Author's Note: This is my first Call the Midwife fanfiction (and indeed, my first foray into fanfiction in several years), but I have spent the past weeks devouring the Turnadette fandom's archives, and I would like to thank you lot for your passion and incredible writing skills. You are stars.

She turned her back on him.

It was the first time in their married life that she'd done it intentionally, that she'd shut him out so bluntly and refused to even try to let him understand –

But he knew he couldn't help her. Not now. Not after the dismal operation and an afternoon spent at her bedside, watching her lie in utter stillness and ignoring the medical journals in his lap. Her face had been completely smooth, her worry creases gone in her drugged state, and the stillness had reminded him of the time he had waited for her before. Then it had been for months on end, and he'd found her at the end full of hope and quiet assurance, so different from now-

Her worry crease had returned to her face as soon as she opened her eyes, and now, even as she dozed, it remained. He longed to lie on the bed next to her, to wrap his arms round her waist and hold her through the pain he could tell was gnawing her stomach to shreds, but her back was straight and sharp, the back of Sister Bernadette, and it was funny how she slipped back into her holy habits when she thought the pain would swallow her whole.

He had carried her up the stairs to the flat as she slipped in and out of consciousness, unable or unwilling to fight the lingering anesthesia, and she had been light as bird bones and unresisting as he held her close. The hope had evacuated, leaving the shell of Shelagh behind, and it scared Patrick to think that she could disappear so quickly.

He was no stranger to disappearing lives.

He cursed himself for his lack of tenderness, for his condescension, for the gruff Papa Bear that came out when he couldn't find the courage to feel the emotions trapped behind his ribs. Perhaps, if he'd tried harder, if he'd been more present in her silent battle for wholeness, she would have let him in through this, the scariest bit.

But she was white as the sheet her thin cheek rested on, and her body was stiff with walls built tight as she fought in a war to which Patrick had not been drafted.

So he did the only thing he knew to do, assumed the position he'd seen her creep to when she thought he snored soundly through the Great Silence, and he knelt by the bed where the battle waged fiercely, rested his forehead against the armour of the woman who held his heart, and prayed.