The Wonder(64)

His small chamber or hers, both equally impossible for a conversation. Lib couldn’t ask him to come downstairs; that would attract even more attention at this time of night.

“I owe you an apology. You’re entirely right about Anna’s state,” she whispered. “This watch is an abomination.” The word came out too loud; she’d bring Maggie Ryan running up the stairs.

Byrne nodded, without triumph.

“I’ve spoken to Sister Michael but she won’t take a single step without the express permission of her masters,” Lib told him. “I’ve urged Dr. McBrearty to halt the watch and concentrate on dissuading the child from starving herself, but he accused me of irrational panic.”

“Thoroughly rational, I’d call it.”

Byrne’s calm voice made Lib feel slightly better. How necessary this man’s conversation had become to her, and so quickly.

He leaned into the door frame. “Do you take a vow? Like that old Hippocratic oath for doctors, to heal and never kill?”

“Hypocrites’ oath, more like!”

That made Byrne grin.

“We have none,” she told him. “As a profession, nursing is in its infancy.”

“Then for you it’s a matter of conscience.”

“Yes,” said Lib. Only now did it sink in. Never mind orders; there was a deeper duty.

“And more than that, I think,” he said. “You care for your nursling.”

Byrne wouldn’t have believed her if she’d denied it. “I suppose I’d be back in England by now if I didn’t.”

Better not to get too fond of things, Anna had said the other day. Miss N. warned against personal affection as much as she did against romance. Lib had been taught to watch for attachments in any form and root them out. So what had gone wrong this time?

He asked, “Have you ever put it to Anna plain and simple that she must eat?”

Lib struggled to remember. “I’ve certainly raised the issue. But on the whole I’ve tried to remain objective, neutral.”

“The time for neutrality’s passed,” said Byrne.

Footsteps on the stairs; someone coming up.

Lib fled into her room and shut the door with the softest of pulls so as not to make a sound.

Hot cheeks, a thumping head, icy hands. If Maggie Ryan had caught the English nurse talking to the journalist so late at night, what would she have thought? And would she have been wrong?

Everybody was a repository of secrets.

Lib’s state was horribly predictable. She’d have spotted the danger earlier if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with Anna. Or perhaps she wouldn’t have, because it was a new one for her. She’d never felt this for her husband, or for any other man.

How much younger than Lib was Byrne, with his zestful energy and his milky skin? She could hear Miss N. sum it up: One of those yearnings that spring up like weeds in the dry soil of a nurse’s life. Had Lib no respect for herself at all?

She was groggy with fatigue, but it took her a long time to fall asleep.

Lib was on the green road again, hand in hand with a boy who was somehow a brother of hers. In the dream, the grass gave way to a wilderness of marsh, and the path grew faint. She couldn’t keep up; she was mired in the wet tangle, and despite her protests this brother loosed her hand and went ahead of her. When she could no longer make out his calls or distinguish them from those of the birds overhead, she found he’d marked the way with crusts of bread. But faster than she could follow, the birds carried them away in their sharp mouths. Now there was no sign of a path at all, and Lib was alone.

On Wednesday morning, Lib’s face looked haggard in the mirror.

She got to the cabin before five. The bath chair had been shifted outside the cabin door, its velvet damp with dew.

She found Anna sunk in sleep, her face scored with pillow creases. The chamber pot held only a blackish trickle.

“Mrs. Wright,” Sister Michael began, as if to justify herself.

Lib looked her in the eye.

The nun hesitated, then went out without another word.

In the night, she’d decided on her tactics. She’d choose the weapon most likely to shake the girl: Holy Writ. She took the whole stack of Anna’s pious volumes into her lap now and started skimming them, marking passages with strips torn out of the back page of her memorandum book.

When the girl woke a little later, Lib wasn’t ready yet, so she put the books back in the treasure box. “I have a riddle for you.”

Anna managed a smile and a nod.

Lib cleared her throat.

I’ve seen you where you never were,

And where you never will be,

And yet you in that very same place

May still be seen by me.

“A mirror,” said Anna almost at once.

“You’re getting too clever,” Lib told her. “I’m running out of riddles.” On impulse, she held the hand mirror up to Anna’s face.

The child flinched. Then considered her reflection steadily.

“See what you look like these days?” asked Lib.

“I see,” said Anna. And she crossed herself and clambered out of bed.

But she was wobbling so much that Lib made her sit down right away. “Let me change your nightdress.” She took the fresh one out of the drawer.

The child struggled with the tiny buttons, so Lib had to undo them. Lifting the nightdress over Anna’s head, she sucked in her breath at the extent of the brown patches on the skin, the reddish-blue spots that were like a scattering of coins now. New bruises too, in odd places, as if invisible assailants had been beating the girl in the night.