Like the aftereffects of strong spirits, that pesky feeling of lightness lingered into the next day. Una caught herself smiling while delousing a patient’s hair and humming—actually humming!—while scrubbing bedpans. What she needed was a cold pail of water thrown over her head. What came was worse.
Shortly after noon, the head nurse sent Una down to the basement exam room where new arrivals were seen before being transferred to the appropriate ward. An influx of patients was expected after an accident at the nearby tinware factory, and Una was to assist with their intake.
The nurse on duty in the exam room had only a few minutes to show Una where the supplies and medicines were kept before the first ambulance arrived. Three patients stumbled out of the back, bruised and bloody but able to walk. The next ambulance bell sounded only a few minutes later, and two more patients, both stretcher cases, were brought in. Una and the other nurse cleared beds for them, squeezing the first three men onto a single cot. Those patients who arrived on the third ambulance had no place to go but the floor.
Una tended to the less injured men while the other nurse, a second-year, took on the more severe cases. The house physician and his two interns bustled between them, tending those whose wounds were urgent and quickly assigning the rest to one of the upstairs wards.
The small room was as noisy and crowded as a concert saloon. Una had to step over patients lying on the floor and shimmy around others crammed three or four on the beds to reach the supply cabinet. Water from the washbasin spilled on her dress, and her apron was stained with blood. She cleaned and bandaged the men’s wounds. Smeared salve over their burns. Assisted the doctors in setting and splinting fractured bones. For each man who was conscious, she filled out an intake card with his name, age, address, and next of kin, pinning it to his shirt before orderlies carried him
upstairs. For those patients who were unconscious, Una simply wrote
Unknown.
She couldn’t help but think of her mother as she hustled from one patient to the next. Was this the sort of chaotic scene she’d arrived at after the fire? Had someone asked her name, sighed, and written unknown when only a raspy, uneven exhale came in reply? Would it have been better if she’d died at the scene, among the ash and rubble, like many of the others had?
Una pushed the thought aside but took care with each of the men she tended, even those too injured to mutter their name, offering a gentle touch or reassuring smile.
At some point, Edwin arrived, presumably to help identify which patients would need surgery and of what kind. Una registered his presence, and, as always, a pleasant warmth spread inside her. But she hadn’t time to seek out his smile or space among her harried thoughts to wonder when they might meet again. Too many patients yet needed her care.
Such was the mayhem that Una didn’t notice the arrival of another ambulance until Conor and the surgeon dragged in a new patient. A cot had recently been freed, but Una hadn’t yet found a spare moment to change out the soot-darkened and bloody sheets. They dropped the patient onto the cot anyway as there was little better place to put him. As soon as she finished mixing up a new batch of burn ointment, Una would see about fresh sheets and whatever else the patient needed.
Conor passed by Una on his way out. “Another factory worker?” she asked him.
“Nah, I think that’s the lot of ’em. This one’s just a drunkard.” He glanced at the patient with disgust. No, not disgust. Revulsion. The kind of look usually reserved for an overflowing privy. “Be better off without ’em, this city would.”
“I’ll get him cleaned up and into one of the alcoholic cells.”
“Not a him,” Conor said and spat on the floor. “She’s what passes for a lady in the slums.” He shook his head and stomped out. Una watched him go, unnerved by the vitriol in his voice. She’d seen his fits before. Listened to him blather on like a Bible-waving reformer. But this was a hospital, after all. Open to any in need. No one was quite as insufferable as a teetotaling Irishman, her father had always said. And Una had to agree.
She mixed the last of the linseed oil and lime water and brought the ointment to one of the interns. He was tending to a man who lay moaning
on the floor. Red, weeping burns covered his face and arms. Una helped the intern bandage the man’s wound with ointment-soaked rags, mindful that every inch of burn must be protected from the air. When they’d finished, orderlies carried the patient up to ward nine. She needn’t ask whether the man would make it. The doctor’s somber, thin-lipped expression bespoke the odds.
But she hadn’t time to wallow or return to thoughts of her mother, and for that, Una was grateful. She scrubbed her hands and pulled the last clean sheet from the cupboard. The drunk had not stirred since Conor and the ambulance surgeon had heaved her onto the cot. Una would have worried she were dead, but for her loud, tremulous snoring. A dirty, moth-eaten cloak covered her body, shrouding her face and entangling her limbs, so she looked more like a heap of rags than a woman. Only a few strands of red hair and a shoeless foot peeked out from beneath the fabric.
Una rolled the woman onto her side, bracing her heavy body with one hand while folding up the dirty sheet with the other. She put the fresh sheet down in its place and then heaved the woman onto her opposite side and repeated the procedure. The woman’s snoring faltered a moment only to start up even louder. She might be dead drunk, but at least now she was sleeping on a clean sheet. But when Una returned with an intake card to pin to the patient’s cloak, unknown already written in place of a name, she found the woman stirring.
“Miss? Miss are you awake?” Una knelt beside the cot and gently shook the woman’s shoulder.
The woman startled. She fought at the cloak still twisted around her body, spewing a string of curses. Her voice, though hoarse and muffled, sounded familiar. Before Una could place it, the woman managed to untangle herself and throw off the cloak.
Una gasped when she saw the woman’s face. Deidre? She caught herself before saying the name aloud. Her thoughts swam like mosquito larvae in a rusty pail. Maybe Deidre wouldn’t see past the nurse’s cap and uniform. She was drunk, after all. The scent of cheap brandy soured her breath and sweated through her skin.
Una scrambled up from her knees, but before she could fully stand, Deidre grabbed her arm. “Una? Is that you?”
“Miss, you’re heavily intoxicated and don’t know what you’re talking about.” She tried to pull free, but Deidre held on to her arm as if it were the
keys to a bank vault. An easy fix would be to sock Deidre in the jaw, but that was hardly behavior becoming of a nurse. “Miss, please let go of me before I—”
“I’d sooner be dead than not know you, Una Kelly.”
Not wanting to cause a scene and rip her shirtsleeve in the process, Una knelt beside the bed again. “Hush,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Or you’ll regret it.”
Deidre cackled. “You and your disguises. They don’t really think you’re a nurse, do they? And here I thought doctors were supposed to be smart.”
“I am a nurse.”
This made Deidre laugh all the harder.
“A trainee anyway. Applied and was accepted same as the other trainees.
Not that it’s any of your damn business.”
Deidre sat up, her hand still locked around Una’s arm. “They know you wanted for murder? You put that on your nurse’s application?”
Una glanced over her shoulder at the others in the room. Though several of the injured men had been moved up to the wards and one out to the morgue, it was still as harried and noisy as before. The second-year juggled an armful of rags and a basin of water as she tottered to a man with a bleeding head wound in the far corner. The house physician barked orders to his interns. Edwin examined a patient’s mangled hand. The orderlies scuttled out with another body bound for the morgue. She turned back to Deidre. “I didn’t murder nobody, and you know it.”
“Maybe not, but them coppers sure would like to know you’re here. They’ve even got a reward posted. Bet Marm Blei would pay to know too.”
Una’s heart skipped several beats before jolting back into an uneven rhythm. Panic licked like icy rain over her skin. “You wouldn’t . . . Deidre, we’re friends.”
“Ha! You think I don’t know you tried to pin ol’ Mike Sheeny’s death on me? I knew you would the minute I saw you in that cell.” She belched, then smiled smugly. “So I beat you to it.”
The cold panic settled in Una’s bones, making it impossible to move. Her thoughts continued to swim. Behind her, amid the clamor, she heard Edwin say to his patient that they’d need to operate immediately to save his hand. The sound of his voice—so steady and assured—helped quiet her mind. “Listen, I can . . . I can pay you to keep quiet.”
Deidre released her arm. “How much?”
“Five dollars a month.”
“Five! I can make twice that in a day dipping pockets.”
“Like hell, you can. When was the last time—” Una stopped. Arguing over Deidre’s lousy pickpocketing skills wouldn’t help anything. “Seven.”
“A month?”
“A month,” Una said, even though it would be a struggle to get by on the remaining three dollars of her stipend.
Deidre sucked on her bottom lip the way she always did whenever she was thinking hard. “That’s an extra hundred and ten dollars a year.”
“Something like that.”
“Them coppers only offering fifty.”
“Think of all the meat pies and brandy you could buy with the difference.” Una glanced over her shoulder. Another patient or two had been taken up to the wards. Most of the others sat bandaged and waiting. The second-year was gathering up the bloodied sponges and discarded bits of gauze from around the room. The doctors were consulting in the corner. Before long, they would want Una’s report on the inebriated patient or come to examine Deidre themselves. “Do we have a deal?”
“Throw in a quart of whiskey and a bottle of laudanum, and we do.” “What?”
“You got plenty around here. You telling me you ain’t taking a sip or two on the side?”
“No, I ain’t. I could get expelled for that.”
“Think of what they’d do if they knew you was wanted by the law.” “Fine. I’ll slip you laudanum this one time but—”
“Every time. Along with the seven dollars. And the whiskey too.”
“I—” Una stopped and hurried to her feet at the sound of approaching footfalls. It was Edwin. He glanced at Deidre with a frown, then said to Una, “What’s your report?”
“Vital signs are stable, sir. No injury or ill-health aside from inebriation.”
He leaned down and tried to peel back Deidre’s eyelid to examine her sclera, but she batted his hand away.
“Don’t touch me, you good-for-nothing—”
“I observed no signs of cirrhosis, sir,” Una said.
“All right. Have the orderlies take her to a cell to dry out.” “Yes, Doctor.”
Edwin flashed her the briefest of smiles and turned to go.
“Oh, Doctor,” Deidre said, her voice suddenly sweet. “I wanted to tell you something about this here nurse you got.”
Una stared at her with pleading eyes.
“She’s . . . she’s been right kind to me. Giving me everything I need.” Deidre glanced from Edwin to Una. “It sure is good to know that whenever I come back, I’ll be cared after just the same, won’t I?”
All Una could do was nod.
