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.
Dr. Lynn peered into the abdominal cavity, which was pulpy with dark juice. She dictated: Liver swollen, signs of internal bleeding. Kidney inflamed and oozing. Colon ulcerated.
I followed her scalpel with my own, taking samples.
She murmured, We could always blame the stars.
I beg your pardon, Doctor?
That’s what influenza means, she said. Influenza delle stelle—the influence of the stars. Medieval Italians thought the illness proved that the heavens were governing their fates, that people were quite literally star-crossed.
I pictured that, the celestial bodies trying to fly us like upside-down kites. Or perhaps just yanking on us for their obscure amusement.
Dr. Lynn freed Ita Noonan’s small intestine with her scissors and lifted it in the way of a snake charmer. Now, autopsy comes from the Greek word meaning to see with one’s own eyes. You and I are lucky, Nurse Power.
I frowned. Lucky? To be alive and well, you mean?
To be here, in the middle of this. We’ll never learn more or faster.
Dr. Lynn put down her scalpel and flexed her fingers as if they were cramped. Then she picked the blade up again and slit Ita Noonan’s uterus with delicacy. We all do our bit to increase the sum of human knowledge, including Mrs. Noonan.
She lifted the flap, peeled back the amniotic sac. Added under her breath, Even her last little Noonan.
She scooped the foetus out of the red cavity, cupped it in her hands.
Not it—him. I saw that it was a boy.
Dr. Lynn said, No sign the flu did him any harm. Measure, please?
She stretched him lengthways in the dish as if he were standing up for the first and only time in his life.
I set the tape at the crown of the skull, went down to