The Pull of the Stars(41)

I saw red, because that was Tim’s army. I said, My brother served. The king, I mean.

(I added that awkwardly, in case I hadn’t been clear.)

Dr. Lynn nodded. So many Irishmen have sacrificed themselves in the cause of empire and capital.

But it was you terrorists who began the shooting in Dublin, and treacherously, in the middle of a world war!

My hands froze. Berating a physician—what had I done? I thought Dr. Lynn might order me out of the mortuary.

Instead she set down her blade and said civilly, I saw the national question much the same way as you until five years ago, Nurse Power.

I was taken aback.

I took up the cause of women in earnest first, she added, then the labour movement. I pinned my hopes on a peaceful transition to a self-governing Ireland that would treat its workers and mothers and children more kindly. But in the end I realised that despite four decades of paying lip service to the principle of home rule, the British meant to keep fobbing us off. Only then, after much soul-searching, I assure you, did I become what you call a terrorist.

I said nothing.

Dr. Lynn picked up the big shears and worked it along each side of Ita Noonan. Then she lifted the breastbone and frontal ribs in one go, the raising of a portcullis.

That made me tremble. How frail my own rib cage; how breakable we all were.

I needed to get us off politics. So I asked, Did your own dose of flu leave you with any odd symptoms, Doctor?

She didn’t look up as she said, I haven’t had it.

Christ Almighty, the woman was up to her elbows in microbes. My voice came out shrill: Would you not put on a mask, even?

Interestingly, there’s very little evidence that they have any protective effect. I scrub my hands, and gargle with brandy, and leave the rest to Providence. Retractor, please?

I handed the doctor what she asked for; I measured and weighed. I didn’t want to disappoint her, for all the gulf between our beliefs.

Dr. Lynn went on, As for the authorities, I believe the pandemic will have run its course before they’ve agreed on any but the most feeble action. Recommending onions and eucalyptus oil! Like sending beetles to stop a steamroller. No, as a wise old Greek once said, we all live in an unwalled city.

She must have sensed she’d lost me, because she spelled it out: When it comes to death.

Oh, yes. Quite.

She lifted Ita Noonan’s lungs—two black bags—and dropped them wetly into my waiting dish. Dear me, what a mess. Take a specimen, please, though I expect the engorgement will obscure the image.

I shaved a thin layer; I labelled the slide.

You know there’s a brand-new expensive oxygen machine upstairs?

I shook my head.

Dr. Lynn said, I tried it out on two men with pneumonia this afternoon, quite uselessly. We trickle the pure gas right up their noses, but it can’t get through their gummed-up passages.

She dictated now, more formally: Swelling of the pleura. Purulent material leaking from the alveoli, bronchioles, bronchi.

I wrote it all down.

If something attacks the lungs, she murmured, they fill up, so one drowns in one’s own inner sea. I had a comrade go like that last year.

From the flu?

No, no, he’d been force-fed, Tom Ashe had, and it went down the wrong way.

I’d heard of suffragettes mounting hunger strikes, but—Sinn Féin prisoners too? My voice wobbled as I asked, This man actually…died of it?

Dr. Lynn nodded. As I stood there taking his pulse.

I felt terribly sorry for him, and for her, but that did not change my disapproval of their cause.

One dark braid was coming loose at the back of Dr. Lynn’s head; it bobbed as she worked her instruments. I wondered how long she’d spent in prison and how she’d stayed so sturdy, so lively.

She dictated: Vocal cords eroded. Thyroid three times normal size. Heart dilated.

Isn’t it always bigger in expectant women, though?

She held up the heart for me to study. But Mrs. Noonan’s is flabby on both sides, do you see? Whereas the normal enlargement in pregnancy is only on the left—to supply the foetus with more blood.

I supposed the foetus demanded more of everything. A mother’s lungs, circulation, every part had to boost capacity, like a factory gearing up for war.

I asked, Could that be why this flu is hitting them so hard—because their systems are overworked already?

The doctor nodded. Sky-high morbidity, even for weeks after birth, which suggests their defences have been weakened somehow.

I thought of the old tale of Troy, Greek soldiers dropping out of the wooden horse’s belly under cover of night and throwing open the gates. Betrayed by one’s own side. What was it Dr. Lynn had quoted about an unwalled city?

She cut, she scooped; I labelled, I bagged.

She grumbled: So many autopsies being industriously performed all over the world, and just about all we’ve learnt about this strain of flu is that it takes around two days to incubate.

Aren’t they any closer to a vaccine, then?

She shook her head and her loose braid leapt. No one’s even managed to isolate the bacterium on a slide yet. Perhaps the little bugger’s too small for us to see and we’ll have to wait for the instrument makers to come up with a stronger microscope, or possibly it’s some new form of microbe altogether.

I was bewildered and daunted.

All rather humbling, she added ruefully. Here we are in the golden age of medicine—making such great strides against rabies, typhoid fever, diphtheria—and a common or garden influenza is beating us hollow. No, you’re the ones who matter right now. Attentive nurses, I mean—tender loving care, that seems to be all that’s saving lives.