a warrant. (Patting his breast pocket.) War crimes.
The first fellow asked uncertainly, This is the lying-in ward?
I was on the point of telling him that the main one was upstairs. But if they were stupid enough to believe that a hospital this size might have only three women in its maternity ward, why should I correct them? I flung out my hand at the waiting baby crib. What do you think?
The taller one frowned and adjusted his chin strap. Then where would we find this Mrs. Lynn?
How should I know?
The fact was, I couldn’t do without the doctor, not right now, when there wasn’t an obstetrician in the building. If they arrested her—locked her up or deported her to England again—what would happen to Mary O’Rahilly? My patients’ welfare came first, and politics would just have to wait.
I demanded, What’s this warrant?
The constable fished out his piece of paper. Defence of the Realm Regulation Fourteen (b), he read a little stumblingly, being suspected of acting or having acted or being about to act in a manner prejudicial to the public safety.
What on earth does that mean?
Bridie took a breath to speak.
I threw her a look.
She said, I was upstairs just now, and I couldn’t find Dr. Lynn.
The first policeman’s shoulders sagged. Well. When she comes in next, tell her she’s obliged to present herself—to turn herself in at Dublin Castle, as a matter of urgency.
I said, Certainly, Constable.
Head skewed around at the end of the mattress, Mary O’Rahilly had been watching this scene play out with fearful eyes. But now a pang seized her; she hauled on her looped towel and let out a long groan.
The policemen fled.
This time I lifted up her right foot and set it against my hip as she pushed. No sign of any progress.
When I got a chance, again over by the sink, I asked Bridie in a whisper: Did you make that up, about not being able to find Dr. Lynn?
Bridie’s mouth was mischievous. Not exactly. They said she was in surgery and they’d get a message to her.
Mary O’Rahilly cried out again.
I hurried back. I palpated her abdomen and used the ear trumpet to check that the foetal heartbeat was still pattering away. She’d been working for—I checked my watch—more than an hour and a quarter now, and the head didn’t feel to my hands as if it had descended an inch. What could be blocking the way?
Such confidence in Bridie’s light blue eyes, turned towards me as if I knew everything, as if all things were possible to me and my lucky hands.
The bladder. Mary O’Rahilly hadn’t emptied it on my shift.
Bridie, a bedpan, right away, please.
I persuaded the girl to lean up on one hip and got the thing under her. You need to pass water to make room in there, Mrs. O’Rahilly. Try to release it. Even a drop.
She sobbed and coughed. There’s nothing there.
I wondered if the foetus’s head was blocking the urethra, preventing liquid from flowing.
I told her, I’m going to let it out for you.
(Such a simple description of a tricky procedure. Yet in the absence of a doctor, I had to try it.)
I got Mary O’Rahilly lying down on her left again. Then I dashed to the sink to scrub my hands and find a sterile catheter as well as a bottle of carbolic solution.
Mary O’Rahilly had her chin on her chest, her teeth bared. She heaved, eyes bulging.
When the pang was over, I told her, You’re doing grand.
She gasped when I poured the cold disinfectant over her privates.
I mouthed at Bridie: Hold her.
Bridie set her hands on the young woman’s ankles.
Mrs. O’Rahilly, stay very still for a minute, please…
I’d inserted a catheter before, but not often, and never into a woman being wracked by labour.
This will sting, I told her, but only for a moment.
Her face screwed up. Somehow I found the opening and slid the greased end in, half an inch. She let out a sharp cry.
But what if everything was pressed out of shape by the small skull—what if I punctured the bladder? I closed my eyes, took a breath. I fed the catheter up into—
Urine the colour of weak tea shot all over my apron. Quickly I aimed my end of the catheter into the dry bedpan.
Bridie cried, You did it!
Mary O’Rahilly was pissing like a soldier now, like a horse, like a mountain spring. When the flow trailed off, I pulled out the tube and Bridie carried the bedpan to the