Avoiding my eyes, the younger woman wore a faint smirk.
Well, one sausage—whatever it was made of these days—wouldn’t kill her, and Ita Noonan didn’t seem to want it.
The delirious woman skewed sideways all of a sudden, and her tray clattered down between her cot and the medicine cabinet. Tea spilled across the floor.
Mrs. Noonan! I stepped over the mess and studied the sheen across her scarlet cheeks; I could sense the sizzle of her skin. My thermometer was already in my hand. Pop this under your arm for me?
She didn’t respond, so I hoisted her wrist myself and tucked the thermometer into her armpit.
As I waited, I took out my watch and counted Ita Noonan’s noisy breaths and her pulse—no change. But the mercury had bumped up to 104.2. Fever did have power to burn off infection, though I hated to see Ita Noonan like this, sweat standing out along her intermittent hairline.
I stepped around her upturned breakfast to get ice from the counter, but the basin held only a puddle around a solitary half cube. So instead I filled a bowl with cold water and brought it over with a stack of clean cloths. I dipped them into the bowl one by one, squeezed them out, laid them over the back of her neck and on her forehead.
Ita Noonan twitched at the chill but smiled too, in instinctive politeness, more past me than at me. How I wished the woman still had wits enough to tell me what she needed. More aspirin might lower her temperature, but only a physician could order medicine for a patient; Dr. Prendergast was the one obstetrician on duty, and when was I likely to lay eyes on him this morning?
Now that I’d done all I could think of for Ita Noonan, I bent to pick up the tray and the plate. The handle was off the cup, in two pieces. I mopped up the puddle before someone could slip in it.
Shouldn’t you call someone to do that for you? Delia Garrett asked.
Oh, everyone’s swamped at the moment.
Technically, a spill came within the orderlies’ remit if one had no ward maid, probie, or junior nurse, but I knew better than to ask them. If one called those fellows in over a splash of tea, they might take offence and turn a deaf ear next time, when it was wall-to-wall gore.
Ita Noonan’s fiery face on the pillow seemed preoccupied. Lovely day for a dip in the canal!
Did she believe she was bathing? Something made me check under her blanket, and—
She’d flooded the sheets. I withheld a sigh. She mustn’t have passed water at all when I’d taken her to the lavatory. Her bed needed making now, and a pair of nurses could do it if the patient was co-operative, but there was just one of me, and Ita Noonan so unpredictable.
I had the machine on hire purchase, she complained, only they dropped it off the balcony…
The delirious woman was caught up in some old or imagined disaster.
Come on, now, Mrs. Noonan, just hop out of bed for a minute so I can strip these wet things off you.
Smashed my holies, so they did!
Delia Garrett announced, I need the lavatory.
If you could wait just a minute—
I really can’t.
I was tugging a top corner of Ita Noonan’s sheet off the mattress. I’ll give you a bedpan, then.
She poked one pale foot out and said, No, I’ll go on my own.
I’m afraid that’s not allowed.
Delia Garrett let out a harsh cough. I’m perfectly able to find my way, and I need to stretch my legs anyway, I’m stiff from lying here like a sow.
I’ll bring you, Mrs. Garrett. Give me two ticks.
I’m simply bursting!
I couldn’t block the door or chase her into the passage. I said sternly, Please stay where you are!
I abandoned Ita Noonan and her sodden bed and nipped into the passage. The nameplate on the first door said WOMEN’S FEVER.
All seemed calm inside. Excuse me, Sister…Benedict?
Unless it was Sister Benjamin? The tiny nun looked up from her desk.
I’m in charge of Maternity/Fever today, I told her. My voice came out too high, more cocky than careworn. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder as if to suggest that she mightn’t have heard of our little temporary ward. I should have introduced myself first, but I’d missed the moment. Sister, I wonder if you could ever spare me a junior or probie?
She was well-spoken, her voice soft. How many patients have you in Maternity/Fever, Nurse?
I felt myself flush. Just two at the moment, but—
The ward sister cut me off. We have forty here.
I glanced around, counting; she also had five nurses under her. Then could you at least get a message to—
Not Matron, I reminded myself. On this topsy-turvy day, Matron might be in one of these cots; I scanned the rows. Mind you, I wasn’t sure I’d recognise her out of uniform.
Could you ask whoever’s standing in for Matron? I really need assistance rather urgently.
I’m sure our superiors are well aware, said Sister Benedict. One does one’s bit. Everyone must pull together.
I said nothing.
Like a curious bird, the nun put her head to one side as if making a note of exactly how I was failing so she could report to Sister Finnigan later. You know, I always say a nurse is like a spoonful of tea leaves.
I couldn’t answer in case my words came out in a roar.
A hint of a smile for the punch line: Her strength only shows when she’s in hot water.
I made myself nod at this wise saw so Sister Benedict wouldn’t write me up for insubordination. I shut the door soundlessly behind me, then remembered the papers in my bib and had to double back and open it again. If I could leave you my supply requisitions, Sister, to pass on to the office?
Certainly.
I pulled out the fistful of curling slips and dropped them on the counter.
I half ran back to my ward.
Ita Noonan hadn’t stirred from her urinous bed. The younger woman’s need was more urgent, I decided. Let’s get you to the lavatory then, Mrs. Garrett.
She sniffed.
I steered her by the elbow. As soon as we were in the passage she began to scuttle, a hand clamped to her mouth. Oh, hurry, Nurse!
Halfway along the passage, she bent in two and threw up.
I couldn’t help noticing telltale pieces of sausage.
I fished a clean cloth out of my apron to wipe Delia Garrett’s mouth and the top of her nightdress. You’re all right, dear. This nasty illness can disrupt digestion.
Now I really needed to find an orderly to mop this vomit up, but Delia Garret gripped her belly and cantered away towards the lavatory. I followed, my rubber soles slapping the marble behind her slippers.
The sounds from behind the stall door told me she had diarrhea now too.
As I waited for Delia Garrett, arms crossed, my gaze was caught by a word on a poster still damp from the printer’s: bowels.
PURGE THE BOWELS REGULARLY.
CONSERVE MANPOWER
TO KEEP IN FIGHTING TRIM.
INFECTION CULLS
ONLY THE WEAKEST OF THE HERD.
EAT AN ONION A DAY TO KEEP ILLNESS AT BAY.
So we’d come to this—Anonymous had spewed his lifeblood all over Nurse Cavanagh in the street, and the government in its wisdom was prescribing onions? And as for the culling of the weakest, what cruel absurdity. This flu was nothing like the familiar winter bane that snuffed out only the very oldest and frailest. (If that one turned to pneumonia, it generally took them off so gently that we’d nicknamed it Friend to the Aged.) This new flu was an uncanny plague, scything down swaths of men and women in the full bloom of their youth.