Thanks for the reviews :) Here's the final installment...
Shelagh arrived at Nonnatus just in time to help clear away the breakfast things. As she made her way towards the dining room she could make out the raised voice of Sister Evangelina, interspersed with flustered, unintelligible responses from Chummy and violent giggles from the other midwives. "Let's ask Nurse Turner her opinion," pouted Trixie no sooner had Shelagh stepped into the room.
"Go on then," she sighed, unbuttoning her coat and affecting a low, measured tone, the same she applied when trying to explain herself to uncooperative mothers. "By the sounds of it you need a mediator - what's all this about?"
Trixie perched on the edge of the table and lit a cigarette. "Sister Evangelina has spent breakfast being disparaging about Valentine's Day," she sighed. "We were trying to quiz Chummy about hers, and the poor girl couldn't get a word in, Sister has such a depth of opinion."
"I can't say I'm too displeased," said Chummy, lowering her voice as she passed Shelagh to get to the kitchen. "It's like the Spanish Inquisition, make your escape now, while you still can."
Sister Evangelina had a new audience, and was not going to waste her opportunity. She put down the plates she was holding and turned to face Shelagh. "All this Valentine's Day nonsense. It's just consumerised, commercialised sentimentality, a way of getting people to spend too much money on frivolous rubbish."
"I think we've heard all this before," came a weary voice from the chair in the corner, where Sister Monica Joan had escaped the morning's chores and taken up her knitting.
"It's capitalistic society exploiting a religious concept and trivialising it," continued Evangelina, ignoring her Sister's sarcastic objection. "It's about making money and forgetting what Saint Valentine's original purpose in the Lord was."
Sister Julienne smiled and took a cautious breath, ready to resume her well practised role as peace-maker, but she was stopped in her tracks as Shelagh rose to the occasion.
"It's about love," she cut in, firmly, speaking with such evident sincerity that everyone found themselves stopping to listen. She was still standing in the doorway; her hands were clasped timidly in front of her, but her eyes were alive and flaming behind her glasses. "And that happens to be my purpose in the Lord. And it's yours too, just in a different guise."
"Oh, give me strength," the frustrated nun interrupted, stubbornness ingrained upon her darkened features. "You're just as bad as the loved-up young nurses."
"She is a loved-up young nurse," reminded Fred, who had crept in to see what all the fuss was about.
"It is a silly bit of fun, but ultimately you can't argue it's not about love," continued Shelagh, louder now, the comforting Scottish brogue ringing into the silence. "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love," she quoted plainly. "Is anything that's promoting love worthless?"
"Corinthians," smiled Julienne in wonder, "you've forgotten nothing."
"I should hope not," chuckled Shelagh, flushed and now considerably embarrassed as everyone was staring in her direction. She was particularly worried, and had every right to be, when she saw Trixie's delighted and impish expression.
"Someone's had a nice morning," she grinned after a pause.
"Trixie!" exclaimed Sister Julienne.
"I'm sorry Sister, but Shelagh's not a nun anymore, and therefore no longer exempt from teasing. Is the good doctor a helpless romantic then? I can't quite imagine it. Actually no, I can-"
The nuns coughed before Trixie could complete her sentence; the nurses pretended to cough to conceal horrified giggles. Shelagh blushed crimson, but couldn't help laughing too. She was in such a buoyant mood she could remain serious for long, and delicious memories insisted on setting off butterflies in her stomach and making secret smiles creep across her lips at every mention of romance. Patrick's gesture with the rose, his childishly elated reaction to her own romantic ideas ... their lingering kiss by the sink. She was glad no one in the room was a mind reader.
"Alright, Nurse Turner, I can see your point," sighed Sister Evangelina, taking up her pile of plates once more and snatching the last piece of cake from under Fred's nose. "You always did have an infuriating capacity for making people see sense."
Sister Julienne smiled at Shelagh, a contented sigh escaping her as she received a sparkling grin in return. How she loved to see Shelagh looking so radiant after so many months of searching Sister Bernadette's colourless, red-rimmed eyes, her own heart breaking at the look of sheer weariness she found there. It was now over a year since those times of burden, and she knew Shelagh's happiness had no reason falter now she was the much-loved Doctor Turner's wife, but she still found herself requiring a snatch of her young friend's melodious laughter every day to put her mind at rest. "As much as we could stand here talking all day, I'm afraid our work needs seeing to," she addressed the room, smirking. "Valentine's day, commercialised rubbish or not, is just another day when it comes to deliveries."
"It's not just another day in other respects though," exclaimed Sister Evangelina. "Mark my words, in nine months' time when you're drowning in babies you won't be so pro-Valentine's Day, I can tell you."
Cynthia hastily changed the subject. "Shelagh, did you by any chance take my nail brush by accident when we left Mrs Day's house yesterday?"
"Hang on, I'll take a look," came the reply. When she opened her delivery bag to check, she found herself unable to see the contents as every available space had been filled with a rainbow of origami hearts and animals. She broke out into peals of laughter, closely followed by the other nurses. "Oh, he's impossible," she cried, beginning to scoop them out. "How on earth did he find the time to do all this, for goodness sake?"
"See," chortled Sister Evangelina. "Another peril of Valentine's Day. What if you'd not checked your bag before a call?"
Shelagh chucked an orange origami frog at her, and a truce was called.
In the following weeks, paper creatures kept being discovered all around Nonnatus House, for the nuns, an exasperation; for Shelagh Turner a small reminder of the joy and creativity of her first Valentine's Day with her remarkable Doctor.
End. Please tell me what you thought, writing is the only thing keeping me sane as AS levels wear on :)