Chapter 9

Summary: Limbo

A/N: Welcome back to angst-fest? *hugz* Sorry for the delay in updating. A musical I wrote was accepted to a festival and it's consumed my life, lol. Guys, there's so much paperwork in doing your own thing, so like, do your own thing, but PAPERWORKKKK. Okay, that's all.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. Shelagh couldn't remember a time her life wasn't swept up in smells. From her childhood farm, to the worst parts of Poplar, to a house with two rambunctious children, she'd always been surrounded by familiar (if occasionally unpleasant) aromas. She never minded, though. Her eyesight had always been poor, loud noises had always overwhelmed her, and poverty had taught her not to put too much stock into food that wouldn't always taste edible or soft toys that could be taken away. Her sense of smell was always reliable, though, and she didn't have to open her eyes to realize she was in her parents' room in her family home in Scotland. Her mother's favorite flowers, her father's work clothes, and the soothing fresh scent of the country through the window all touched a place in her heart she hadn't thought about in years.

Why was she here though? How was she here?

She couldn't remember how she'd got there. One minute, she was visiting Patrick at the hospital and the next, she was waking up in Aberdeen in a house she hadn't stepped foot inside for nearly two decades.

It was unnervingly clean.

Smells aside, the small house was spotless and untouched - as though it hadn't been lived in in centuries. The tight bed-corners and symmetrical placement of small keepsakes along the lone shelf were not her parents' doing. Shelagh might've always been impeccably neat, but her family wasn't. This wasn't real.

"Hello?" She called out tentatively. She was met with silence. Her heart began to flutter in fear. She still couldn't remember how she got here. She just wanted to feel safe. She wasn't sure why, but it felt like she hadn't felt safe in some time. She wanted Patrick. "Patrick." she whispered more to herself than to anyone who might be in the house.

"Shelagh?" a familiar voice called back to her and her entire world righted itself in seconds.

"Patrick, where are you?" she called out, running towards his voice. Her bare feet smacked hurriedly against the wooden floors and she could hear the fleeting reminder of her mother not to run in the house, but she didn't care. She needed to be wherever he was. He would make this make sense.

"I don't know where I am!" he shouted back. A rattling door shook through the walls.

"Sitting room closet." she thought to herself. She'd gotten stuck in it plenty as a child. Why Patrick would be there was beyond her, but she didn't have the patience to question it. She ran the familiar S-shaped hall and stumbled into her old sitting room. The door to the closet buckled and she heard a small oomph as Patrick tried to hurl his shoulder against it. She giggled to herself. Silly man, the door opens inward.

She called out for Patrick to stand as far back as possible and rammed the door from her end. The closet sprang open immediately and Patrick ran out of it in terror it might trap him once more.

Shelagh's smile faded.

He'd run through her. Straight through her, like a ghost.

"Patrick?" she asked with uncertainty. She felt his name on her tongue and realized just how many times she said it everyday. Sometimes in love, sometimes in annoyance, frequently in praise, but rarely in doubt.

"Why are you here?" he asked fearfully, having recovered from his closet mishap. "You shouldn't be here."

"I don't even know where here is, Patrick, please." she pleaded, more scared than before. She tried again to touch him, to hold him, but her hands went through his body as easily as he'd gone through hers. "Why can't I touch you?" she cried.

"I'm sorry I yelled." he apologized. Out of habit, he moved to take her hand, and his heart shattered when he couldn't. "It's good that you can't touch me, though, darling. Though, please don't think I don't wish I could touch you."

"I don't understand." she sank down onto her family couch and he gently took a seat beside her. "Why can we touch the furniture?" Her fingers clenched and unclenched against the rough woolen blankets. She never really liked them, they always made her feel smothered. A side effect of being so small, she supposed.

"I'm not entire sure." he admitted. "I've found I'm able to touch most places and things, but...not always people." he paused and looked around. "What is this place?" she looked up at him questioningly, that was obviously not the most pressing issue at the moment. He smiled. "I just ask because it must have meaning to you. I've learned that much at least. If it didn't, you wouldn't have been able to call me here."

Things were starting to make horrible, morbid sense to Shelagh, though the relief of being able to talk to her husband was worth the realizations. As she calmed, her memory began to come back to her. Patrick in the hospital, Timothy and Angela, days and days of waiting...she still couldn't remember how she got here, though.

"It's my childhood home." she revealed. "Though I don't remember it ever being this tidy and quiet."

"I was in Italy." he replied. "Also much quieter than I remembered."

Both sat in the silence. Neither wanted to ask the questions that lay between them. Patrick didn't want to know why Shelagh was unconscious and Shelagh didn't want to know if this was a glimpse at an afterlife she'd always imagined quite differently, but they were questions that needed to be answered.

"Shelagh, what happened here?" Patrick asked softly. He wanted her to say nothing. He wanted her to say that her childhood was perfect and then she left to become a nurse and nun and, eventually, his wife, but he knew that wasn't the case. She'd never really talked about her mother's death. She'd talked about her father's when he'd finally opened up about Northfield, but her mother went unspoken and he couldn't help but wonder why. It must have happened here. He could feel it in the way her body tensed to protect itself and the way her mind had tidied up the place that held her messiest memories.

"My mother died on this couch." Shelagh whispered. "My father and I both wanted to be rid of it afterwards, but we couldn't afford another one, so we just covered it up with blankets. Eventually, I was glad of it. I would come here to be with her."

"How?" he gently pushed when she trailed off.

"Hemorrhage with my little sister. She didn't make it either." Shelagh murmured. "We were too far away to get a midwife here in time and I…"

"That's when you decided to become one." he finished for her. God, it was killing him that he couldn't hold her.

"I couldn't bare the thought of anyone else suffering." she admitted. How like his Shelagh. "There was so much blood - oh God, Patrick!" Shelagh gasped as her final memories of the hospital triggered back into her brain. Timothy's horror, shouting for the nurse, her soaked dress.

"What is it?" Again, instinct shot his hands to her shoulders, but it was for naught. Only cold air met his fingertips. He hated that she was here. She didn't belong here, neither of them did, but at least he was healing. He was on his way home. Why, why was she also taken away from their children.

"I think I'm here because I had a miscarriage." she cried. "I remember...there was so much blood and Timothy was so scared. Patrick, what have I done?"

"Shelagh, love, whatever happened it wasn't your fault." Damn their inability to touch. Four years of marriage and he still couldn't find the words to say what his hands and lips always could. "It's going to be alright."

"It's not going to be alright, Patrick." she snapped. "You weren't supposed to be hurt, I wasn't supposed to leave them behind, we don't know how to get back." Her words got faster and faster her hand moved subconsciously to her stomach. Relief filled his very bones. She could feel physical pain. She was going to be called back. Hopefully she wouldn't return like he did.

"Shelagh, listen to me. The reason we can't touch is because we're not really here." she tried to interrupt him, but he didn't know how much time he had, so he didn't let her. "Only the dead can touch here, but we're not dead, do you understand? I don't know how much of this you'll remember when you wake, but please try to remember that I'm getting better and I will come back to you."

"Patrick, I don't - ah!" she gasped and her nails dug into her abdomen. She was leaving. "I don't want to leave you!"

"You won't." he promised. "It won't be long now, I promise I'll be back with you soon."

"No-" she reached out for him, but he was gone. Scotland was gone.

Blinding light surrounded her and filled her every sense until the chaos faded to a soft beep and the shuffling of a chair.

"My dear, Shelagh." Sister Julienne's relieved voice soothed her and she squeezed her hand. She could have sworn Patrick was just beside her.

Imma try to not wait as long before the next update! Up next: Timothy and Angela feelz fest and Sister Julienne being a badass. :P