The Wonder(33)

Anna’s eyes went wide.

“Nor do I go to church, not for many years now,” Lib added. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“More happiness than a feast,” the girl quoted.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Prayer brings more happiness than a feast.”

“I never found it did much good.” Lib felt absurdly embarrassed by her admission. “I had no sense of getting a reply.”

“Poor Mrs. Wright,” murmured Anna. “Why won’t you tell me your first name?”

“Why poor?” asked Lib.

“Because your soul must be lonely. That silence you heard, when you tried to pray—that’s the sound of God listening.” The child’s face shone.

A commotion at the front door released Lib from this conversation. A man’s voice, booming above Rosaleen O’Donnell’s; without being able to make out more than a few words, Lib could tell that he was an English gentleman, and in a temper. Then the sound of the front door shutting.

Anna didn’t even lift her eyes from the book she’d picked up, The Garden of the Soul.

Kitty came in to check the lamp was prepared. “I heard tell of one that the vapours caught on fire,” she warned Lib, “and cinderized the family in the night!”

“The lamp glass must have been sooty, in that case, so mind you wipe this one well.”

“Right, so,” said Kitty, with one of her tremendous yawns.

Half an hour later the same angry petitioner was back.

A minute later he was stalking into Anna’s room with Rosaleen O’Donnell behind him. A great domed forehead with long silver locks below. He introduced himself to Lib as Dr. Standish, chief of medicine at a Dublin hospital.

“He’s brought a note from Dr. McBrearty,” said Rosaleen O’Donnell, waving it, “to say could we make an exception and let him in as a most distinguished visitor.”

“Given that I’m here as a matter of professional courtesy,” Standish barked, his accent very clipped and English, “I don’t appreciate having my time wasted by being obliged to chase backwards and forwards along these foul boreens for permission to examine a child.” His pale blue eyes were fastened on Anna.

She was looking nervous. Afraid this doctor would find out something McBrearty and the nurses hadn’t? Lib wondered. Or simply because the man was so severe?

“Can I offer you a cup of tea, Doctor?” asked Mrs. O’Donnell.

“Nothing, thank you.”

Said so curtly that she backed out and pulled the door to.

Dr. Standish sniffed the air. “When was this room last fumigated, Nurse?”

“The fresh air from the window, sir—”

“See to it. Chloride of lime, or zinc. But, first, kindly undress the child.”

“I’ve already taken her complete measurements, if you’d like to see them,” offered Lib.

He waved her memorandum book away and insisted she strip Anna down till she was stark naked.

The child shuddered on the woven mat, hands drooping by her sides. Angles of shoulder blades and elbows, bulges of calves and belly; Anna had flesh on her, but it had all slid downwards, as if she were slowly melting. Lib looked away. What gentleman would bare a girl of eleven like a plucked goose on a hook?

Standish carried on poking and prodding, tapping Anna with his cold instruments, keeping up a barrage of orders. “Tongue out farther.” He put his finger so far down Anna’s throat, she gagged. “Does that cause pain?” he asked, pressing between her ribs. “And that? What about this?”

Anna kept shaking her head, but Lib didn’t believe her.

“Can you bend over any farther? Breathe in and hold it,” said the doctor. “Cough. Again. Louder. When did you last move your bowels?”

“I don’t remember,” whispered Anna.

He dug into her misshapen legs. “Does that hurt you?”

Anna gave a little shrug.

“Answer me.”

“Hurt’s not the word for it.”

“Well, what word would you prefer?”

“Humming.”

“Humming?”

“It seems to hum.”

Standish snorted and lifted one of her thickened feet to scrape the sole with a fingernail.

Humming? Lib tried to imagine being swollen up, every cell tight as if ready to burst. Would it feel like a high-pitched vibration, the whole body a tautened bow?

Finally Standish told the child to dress and shoved his instruments back into his bag. “As I suspected, a simple case of hysteria,” he threw in Lib’s direction.

She was disconcerted. Anna wasn’t like any hysteric she’d ever encountered at the hospital: no tics, faints, paralyses, convulsions; no fixed stares or shrieks.

“I’ve had night-feeders in my wards before, patients who won’t eat except when no one’s watching,” he added. “Nothing to distinguish this one except that she’s been indulged to the extremity of half starving herself.”

Half starving. So Standish believed Anna was sneaking food but far less than she needed? Or perhaps she’d been getting almost enough until the watch had begun, on Monday morning, but since then, nothing at all? Lib was horribly afraid he might be right about that. But was Anna nearer to starved or nearer to well? How to quantify the quality of being alive?