodded. "Well, she was one of the nurses, yes." She was surprised that Delia had made an impression on staff throughout the hospital, even if she had been described as a little girl.

Sister Marshall shook her head. "Terrible business." She paused and looked at Patsy steadily. "Go. I'll allow you to take your second break now but you will be deducted an hour's pay. I expect you back at work in 90 minutes. We cannot afford to lose you for the entire shift."

Patsy nodded hurriedly. She wouldn't have cared if her pay for the whole week had been stopped at this point. "Yes, Sister." She spun on her heel and through sheer force of will, managed to make herself walk, rather than run, towards the exit.

"Nurse Mount?"

Patsy turned around, wincing. "Yes, Sister?"

"Go to the stores and take Nurse Busby some Lucozade. She'll need it to aid her recovery."

Patsy nodded gratefully. "Thank you, Sister."

After collecting supplies, Patsy hurried back to the Nurses Home, bounding up the stairs two at a time in her rush to see Delia. She tapped lightly on the door but did not wait for an answer and let herself in. "Deels?" She called softly.

As the light from the corridor illuminated Delia's face, she flinched and pulled the covers up to shield her eyes, groaning slightly as she did so.

Patsy quickly shut the door and the room fell dark again. It wasn't pitch black, but Patsy's eyes weren't used to the switch in brightness, so she crossed the room using memory rather than sight. "Sorry, Delia," she apologised as she placed the bottles she had been carrying on the nightstand. Patsy could make out the shadowy outlines of a bottle of painkillers as well as a jug of water and a glass.

"Where have you been?" Delia mumbled, sounding supremely grumpy.

Patsy kneeled down by the side of the bed and stroked the top of Delia's head gently. "I am so sorry, Delia. No one told me you weren't well."

Slowly, Delia pulled down the covers and she squinted at the blonde nurse. "How did you find out then?"

Patsy shook her head. "Fortunately, Lynette came into the staff room and told me. I begged Sister to let me check in on you."

Delia frowned. "What time is it?" She asked groggily.

"It's 5 o'clock. Sister gave me an hour to make sure you were alright and then I have to go back to work."

Delia stared at Patsy, her eyes cloudy. "I'm glad you're here," she whispered.

Patsy bit back a sob of relief. "I'm glad you're all right. How are you feeling?" She brushed a few strands of hair away from Delia's eyes. The blonde nurse could feel the heat radiating from her brow.

Delia shrugged and winced. "Like I've been run over," she grumbled. "Hideous headache, fever, achy all over, and photophobia. I haven't got a stiff neck though, so that's a relief."

"Lynette said you've got meningitis. Why on earth weren't you admitted?" Patsy just about managed to disguise the panic in her voice.

"The doctor said it was a mild case. Although the symptoms don't feel that mild, to be sure. It's viral meningitis, Patsy. According to the doctor, the standard treatment is bed rest, plenty of fluids and painkillers. I'd rather do that in the comfort of my own room than being kept awake all night being prodded and poked on a ward."

Patsy narrowed her eyes. "If it's as simple as that, why did you faint on the ward?"

Delia looked uncomfortable. "I think that was due more to the fact I haven't really been sleeping all that well."

Patsy looked stricken. "I'm so sorry. That's all my fault because of the nightmares."

"Not really," Delia admitted softly. "I hadn't been sleeping well before you began with them again."

"Why?"

Delia yawned. "Long story that I don't think I have the energy for yet," she replied eventually.

Patsy nodded reluctantly. "You sound as evasive as me," she commented wryly.

"Irritating, isn't it?" Delia muttered.

Patsy gave a lop-sided smile. "Very. Deels, are you sure it's all right to leave you on your own?"

Delia nodded. "As long as someone checks in every now and again, I'll be fine," the Welsh woman insisted.

"I'm sorry I didn't come by sooner." Patsy couldn't help but berate herself.

"I'm just glad you're here now." Delia smiled.

"I'll stay as long as I can, and then I'll be back at the end of my shift."

Delia shifted slightly and sat up, groaning as she did. "I need a big favour from you first," she declared.

"Why are you getting up? You're practically falling asleep on me as it is. It's bed rest only for you, young lady."

"I need to go to the loo. I tried earlier but managed to do a first class impression of a new-born lamb." She glanced at Patsy and looked slightly embarrassed. "Can you help me down the corridor?"

"Of course." Patsy got up immediately and switched into nurse mode. Delia leaned into the taller woman heavily and flinched before shielding her eyes almost completely from the artificial light in the corridor. "Don't worry, Delia. Close your eyes if you need to. I'll guide you."

Delia didn't even bother to argue and allowed Patsy to lead her to the bathrooms. She was exhausted by the time they returned to her room, and knew that it was only Patsy keeping her upright by the time she got to her bed.

Patsy took her time and ensured that Delia was tucked back into bed and comfortable. She insisted that the younger woman drink a glass of Lucozade before filling the tumbler with water. "You need to keep drinking."

"I know. I'm just not looking forward to another bathroom trip."

"I'll help." Patsy looked nervously at the bedside clock and then grimaced. "Will you be all right if I go back?" She really didn't want to leave her, but now that Patsy had seen Delia for herself, she felt reassured that the young woman was not at death's door.

Delia nodded, trying hard, but failing to hold off the grip of sleep. When Patsy leaned over to kiss her though, Delia found the strength somewhere to lift a hand and stop her. "No kissing, sweetheart. I'm contagious." She wiped her brow before drawing the blankets up under her chin. "I wouldn't wish this on anyone," she mumbled, her voice beginning to slur as she succumbed.

Patsy shook her head and waited for a few more minutes to assure herself that Delia really was asleep and comfortable. She then hurried back to the ward, knowing that she would be coming straight back as soon as her shift was over.

For two days, Delia was pretty much bed bound. The debilitating headache and photophobia meant that she needed to rely on Patsy's assistance to get to the bathroom, and the exertion of each trip exhausted her for hours afterwards. The only upside to the illness was that either the flashbacks had stopped or her body was too tired to react to them. Whatever it was, Delia managed to sleep uninterrupted. Patsy managed to cajole her into drinking Lucozade, but Delia had no real appetite and it was a struggle to find any sort of food to tempt her with.

On the third day, the Welsh woman seemed to turn a corner. Her headache receded to just a dull pain and she suddenly had more energy. She was actually sat up in bed and reading when Patsy came in after her late shift. "Hello, Pats."

Patsy smiled. "Hello. You're looking better." She crossed the room and perched on the side of the bed before brushing Delia's fringe out of her eyes. "I can feel that your temperature's dropped, too." She looked at Delia appraisingly. "How do you feel?"

Delia frowned. "Definitely better, but not a hundred percent just yet."

Patsy closed her eyes in relief. "Oh, that's wonderful news." She glanced round and took stock of the nightstand. "I see you've been drinking a lot more too. You must be feeling better."

"I actually managed to get to the bathroom earlier so I felt a bit safer drinking more." Delia grinned sheepishly. "I still seem to be sleeping for hours on end though. I'm not sure how I'll cope going back to work at this rate."

"You'll be fine in no time now." Patsy kicked off her shoes and swung her legs up on the bed so that they could sit alongside each other. "I've got tomorrow off."

Delia groaned. "That was our day off together." She looked apologetically at the taller nurse. "I don't think I'm going to be up to going out anywhere," she admitted reluctantly.

"I didn't think you would be. So I have a couple of suggestions, but at least one isn't particularly romantic."

Delia frowned. "Go on," she prompted.

"Well, it's been several days since you've had a bath and washed your hair. I thought I could help you out with that."

"That's got my heart racing more than you probably intended," Delia interrupted, a mischievous grin on her lips.

Patsy shook her head. "You're definitely on the mend. But getting back to my proposal, I then thought that you could spend a bit of time in my room while we air your room out. It could do with having the window open to blow out all the stale air, and there's nothing better than fresh sheets. Once I've done that, I'll get us some proper food for lunch, if you feel up for it?"

Delia looked embarrassed. "You shouldn't be doing all the cleaning for me, Patsy. That's not fair."

"Nonsense. It'll take me no time at all. And it will be nice to see you eat something substantial. I really will believe you're feeling better at that point." Patsy was simply relieved to have a plan that involved Delia recovering well from her malady.

Delia nodded. "All right, but I don't want you wearing yourself out and succumbing to some ridiculous illness, too. Promise me you'll get a good night's sleep tonight."

"I promise. But I'm not going anywhere yet." Patsy paused for a second, and then took a steadying breath. "How tired are you feeling now?" She probed.

"I haven't really done anything to make me feel tired today." Delia looked at her love curiously. "Why?"

Patsy hesitated again before wincing slightly. "I wanted to ask you about why you weren't sleeping," she admitted softly.

Delia sighed. "I wondered if you'd bring that up again." She rubbed her face and sat up a bit more, trying to gather her thoughts. She looked carefully at Patsy. "I will talk about this, but I do hope you'll trust me enough in return to talk, too."

Patsy nodded. "Of course. But I can tell you that the reason I don't open up to you more has nothing to do with trust."

Delia frowned. "What does that mean?"

Patsy marshalled her thoughts for a few moments. "After the camp was liberated, I ended up sailing home and being sent off to boarding school. The war in Europe had finished a few months earlier and already, people were not talking about it. The war in the Far East was a bit of a mystery to most people. Those of us that survived just couldn't talk about it. The horror was unimaginable. Even though there had been reports about the Holocaust, I don't think people could believe that prisoners of war could be treated so appallingly. No one thought that the Geneva Convention would be so blatantly ignored, but they didn't know that it didn't apply to civilians. That adjustment was only made after the war."

The blonde nurse swallowed, keeping her emotions firmly in check. "If I'm honest, I hadn't even heard of the Geneva Convention. All I knew was that no one should be treated that way. But even if it had applied to all prisoners, I truly don't believe that the Japanese would have abided by it."

Patsy's voice was bitter. "They were ashamed that their role was guarding women and children. They thought it was dishonourable. So as prisoners, we had no rights whatsoever. No matter what a treaty might say. What made it worse was that the Japanese withheld food and medicines from us. They were locked away in a storeroom in the camp. Within arm's reach." She blew out a shaky breath. "I have no idea how many of us could have survived if they had provided the quinine and Vitamin B they had in stock."

She looked away and blinked rapidly, determined to carry on. Patsy felt her hand being clasped and she looked back at Delia. As always, there was no faux show of sympathy on her features. Neither was Delia crying. The Welsh woman simply looked steadfast and controlled. Patsy was supremely grateful for that, as she knew she would not have been able to maintain her own composure if she had seen Delia shedding tears.

"You don't have to do this now," Delia offered; generous and sensitive as ever.

Patsy shook her head determinedly. "Don't stop me now, Deels. It's taken me thinking that I might lose you too, just to open up," she revealed.

"I don't talk about this because..." Patsy paused as she struggled to vocalise her thoughts.

"Because I suppressed this for so long..." She stopped again and shook her head in frustration. "Damn, this is not easy."

Patsy took a deep breath in and blew it out through her mouth forcefully. "I don't know how to talk about it, Delia. I don't know how to let you comfort me. I don't know the words that can describe how I feel. I've kept all this hidden for so long that it's festered into a ball of toxic fear that I can't face, let alone describe. It's not that I don't trust you. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's that I don't know where to start."

She swallowed round a lump that had formed in her throat and felt her self-preservation kick in. "I know that because I haven't talked about what happened to me, I have secrets and elements of my past that I don't want others to know about or, worse, ask me about. It makes me defensive when people do ask."

She paused again. "The barriers I have set up mean that I am difficult to get to know." Patsy shook her head. "No, that's not completely honest. Because I don't even know how to talk about it, I hesitate to start with people. I don't want to put myself through the explanations, let alone anyone else."

The blonde nurse sighed. "It's something I've dealt with for a long time. And until recently, my 'defence measures', for want of a better description, have served me well. But that was because I hadn't realised just how isolated I had made myself." Patsy gave a lop-sided smile. "And then you got under my skin."

Delia looked at the older woman curiously. "Is that a bad thing or a good thing?" She asked.

"Delia, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me." Patsy was almost forceful in her response. "But I can only bring down my walls a bit at a time. I'm just grateful that you're so patient with me."

Delia nodded. "I wouldn't want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable."

Patsy shook her head ruefully. "Talking about any of this is excruciating," she admitted. "But it helps. And, certainly for the moment, I can't think of anyone else I could do this with."

Patsy took some time to school her thoughts again, hiding the action by pouring herself a glass of water and topping up Delia's Lucozade. When they had both taken sips, Patsy turned to face the brunette. "I may be wrong, but I'm assuming you haven't been sleeping because of the train crash and what you saw. I can categorically tell you, that bottling it up won't help."

She shrugged grimly. "I won't force you to talk. That doesn't help either. But if you feel you can, I'm here to listen to you, Delia. I won't judge, or tell you how you ought to feel, or even how to deal with what happened to you. That is a purely personal thing and it wouldn't help. But I can be here to hold you and to listen for as long as you want me to. If you want me to."

Delia was stunned. Patsy had spoken about the camp before and what had happened to her family, but it had been a clinical, objective description. Although she had been emotional about it, she had made no attempt to describe her feelings about what happened, or indeed the internment's subsequent impact on her. Just now, Patsy had laid herself bare and she had done it selflessly, in the hope that it would help Delia open up. The younger nurse was heartbroken at what Patsy had had to deal with by herself at such a young age. To then have to carry guilt, anger, bitterness and shame around during her formative years must have had a devastating impact on her emotional maturity and growth.

As hard as it was, Delia understood exactly why Patsy had been so forthcoming. It was her way of telling her not to make the same mistakes she had. To find the words to describe her fears somehow.

The Welsh woman squeezed Patsy's hand once again and blew out a steadying breath. She began by describing how she felt as she crawled through the carriages of the train. She told Patsy how she didn't feel horror at the dead bodies she passed. As soon as she realised that someone was dead, she dehumanised them and she moved onto the next person. As the body count grew, Delia began viewing them all as objects rather than people, protecting herself emotionally from the reality of the situation.

Delia talked in general terms to start with, but she knew what the focus of her fear was. Hesitantly, and with many long periods of silence, the diminutive nurse described seeing the woman who had been wearing 'Patsy's coat'. She knew how irrational it was that she checked the woman's pulse multiple times, even though she knew she was dead. It didn't matter. The woman didn't even look like Patsy. Again, it didn't matter.

Delia admitted that it was the thought that the woman might have been Patsy, that then morphed into a thought about losing Patsy that had been consuming her at night. Every night since the train crash, Delia had either kept herself awake worrying about what might happen if she ever lost Patsy, or she had fallen into a fitful sleep that had amplified her fears and given her nightmares. It would seem that she was not one to cry out in her sleep though, as she hadn't disturbed Patsy or any of the other Nurses Home residents.

Patsy kept her features masked as she listened but she knew Delia hadn't mentioned this before because of her own nightmares. It was her fault that Delia had kept this inside for so long. She should never have been so caught up in her own drama, or she would have seen the signs earlier.

"Don't you dare," Delia warned suddenly.

"What?"

"Don't you dare blame yourself." Delia may still have been ill, but her intuition remained sharp as ever.

Patsy pulled a face. "It's difficult not to. You spent several nights comforting me from my nightmares. I knew you were tired, but I didn't realise just how badly you were affected by it all."

"Patsy, if I'm honest, the nights I spent comforting you were the ones where I got most rest. I could relax knowing that I was right next to you."

"Yes, but you didn't tell me," Patsy pointed out. "And you probably didn't tell me because you didn't want to add to the stress that I was already going through."

Delia looked guilty. "Of course. You were already going through enough without me adding to it all."

Patsy nodded. "I can understand that. But I will still be feeling guilty about it for a while," she replied.

"You shouldn't. You're not a mind reader." Delia shifted her gaze and stared across the room for a moment, her eyes unfocused. "Your nightmares started when you came home all upset. Did something happen on the ward?"

The older nurse raised her eyebrows in surprise. "I might not be a mind reader, but I'm not so sure about you," she deflected instinctively.

Delia was having none of it. "What happened, Pats?"

Patsy looked down and picked at a loose thread on the bedspread. "There was a woman on the ward," she started hesitantly. "She came in with meningitis." Patsy looked up as she heard Delia gasp in shock. "Bacterial meningitis," she qualified hurriedly.

"Gosh, no wonder you dashed off the ward to check on me." Delia was instantly understanding.

Patsy nodded. "All I could do was watch her die on the ward. She was the same age as mother." Patsy's voice caught on the last word and she gratefully leaned into Delia's embrace as the brunette swung an arm around her in comfort.

Delia offered no words but instead simply held Patsy as she cried. She knew that there was simply nothing she could say that could make it any better. She rubbed Patsy's arm gently and waited patiently until the tears stopped.

"Sorry," Patsy muttered, her voice tight with emotion as she sat up and disengaged from Delia's hold.

"Well, we are a pair, aren't we?" Delia decided ruefully. "I don't want to add to your worries, and you don't want to add to mine." She exhaled forcefully. "Why don't we try and rely on each other just a little more?"

Patsy looked dubious. "I'm not sure it's that simple."

Delia smiled softly. "The concept is." She wrinkled her nose. "Actually doing it might feel a lot more awkward, at least to start with," she admitted. "But if we don't try we'll never know."

"You're awfully optimistic that it will help," Patsy demurred.

"Hasn't it already?"

Patsy gazed at Delia for a long moment. "Yes," she agreed at last. "It has."

Delia clasped Patsy's hand in her own. "Pats, I don't expect you to solve all my problems, or even that you have all the right words to say, but I do know that just by talking to you today, I feel I can cope with my fears." She shrugged. "That's a pretty good feeling."

Patsy winced. "I have to warn you that I am not going to be very good at opening up with my feelings. Probably ever, if I'm honest."

Delia shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Just know that I want to help and I'll be there for you whenever you're ready."

Patsy nodded shakily. "Thank you."

Delia looked surprised as she yawned suddenly. "I never thought talking would wear me out so much."

"I know. And I think we've done enough talking for tonight." Patsy swung her legs off the bed and stood up. She bent down and placed a kiss on top of Delia's head. "Goodnight, darling."

Delia pouted. "I am looking forward to being able to kiss you on the lips again, Nurse Mount."

"Just a few more days and we'll be fine," Patsy reassured her. "But until then, I'll see you in the morning, Typhoid Mary."

Delia narrowed her eyes at the tall nurse. "I have a long memory, Pats," she warned.

"Oh, I'm counting on it."

To be continued...