The Pull of the Stars(35)

Bridie asked, What kind of work?

I used to work on the slob lands, cinder-picking, but Mr. O’Rahilly didn’t like that.

(I was taking against the man without ever having met him.)

The young woman went on, So now I draw threads at home. A boy delivers a bundle of handkerchiefs and I pull threads out of them to make a pattern with what’s not there, see?

Delia Garrett said, I have a set like that.

Maybe I did them!

Then Mary O’Rahilly went ramrod stiff as a pain seized her. She coughed hard into her hand, four times.

I checked my watch in the faint lamplight; a quarter of an hour since the last.

When she flopped back, I suggested, Maybe walk around some more, Mrs. O’Rahilly, if you’re able?

Obedient as a puppet, she got out of bed.

Here, let me help you with your shawl.

I wrapped it around her shoulders and over her head.

Her face contorted. She whispered, Nurse, why won’t my baby come out? Might it be…like hers?

A slight tip of the head towards Delia Garrett, just feet away.

I took the girl’s warm hand, the skin a little scaly. I told her, I heard its heartbeat loud and clear with the ear trumpet, remember? It’s just not quite ready yet.

She nodded, trying to believe it.

I said, Nature works to her own clock, but she knows what she’s doing.

Mary O’Rahilly stared back at me, one motherless daughter to another. She knew as well as I did what a lie I was telling, but she took what comfort she could.

To think, she’d come in here this morning expecting her navel to open. Practically a child herself, but soon she’d be transformed; she’d have to be the mother.

Knock-knock! A man’s voice at the door.

In walked Groyne with a girl in his arms, like a bride he was carrying over the threshold.

Groyne, what do you think you’re—

He plonked her down on the left-hand cot and said, Shortage of wheelchairs.

(What, had I expected Ita Noonan’s bed to stay empty?)

The new patient doubled over, spluttering. Only when she straightened up could I see, squinting in the brownish light, that she wasn’t as young as Mary O’Rahilly, just similarly undergrown. Wide eyes under straw-coloured hair, and a vast belly.

I put a hand on the knob of her shoulder. I’m Nurse Power.

She tried to answer me but she was coughing too hard.

Wait till you have a sip of water.

Bridie rushed to fill a glass.

The new patient persisted in speaking, but I couldn’t make out a word. She had rosary beads wound twice around her arm, imprinting the skin.

It’s all right, Mrs.…

I held my hand out to Groyne for the chart. I tilted it towards the dim bulb: Honor White, second pregnancy, twenty-nine years old. (Same as me.) Due at the end of November, which put her at thirty-six weeks right now. She’d caught the flu a full month ago, but as so often happened, there’d been complications.

Can’t shift this nasty cough, then, Mrs. White?

She hacked on, eyes streaming. Anaemic, I guessed from that paper-pale skin.

I noticed a little red Sacred Heart on the lapel of her thin coat when I hung it up and an odd bulge in the pocket. The dry layers fragmented and shed in my hand. Is this…garlic?

Mrs. White gasped out, very low: For warding off the grippe.

Groyne let out a yelp of laughter. Much good that did you.

The new patient’s accent was from the far west, I thought. I couldn’t change her clothes until the orderly left.

He was dawdling. So, Nurse Power, how’re you getting along with the diehard?

The word confused me for a moment. Oh, Dr. Lynn? She seems highly experienced.

Groyne snorted. Experienced at agitation and anarchy!

Come, now.

Bridie put in, I heard she was nearly executed.

I stared at her thrilled face. Was my runner taking the orderly’s side now? I asked: Heard where?

On the stairs.

That’s a fact, Groyne assured us. After the Rising, they handed down ninety death sentences—but they spared all the ladies, he added discontentedly, and called off the firing squads after the sixteenth go!

Well. (I was uneasy that my patients were hearing all this.) At least we have a doctor with some obstetrical expertise in today.

Sure Miss Lynn’s probably only here to dodge the peelers, he told me.

I frowned, not following. Why would the police still be after her at this point? Didn’t the government let the rebels out of prison last year?

Groyne snorted. Don’t you read the papers, Nurse Power? They tried to round up the whole traitorous crew again in May for gunrunning with the Germans. I don’t know how Her Nibs slipped through the net, but I tell you, she’s on the run as we speak, she— He froze.

I turned to see Dr. Lynn sweeping in. Behind her glasses, her face gave no indication that she’d heard a word, but mine burnt.

She scanned the low-lit ward. Good evening Mrs. Garrett, Mrs. O’Rahilly…and who’s this?

I introduced Honor White.

The doctor’s coiled plaits were so sedate, her collar so prim, I told myself it couldn’t be true what Groyne had claimed about her conspiring with a foreign power.

Stay alive, ladies, said Groyne. He sauntered out, singing:

Oh, death, where is thy stingalingaling,

Oh, grave, thy victory?