TEN

On Friday afternoon, Patrick moved frantically about his apartment, trying to put away the last of the books and knickknacks before his very first guest arrived at his new home. Their plans had been set just that morning and he'd been so tired after his long days trying to ready the surgery for patients that he had not made any more progress on unpacking his belongings since Monday. With just a few minutes to spare before her arrival, he hefted the last few boxes into his bedroom and shut the door as a makeshift way of hiding him. His hand had barely left the door handle when he heard her knock.

Patrick felt rather silly for his nerves as he approached the door. When had he ever been nervous around Sister Bernadette? That simply was not like them. They weren't nervous around each other! They had been through far too much together. His nerves were not for his own interactions with her, though, but for his son's. He very much wanted Timothy to like the woman he considered a life-long friend.

Timothy had, all things considered, a decent first week at school. He had not misbehaved, but the teachers had described him as sad and withdrawn. Patrick could not say he was surprised by this, as his once overly chatty son had clammed up quite quickly after his mother's death. For the first month, he'd hardly said anything at all to the point where Patrick was becoming genuinely concerned, but some extra love and presents from his grandmother had brought him around to the point where he was decently communicative with family, but with others he wasn't keen on speaking too much.

"Hello! Please come in!" Patrick greeted Sister Bernadette, who had agreed to come over that afternoon and officially meet Timothy during the few hours she had off before she began an evening on-call midwifery shift.

"Thank you for having me." She took off her cape and placed it in his outstretched hand along with a metal tin. "I made you some biscuits as a housewarming gift."

"Oh, that was very thoughtful. Thank you." He hung her cape and then led the way into the living room where Timothy stood half-hidden behind the sofa. He put the biscuit tin on the closest table before putting his hand in the middle of Tim's back and almost forcibly guiding him towards the center of the room.

"This is my very good friend, Sister Bernadette. She has come all the way here to meet you, isn't that nice of her?"

The sister leaned down and smiled warmly at the boy as she said, "It's very nice to meet you, Timothy."

For ten seconds, Tim said nothing, but then he stepped forward and studied the nun's face cautiously. "When did you meet my dad?" he asked her.

"Oh, well, let's see. We met in the fall of 1943, so it's been just about six years."

Tim's eyes widened. "Six years! That's forever!"

Both adults laughed. "Yes, it has been quite some time," the sister added. "Your dad tells me you started a new school this week. Did you like it?"

He shrugged and then, much to Patrick's surprise, he stepped forward and reached out to take Sister Bernadette's hand saying, "I want to show you my racing cars."

She glanced at Patrick almost as though looking for permission, but he nodded her on, curious as to his son's intentions. Before the sister's arrival, he had only told the boy that an old friend of his was coming to visit them. Tim had asked if the friend was from school and Patrick had explained that no, she was a colleague from the hospital where he worked during the war. Give the often-upsetting nature of his work in Italy and Tim's still-tender age, he did not like to explain any details of his time there other than to say he had worked in several hospitals. Thankfully, Tim had never bothered to ask for any further details.

Timothy led the sister down the hall towards his bedroom and dropped the sister's hand just outside the door. He stepped inside, grabbed his two racing cars, and then returned only to sit immediately down on the floor. "I like to race them down this hallway."

Sister Bernadette didn't question him. She dropped to the floor right beside him and asked, "Which one is faster? The red one of the blue one?"

"The red one!" Timothy proclaimed with a grin. "My Gran got me this one just before we moved. Do you want to see?"

"Of course I want to see!" she responded

Patrick watched with nothing short of awe for the next ten minutes as his son and Sister Bernadette raced cars around the hallway. Their interactions were funny and endearing and watching them made him feel like one of the slivers of his shattered heart may have slotted back into the correct place. The Timothy he had known before his wife's illness would have been happy to play with a family friend who entered their home, but he hadn't seen that boy in many months so watching the two of them interact was a true joy.

When Tim began to haul more toys out of his room to play with the sister, Patrick suggested that he should take some time to clean up the mess he was making and give the sister a break. Tim reluctantly agreed and Sister Bernadette walked over to where Patrick stood between the hall and the living area. "Thank you for that," he said genuinely. "He's had a difficult week and I think he needed some fun."

"Of course," she said easily. "He's quite endearing."

Patrick hummed as he studied her, thinking back to all the interactions they'd had during their time together, nearly all of which were in some sort of hospital setting. "It's strange to think that I've never seen you interact with children before."

She merely shrugged. "Children weren't allowed in the hospitals where we worked, but I did work with many young children during my time in Italy."

He nodded again, still studying her until she looked away, clearly embarrassed. "I'm sorry—I don't mean to stare. Sometimes I still find it difficult to believe that it's been five years since we last saw each other. It somehow seems like not enough and too much time all at once."

The trauma of war had felt each day feel like an age, which was why thinking that they had barely spent more than six months of collective time in each other's presence seemed almost more maddening than thinking of the five years that separated them. Once he'd come home and began settling into "normal" life (or whatever that was supposed to be after experiencing several years of horrors), he'd had a son and a wife who had kept him endlessly busy. Then, after Marianne fell ill, time had seemed to move even faster.

Though he'd only worked in Poplar five days, he had seen Sister Bernadette four of them. She'd popped by the surgery to check on him even if it was just for a minute or two. He wasn't at all surprised how easy it felt to see her walk through the door of his office once again, though he did find himself shocked by her glasses each time; it would take him a bit of time to get used to seeing this new version of her face.

"I know what you mean. They have been an eventful five years." Her gaze drifted back towards the hall for a moment and she asked, "You said Timothy just turned four, correct?"

"Mmhm. A few weeks ago." He watched her brow crinkle for the smallest of moments, and he almost laughed. "I can see you trying to work out the maths in your head."

Her cheeks flushed immediately. "I—I'm sorry."

He reached out his hand to brush her arm as he said, "I'm only teasing. I don't mind explaining, though it's nothing terribly scandalous." He slipped his hands into his pockets and walked a few steps towards the sofa so Timothy could not overhear them as easily. "My, ah, father died in December '44. As his only son, I was granted leave to go home and help sort out his affairs."

Her expression crumpled into one of sadness. "Oh, Patrick; I'm so sorry."

He nodded in appreciation of her sentiments then he brushed his fingertips along his forehead as his mind clouded over with memories of that time. "Being sent home so suddenly and having to deal with the transition away from the front in addition to the death of my father was quite a shock. I was reeling, hardly knowing if I was sad or angry or just…lost. My first night home, I didn't want to be in the house without him. My family hadn't known when I would arrive, so they'd already had the funeral. I didn't blame them of course, but it felt like another blow. So, I went to the pub and that was where I met her—Marianne. She was there with a friend, and I happened to sit across from them. Her friend called over to me that I looked like my dog died and when I told them it was my father, they were both mortified."

"Oh dear." Sister Bernadette chimed in.

He gave a little shrug as the memory washed over him. "After that little faux pas, she came over to apologize and we got to chatting. We talked for a few hours that night, the night after that, and the one after that… And then not even two weeks after we met, we married."

In hindsight, his marriage had most certainly been a result of him trying to feel happiness again after his struggles abroad and the shock of losing his father. It never seemed out of place, though, because soldiers often married before going off to or going back to war. He never regretted it as Marianne had always been so kind-hearted and easy-going, but they'd had some rough patches that first year as a result. Then again, it would have been hard to imagine not having rough patches considering all the suffering he'd faced at the front.

The sister was unable to hide her surprise at his news. "Oh! Well! How lovely for you."

He smiled and then concluded his story with, "All this to say that if you haven't worked out the maths by now: Timothy was, in fact, a honeymoon baby. As you can imagine, that was quite a shocking letter to receive once I'd returned to my post in Italy."

She looked surprised. "You went back to the front?"

He nodded. "Not to a field hospital, thank God, but another Allied facility until it was all over. It was nearly June by the time I got home again."

The sister smiled at him kindly. "Thank you for telling me all of that. I-"

"Dad! Can Sister Bernadette read to me?"

"Timothy," Patrick sighed as he crouched down to address his son. "You must be mindful not to interrupt people when they're speaking and if you must urgently do so, you need to excuse yourself."

Timothy nodded then shouted, "Excuse me! Can Sister Bernadette read to me?"

The sister smiled at him apologetically. "Oh, I'm sorry, but I really must be getting back. I would be happy to visit again if you'd like."

Timothy bounced on his toes and said, "Yes, please!"

Not wanting to keep her too much longer, Patrick walked Sister Bernadette to the door, thanking her once again for visiting and being so kind to his son. Then, when she was gone, he returned to find Tim twirling around the living room saying, "I want to play with her again, Daddy! Can she come tomorrow?"

While he was very glad to see his son's enthusiasm, he also knew he had to ground his expectations right away. "I'm sure that Sister Bernadette would be happy to come and visit us again soon, but you must understand that nuns are a bit different than you and I."

"Because they wear funny hats?" the boy asked.

Patrick grabbed onto his son's arms to hold him still while he made a very important correction. "No—those are called veils and they are part of their religious attire. They are not funny, and you should not say that about them. Do you understand?"

"Yes"

"Good. And what I meant by saying that nuns are different than us was they don't have the same free time as we do."

"What is free time?"

"It's time during which you and I can do whatever we please. You go to school, and I go to work, but then we can come home and do whatever we want. And we don't have to do either of those things on the weekends, right? Well, Sister Bernadette and the other nuns don't have schedules like that. Their lives revolve around serving God and serving the community so the time they have to spend doing other things is very limited. She will still be able to spend time with us, but it will be a very special occasion."

Tim nodded. "I see. So, she can come next week?"

Patrick couldn't help but chuckle. "We will have to see."

With her bag in one hand and her cloak draped over her arm, Sister Bernadette stepped out into the street on that unseasonably warm afternoon. When she had entered the laboring woman's flat, dawn had not yet broken, but now the sun was shining so brightly she had to squint until her eyes adjusted. She took two steps towards where she'd propped her bicycle against the building's exterior wall but stopped when she saw Patrick's car remained parked just beside it. He was leaning against the front, smoking.

"Well," he began, holding out the cigarette in her direction. "That was interesting."

She took a step closer to him and reached out for the cigarette, unable to withhold herself from indulging in one of their old routines. She took only a single drag before handing it back to him. "Have you ever delivered twins before?"

He shook his head. "I observed a cesarian for twins once during my training but was all. Thank goodness you knew what you were doing. You're quite good at this, you know?"

She smiled demurely. "Well, I've had plenty of practice."

Since Patrick had come to them with only a basic amount of maternity training, the sisters and midwives had agreed that for his first month with them he would be invited to as many births he was able to attend, particularly those of the unusual nature. As such, when Sister Bernadette received the call that a woman known to be pregnant with twins was in active labor, she knew immediately that she would be inviting Patrick to join her. The case turned out to be quite the interesting learning experience for him as the first twin was delivered by her in a breech position. The second twin was the larger of the two and, with the mother utterly exhausted by that point, the doctor needed to assist with forceps.

When she'd asked Patrick to step in, she noticed the uncertainty on his face immediately, so she'd been reaffirming and provided some gentle suggestions. She'd put pressure on the woman's belly from above as he'd worked with the forceps so that the child could be delivered safely. The baby, a boy, had come out with a bluish tinge to his skin and she could tell Patrick was once again a bit frozen, but luckily, she had no concerns about being able to take over at that point. She'd gently slid the baby from his arms and taken him over to the top of the dresser where, after a tense minute of cajoling him into life, he let out a loud cry.

Patrick finished his cigarette and ground it out against the street. Then, he looked to her and asked, "Do you—would you like to have tea? To discuss everything. I'd appreciate the feedback, honestly. I feel like I'm still getting my sea legs here."

She considered his invitation for a moment. She wanted to have tea with him particularly since they had not spent any one-on-one time together since she'd visited him in his home a week earlier. She rarely had free time and could not justify shirking any of her responsibilities just to spend time with him—even if he invited her to do so. Then again, if it was for the purpose of his further education…

"I need to return to Nonnatus and organize my things, but I can meet you in an hour?"

He smiled and nodded, confirming their plans. "My office in an hour."

She bid him goodbye then walked over to her bicycle to strap down her bag. As she pedaled towards Nonnatus, she reflected on how interesting it was to work with Patrick in such a different setting than they had ever worked before.

During their time in Italy, they had often worked near each other but rarely with each other. The emergency surgery they performed together was the most notable example of them working together and during that case he had very much been in charge. During the twins' delivery, though, she had been the one in charge during nearly the entire process. She had far more experience with it came to deliveries and she appreciated how he knew and respected that, for she had encountered doctors in the past who dismissed her immediately because of her lack of medical degree or gender—or both. Patrick asked questions and genuinely listened to the answers. Of course, given how well she already knew him, she did not really expect him to disrespect her in any way, but it was nice to have such an experience to reaffirm her viewpoint of him.

After checking in at Nonnatus and restocking her delivery bag with what was needed, Sister Bernadette cycled over to the doctor's surgery, where he was just finishing up preparations of their afternoon tea. Once they were seated together in his office, he asked her for his opinion on his performance during the birth. She merely offered a smile and said, "Honestly, you did well. I don't know how long it's been since you did a forceps delivery, but it was textbook as far as I saw it."

He eyed her cautiously. "That sounds much more like the answer you would give a friend not a colleague. Go on—don't spare my feelings. I must have done at least one thing incorrectly, because it has been about a year since I did a forceps delivery, and I honestly haven't done that many overall."

She took a small sip of her tea as she felt some uncomfortable butterflies in her stomach. It wasn't in her nature to judge anyone; that was for God and God alone. She liked to build people up by pointing out the things they did well and make them feel good about themselves. She knew that Patrick knew her well enough that he would not find a critique from her as petty or malicious, but it still made her feel unsettled. On the other hand, she knew that some constructive feedback would only help him grow as a doctor, and she absolutely wanted him to be the best doctor he could be.

"As I said, your use of forceps was done correctly, and I have no corrections for you."

"However…" He led.

She set her shoulders back and cleared her throat slightly. "Perhaps just one small thing."

He almost looked excited as he said, "Yes?"

"Well, I noticed when you were speaking to the mother and going about your tasks you were a bit too clinical. I understand that is how doctors are in the hospital setting and it makes more sense there, but the dynamics shift slightly when you enter someone's home. We still need to be professional and sometimes stern directions absolutely are necessary, particularly if something is going wrong, but… perhaps try to soften your demeanor a bit."

Compared to the gruffness of their previous local doctor, Patrick's by-the-book nature wasn't negative at all. He had the exact same demeanor as she'd known him to have when they worked together before, which wasn't wrong necessarily, but difficult. In an ideal world every patient would be treated with respect, kindness, and compassion. She had seen him direct these qualities towards injured soldiers, though he'd been light on the second two. She understood that was the nature of the military, to treat men as men and use brutal honesty in nearly all situations, however the residential buildings of Poplar were not military hospitals. In her opinion, he needed to soften his approach ever so slightly in order to be the kind of doctor the women of Poplar looked forward to visiting if the need arose.

"Thank you for telling me; I will bear that in mind the next time I attend a home birth."

"And…on clinic days," she added cautiously.

He nodded. "And on clinic days. If you do not feel that I'm improving, please don't hesitate to remind me again."

They sipped their tea silently for several moments before he continued their conversation with, "I've come to realize I don't know much about your life over the past five years."

She lowered her teacup to rest against her leg and shook her head dismissively, "Oh, well it has not particularly interesting."

"I can't imagine that. Please tell me—and start with: where did you go when you left the hospital in Rome?"

"The region near San Marino."

Patrick's brow crinkled at he looked at her. "But…that would have been almost at the front."

She nodded as she let her mind drift back to the days she did not like to think of often. "Yes. There were days when the fighting was quite close to us."

"What were you doing?"

"Whatever was needed, mostly providing aid to the villages that had been decimated by the conflict. We encountered so many starving women and children and civilians with untreated injuries." She paused for a moment, skimming her fingers across the side of her teacup, and letting the feeling of the smooth, warm surface ground her. "It was…difficult. I started to understand the struggles of men like you who were tortured by the sounds of bombs and gunfire."

Though they were rarely in the direct line of danger, the cacophony of battle sounds echoed across the countryside at many times of the day and night. When the noise kept her awake, she would spend hours praying, looking for solace in God's protection. On several of those nights her mind flashed back to the wildness in the eyes of her friend when he had first arrived at the Allied hospital. She had never discounted or brushed off his experience but going through even the smallest bit of it herself aided in the empathy she felt for him, and all the others driven nearly mad by their battle exhaustion.

Patrick's lips curled downwards, and he shook his head. "I am so sorry you experienced that. How close were you to the explosions? You weren't injured, were you?"

The sister hesitated before answering, as she had told none of her sisters in Poplar about one specific event, but she could not hide it from one of her closest friends. "We were not regularly close enough to explosions or gunfire, but one night the church we were sheltering in was hit. God protected me from severe injury, but I did have a serious concussion and was unconscious for over a day."

"Over a day?!" He echoed with notable alarm. "Sister, that is a severe injury!"

"But not compared to the burns and catastrophic injuries on the soldiers we saw at the hospital."

He studied her face for a moment before asking, "Is that why you wear glasses now?"

She gave a little shrug. "I can't know for sure if it's related, but my vision began to grow fuzzy during my last few months in Italy. I received my glasses shortly after I returned. I used to have headaches, too, but not as much anymore."

His displeasure was evident upon hearing this news. "When did you return?"

"In early spring, 1946."

"Nearly a year after it ended?" he asked with notable surprise.

"The war may have ended, but the need to help remained. So many lives had been forever changed. God guided me to stay there for as long as I was needed." She finished off her tea before concluding her story, assuming that he would continue to ask questions until she'd caught him up to present day.

"When I came home, I spent several months in prayer and isolation at the Mother House before I was assigned to serve God in Poplar and I've been ever since."

"Have you worked with Sisters Julienne and Evangelina for all that time?"

She nodded. "Yes, and Sister Monica Joan, too. Trixie has been with us only since January—after we received more funding through the NHS."

"Well, I'll have you know that I found your story very interesting; I'm glad you told me."

She turned her eyes to the empty cup in her lap as she had been continued to feel uncomfortable with such attention and focus. She rarely spoke of her backstory as she wanted her life to be focused on God and the work she was doing for him in the present moment. One could always learn from their past, but dwelling on it was inadvisable. Telling Patrick about what she experienced during their time apart didn't feel wrong, though. It simply felt like adding the final links in the chain that connected their friendship in the past to the one they were rebuilding at present—the one he much needed to heal his broken heart and she was all too happy to assist.