The Pull of the Stars(77)

She strained for the next breath.

I wanted to help, she said. Help you.

But you’d met me only half a minute before.

Bridie grinned. If I’d admitted I hadn’t had it yet—

(Panting now.)

—you might have sent me away. There was work to do, work for two.

I found I couldn’t speak.

Bridie wheezed, Don’t fuss, now.

(As if she were the nurse.)

No need to fret. I’ll get through this.

If I was hearing her right. She breathed the words so lightly, I had to stoop right down with my ear to her mouth.

Her tone was odd. Elated, that was it. I’d once attended a talk by an alpinist who reported having experienced a euphoria in the upper peaks, where the air was thin. While on the mountain, he hadn’t recognised it as a symptom of anything, or perhaps he’d been too caught up in the adventure to care.

I took her temperature again. It had jumped to 104 now.

That’s not Bridie Sweeney?

The voice behind me was Dr. Lynn’s.

I kept my eyes on the chart as I summarised the case at top speed.

The doctor interrupted before I finished. But she should be in Women’s Fever—

Please, Doctor. Don’t move her.

She tutted, already putting the stethoscope down the back of Bridie’s nightdress. Deep breath for me, dear?

I could hear the awful rasping from where I stood. I said, She has no cough—isn’t that good?

Dr. Lynn didn’t answer. She was turning Bridie’s hands over; they were puffy, I saw now, and not just from the chilblains. She murmured, Edema—fluid leaking into the tissues.

How had I not spotted that?

I made myself ask, What about her—

I couldn’t get out the syllables of cyanosis.

—her cheeks?

Dr. Lynn nodded gravely. Well, if you stay nice and quiet, she told Bridie, with a bit of luck…I’ve seen it go back to pink.

How often had the doctor seen that, though, compared with the number of cases in which the stain had deepened? Red to brown to blue to— Stop it, I told myself. All Bridie needed was a bit of luck, and who deserved it more?

Dr. Lynn took hold of Bridie’s chin. Open up for me a minute?

Bridie gaped, showing the dark tongue of a hanged woman.

The doctor didn’t comment. She turned to me and said, You’re doing all you can, Nurse Power. Keep up the whiskey. Now I’m afraid I’m needed in Women’s Surgical.

But—

I promise I’ll be back, she told me on her way out.

For something to do, I took Bridie’s temperature’s again; it was 106. Could that be right? Pearls of sweat standing out on her face, appearing faster than I could wipe them away.

Stay nice and quiet like the doctor said, I murmured. Don’t try to talk, and you’ll get better all the faster.

I dabbed iced cloths on her magenta cheeks, her forehead, the nape of her neck. It occurred to me that Bridie wasn’t coughing because she couldn’t; she was being choked by her own rising fluids. Drowning from the inside.

Hours rolled by like one long, impossible moment. Every now and then, moving like an automaton, I made myself perform one of my other duties. I gave Mary O’Rahilly a bedpan when she ventured to ask; I checked her binder, changed her pad. Barnabas woke and cried a little. I changed his nappy and made up another bottle for him. But all the while, all I knew was Bridie.

Her cheeks were nut brown all the way to her ears; you couldn’t call it any shade of red, and her breath was a rapid, wet grinding. She couldn’t hold her whiskey cup anymore, so I knelt on the bed beside her and held it to her cracked lips. She took sips between her raking breaths. She sneezed five times in a row, and suddenly the handkerchief was smeared with red.

I stared at the linen. One broken capillary, one of thousands, millions in her resilient young body. Blood meant nothing. Birthing women often thrashed about in puddles of the stuff and were perfectly well the next day.

I think I need the—

What, Bridie?

No words came out.

I guessed. A bedpan, is it?

A tear slid out of her left eye.

I checked, and she’d wet the bed. Don’t worry your head, it happens all the time. I’ll have you dry in two ticks.

I tilted Bridie’s light, limp frame at just the right moment to roll the dry sheet on at the left side and the wet one off at the right. I undid the tapes of her nightdress—glimpsing her pale flanks and what looked like an old scar—and got a clean one on her.

I asked her, Can you see me all right? Am I blurry?

She didn’t answer.

Her temperature was down to 105. My voice soared with relief: Your fever’s breaking.

Bridie gaped like a fish. I wasn’t sure she’d grasped what I’d said.

I checked her pulse; it was still fast and the force felt low to me. I had to stop her going into shock, so I ran to make up a pint of saline. I filled our largest metal syringe, willing my hands steady.

Even in her confusion, Bridie quailed at the sight of the needle.

I told her, It’s only salt water, like the sea.

(Had doctors made visits to her so-called home? Had Bridie ever had an injection in her life?) She whispered, You’re putting the sea into me?

I ordered myself not to hurt her, got the needle into the vein on the first try.