Dear Delia,

Here in Poplar the sun is shining and it feels as though summer means to hang on forever. The cubs all miss you and send their regards (they feel they are far too manly and grown up to send love, but I think that's what they mean by it). You made the first aid session you ran so much fun I think they are all a little bit devoted to you now. There's a lad named Jack, one of our rare quieter ones amongst the rambunctious scamps. You spent a good fifteen minutes sitting with him after he fell and scraped the skin off his knee, distracting him by showing him how to properly wrap and tie a bandage (the poor little chap was rather fumble-fingered at first, but ever so determined) and telling him the sorts of gruesome accident ward stories that young boys love more than anything (I must admit I was a little worried you'd give him nightmares, but he lapped it up and begged for more, as I'm certain you knew he would).

Well anyway, today Jack's mother found me at the mother and baby clinic (I'm a midwife so when I'm not dashing around the city attending labouring women I am usually to be found at the community centre handing out rose hip syrup and weighing babies) and told me that ever since then Jack keeps talking about being 'an ambulance man' when he grows up. Apparently he has been driving her round the bend with practising his bandages. She said that yesterday she walked into the boys' bedroom and found that not only had the young rascal wrapped his baby brother up in the whole family's winter scarves, he had taken all his nice clean school socks and made bandages for the cat! He said its tail looked crooked! I know I shouldn't laugh, but really, just the thought of their poor old ginger moggy with Jacks school socks on is enough to make me crack up. I have given her a roll of real bandages to give to him with the instruction that he can use them for practice on his own leg, so long as he promises to roll them properly the way you showed him after each use so no one trips over them and finds they need bandages for real! I have also promised to have a word with Doctor Turner and see if he might have a chat with the boy about a career in medicine. You might just have started a young doctor or surgeon down his future path!

Trixie, Barbara and I are off to the firework display on Saturday. As I'm sure you know it will be November the 5th and the streets will be filled with the children's Guys and the smell of toffee and gunpowder. We are getting ready together but I shall be there as Akela with the cubs so I dare say the two of them will go their own way once the pack start getting their flints out. They are making a little bonfire of their own and baking potatoes in the cinders, which makes me rather nervous after their last foray into fire lighting! (I won't dwell on that incident too much here, I will simply say that it was that little fiasco that inspired me to have you come in and run the first aid session in the first place. We dealt primarily with how to treat burns. Enough said I think). I won't be the only grown up there thank goodness, but I must say I will miss the reassuring presence of you and your St John's ambulance uniform, keeping us all in check. And of course you would love the fireworks. Still, I shall simply have to write it all so vividly in my next letter you shall feel as though you were there without ever having to leave your bed or suffer cheerfully through a burnt on the outside, raw in the middle cub cooked potato!

Everyone here sends their love and wishes you a speedy recovery. The nuns have added you to their prayers and no matter where one stands along the religious path, one can't help but feel that with people like Sister Julienne and Sister Evangelina on your side suffering simply doesn't stand a chance. Sister Julienne is the kind of person I can imagine must organize heaven (I hope that isn't blasphemous to say!), she is truly good hearted but she knows how to get things done and attend to the practical needs of an imperfect world. And as for Sister Evangelina, well, I dare say even the black plague itself would quail under one of her stern looks! Of course Trixie and Barbara send special regards. They are the other midwives here at Nonnatus House and they are both very fond of you. I'm afraid I shall have to sign off now. I'm on call tonight and the phone has just started ringing. New babies will come when they want, whether we who attend them are ready or not.

I hope all is well with you and that the fresh Welsh air is helping you regain your strength.

Best regards,

Patsy Mount

... ... ...

Dear Miss Mount,

Thank you for your recent correspondence. Delia isn't yet well enough to write to you herself, but she asked that I send a few lines to let you know how much she enjoyed your letter. She still spends most of the time sleeping as the doctor has prescribed a sedative to help her get plenty of rest. I'm afraid much of the time she is awake she is rather sad but that is only to be expected after what happened. Her seizures continue, but I dare to hope they are a little less frequent now than they were. When I read your letter aloud to Delia this morning and reached the part about the cat wearing socks I heard my daughter laugh for the first time since her accident. It was a sound I feared I might never hear again, and for that I must thank you Miss Mount. I hope you might consider writing again as I do believe it would cheer Delia considerably.

Yours Sincerely

Mrs M Busby

... ... ...

My Dearest Deels,

My heart leapt when Sister Julienne told me I had mail this morning. Logically I knew it was too soon for you to be up to writing, but for a moment, before I saw the unfamiliar handwriting on the envelope I couldn't help imagining that it would be from you, and that somehow the last few days would turn out to have been... exaggerated somehow. As if the drama of the accident and the rush to the hospital might have masked the fact that you'd just been in shock before, and now you were writing to tell me you were fine, really, and were coming home at once. I told myself I was being utterly ridiculous of course, but even so I couldn't help a brief sick, disappointed feeling at your mother's precise lettering that is so different from your own cheerful, looping scrawl.

Still, now I have swallowed that last bitter, foolish hope I am truly grateful for your mother's letter. I know she needn't have sent anything at all, and things must be so difficult there it must have been tempting not to. In fact I will confess (here at least, in this letter I will never send) that I hold onto those few precious details as fiercely as a drowning woman would hold on to a life raft. Somewhere out there you were listening to my words and they made you laugh. Even for just a second I made you happy and that small fact helps me keep pretending all is well.

But at the same time there are parts of the all too brief note that trouble me. She writes that you are sad and it kills me that I can't be there with you to take some of your sadness away. Do you lie there alone in your childhood bedroom and cry tears I cannot wipe away for you? Does your mother hold you like I would, all the hours in the day if you wanted them? Does she make your tea right? Does she know how to make a balm to soothe your bruises? Does she read to you and put flowers in your window to catch the morning sun?

There is so much I want to tell you. A thousand times a day I think I must tell you about this or that little moment, that I can't wait to see the expression on your face before I remember that I can't. But your mother says I may write again, so even if I can't see it, perhaps I can make you smile from afar. That will be my goal. I daren't hope for more just yet.

All my love,

Your Patsy