Ita Noonan, who was snoring, and Delia Garrett, who (in a dressing jacket, a wrap, and a scarf) was reading. But the middle cot was empty, with fresh bedding pulled tight.
The crust of bread turned to a pebble in my throat. The barrow woman was too ill to have been discharged, surely?
From over her magazine, Delia Garrett gave me an angry stare.
The night nurse heaved herself off the chair. Nurse Power, she said.
Sister Luke.
The Church considered it immodest for nuns to serve in lying-in wards, but given the shortage of midwives, Matron—who happened to be from the same religious order as Sister Luke—had managed to persuade their higher-ups to lend this experienced general nurse to Maternity/Fever. For the duration, as everyone said.
I found I couldn’t control my voice enough to ask about Eileen Devine. I drained the cocoa that now tasted like bile and rinsed the cup at the sink. Is Sister Finnigan not in yet?
The nun pointed one finger at the ceiling and said, Called to Maternity.
It had the ring of one of Groyne’s playful synonyms for death.
Sister Luke adjusted the elastic band of her eye patch, a puppet pulling its own strings. Like quite a few nuns, she’d volunteered at the front, and shrapnel had sent her home with one eye gone. Between her veil and her white mask, the only skin showing was the hinterland around the other eye.
She came over to me now and nodded at the stripped cot. Poor Mrs. Devine slipped into a coma around two a.m. and expired at half past five, requiescat in pace.
She sketched a cross on the stiff, snow-white guimpe that covered her broad chest.
My heart squeezed for Eileen Devine. The bone man was making fools of us all. That was what we kids called death in my part of the country—the bone man, that skeletal rider who kept his grinning skull tucked under one arm as he rode from one victim’s house to the next.
I hung up my cape and coat without a word and swapped my rain-soaked straw hat for a white cap. I unfolded an apron from my bag and bound it on over my green uniform.
Words burst out of Delia Garrett: I woke up to see men toting her away with a sheet over her head!
I walked over to her. How upsetting, Mrs. Garrett. I promise you, we did our utmost for Mrs. Devine, but the grippe had lodged in her lungs, and in the end it stopped her heart.
Delia Garrett sniffed shakily and pushed back a smooth curl. I shouldn’t be in hospital at all—my doctor said this is only a mild dose.
That had been her constant refrain since arriving yesterday from her gracious Protestant nursing home where the two midwives on staff had been knocked out by the flu. Delia Garrett had walked in here wearing a ribboned hat and gloves rather than the old shawl typical of our patients; she was twenty years old, with a genteel South Dublin accent and that sleek air of prosperity.
Sister Luke tugged off her mackintosh sleeves and took her voluminous black cape from the peg. Mrs. Garrett’s passed a comfortable night, she told me.
Comfortable! The word made Delia Garrett cough into the back of her hand. In this poky cubby on a backbreaking camp bed with people dying left and right?
Sister only means your flu symptoms are no worse.
I tucked a thermometer as well as my silver watch, attached by its fob chain, into the bib of my apron. I checked my belt, my buttons. Everything had to fasten at the side so as not to scratch a patient.
Delia Garrett said: So send me home today, why won’t you?
The nun warned me that her pulse force—an indication of blood pressure—was still bounding.
Sister Finnigan and I hadn’t been able to decide if Delia Garrett’s flu was to blame for this hypertension; we often found the pulse force surged after the fifth month of pregnancy. Whatever the cause, there was no treatment but rest and calm.
I said, I do sympathise, Mrs. Garrett, but it’s best if we keep an eye on you till you’re quite well.
I scrubbed my hands at the sink now, almost relishing the sting of the carbolic soap; if it didn’t hurt a little, I wouldn’t trust it.
I looked over at the sleeper in the cot on the left. And how’s Mrs. Noonan been, Sister?
Much the same.
The nun meant Ita Noonan was still away with the fairies. Since yesterday, the woman had been so dazed, she