Trixie exited Sister Julienne's office to find Barbara leaning against the adjacent wall. She continued fixing the collar of her plaid shirt then looked to Trixie expectantly. Barbara's forehead creased in confusion at the crestfallen look cemented on Trixie's face.
"Nurse Crane is already at the clinic, I'm afraid."
Barbara smiled in relief. "Not to worry," she said, "I'll be sure to pass on any words of enlightenment."
Trixie entwined her arm in Barbara's, "but Sister Julienne has offered to find a suitable replacement. So I'm all yours." Trixie said the words quietly, but conveyed her enthusiasm with an exaggerated smile. "And Lara's, if you're willing to share."
Barbara's smile faded. "How on earth did you manage that?" she asked, ignoring the latter comment.
Trixie motioned Barbara toward the front door. "My youthful charm and exuberance, I'm sure," laughed the blonde, before swiftly descending into contemplation. It was not lost on Barbara. "Is everything alr..."
"I've only been awarded the liberty of a few hours, so we best hurry," interrupted Trixie, as she led the way out and onto the streets of Poplar.
Patsy 'The Great Avoider of Confrontation,' breathed a sigh of relief. Trixie was absent from their room. Perhaps she's avoiding me too, thought Patsy; dressing and undressing away from my deviant eyes.
Though habitually a meticulous dresser, Patsy quickly adorned her uniform and applied much less lacquer to her hair than usual. Ordinarily she would have relished using the mirror without Trixie inching her way into the reflection, but the blonde was not the only nurse Patsy wished to avoid this morning.
Patsy turned to face the room, ready to close the door. She paused her hand over the door knob, spotting a prism of light in the near distance. Resting below Trixie's bed and slightly obscured by the bedside table, she found Trixie's little secret; a bottle of gin. Patsy held it level to her eyes, measuring what remained. "Oh Trixie", she sighed, her forehead tense.
Trixie may not have reacted well to the revelation, but level-headed, perfectly calm in a crisis Patsy, knew that her own reaction now could save her friend; whether Trixie considered her as such or not.
She crept into the bathroom like a keeper of secrets; silent and cunning. She watched the liquid disappear as she poured it down the sink. A slight numbness overcame her, as if she had consumed the very alcohol that was now burrowing it's way through the pipes of London.
In mere seconds the contents had disappeared. Patsy thought of the blonde, drinking alone in the midnight hours. She wondered how long it would take Trixie to 'disappear' the alcohol. Patsy had not known the extent of the problem until Trixie had confessed. She had ignored all the signs, perhaps willingly. She liked her friend the way she was. Perhaps she hadn't wanted her to change.
Perhaps this fear of change had also accounted for Trixie's reaction, she thought. Things wouldn't be the same, she knew. Despite rehearsing her own confession in her head a million times, despite imagining all possible scenarios – the good and bad, the friendship had never returned to what it once was. Even in her dreams. And now in reality.
A knock at the door caused Patsy to flinch. She hid the empty bottle in the medicine cabinet.
"Who is it?"
"Ms Mount, it's Sister Julienne. I wonder if I might have a word?" Her voice, though calm and concealed as always, had caused a sense of dread to rise in the midwife. The head nun had never wanted a private word before; it had always been Patsy who initiated such formal meetings.
Nothing will return to what it once was, she thought. Sobering reality crept further into view.
Patsy braced herself against the porcelain, her hands clenched at it's side. She stared into the sink, wishing she had not poured all the courage down the drain.
Delia knocked on Patsy's door. She waited for the sounds of life inside the room to reassure her - that she had not been abandoned in a morning such as this. But Delia could hear nothing but the odd creaking of Nonnatus House. The same soft knocking she could hear in the dead of night, or whenever the house inhabitants had absconded and taken their noise with them. It was akin, Delia now realised, to a death rattle. A howling of spirits soon to pass. Delia shivered, crept the door open and peeked inside. She had hoped to find her girlfriend standing at the mirror, far too focused on fixing her hair to hear the Welsh woman's shy knock, but the room was bare. Delia sighed. She would not get a customary peck on the cheek goodbye; a sign that all was forgotten.
Delia collected her nursing kit, placed a banana between her teeth and proceeded to the front door. But just as she was fishing her umbrella from the stand, she heard a door creak open. She looked to it's source. She watched as Patsy exited Sister Julienne's office; her face pale and sickly. The banana dropped from her mouth.
Delia registered the look on Patsy's face. It shifted from cold aloofness to unbridled despair as she caught wind of the brunette's surveillance. The fear in her eyes, Delia had seen it before. It was a look given when Patsy spoke of the consequences of what they were; when she shared Delia's bed and heard a footstep in the hallway. But the look was heightened now; grey, severe... real. Delia was about to run to her; to heal the pain with an embrace, but stopped upon sighting the head nun in the doorway.
Delia stood, unable to move or speak. She looked on, as helpless as a mere witness, as Patsy turned from her watch and exited the front door. Delia stared at the space her girlfriend once held and waited for the inevitable; Ms Busby? A word...
Delia could see Sister Julienne in her peripheral, a hazy figure approaching her. She held her breath.
The death rattle hummed around her.
"Ms Busby?"
"Sister?" she breathed, her gaze steadfast on the exit.
"You look unwell. At breakfast you seemed not quite yourself. Is everything alright?"
Delia looked to Sister Julienne and released her breath. "Everything is fine Sister. I just realised the time. I must run if I'm not to be late."
Without waiting for a response, Delia ran to the door, leaving Sister Julienne to pick up the banana she had left in her wake. The head nun held it in her hand, unable to grasp why the Nurses, and Delia in particular, had found them so humorous. She turned as Delia slammed the door behind her.
The Nurse's reaction raised further suspicion from the nun. Delia's odd behaviour, her urgency to reach Patsy, their unashamed closeness... Sister Julienne watched the space once occupied by both women; a heavy heart anchored her in place.
Delia searched the exterior of Nonnatus House for Patsy, but the street was merely filled with it's usual occupants: milk men, lorry drivers, kids playing, gossiping mothers. One particularly robust woman, apron hanging from her tight fitting dress, ceased her chatter. A look of concern adorned her face. "Are you alright, Nurse?" she asked the seemingly lost brunette.
"The midwife. Tall woman with red-hair... have you seen her?" Delia asked, hurriedly.
"Yeah," replied the woman's friend. She wore an equally ill-fitting dress but of the opposite spectrum, "she went that way." The woman pointed North.
"She seemed to be in quite a..."
Without further explanation required, or indeed further pleasantries, Delia bolted in the pointed direction...
"Hurry," the woman concluded. She turned to her curvaceous friend and muttered words of disapproval.
Delia ran around the corner, nearly toppling over the milkman in the process. She didn't apologise. She merely slumped in her tracks, unable to see the red-head in the bustle of Poplar. Her heart ached. She imagined her girlfriend in a desolate corner of the city, rocking to and fro in a ball of anxiety. It was a position reserved for stormy nights, reminiscing over a painful childhood. A position that required Delia's embrace to relinquish. She sighed hopelessly.
"She knows" came a familiar voice, at last. A mixture of a first class up-bringing and a sobering reality.
Delia searched her surrounds, unable to spot the sophisticated red-head in the sea of tradesmen and child-carrying women. But then – obscured by the brick railing of a terrace stoop – she saw the familiar wheel of a Midwife's bicycle. She walked toward the darkened metal. Patsy, her posture uncharacteristically hunched-over, came into view. Patsy leaned her body forward, allowing her elbows to rest on her thighs. They seemed to carry the entire physical and emotional burden of the towering red-head. They swayed slightly with the toll.
Delia knelt down in front of her girlfriend, their blue eyes level. She placed her hands on Patsy's knees; both to steady herself and comfort the taller woman. "What does she know?" asked Delia, quietly. She knew the answer, but willed it to be something, anything else.
"About me." said Patsy, exhaling the words. "Well about me at Gateways specifically."
Delia let herself fall to the cement. She crouched her legs to her chest. "But how?"
"An anonymous tip from the public apparently, received this morning." Patsy smiled at the brunette, sadly. "I'm sure our antics at the breakfast table would not have weakened her position."
Delia thought back to Barbara's erratic behaviour, and then, to her own initiation of hysterics over Sister Monica Joan's unintended innuendo. She had been the cause of both.
"Patsy, I ..."
"I'm to have a more formal meeting this evening, after my shift." Patsy interrupted, deliberately, aware that Delia would only blame herself. "It would give me time to coordinate a response, as it were."
Delia's eyes grew wide in anger. "So you have to work through a whole shift thinking it could be your last?"
"Sister Julienne did want to replace me, but another midwife had an emergency matter to attend. I simply couldn't be spared, in spite of the circumstances," said Patsy.
Delia shook her head in disbelief. "Surely they need something more than an anonymous tip? Something more than a mere sighting at a club?"
"I suppose speculation of this sort is enough, considering what I do for a living. Where I live." Patsy fought the tears back, determined to be strong, if only for Delia.
"We can deny it," assured Delia, "there are tonnes of women at Gateways. They've simply confused us with others."
"We? We won't be doing anything. It was only my name that was mentioned. I'm the only one accountable. But yes, I've denied it." Patsy looked to the brunette. "As much as it kills me." Her eyes glistened.
Delia looked away, her breath caught. Patsy placed her hand on the brunette's knee, a swift act of reassurance. But it had not reassured the Welsh woman. She was not like Patsy; she did not have the 'stiff upper lip' of the English to mask her. She had always believed that if caught, they would go down together – in a self-righteous blaze of glory. But now, they'd each be alone. Separated, as if accomplices in some grave crime.
And Patsy was right, of course. If she were to come to her aid; to speak passionately in her defence, it would only raise suspicions further. Certainly, if she too, denied her presence at Gateways, despite not being accused of such a thing.
Delia's mouth trembled; she swallowed the rising burn in her throat. "How is this possible?" she asked, her voice broken. "We always go together."
"You're relatively new? Not particularly known in these parts? Perhaps I was the only one recognised?" Patsy shrugged, "I don't know."
Delia shook her head, "No, it doesn't make sense. We have been to Gateways so many times before, why now?"
"The wrong place at the wrong time?"
Delia hung her head in thought, then looked to Patsy. "Or the wrong person at the wrong place... at the right time?" asked Delia, afraid of it's implications.
Patsy sighed, she had thought of the possibility also.
"Trixie," whispered Delia.
The question hung in the air, low and painful.
"But why not inform on both of us?" asked Delia. Her eyes searched Patsy's face for an answer.
"I'm the one who hurt her? I don't know. I'm not positive Trixie is even capable of such a thing. A grudge? Sure, but this?" Patsy paused, unsure whether to continue. "Barbara, too, is not free from suspicion" she whispered, raising an eyebrow.
Patsy watched as Delia broke down, tears engulfed her face. Perhaps Barbara hadn't been the friend she had hoped for after all, she thought. She had potentially ruined all Patsy had worked for - and all for just a little hope.
Patsy regretted her words and the silent accusation that came with it. She gathered Delia and held her close. "But it doesn't matter now. I'm just glad you were spared." she whispered. "There's nothing quite like the threat of losing what you have to recognise it's worth."
Delia broke from the embrace, "If you lose everything, Pats..." she searched her eyes.
"I won't." Patsy held Delia's hands with her own. "If the worst were to happen, I'd still have you."
"But your job, Pats. Your life here... with me. Everything will change."
"My whole life," said Patsy quietly, slowly, "is you. And that won't change."
Patsy pressed her hands firmly against Delia's before releasing them. She smiled reassuringly then turned from the brunette. She gathered her bike and walked it along the cobblestones.
Away now, from her girlfriend's concerned, fearful gaze, Patsy broke. Her smile of reassurance gave way to a series of trembles and gasps. Tears fell from her eyes, harsh against the London wind, as she cycled along the path to work. Perhaps for the last time, she thought.
Delia watched as Patsy disappeared into the distance. The remote click of the bicycle spokes- a death rattle to her ears.