relations with a man—even her husband—should expect the punishment that followed. I hardly liked to leave this weary and frightened girl in the nun’s hands.
I said, Mrs. O’Rahilly may have more chloral to help her sleep through her pangs, if need be.
But what would the night nurse consider need?
I warned her, If the pangs get much stronger or start speeding up, step into Women’s Fever and have them call a midwife down from Maternity, right?
Sister Luke nodded.
And as there are so few physicians on duty, Dr. Lynn’s given permission for any of these patients to have whiskey, chloroform, or morphine.
Above the mask, the nun’s eyebrows arched at this breach of protocol.
Bridie dashed in with the chilled moss pad.
Sweeney, have you been making yourself useful?
It seemed a curt form of address, but Bridie only shrugged.
I took the pad from her hand and said, Indispensable, in fact.
That made the corners of Bridie’s mouth turn up.
The nun was unpacking an apron. The queue I passed outside the picture house! Grown men, women, and children, all gasping to get into the great germ box.
Well, the small pleasures of the poor, I murmured as I got my coat on. Can you blame them?
Sister Luke jerked a fresh pair of mackintosh sleeves up past her elbows. Courting death, so they are. Off you go now, Sweeney.
Her rudeness took me aback.
But Bridie grabbed her coat and left the room.
I said a quick good night to my three patients and put my cape and bag over my arm.
I thought I might have lost her, but I spotted her below me. Bridie!
I caught up to her and we headed down the noisy staircase together. You shouldn’t let Sister Luke boss you about that way.
Bridie only smiled.
And she’s very harsh on cinemagoers, I added. In depressing times, doesn’t one need a cheap escape?
I saw a picture once.
Oh, yes? Which one?
I don’t know what it was called, she admitted. By the time I managed to slip off and sneak into the cinema by the side door, the story was half told.
Slip off from where? I wondered. And why sneak in by the side door—hadn’t she the price of a ticket?
Bridie said, But I do remember the heroine was only gorgeous, a wee slip of a thing. She was marooned, and this fellow showed up, and next thing, they had a baby!
She laughed a little bashfully.
Then wouldn’t you know, another ship turned up with his wife on it…
I asked, This was a couple of years ago?
The title came back to me. Hearts Adrift, I told her. Mary Pickford and…I forget.
Mary Pickford? echoed Bridie. I didn’t think she’d have an ordinary name like Mary.
She’s quite something, isn’t she? Nothing ordinary about her.
Hearts Adrift; Bridie brought out the phrase with a slow savor. Oh, I’m getting it now, adrift because they’re shipwrecked.
Didn’t you love her in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?
I’ve only seen the one picture.
Sympathy stopped me in my tracks. Once, in her roughly twenty-two years? I’d been going to the cinema ever since I’d come up from the country, and Tim came along with me after he moved to Dublin. Did Bridie’s parents not let her out in the evenings or hadn’t they two pennies to rub together? But I couldn’t shame her by asking.
I continued down the steps. Then it’s as well it was a good one, I suppose.
Bridie nodded with one of her gleaming grins.
The plot of Hearts Adrift was coming back to me. At the end, when Mary Pickford leaps into the volcano…
I thought I’d die with her!
(Bridie’s eyes as wet as shore pebbles.)
I said, I can’t remember what happens to the baby, though. Do the married couple take it away with them?
No, no, she has it in her arms when she jumps.
Bridie mimed that, protective arms caging the invisible infant on her chest, her face lit up with ecstasy.
It was such a pleasure to be able to chat for a minute without worrying about patients. But at the base of the stairs, staff pushed past us in the hullabaloo of shift changeover.
Are you all right walking home in the dark, Bridie?
I’m grand. Where do nurses sleep?
Well, big lodging houses, most of them, but I rent with my little brother. I take a tram and then cycle the rest of the way. Tim’s twenty-six.
I added that belatedly, in case I’d made him sound like a boy.
Bridie nodded.
He enlisted in ’14, I surprised myself by telling her.
Did he? How long was he gone?
Nineteen months at first. Then he sent word from