The year 1941. Patrick's point of view (and some bold Shelagh).
Then a very peculiar case at work led Doctor Turner to have a long discussion with Nurse Mannion. She had been trying to prepare a very difficult patient to have her baby at the hospital. Mrs Mave Carter was pregnant and lived with her husband and her identical twin sister, Meg. There were some very crude jokes on this odd household at the hospital, but Shelagh saw with satisfaction that Dr Turner never participated in them. Finally, when the push came to shove, Mave Carter gave birth to twin girls at the hospital, after much persuasion. It had to be an emergency Caesarean in the end. Doctor Turner performed it, and Nurse Mannion took care not only of the body and soul of poor Mrs Carter but her husband and her sister in her engaging, but efficient manner.
Afterwards, Doctor Turner was smoking in the lab watching the early sunrise. He had opened a window. There was a wonderful dew in the air. Nurse Mannion came in and he quickly offered her a cigarette, too. She took it without fuss.
They smoked a few moments in silence. She was wearing that old-fashioned veil even though the operation was over.
"Good work, Nurse Mannion. Very good work."
She made a small dismissive gesture. "The end's well, all's well."
"Can I ask something? Does that veil...mean anything?"
"Yes. It means something. I have been a novice at the Order of St John for two months now."
"Oh."
Patrick felt a twist in his guts. It was only a slight one at first, but then it started to grow. It was like watching a dark cloud rising over that beautiful sunrise and dew. The beauty and the fear, joined together. He tried to shake off the feeling of being under a weight. Why was he so agitated by this information?
"My turn. Can I ask something from you?"
"Yes. Fire away."
"Do you think this man, Mr. Carter...can he manage with his...two wives?"
"They aren't exactly his two wives. After all, only one was pregnant."
There was a remarkably heavy silence. Shelagh had never had conversation this direct with a male colleague before.
"But I see what you mean. They are very dependent on each other. I don't know. Most men manage...somehow. And the babies mean a future."
"What will your future be, Doctor?"
There it was again, that dazzling sharpness, like she had a right to know.
"Do you ask that because you want to know or because you need to know?"
She turned her back at him and started to organize the pipettes and tubes.
He decided to answer anyway. Although that meant that he didn't deny her right to know. The idea made him dizzy.
"I'm glad you asked. I have enlisted in the army. I am joining the medical corps in North Africa in three weeks' time."
She turned around abruptly and gave him a blank stare. "Oh."
"Yes. I am ready to go, even if it means a delay for my research. But in times like this, wouldn't you say that a faith in your country matters?"
"I have been taught to keep faith...in higher things. Even in times like these. Especially in times like these."
"I know that you don't approve this war."
"Isn't it obvious from my choices? When I give myself, it will be for life. That is the belief ingrained in me. I have given myself to serve the humanity."
He started to see a glimmer of hope. She seemed to be preaching...to herself. The lady doth protest too much? An unreasonable giddiness took over him.
"I have always thought that I have given my life... to humanity, too. It just seems that the concept means different things for us."
"It definitely appears so." Shelagh felt her resistance grow weak under his discerning eye.
Then he let his head drop. After a while he said: "I hope you won't find me...morally reprehensible."
"I don't think any human has a right for that. Only God has."
There was no suitable answer to that.
"I am sorry but I must ask this. Was your question of a man with two wives...totally guileless?"
"Perhaps... it wasn't. It might even have been...unforgivable. I apologize."
"I have never tried to suppress the truth about my circumstances. Everyone here knows that I am a divorced man. Whereas you hadn't told me that you were...a nun."
A silence. Then he said: "I don't know who decides what is forgivable or unforgivable. You should not be so harsh on yourself."
"Perhaps not. Please, Doctor Turner. Let us not quarrel. Give me another Henley. I love Henleys..."
He chortled. "A nun and a smoker. A first for me. Never could I have believed..."
He lit her cigarette somewhat nervously.
"Believed what?"
He was on the brink of confessing his emotional turmoil to her. The unhappy fact that he loved her. But that veil must still mean something. He must respect that.
"That there could be circumstances in life more damnable than mine. Your vocation, your pacifism, your future as a medical student...You really have taken an enormous burden. It must be a hell."
"Burdens are not taken, they are given."
"Yes. That is where we do not agree."