Chapter Text
February 27th, 1960
12:09am
Patsy was no stranger to hospitals at midnight. Her time working at The London was mostly daytime or evening shifts, but she’d spent enough nights here for the eerie emptiness to have lost its edge on her. She was used to the vast silence, broken only by the occasional clack of footsteps in the distance, that faded in and out of earshot as their owner travelled from one ward to the next; the clocks that loomed high on the wall and clicked at patients and nurses obnoxiously; the buzzing lights out in the hall that seemed to flicker only after visiting hours had ended. And then there was the new wave of serene stillness that washed over her whenever a fellow nurse passed her a cup of tea or coffee – whatever the night called for, they all seemed to just know who needed the extra bit of energy. They would stand there in the quiet, just them and the clocks on the wall and the knowledge that they were doing their best to help people, in this weird liminal space where people came and went but they (mostly) stayed the same. Nobody was close enough to ever call each other family – there was always the chance other girls would leave, seconded and transferred and sacked, only to be replaced with someone new – but there was enjoyment in knowing that there was company without commitment. After staying here longer than any other nurse her age, she felt safe to say that it was, perhaps, the closest thing she’d ever had to a proper home.
Right now, it was midnight, and she was back in this hospital, but not as a nurse. And it felt as though everything she’d ever considered to be so homely was twisting inside her like a knife. Thankfully she wasn’t a patient either – and she hated to compare her suffering to the well and truly sick, but right now she felt as though being a visitor was the worst thing imaginable. The itchy eyes and the dry throat, the loss and emptiness and the feeling as though she hadn’t sleep for a week. It was unbearable, and the worst part was that as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t leave.
The silence was taunting her: every new set of footsteps sounded as though they were coming towards her, to be the bearer of bad news or tell her to get out. On the wall, the clock was deafening, and while she’d usually been able to drown them out, tonight she had no such luck. And out in the hall, the buzz of flickering lights seemed totally inconsiderate towards her still being here, still visiting, and no matter which way she angled herself she couldn’t quite get them out of her peripheral vision. It’d drive her over the edge, if she wasn’t exhausted from her earlier meltdown. But, even for someone who bottled up their emotions so tightly, one could only last so long. It had tapered off at around nine o’clock, leaving her at the mercy of her sterile surroundings as they sapped away at everything inside her. Now, she just felt empty and vulnerable.
Once in a while, she brought herself to look across at Delia, and every time she did her heart felt like it was going to rip itself up again. The lights overhead, and her poor state of health, left her looking washed out and pale. Ghostly was the word Patsy would use, if she weren’t so afraid of the connotations. But the fact still stood that her face had drained of colour, save for the angry purple-and-blue bruises covering her cheekbones and forehead and the dried blood on the inside of her nose. If it weren’t for all that, Patsy would’ve assumed her world had returned to greyscale; ironically, all this damage was the only thing reminding her that her soulmate was only lying unconscious, and not dead.
A shock of anxiety shot straight through her chest at the very thought of it. The panic she’d felt earlier in the day when, for a split second, her world turned colourless, was still fresh in her memory. If the blow to Delia’s head had been strong enough to – in Patsy’s mind – momentarily interrupt whatever bond they shared, then there was no telling whether or not she’d wake up again. But the redhead was hoping – praying, even, although she hadn’t done that in years, that she would.
Christ, it hadn’t even been a year. As harsh as the world could be, it surely couldn’t be this cruel: to finally give you someone you’d been waiting all your life to meet, and then rip them away so soon after?
Patsy, for once in her life, willingly reflected back on her life in the internment camp, and all the horrors she’d seen so young, and decided that perhaps it could be.
Midnight now seemed forever ago. The clock on the wall now fast approached two in the morning, and sleep was becoming harder and harder to fight off. Delia’s left hand was gripped tightly between her own, still and cold with a slowly strengthening pulse thudding beneath her wrist. Over and over again, Patsy smoothed her thumb over the other’s ring finger, over the gold band that was as cold as she was. In her mind, images of a doctor cutting it off tormented her and left her on the verge of tears once again.
‘This is what happens when you love people, Patsy, she scolded herself sharply, ‘If you’d just kept pushing her away, she’d be fine,’
That had been her philosophy with everyone before Delia: if you don’t care for them, it won’t hurt when, one way or another, they leave. And, for a while, she’d tried to apply it to this relationship too. But clearly when it came to people who were…biologically or mentally connected or destined to be or whatever the theory was nowadays, it wasn’t that easy to keep them at arm’s length. Delia had snuggled up close (in the emotional and physical sense) and no matter how high Patsy had tried to build walls around herself, they’d been flimsy at best and ultimately gave way in the end.
Watery eyes turned to proper tears without Patsy noticing until the cold started to cling to the wet tracks down her cheeks. At this point, she was too tired to try keep her emotions under wraps anymore. Pressing her forehead down against Delia’s hand, her shoulder trembled with the effort of keeping from sobbing too loudly, and waking other patients. In hindsight, it felt like there was so much she could’ve done to prevent this. So much that could’ve landed the other girl anywhere except under the wheel of a car. Whatever decision might have changed the outcome, Patsy couldn’t think of what it could’ve possibly been – not that it would change anything now.
As exhausted as she was, Patsy well and truly fought to stay awake. She wholeheartedly needed to be consciously present for every seizure, every need to call for the nurse or the doctor, every time they mentioned the odds of her waking up again – which seemed to dwindle by the hour.
However, two o’clock turned to three o’clock, and then three o’clock suddenly turned to six o’clock. The next thing she knew, she’d dozed off with her face pressed against Delia’s hand (an indentation on her cheek to prove it, where she’d lain against her wedding ring), and hadn’t stirred until someone begun nudging her shoulder. She startled out of her sleep, almost jumping out of the uncomfortable plastic chair she’d spent all night in. For a moment, she feared the worst, the exact reason why she hadn’t wanted to sleep: that when she took a look around, she’d see nothing but grey and black and white and a lifeless body beside her. Her eyes stayed trained on the thin cotton sheets for as long as she could get away with it, but eventually she had to give her attention to whoever had woken her.
Delia’s mother. A loving but overbearing woman who perhaps tried far too hard to protect her daughter – a trait which had her and Patsy on rocky terms from the very beginning. And after all this, she couldn’t exactly see a friendship blossoming anytime soon. In fact, she rather expected to be detested after the events of the past twelve hours.
But the older woman looked tired with worry – far too tired to be throwing the blame around – and somewhat sympathetic. Her hand was still on Patsy’s shoulder and it was then that the redhead realized she must’ve looked quite a sight: smudged makeup from the day before, blotchy cheeks and cracked lips, not to mention messed hair and dark eyes.
“I…I’ve been here all night,” she tried to explain. But her voice croaked and her chest shuddered with a fresh wave of emotions, threatening to make a mess of her again. The older woman who stood above her gave a weak smile, but there was no attempt made to hide the pity, and the worry, and the downright fear. Beside her, her husband was entirely silent, with his gaze directed down at the hat he gripped onto tightly. He was maybe an inch taller than Patsy, but any presence he might have normally commanded with his height alone was now diminished to nothing. Perhaps, just like his daughter-in-law, he was half in fear of Delia never waking up again.
“Go wash up,” Mrs. Busby said, looking over Patsy with a concerned expression, “You’ve done more than enough.”
The thought of leaving, even for a moment, made her heart race fearfully. “But I –”
“We’ll sit with her now.”
It was an order. Despite being twice the older woman’s size, Patsy was very nearly lifted out of her seat and disposed of out in the hall, like a stray cat being shooed out of the local fish market. Feeling a little indignant, she contemplated marching straight back through those doors; but one step forward and her muscles ached in protest, her head pounded and her stomach started growling loudly. She hadn’t eaten, or moved from that chair, or even changed since late yesterday afternoon. So perhaps, if she rushed, she could take care of those things and be back in no time flat.
She spent the most time (only four and a half minutes) at the sink of the lavatory, splashing cold water over her face. Three hours of sleep was hardly enough to work off, but she couldn’t afford to rest now. Cold water and the familiar chill of an early morning would have to be enough to get her through the day.
Unfortunately, like all bathroom sinks, there was a mirror above this one too. And Patsy couldn’t for a second pretend that she didn’t know she looked downright horrid. What little amount of makeup she usually wore had been washed away, but her hair was still sticking out at all angles and her eyes were underlined with dark circles. The hair was easily fixed: every single pin was meticulously pulled out and it was rearranged into plaits with little effort. As for the rest of her appearance…it just couldn’t be helped. Luckily, in the middle of a hospital, she didn’t exactly need to pretend to be happy. Nobody else cared how well she was keeping it together.
Eating would’ve meant venturing outside the hospital, and changing would’ve meant going back to Nonnatus altogether – both strayed too far from Delia for her liking. She decided to go back, the distance already beginning to drive her up the walls. Her feet were already blindly carrying her back towards the ward Delia was admitted to, going as quick as they could without breaking into anything faster than a brisk walk.
Delia’s father stood outside the double doors, shifting his weight from one foot to the other anxiously, like he was trying his hardest not to start pacing. He raised an eyebrow at Patsy as she approached, so soon after they’d sent her off to take care of herself, but she wasn’t about to be turned away again. Luckily, Mr. Busby seemed like much less of a force to be reckoned with than his wife: right now he was too overwhelmed, too busy trying to wrap his head around something to say anything at all to her.
Or it seemed that way. As Patsy drew closer, he turned towards her, placing a hand on her shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, then repeated the action a few times as he tried to put whatever was in his head into words. Patsy’s heart thudded loudly in her chest, trying to prepare itself to hear terrible news.
“She’s awake,”
Considering Delia might not have even woken up at all, this should've been great news. Nothing could’ve been better to hear, but Patsy didn’t even crack a smile. She was terrible at reading people, but even she could tell that there was something off. Something in his tone, his face, the way he was fidgeting nervously, told her that things weren’t that simple.
Patsy’s mind was already running through all the things that could be wrong. All the ‘but’s and ‘however’s and ‘although’s. All the catches and conditions and things in fine print. And before she could even decide whether or not she was ready, she was already striding through the doors as if she possessed more confidence than she actually had.
Seeing Delia awake, after too many hours sat by her bedside wondering ‘what if’, brought tears prickling at the corners of Patsy’s eyes again. Immediately she all but pushed past the nurse to sit back in the plastic chair.
Delia didn’t look better. She didn’t look well at all. She didn’t even look entirely present: her eyes were wide open and in them, amidst the very first color Patsy had ever seen, swirled a horrid mix of confusion and pain and fear. They squeezed shut with each wave of pain that rushed through her head, her face screwing up so much it was starting to irritate the gravel rash on her temple. Her chest was heaving with panicked breaths as she looked from the attending nurse, to her partner, to her mother. Mrs. Busby tried to hold her hand, provide her with some comfort, but Delia looked so wildly confused that she pulled away violently at every attempt, which prompted another stab of pain in her skull, which started the whole vicious cycle all over again.
“Delia?” Patsy prompted, leaning on the edge of the bed a little. It wasn’t uncommon for patients with head trauma to be confused, but that didn’t mean she knew the first thing about keeping them calm. The brunette didn’t seem to hear her spouse at all; she struggled to properly pull herself upright but stopped almost immediately, a pained expression returning to her face. She gasped quietly, freezing up and turning rigid. Tears sprang to her eyes, which glazed over as her expression turned from pained, to fearful, to woozy.
Then, with an admittedly impressive show of determination, she rolled onto her side and threw up over the opposite side of the bed. And all over her mother’s shoes.
Patsy would, any other day, be biting back a grin at that. While she didn’t hate Mrs. Busby, the look of disgust on her face would normally make the redhead’s whole day. As the older woman scrunched up her nose, and the nurse tried to clean the mess while explaining this and that about how nausea can be brought on by concussions, Patsy leaned closer to smooth Delia’s hair away from her face. With little effort, she pulled her into an upright position, and used it as an excuse to sit on the edge of the hospital bed.
Things were starting to feel overwhelming. The matron had bustled over, kicking up a fuss about the mess and chewing into the nurse about protocols – the poor girl was definitely new, but Patsy had no sympathy. Her heart was thundering in her ears and her chest was starting to constrict again, but she had to try keep it together. It wouldn’t help Delia if she was inconsolable. While the nurse hastily mopped the floor and tried to keep out of the way, the matron seemed unfazed – despite the patient being someone she knew and worked with – as she studied the clipboard, checked her watch, then administered a generous dosage of painkillers.
Within mere seconds, Delia was sleepy-looking. Her eyes, although struggling to keep open for longer than a few seconds, stayed fixated on Patsy’s face. Her eyebrows knitted together, her expression puzzled. The redhead smiled warmly, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes stubbornly as she kissed the back of her partner’s hand.
But the Welsh girl only looked more confused, and slowly pulled her arm back to her chest.
“You’re crying,” she observed, her voice crackly and feeble. With a restrained sob, Patsy shakily retrieved the untouched glass of water from the bedside stand, handing it to Delia’s mother before wiping her eyes on the back of her sleeve.
“A-Am I?” Patsy smiled weakly at her, hoping that maybe she could get away with the tough act. But her vision wobbled under the threat of more tears, and her expression faltered as she hid her face in her hands.
Delia was awake. She was alive, at least – and eventually she’d be okay again. The outcome was so much better than it could’ve been. So why did Patsy still feel like she’d lost something special to her?
Her shoulders had only started to shudder, a second wave of sobs making an appearance when delicate fingers touched the back of her hand slowly. Glancing up hesitantly, not sure whether she wanted an entire ward of patients and nurses to see her like this, she found Delia looking directly at her, eyebrows furrowed together tightly. Ignoring her mother and the glass of water, her finger smoothed once over the wedding band that matched her own, before catching her eye and pulling back quickly.
It wasn’t like her, to be so bashful with her affection. But, Patsy considered, maybe she wasn’t as self-assured when her mother was sitting right there, with vomit on her feet…
Sniffling, the redhead tried again to smile through it all. “You had us worried, love,”
Delia frowned, only looking more confused. Her eyes looked Patsy up and down, calculating, but not seeming to reach whatever answer she was looking for.
“You were in an accident, cariad,” her mother offered, reaching forward to take her other hand, “You hit your head. Badly.”
“Oh,” was all the brunette could really say. She stared into her lap, looking mildly concerned. A severely understated reaction, in Patsy’s opinion. She thought Delia might go on, ask more questions, once she’d thought it through a little. The cogs in her head seemed to be turning, her gaze hovering over Patsy’s hand again.
Then she lifted her head, her eyes meeting the redhead’s, still confused and cautious and…untrusting.
“And you’re my nurse?”
The silence that followed was deafening. Patsy hardly registered the severity of the question, mouth hanging open in shock.
“I…”
What kind of a question was that? She wasn’t even in her uniform. The fact that Delia could think that…clearly, she was still confused. That’s all it was, she tried to tell herself. But the worst outcome, the possibility of something more severe than a simple concussion, was starting to weigh down on her mind.
“Don’t be daft,” she gave a hollow smile, “You…You know me, Deels.”
She expected the long silence to be followed by relief, as Delia’s expression melted into some sign of recognition. A pained smile and sleepy laugh and an “I don’t know what came over me, love,”
But all she got was a blank stare.
“…I do?”
“Yes!” she strained to keep her voice down, but nurses and the matron were still casting worried glances in their direction, “You should! How could you not –?”
She knew the answer to her own question well enough. Head trauma had many side-effects, amnesia being just one – she knew that. Now she felt downright stupid, for not expecting something like this in the first place.
Of course it wasn’t going to be simple.
She supposed she should’ve felt her heart shatter – she expected to, anyway. And judging by the way Delia’s mother looked at her, like she was waiting for a bomb to go off, she expected it too. But she just felt numb instead, which felt even worse than any outburst. Once again, her legs did all the moving for her: she stood from the edge of the bed, blinked a few times – like some final, failed attempt to process it all. Mrs. Busby asked after her, looking just as frazzled and upset, but it just seemed to blend in with the background noise. Unsure of what else to do, Patsy turned and walked out of the ward of her own volition this time.
She’d experienced shut-downs before. Sadly, they weren’t anything new to her. But the causes had always been in the same strain: nightmares, flashbacks, typhoid outbreaks, barbed-wire fences where she least expected to see them. It had always been those same things, ever since the war ended. Knowing what to avoid usually kept her out of situations like this. But never, at any point in the past year, had she felt like this because of Delia – the idea in itself, that she could’ve caused something like this herself, was ridiculous. It’d never even been a possibility.
But here she was, letting herself clam up because the one person she’d had in the past twelve months to calm her down, couldn’t even remember her.
‘It’s not like you treated her like a soulmate,’ she thought miserably, stepping out into the frozen air and sitting down stiffly on the closest bench, ‘All you did was upset her. You deserve this,’
And maybe she deserved it, but Delia certainly didn’t. The look on her face said it all: she didn’t recognize anything around her. Not her mother, not the hospital. It was worth wagering that, at this stage, she couldn’t even remember her own name, either. The thought made her feel sick to her stomach; maybe if she’d eaten anything at all in the past ten hours, she’d be having a worse time of it. Instead, all she could do was sit and tremble in the cold, nausea coming through in brief waves whenever she pictured Delia – her Delia – lying there with absolutely no grip on anything at all.
She needed a cigarette. Badly. But she’d gone through the whole pack (a brand new one, too) overnight. Patsy wasn’t normally one to feel the strain of withdrawals, but the sudden absence of an outlet was starting to make her itch. It made the anxiety build up quicker. And she didn’t like letting her emotions loose, even when alone, but the figurative rug had been pulled out from under her so suddenly that she found herself unable to refrain from crying into her hands again. She’d lost count of how many times she’d sobbed herself hoarse over the past night alone, but she knew it’d been enough that she’d stopped caring who saw her by now. And, secretly, she was glad to be a mess: for once in her life, she was conscious of what other people might think of her if she didn’t show any emotion at all.
Socially, she was supposed to care about Delia a great amount (legally, it didn’t really matter how they felt about each other as long as there was a wedding involved). Everyone around here had been so keen on reminding them what they were expected to do and how they were expected to act. Easy to say for some of them, who were still searching in hope of meeting their certain someone. But it wasn’t quite that easy to love a stranger, especially when you knew you had no choice. ‘Love at first sight’ had always been a ridiculous concept to Patsy, anyway. It seemed impossibly unrealistic – she was a rational person, after all. And the idea of there being someone made for everyone, that you would automatically adore all your life from the very second you met them, that you could love without knowing a thing about, seemed like the most irrational thing of all.
But Delia had been eager right from the beginning. All you had to do was look at her to know she was in love.
Admittedly, at the time, Patsy would’ve been quite content with parting ways and leaving no evidence – save for the newly coloured world around her– that they’d ever met at all.
But God, how could she have done that to someone, even a total stranger? It hadn’t been easy; for the longest time, the only thing that kept her going was the fear that, should she leave, she’d be forever burdened by one burning question: ‘what if I’d stayed?’
Well, she’d stayed. For a year and two months. And for most of that time, she detested this whole soulmate system. Hell, she’d even detested Delia some days. But for once in her life she wound up swallowing her pride and letting someone into her life. Letting herself actually love someone, after so many failed attempts at pushing them away.
And this was what had happened. This was the result of her mind screaming ‘what if?’: freezing to the bone outside a hospital, at half-six in the morning, remembering why she decided not to let people in. And now amidst all the fuzz and white noise of her mind, there was a new question beginning to torment her:
‘What if I’d left?’
* * * * *
Things were starting to get busier when Patsy trudged back once again. Early morning was a busy time: it was when people woke up to new ailments, or ones from the previous night that they’d mistakenly thought sleep could fix. It was when people rushed to get to work on time, and wound up in accidents. It was when people made fatal mistakes amidst their drowsiness. Patsy was used to it – again, as a nurse and a nurse only. Anything else felt foreign. But being part of the crowd for once didn’t stop her pushing through. Even without her uniform, she had a presence that wasn’t ever questioned. She carved through the throng of nurses and doctors and worried new patients like a hot knife through butter. And things felt clearer now. Maybe, without all the fuzziness, she could find the bravery to actually talk to Delia, and not run away this time.
The first thing she noticed was that the brunette already looked a great deal better than she did an hour ago. She was still sat up in bed, holding a glass of water by herself now. The slightly drowsy look on her face suggested the painkillers were doing their job, and by the looks of it she was holding an albeit staggered conversation with her mother – one that came to an abrupt halt the moment she saw Patsy.
Patsy felt her heart twinge at the expression on her face. There was no smile, or apologetic glance, no semblance of recognition. Only confusion and remorse and the slightest telltale sign of tears welling up in her eyes. Patsy wanted to go to her…but she didn’t. She stopped at the end of the bed and gripped onto the cold metal frame to stop herself from possibly fidgeting. For what may have been a few awkward minutes, neither of them said anything; quite a few times, Patsy looked up with an idea of what to say, before it fizzled out and left her with nothing to do but look away again shamefully. Whether Delia was going through the same struggle, she couldn’t tell. Whenever she looked up, the only thing she saw was the guilt written all across her face.
Unsurprisingly, her mother was the one to break the silence.
“Looking a bit peaky,” she commented. Patsy jumped a little and looked at the older woman. Mrs. Busby had always been a worrier, especially when it came to whether her daughter was eating enough. She couldn’t remember one visit that she didn’t ask Delia if she was eating enough, or if she had enough milk. But what surprised her was that she wasn’t addressing Delia, she was looking directly at her.
Again, neither of them were on bad terms with the other, but Patsy couldn’t exactly say she was favoured by her mother-in-law. She always assumed it was because, deep down, the stern woman had always held a glimmer of hope that her daughter would, one day, see sense and return back to Wales – and stay there. But then, of course, she just had to find her soulmate in the very last place her mother wanted her to be, and there was no doubt about whether she was staying. The news wasn’t…entirely well-received.
So the fact that Mrs. Busby seemed to show actual concern for her daughter-in-law once, let alone for the second time today, was shocking to say the least. “I’ll bring something back.” She stood from the chair and patted her daughter’s hand sadly before turning away. As she passed, Patsy noticed the redness around her eyes and made the guess that Delia definitely didn’t remember her either. And as imperious as Mrs. Busby could be, maybe she was using this as an excuse to give herself some space.
With the seat beside Delia’s bed free once again, Patsy was now forced to debate whether to sit down beside her for the third time today. She supposed this was where all that soulmate stuff she found so farfetched really counted – whether she could put on a brave face and weather the storm when her other half couldn’t. And now that she was faced with it, she wasn’t entirely sure she could gather the courage. Or, really, if she even had it to begin with…
Delia stared up at her expectantly, and the redhead had to remind herself: ‘However scared you are, she must be feeling it tenfold,’. Hesitantly, she sat on the end of the bed and gave Delia a weak, barely-there smile.
And Delia smiled back.
“…You aren’t a nurse, are you?” she asked sadly. Her left thumb curled upwards, smoothing along the underside of her ring, “You sound a bit like one…”
“Do I?” Patsy laughed feebly. If she weren’t so horribly dehydrated, the tears would be making a reappearance.
“But you’ve been crying. You’re too sad to be my nurse.” She stopped herself from going on, and nervously took a tiny sip of water. The entire time, she watched Patsy over the brim; true to form, her mind was so clearly continuing to turn over every little detail, even now. Patsy could see it in her eyes, even when they were glassy and half-lidded.
“Are you a friend of mine?” she finally questioned.
“Yes,” the redhead whispered, calm this time around, “I suppose that’s one word for it.”
“And that other woman…that was my mam,” she continued, “And I’m Delia. And we’re in London.”
Patsy nodded. “Yes, that’s right. And your father’s waiting right outside those doors.”
“Was he crying too?”
“I suspect he was.”
“Oh.” Delia dropped her gaze to her lap. A few tears rolled down her nose and as much as Patsy wanted to wipe them away, she was highly conscious of the gravel rash. Her breath hitched, she rocked forward a little, and curled her fingers tightly around the glass in her hands.
As Patsy reached for the cup, to pull it away before it could be spilled or broken, Delia suddenly tugged on the sleeve of her olive-green cardigan. It certainly wasn’t a cheerful or particularly interesting colour, but she was fixated on it nonetheless. Then her eyes trailed upwards, still tearful, and settled on the bright red of Patsy’s messed-up hair. She smiled again, this one brighter than the last.
“Have we been friends long?” she said.
She had the fabric of the cardigan pinned shakily between her fingers, nearly holding on for dear life. As gently as she could, Patsy covered them with a hand of her own. “A little while,” she said, “Just over a year. December of 1958, I think it was.”
As if she couldn’t remember the exact date, down to the very minute - even if she never wanted to be that invested, she could never shake the small details. But she’d been practicing, recently, with not coming off too strong. This was a good a place to start as any. She caught Delia’s eye and gave her hand a small squeeze. The poor thing couldn’t remember her mother or her own name, but she could see colours still and just knew what they meant. And that had to count for something.
“Are you the reason why things are so…?” she trailed off with a sniffle. Her eyes were still glued to Patsy’s hair, her mouth hanging open a little. And Patsy couldn’t help but laugh tearfully.
“You looked at my hair the exact same way when we first met,” she sighed, “I think...you told me it was the first colour you ever saw. That you never knew the world could be so bright.”
Amidst Delia’s guilt and upset, her eyes glimmered a little as she tried to lean a little closer. Normally, Patsy was strict about patients staying in bed, but how could she push the other girl away now? She looked so…content. Take away the bruises and cuts, and you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong at all.
“And this?” the brunette lifted her hand between them, fiddling with the ring on her left hand once again. Of course, she seemed to already know the answer – her cheeks were already turning red. Better than no colour in her face at all. “Is this you too?”
Patsy nodded eagerly, starting to actually feel like her heart might not be permanently broken. Like there was some silver lining, however vague. And the look of thrill on Delia’s face made her heart thud loudly. But, inevitably, it dropped back to a miserable expression as quickly as though the wind changed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember you at all,” she mumbled, “And I should, but I…”
“It’s not your fault,” Patsy interrupted sternly, “You were in an accident. If anything the driver of that car is at fault.” She scrunched up her nose, only glad that she hadn’t actually met the man who’d hit Delia. If she had, she might have just sent him sprawling.
“We’ll get by somehow,” she assured the other. Starting to feel confident enough, she rubbed the back of Delia’s hand in gentle circles, “Your memory might still come back. And if it doesn’t…”
She didn’t like that option. The thought of Delia having new and drastically different opinions of her was almost terrifying. It wouldn’t change that they were together – they had to be, it’d been hammered into their heads by their friends and family for months. But, if they had to, Patsy would rather prefer it if Delia was back to her old self.
“It’ll be like meeting again, won’t it?” the Welsh girl asked hopefully, “Only…you must know everything about me already.”
“A great deal, but not everything,” Patsy said, leaning her elbows on the bed, “When you’re well-rested, I can tell you whatever you’d like to know.”
The gesture just about brought Delia to tears again. She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, smiling all the while. “I’d like that,” she hiccoughed, “I’d really, really like that.”
But after a moment of thought, she seemed to decide that she couldn’t wait for rest. “…Will you tell me something now?”
“Now…?” On top of being exhausted herself, Patsy was certain that Delia would need plenty of rest. But Delia, as always, had other ideas. The fact that the painkillers hadn’t knocked her out in five minutes flat was already astounding. To suddenly be in the mood for a story despite that was…very much like her.
So of course, Patsy couldn’t turn her down.
“Where would you like to start?”