Can you manage?
A loud sneeze drowned out Bridie’s answer. Sorry!
Punished for sneezing at mass, I remembered.
She turned her back modestly and started unbuttoning.
I found her a clean handkerchief, slid a thermometer under her tongue, and began a chart as if she were any new patient. Bridie Sweeney. Age twenty-two (approx.). So many details I didn’t know. It galled me to give her address as the motherhouse of Sister Luke’s order. Admitting physician—blank. I tried to remember when I’d put the thermometer in her mouth—could one minute have passed yet? Time was moving so peculiarly. I bent and touched Bridie’s jaw. Open up?
Her dry lips parted, releasing the thermometer; her lip clung to the glass as I lifted it out, and a bit of skin tore, releasing a bubble of blood.
I dabbed the glass and read it: 102.6. High, but actually not particularly high for this flu, all things considered, I told myself.
I hurried out the door. I pushed past nurses and doctors and shuffling patients in the passage. I leaned into Women’s Fever, and because I couldn’t for the life of me remember the ward sister’s name, I called, Nurse? Nurse?
The small nun didn’t like that form of address. What is it, Nurse Power?
My runner’s not well, I said in a high, falsely casual voice. Could you spare someone to fetch a doctor right away?
I didn’t say for what patient; I couldn’t admit that I’d put a volunteer helper into a bed when she hadn’t even been admitted.
The nun sighed and said, Very well.
I bit back the word Now.
When I got back to my ward, Bridie was under the covers already, her clothes folded on the chair.
(I realised she’d grown up knowing she’d be beaten if she dawdled.)
I was in no state to be in charge of this ward, given that I was so frightened I could hardly breathe, but it wasn’t as if there was anyone else. Needs must. I propped Bridie up on two pillows. I fetched four sulphur-reeking blankets from the press. I made up a hot whiskey, very strong. Bridie’s respirations were just a little fast, and her pulse was only slightly high. I wrote down all the figures, trying to think scientifically. No cough, at least.
Bridie shifted between the sheets. She asked, But what if a real patient needs the bed?
Shush, now, you’re as real as any. High time you had a rest after all the racing around for me you’ve been doing. Enjoy a little kip.
My tone was incongruously playful.
I added, You must be sleepy after sitting up all night on the roof.
Bridie’s chapped smile was radiant.
I twisted around suddenly. Mrs. O’Rahilly, I wonder, would you mind if I moved you to the far bed to make a little more room here?
Mary O’Rahilly blinked. Certainly.
(Whenever I leaned over Bridie, I thought I was doing a good job of keeping the panic from showing on my face—the panic but not the love. I couldn’t bear anyone to see the way I was looking at her.)
So I helped Mary O’Rahilly out of her sheets and into the cot by the wall. I did spare a thought for the two babies. I pushed Eunice’s crib between her mother’s cot and the emptied middle one, to move her away from Bridie’s sneezes. Then I shoved Barnabas’s crib alongside it, but too hard, so both babies were slightly shaken, and Eunice sent up a whimper.
I was busy trying to remember, if I’d ever been told, whether a faster onset of the flu necessarily meant a worse case. Might Bridie blaze through the thing and be back on her feet and laughing in a few days?
To keep off the chill, I draped a cashmere shawl around her head and neck.
Her teeth were chattering. Lovely!
I laid the blankets over her and tucked them around her narrow, shaking frame.
She joked, I might get too hot now.
It’s good to sweat it out, I told her. More water?
I hurried to pour a glass.
Bridie sneezed five times in a row into her handkerchief. Sorry—
I cut her off. You don’t have to be sorry for anything.
I flung her handkerchief in the laundry basket and gave her another. Was I imagining it or was the colour spreading towards her porcelain ears? And rather more like mahogany now? Red to brown to—
Drink your whiskey, Bridie.
She gulped her drink. Spluttered.
I scolded fondly, Little sips!
She gasped. I thought it would taste nicer than it does.
I could hear the effort in her voice, the precariousness of breath. I said, You know,