A/N: I do not own these beautiful characters or this plotline. And I would like to thank everyone on Tumblr who screen capped this episode so rapidly, as it was invaluable to me. This is really just an exploration of Shelagh's perspective in the events of 4x05.
"My whole world is about to collapse."
God help her, but that was her first thought the day she noticed Patrick's hands shaking as he smoked a cigarette and moodily stared out the window of his office at the surgery.
An odd chill raced through her stomach and up to her throat, like when a car lurches too fast around a bend and could possibly flip, and she felt her shoulders settle resolutely into battle position.
She had, after all, been made for this. Patient, good at listening, better at spending time on her knees, open to new solutions: she had trained for this for ten years as a nun, and then again through her own and Timothy's illnesses, not to mention the long months of yearning for a child and having every path open to her thwarted.
Only it had never before been Patrick, her steady love, for whom she had battled.
It was almost as if all of her previous fighting, from her knees, in the flats around Poplar, in the chapel at Nonnatus House, in the London in front of an iron lung machine, even among the prostitutes on Cable Street, had been in preparation for this.
So she did the only thing that she knew to do in situations like this: she shut the door to the office quietly, as if she hadn't been there, and went to make herself a cup of tea. She always heard God and received his courage more clearly with a cuppa in her hands.
It wasn't until later that the worry crept in, late one night when she awoke to see her husband's pyjama clad back standing over Angela's cot. She took a second to let it all in: the anxiety cold and coiled in her stomach, the blue light bathing the room in foreshadowing, her husband's stooped shoulders and weary stance, her daughter's unusual peace at being watched and not held.
Everything in her yelled to stop this, to grab Patrick's shoulders and shake them back into fighting stance, to baptise him in holy oil and kisses, to carve his heart out of his chest and heal it with her hands of love, but she knew that she could not. She was a wife, a partner, a half of one whole who could not move separated from her other half, but could stand in support of her poor, shattering, desperately aching beloved.
And so she did.
If words could have fixed this pain which she still did not fully comprehend, she would have found the courage to speak a novel of hope and promises of a future without lurking guilt to this man that she had chosen. If extraordinary physical feats could have done the trick, she would have joined Team GB in bringing home medals of gold and silver and brought safety to her small Poplar flat.
Luckily for her, that was not what was required, so she took in her husband's defeated back and walked slowly across the carpet, for this journey was sure to be long and these steps would begin it, and she did what she knew she could.
She stood with him.
Shelagh was small, it was true. But she was also strong, a victor in so many fights, and her victory had been assisted (or in fact, won), by this aching man whose arm she held with all of her might. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder and listened. She heard his words, yes, but also his heart beat, slow in aching confusion, the rasp of the words clawing desperately from his throat.
This was an act of prayer, standing together before an unseen enemy in a new kind of Great Silence, but Shelagh was well practised in praying until her throat was raw and her knees bruised. She could stand out this fight just as she had the others: with God, with her family, with her sisters, and with the strength that came from knowing that love was not a feeling, but a choice and a commitment that could withstand even this.
Patrick reached for her hand then, and her heart leapt as it had a thousand times before.
Their love could stand this.
If she was perfectly honest, the wall that he built up was not a surprise.
She had seen it built slowly, as he realised his mistake and climbed into an ambulance with guilt gleaming in his eyes. She had met it with resignation – this man was no stranger to her, and when it became nine o'clock, then ten o'clock, then eleven, she shut the curtains and locked the doors and went to bed. And well after midnight, when he crept into bed in rumpled clothes, she was not surprised when he turned away.
The worst part was that she was relieved by it. Even her patience had its limits, and waiting for the storm to begin was trying business. Best to get on with it and let nature have its way.
The collapse was a thing of beauty in its own way. A terrible beauty, truly, but beautiful all the same. Oh, she could have felt rejected when he pulled away from her, or alarmed by his fidgeting hands and flickering eyes, but she had seen the symptoms for weeks, and at the sign of full-fledged panic, she felt the pieces fall into place. In the back of her mind, she had planned it all days ago; she was a nurse, after all. She knew how to be prepared.
So without too much bossiness (something she had learned months ago did not go well with Patrick), she took charge. She shut the surgery and took Patrick home and heated water for tea and tucked him into bed. She pushed back open the curtains he pulled shut and went down to the lounge to call Nonnatus House and request a nurse's assistance for the next few days.
Her courage didn't falter until she awoke the following morning to find her husband staring at the ceiling as if it was the anchor tethering him to his pain. He had been almost alarmingly still in the night, although his breathing hadn't deepened into the breathing of sleep, and as she picked out her dress and wrangled her hair into submission, her stomach began to twist into knots.
"Pull yourself together, Turner," she coached herself in a low voice as she slid a final hair grip into place and turned to face the bed where Patrick remained unmoving. His eyes didn't even follow her, the way he was wont to do when she got ready, and it was this lack of response that worried her most of all.
When she crawled onto the bed and pressed her lips to his forehead, she wasn't quite sure if she was doing it to comfort Patrick or to find comfort for herself. She did it as a prayer for them, that her faith and love would hold them together through the worst of this. Nevertheless, she did feel a sliver of excitement at Patrick's bitter-tinged statement that his patients would be in better hands with her. Better hands, perhaps not, but it was still an exciting challenge that she was about to face.
The fear crept in an hour later, as she pushed open the doors to the surgery and was met with skepticism from the good folk of Poplar. It was as if her ten years as a midwife had escaped their memories, as if she hadn't been inside hundreds of their homes in the dead of night, when mothers thought there was no strength left to help along Baby, or when their child's fever had raised alarmingly, or their father's breathing hadn't sounded quite right. But her habit had been her costume of confidence then, and she knew what she had to do.
It was only fitting that Sister Julienne came to her rescue, and it was all that Shelagh could do not to collapse into the good Sister's arms. Nonnatus House had once been her refuge, and tonight it was again. She could not afford a visit to the chapel, but she found that there was no need. Sister Julienne met her fears with reassurance and truth, and when Shelagh cried, she did not try to silence her or offer her false hope. Sister Julienne was no stranger to the power of love; she had seen it pull Sister Bernadette out of a dangerous disease, she had seen it carry Timothy from the edge of death and into life as an active pre-teenage boy, she had seen it struggle to find birth in Angela, and that was only within the Turner family. Shelagh's mask of strength may have collapsed there outside of the supply closet, but it was met with truth and steadfast love, and she felt resolve straighten her spine again.
"It is not the war anymore," she offered to Heaven in hope. "And I love. I love, I love, I love him."
Besides, she would look quite smart in a nurse's uniform, something she had longed to wear since her days as a sister.
Oh, but she hadn't counted on Patrick finding out. She could cope with her dual life, with leaving Timothy, her faithful helper, in charge of the home front as she fought on the frontlines in the surgery, but she hadn't considered the crossing of battle lines, and when she heard Patrick's familiar step and voice in the surgery reception, she turned to face him in her nurse's uniform with uncertain dread.
But there he was, the very man she'd fallen in love with, come back from the shadow she'd tiptoed around for the past days. His hair was unkempt, and his shirt not done up quite right, but his eyes creased in the faintest smile for her, and even as she turned to get his bag, she felt relief race through her veins.
It was a long afternoon she spent tending to the remaining patients at the surgery and wondering what it was that had brought him back from the brink, but when she received a call asking for vaccinations against diphtheria, her heart leapt back into her throat. Diphtheria, and a tracheotomy at that. She fairly ran to the housing block, dread and hope mingling in her stomach. Had she heard gladness in his voice when he phoned? Had it just been her wishful thinking?
But then he was waiting for her, and at her questioning look, he smiled. Her heart leapt into her throat again, though for an altogether different reason this time. If this was what the road to recovery looked like, a flat of Sylheti immigrants in need of vaccinations and a pregnant woman being whisked to hospital with a hole in her throat, then Shelagh was glad she could be there to watch her husband fight bravely. And my, but wasn't he handsome with determination shining in his eyes again?
The evening was long as they prepared the vaccinations, and there was no time for talking or reassurance, but as the last man was vaccinated and the other nurses cleared everyone away, Shelagh swallowed her lingering nerves and surrendered her armour. The exhausted look on Patrick's face made her want to protect him again, but she knew that she had to face his pain head-on.
"Let me do that. You go home and rest," she said, hurrying over to the table and reaching for the work that consumed him. As she reached with her physical hands, she reached inside for courage to bear the brunt of whatever Patrick needed to release.
But he was here again, her strong, healing husband, and he refused her practical hands and reached instead for the help he actually needed.
"We're not at war anymore," she promised, gratified to see the love in his eyes again, to feel his arms wrap around her. She kissed him briefly, an offer of reconciliation and support in fighting together, and as he tightened his hold on her, she knew that he was coming home.
It was such quiet happiness to walk home through the night with him, to feel the late night breeze cool her cheeks and to reach for his arm and know that he was there for her to hold on to.
And later, with the windows open to let the fresh air in and Angela sleeping soundly in her cot, Patrick reached for her. How she had missed the reassurance of his presence in her bed, for while he had hardly left it for the past days, he hadn't really been there. But now he was here again, pulling her against his side, placing kisses to her hair and lips. She reached for him with searching fingers and felt the stubble on his chin, the ridges of his ribs, the muscles of his forearms, everything that spoke of healing and truth and love to her.
"I know what you did," he whispered against her throat, his lips causing her to shiver. "I see you, my love. You were my rock. My stalwart love."
She turned into him then, pressing her face to his chest and breathing deeply. This, too, was an act of prayer, but one of thanksgiving this time.
Her world was coming back together.