The Fire's Center

by Shannon Farrell

  Riona breezed past Sean the night porter, standing in the doorway, bleary eyed from sleep, with an airy good morning, but dropped her bundle as she saw sheer chaos in the ward.

  One man, obviously drunk, was shouting and smashing bottles, while two women had begun fighting each other in the middle of the floor, and were tearing each other’s hair out in handfuls.

  Dr. Kennedy was trying to calm them down, while Dr. O’Carroll was busy in the small side ward with what appeared, from the amount of bloody linens and the horrendous screams, to be a very difficult birth.

  Breda, who was meant to be doing the breakfasts for all the patients Lucien had newly admitted the evening before, had had her kitchen raided in the middle of the night by three of the hungrier patients, so that there was nothing left to eat for the others.

  Angela the night nurse was complaining that someone had smashed open the drug cabinet, and had stolen most of what was inside.

  Whisking off her cloak, Riona first went to the medicine cabinet, where she prepared a small opium and brandy tincture for the drunken man.

  "Here you are, Tom, have a proper drink. That’s some of Dr. Woulfe’s best brandy," Riona offered with a winning smile.

  Old Tom’s hands were shaking so badly he spilt half of the concoction, but the other half went down his throat, and within seconds she had him back in his bed, and tied his hands and feet to the metal bed posts.

  As for the fighting women, Riona separated the two of them by offering to let them help her make the breakfast, and saying they would get double portions if only they stopped quarrelling.

  Then she ran to sleepy old Sean, scolded him for letting things get so out of hand, and sent him to the nearby market for bread, butter, oats, and honey.

  "And don’t forget to get some more milk," Riona said, indicating the empty bottles on the doorstep. "They’ve even gone and drunk all of that!"

  Then she had a quick look in the larder, where there were at least some oats, and got the quarrelsome women to help draw water for the porridge, tea and washing for the morning.

  Soon enough their meagre strength gave out, and Breda had the kitchen back to herself again.

  "Sean has gone for some more food," Riona told her. "We will be running late this morning, but they’ll all get fed in the end. In the meantime, while you wait, you can tidy up this place a bit. It looks like you’ve had a war in here."

  Breda nodded, relieved that Riona was there to give them some sound advice.

  Then Riona went over to where Angela was sitting shaking her head.

  "The doctor will kill us."

  "Never mind him. Let’s just hope whoever stole that medicine doesn’t kill anyone himself! Now, I want you to get everyone up out of their beds for a wash as soon as the water is boiled, and then Sean can search everywhere for the bottles that were taken."

  "But to wash them all? We’ll be at it all day!" Angela exclaimed.

  "Let’s face it, some of them will be leaving soon enough anyway, and this is possibly the last chance they’ll get for a decent bath before they do. See what gowns and men’s clothes you can find. We certainly can’t put them back in the rags they arrived in," Riona instructed. "I don’t know what you were thinking of, letting them keep their own clothes on!"

  "Ursula was the one who helped admit them, not me," she bristled defensively. "And all the clothes you laid in were stolen as well while she was on duty."

  "It doesn’t matter whose fault all this is," Riona pointed out sharply. "The point is, will you help now?"

  Angela nodded reluctantly, for she could see the wisdom of Riona’s ideas

  "I’ll do my best. And my mother’s employer works for one of the big linen factories in the city. I’ll ask her to see if there is any cloth they might be willing to donate to the clinic."

  "That’s an excellent idea, Angela, thank you."

  Angela scurried off to do her chores, and soon Breda came back with two of her eldest daughters. "If you're willing to pay them a few pennies, they can help with the washing and scrubbing today."

  Riona looked around at the mountain of washing which had accumulated in the baskets in the last couple of days, and the ward full of dirty sheets, and nodded.

  "Aye, we can use them all right. I’ll need every tub in this place filled with hot water, do you hear me? If you can bring you laundry tubs from home too, girls, it would be a great help."

  The two pale redheaded girls, with skin so fair it was almost transparent, nodded. They reappeared a short time later, and began scrubbed the sheets and towels with a vengeance.

  Riona poured disinfectant into all the wash tubs as well, and was relieved to see it was going to be another hot sunny day, a perfect day for drying.

  So far Riona had tried to stay out of the way of the two doctors attending the pregnant woman, but since Angela had her hands full and Ursula the day nurse had not yet arrived, nor any other doctor, they soon asked for her help.

  Riona strode into the room, trying not to show her discomfort at being there. The woman’s screams continued unabated, though they were weaker than when she had first arrived.

  "She has been pushing and pushing, but I don’t see any sign of movement at all. I also don’t think I feel the head," Dr. Kennedy said quietly.

  "It might be a breach birth then?" Riona asked.

  Dr. Kennedy looked surprised, but asked, "You’ve had experience of this, coming from such a large family, haven’t you?"

  "My sister in law, in fact. She had a difficult birth, and then caught childbed fever and died," Riona admitted with a shudder.

  Riona recalled he hadn’t been able to save Emer then, and she had very little confidence she would be able to help this poor woman now.

  "Who is she?"

  "She says her name is Mary Smith, but sure, all the prostitutes say that," Dr. O’Carroll sneered.

  "Mary, can you hear me? Mary, I’m just going to go get some warm oil to rub on you, to try to ease this a bit, and then I'm going to examine you, all right?" she said loudly to the woman who writhed on the bed.

  "Anything, please, only hurry!" the woman panted in the bed helplessly.

  Riona got some eucalyptus oil from the pharmacy. After heating it briefly in a small pot on the now blazing stove, she massaged the woman’s distended abdomen for several moments.

  "From the size of her, I would say the problem might actually be twins," Riona assessed as she worked with large, even strokes. "If they're both turned around the wrong way, we will have problems. I have no way of knowing if they might be wrapped around each other, or even have the cord wrapped around them," she admitted in an undertone to Dr. Kennedy, who seemed slightly more sympathetic to the woman’s plight.

  "Do the best you can, Riona," Dr. Kennedy said resignedly. "We’ve tried everything."

  Riona noticed Dr. O’Carroll assiduously ignoring her, but she didn’t care. A woman was suffering, and would surely die if she didn’t help. What difference did it make what the arrogant gentleman thought?

  Riona washed her hands in the basin carefully until the were free of eucalyptus oil, but she then put some salve on her hands and examined the woman internally, probing as far as she could with her petite hand.

  "I need you to bear down for me, Mary," she requested. Sure enough, she could feel a foot.

  "It is a breach," she confirmed instantly. "We are going to need some strips of cloth, and we should give her some opium to relax her a bit. We don’t want to tear her, but I think we are going to have to make a cut here and here to try to widen the passage," she advised, wiping her hand on a towel before pointing.

  "Are you mad! Cut her?" Dr. O’Carroll exclaimed with a snort.

  Riona grew impatient at his mocking tone. "We can sew up an incision again afterwards easily enough, but if she tears we might not be able to manage," Riona argued rationally. "I’ve heard of it being done, so please trust me."

  "But it's surgery, and we aren’t really experienced..." Dr. Kennedy hesitat
ed.

  "Do you think this woman is going to care as long as you save her life?" Riona argued angrily.

  "And if she's dead because I've made a mistake, no one is going to come complaining to you, now are they!" Riona added sarcastically to Dr. O’Carroll, who glowered at her across the room.

  Dr. Kennedy looked from one to the other as they stood there at loggerheads, and in the end declared, "All right, I agree with you, Riona. We’ve tried everything else. We have nothing to lose by doing things your way at this point."

  Dr. O’Carroll scowled darkly, but asked, "What did you say you would need, Miss Connolly?"

  "Opium, some cloth strips, and some muscle power. I’m going to loop the cloth around the baby’s feet, and while I'm massaging her stomach, you will apply gentle but steady pressure to try to tug the baby out, is that clear?"

  "What do you want me to do?" Dr. Kennedy asked.

  "Stand by ready to catch the baby, or to try to revive it if it isn’t breathing. You can have a turn tugging if you like as well. Are we all ready?"

  "Right, here’s some opium out of my bag," Dr. O’Carroll said, shaking the bottle with a small amount of white powder in it. "There isn’t much, but it's the best we can do since the medicine cabinet got broken into."

  Riona shot him an assessing look, then nodded.

  After Mary drank down the bitter draught he prepared for her under Riona’s close scrutiny, they began to resume their efforts.

  "Bear down, Mary, now, bear down!" Riona urged. She managed to loop the cloth around the infant’s foot. "Again!" she ordered repeatedly, until at last, after several tries, she secured the second foot.

  "Right steady pressure, Dr. O’Carroll, but don’t yank. Now, Mary, I need you to push, and I’m going to help."

  Riona got onto the bed, and despite the shocked looks from both O’Carroll and Kennedy, she hoisted her skirts up and straddled the woman, pinning down her top half so she couldn’t wriggle away, and massaging her stomach with downward strokes to encourage the baby along.

  "Here we go! Push, Mary, push! Now you tug, Dr. O’Carroll, go on, push, tug," Riona urged.

  "I think I feel something," she said to Dr. Kennedy with a grin.

  So absorbed were they with their efforts to help the woman that they never even noticed the witness standing outside looking in through the glass windows.

  Lucien stood there, stunned and angry that Riona should be assisting at a birth, but also wondering why Dr. Kennedy and Dr. O’Carroll were on duty when he was certain that Dr. O’Shea and Dr. Briggs were meant to be there, and why the entire place looked like a Turkish bath.

  His first instinct was to remove Riona from the birthing room, but just as he put his hand on the door knob, Dr. Kennedy yelled excitedly from his vantage point, "It’s coming. You were right, Riona, it’s coming."

  "Push, Mary, come on, push!"

  At last, Dr. Kennedy caught the tiny infant in his arms and began to clear its mouth and nose.

  "It’s a lovely boy!" he exclaimed, until he noticed it was too quiet.

  The child didn’t seem to be breathing, and even after a few resound whacks on its bottom from Dr. Kennedy, there was no response.

  Riona jumped down off the bed then and told Dr. Kennedy to hold it upside down whilst she rubbed its back, but still there was nothing.

  "After all that, it’s dead anyway!" Dr. O’Carroll grumbled bitterly.

  "Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say that!" Riona rounded on him, trembling with anger.

  She took the infant from Dr. Kennedy, and laying it down on the side table, she pinched its tiny nostrils closed, and blew air into the infant’s mouth

  "Riona, really!" Dr. Kennedy protested, shocked. "Let it go. You’re doing no one any good..."

  Just then the infant gave a tiny gurgle, and Riona turned its head to one side as fluid dripped out of it. She tapped it lightly on the bottom, and the boy gave a watery cry at last.

  "You were saying, Dr. Kennedy?" Riona stated flatly, before she handed the child to him and turned back to where Mary lay.

  She felt the abdomen and confirmed, "It is as I said, twins."

  She wiped her hands off and then probed again. "This one is well on its way, gentlemen, and it’s the right way around."

  Within moments another tiny boy popped out, and the exhausted Mary began to cry with relief that at last it was all over.

  "Not all over, Mary love, it’s only just started," Riona said with a smile. "You’ll have you hands full with this lusty pair, you mark my words."

  With Dr. Kennedy’s help, she bathed the babies, put them in clean napkins, and then tidied up the room and the mother, giving her clean sheets and a fresh gown, and bundling all the dirty items into the nearest wash tub with Breda’s help.

  All the while Lucien stood outside tending to lesser medical issues, and stunned by what he had seen. He had known Riona was a skilful healer, but she seemed to have some sort of gift that he himself had always felt that he lacked.

  Just as he was about to go in and speak to Riona about what she had been doing, a distraught looking man came running in and begged, "My wife Mary, where is she?"

  Lucien wordlessly pointed inside, and the husband, overjoyed, ran in to see his wife, pale and wan, clutching not one but two babies.

  "I just got word at the factory, my love," he apologised as he ran up to the bedside and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. "When the neighbours said that you’d been taken to the clinic, I thought I’d lost you for sure. "

  "I’m fine, really." Mary smiled. "And look, two babies instead of just the one. I don’t know how we’ll manage."

  "We’ll manage, even if I have to work around the clock, my darling. A first child is always special, but these two, they’re like a miracle!"

  He turned to Dr. Kennedy, who was mixing the last of the opium so that Mary could get some rest.

  "Thank you, doctor, thank you so much for everything," he said, offering his hand.

  Dr. Kennedy cleared his throat and said sheepishly, "Don’t thank me, thank Riona here. She saved your wife."

  The husband blinked.

  Riona said, "I think they deserve a few minutes alone, don’t you?"

  Dr. O’Carroll followed Riona out, and would have walked past her had she not plucked him by the sleeve and hissed, "Well, I hope you're ashamed of yourself!"

  "What for?" he asked belligerently.

  "Let’s start first with what you did to that woman in there, or didn’t do. You simply assumed that she was a prostitute. You were ready to give up on her, to let her die, since you judged that she wasn’t cared for by anyone, and that the child was simply an unwanted bastard, a burden on the parish, didn’t you? Didn’t you!"

  He didn't even bother to deny the accusation. "There are plenty of those sort in the world! I ought to know. I see them milling out on the streets as I come back and forth to work here. Why should anyone care about them, degraded wretched that they are? Besides, one bastard less in the parish orphanages is a bonus. You should be thanking me. At any rate, I don’t know why I'm standing here defending myself. I don’t have to answer to the likes of you!" Dr. O’Carroll spat as he tried to push past her.

  "No, you’re right, you don’t. But you do have to answer to Dr. Woulfe if you wish to work in this clinic. Moreover, there is of course an even higher authority who can see into men’s hearts and knows all your petty spites and prejudices, even if you yourself aren’t willing to admit them," Riona said coldly.

  Dr. O’Carroll laughed at her moralising contemptuously. "I don’t need a moral lecture from a skivvy from the backwaters of Donegal, thank you very much. As for telling tales to Dr. Woulfe, he won’t believe you! You're no better than a serving wench. He’ll believe me, a respected professional,"’ Dr. O’Carroll sneered.

  "Not so fast, Doctor," Riona stated flatly, grabbing his arm and pushing him up against the wall. "Lack of patient care is one thing, but theft is another. I checked with Breda and Angela and D
r. Kennedy and Sean about the break-in. No one came in or out last night or this morning except me. We’ve searched all the patients and their beds on the pretext of bathing them.

  "So even if Dr. Woulfe weren’t to believe me about the situation with Mary Smith, whom you would have let die because you thought she was a mere whore, there is the small matter of the robbery and the missing drugs. Breda and Angela checked. They weren’t anywhere in the surgery. Your bag was in the office, so I took the liberty..."

  "You little bitch, I’ll bloody kill you!"