The Pull of the Stars

by Emma Donoghue

  Mary O’Rahilly stroked the top of her newborn’s rounded-cone head. The delicately coiled ear. So small!

  Oh, she’s just brand-new, I told her.

  I had no scales down here, but the infant looked a good size to me.

  Five minutes later the placenta slid out of Mary O’Rahilly on its own, whole and healthy-looking. No bleeding, even. And after all this first-timer had been through, she was barely torn; I disinfected the short rip, but it was nothing that couldn’t heal itself. Her pulse was safely down in the low eighties now.

  I put the baby in the crib and sent Bridie for another of those chilled moss packets. Oh, and have them tell Dr. MacAuliffe that Mrs. O’Rahilly’s delivered on her own, I said with satisfaction.

  I got her sitting propped up in Fowler’s position to let all her fluids trickle out and fastened her into an abdominal binder as well a nursing one for the breasts, with flaps of gauze over her great brown nipples. I put her in a fresh nightdress and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders.

  Honor White was coughing hard, the sound of a hammer on sheet metal. I dosed her with ipecac and more hot lemonade.

  Mrs. Garrett? Anything you need?

  But Delia Garrett had turned her face to the wall. A living baby, that was what she needed.

  I went back to the O’Rahilly child and cleaned her face and the inside of her mouth with a sterile cloth. I put two drops of silver nitrate into each eye. No sign of fever, runny nose, congestion, or lethargy; it seemed she’d slipped free of her mother without picking up her flu. With Bridie’s help I gave the infant her first bath in the sink—I took off that cheesy coating with olive oil and a flannel, lathered on soap with a soft sponge, dipped her in warm water, then dried her with dabs from a soft towel.

  Bridie gestured at the tied stump. Aren’t you going to take this thingy off?

  No, in a few days it’ll dry up and drop off by itself.

  I powdered and bandaged it before drawing on the minute binder that would support the baby from hips to ribs. I pinned on a nappy, then added an adjustable shirt, petticoat, and warm dress as well as knitted socks.

  I went back to the mother. Now, Mrs. O’Rahilly, you deserve a nice long sleep.

  The young mother struggled higher in the bed. Can I see her again first?

  I held the baby close enough for her to examine every feature.

  Mary O’Rahilly reached out to seize the bundle from my hands.

  In ordinary times, we might isolate a newborn from a sick mother and send it straight up to the nursery, but I had to assume they were short-staffed up there, and bottle-fed babies generally didn’t thrive as well as those nursed by their mothers. All in all, I thought this one would do best if she roomed in, even in a chockablock fever ward. All right, I said, but be careful not to cough or sneeze on her.

  I won’t, I swear.

  I waited to be sure the young mother had a safe hold on the girl. She did seem to know what she was doing by instinct.

  I asked, Mr. O’Rahilly will be delighted, won’t he?

  A tear sparkled down and hung on the young woman’s jaw, and I wished I hadn’t mentioned the husband. Had he wanted a boy, was that it?

  The baby let out a faint plaint.

  Would you like to try putting her to the didi right away?

  Mary O’Rahilly plucked at her laces.

  I helped her undo her nightdress. I lifted the gauze lid over one huge nipple. Tickle her upper lip with it.

  The young woman was abashed. Really?

  Delia Garrett said, That’s what makes them open their mouths.

  She was up on one elbow, watching with an indecipherable expression.

  Like this? Mary O’Rahilly looked past me at her neighbour.

  Delia Garrett nodded. And the second she opens wide, mash her on.

  When the moment came, Mary O’Rahilly pressed the small face to her breast, and I added more force with my cupped hand, saying, That’s it, good and firm.

  The young mother gasped.

  Delia Garrett asked, Does it hurt? It can, the first weeks.

  No, it’s just…

  Mary O’Rahilly was at a loss for words.

  I’d never felt a baby latch on, myself, could only guess what that lock of gums felt like. A tired but urgent working, the rooting of a worm in the dark ground?

  She asked, Won’t I suffocate her?

  Delia Garrett said, Not a chance.

  Watching Mary O’Rahilly with her baby, Bridie wore a soft but uneasy expression.

  I wondered if she’d been nursed by her mother, the one she’d been told hadn’t been able to raise her. Would Bridie ever even have seen this done, in fact, growing up in a strange little society of outcast children?

  Things were beautifully quiet. The baby was soon asleep on the teat—there wasn’t much to suck, the first few days—but Mary O’Rahilly wouldn’t have her disturbed, not even to let us change her own sheets. I knew that letting the newborn spend so much time in her mother’s arms might increase her risk of catching her flu, but then again, there was nothing so conducive to a baby’s sleep and growth as breastfeeding. I tucked the shawl around her again to keep them both warm.

  Bridie left, holding a tray of dirty things to be sterilised in one hand and a bucket of soiled linen for the laundry chute in the other.

  I made tea all round. Delia Garrett wanted three biscuits, which I took as a sign of life.

  When Bridie returned, she slurped her tea and sighed. Lovely.

  I sipped mine and tried to appreciate the flavor of woodchip and ash. It’s really not, Bridie. Before the war, people would have spat this stuff out.

  Well, but you brewed it fresh for us, she pointed out. And three sugars.

  I wondered how many spoonfuls the boarders at the motherhouse were allowed—one each?

  And a biscuit.

  You’re a tonic, I told Bridie. Just what the doctor ordered. Have another biscuit, if you like—you must be half dead.

  She grinned. Not even one per cent, remember?

  I stand corrected. We’re all one hundred per cent alive.

  I drank my tea down, thinking, Dust of the Indies.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Mary O’Rahilly had dropped off. I went over, rescued the baby from the crook of her mother’s elbow, and set her in the crib.

  Bridie murmured, Like the story.

  Which story?

  About the mother who comes back.

  From where?

  You know, Julia. The other side.

  I got it. She’s dead, this mother in the story?

  Bridie nodded. The babby won’t stop crying, so the mammy comes all the way back to nurse it.

  I knew some ghost stories but not that one. I watched the O’Rahilly baby. How long had the spectral mother stayed with her child? Not for good; that wouldn’t be allowed. Maybe all night, till cockcrow.

  It struck me that the newborn girl hadn’t been registered yet. I found a blank certificate in the desk and began a chart for her. I wrote O’Rahilly under Family name and noted the time of birth.

  Bridie, could you ever hold the fort while I go find a doctor to sign this?

  I paused in the doorway.

  I know that I know nothing, Bridie recited.

  That made me smile. Well, I conceded, you know a bit more than you did yesterday morning.

  Sister Finnigan would still be outraged, I thought as I headed for the stairs. So many rules I was getting used to breaking, bending to an unrecognizable degree, or interpreting in the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Only for the duration, of course, for the foreseeable future, as the posters said. Though I was having trouble foreseeing any future. How would we ever get back to normal after the pandemic? And would I find myself relieved to be demoted to mere nurse under Sister Finnigan again? Grateful for the familiar protocols or forever discontented?

  Snatches of conversation were smoke winding around me.

  Between the sixth and eleventh days.

/>   (That was one black-suited doctor to another.)

  Oh, yes?

  Typically, with this flu. If they’re going to go, that’s when.

  By go, he meant die, I realised. I thought of Groyne and all his colourful euphemisms for it.

  I could have got any doctor to sign the newborn’s certificate, but I kept asking after Dr. Lynn until a junior nurse directed me to the top floor of the hospital, a room at the very end of a corridor. I heard soft music coming from behind the door, but it was already dying away by the time I knocked.

  A small, shabby box room. Dr. Lynn looked up from the table she was using as a desk. Nurse Power.

  I found I was shy of mentioning the police. Instead I chanced asking, Did I interrupt you…singing, Doctor?

  A half laugh. The gramophone. I like to restore my spirits with a little Wagner when I’m catching up on paperwork.

  I couldn’t see a gramophone.

  She pointed it out, on a chair behind her. It’s a hornless model, or, rather, the horn is hidden within, behind slats. Much easier on the eye.

  So that was the wooden case I’d seen her lugging in yesterday morning. Oh, I just came to say that Mary O’Rahilly delivered her baby in Walcher’s position without surgical intervention.

  Good work!

  Dr. Lynn put her hand out for the birth certificate. I gave it to her, and she signed it. Do you need me to come down and suture the mother? Give the infant the once-over?

  No, no, they’re both doing very well.

  She gave me back the document and said, I’ll tell the office to phone the husband with the news. Is there anything else?

  I hovered uneasily. I wonder…should I have thought to try Walcher’s much earlier? Might it have shortened her labour and kept her from going into shock?

  Dr. Lynn shrugged. Not necessarily, if she wasn’t ready. At any rate, let’s not waste time on ruminations and regrets in the middle of a pandemic.

  I blinked and nodded.

  I noticed a brown smudge on her collar; I wondered if she knew it was there. There was that opulent fur coat slung over the back of the chair that held her gramophone. Also a folded hospital blanket and a pillow on the floor behind the desk; was the philanthropist locum kipping here like some tramp?

  Dr. Lynn followed my gaze. Her voice was jocular: I can’t get home much under the current circumstances.

  The influenza, you mean?

  That and the police.

  Then she must have heard they’d barged into the hospital looking for her. Did she know I’d put them off the scent for now? It felt too awkward to ask.

  Dr. Lynn said, When I have to go out, these days, I take cabs instead of riding my tricycle.

  That image made my mouth turn up at the corners.

  I’ve been trying to pass for an officer’s widow in a coat borrowed from a comrade who’s married to a count, she added with a derisory gesture at the fur. I affect to be a little lame in my left leg.

  Now a yelp of laughter escaped me. The whole situation reminded me of a slapstick sequence in a picture.

  Then I sobered and said, May I ask…is it true? Not your leg.

  Is what true?

  Was Dr. Lynn going to make me spell it out—what she was wanted for?

  She shook her head and said, Not this time. All we Sinn Féiners were doing last spring was protesting against the plan to extend conscription to Ireland. This so-called German plot was a fiction to justify the police banging us up, with the result that almost all my comrades have been held without charge in British prisons since.

  I wondered if that could really have happened, that the gunrunning conspiracy was trumped up. Dr. Lynn hadn’t denied her part in the Rising of ’16, after all, so if she claimed innocence on this occasion, I was inclined to believe her.

  Something else occurred to me. If she was in hiding at the moment, lying low at her flu clinic or seeing private patients, why on earth had she agreed to fill in at this big hospital, where we were all strangers to her and many of the staff, like Groyne, would be happy to see her dragged off in handcuffs? Except that…surely even Groyne would have to admit how much we needed competent doctors.

  I said suddenly, I fobbed them off this afternoon. The peelers who came looking for you, I mean.

  Did you, now? Well, thanks.

  She held her hand out, surprising me. I shook it. Hard and warm.

  My voice came out shrill: They could be back tomorrow. It’s not safe for you here.

  Oh, my dear girl, nowhere’s safe. But sufficient unto the day and all that.

  I should have been back on the ward by now, but I lingered. On the desk stood a silver framed photo, Dr. Lynn arm in arm with a smiling woman. I asked, Your sister?

  Her smile was lopsided. No, I’m afraid my family tried to have me declared a lunatic when I was deported, and even now they won’t let me come home for Christmas.

  I’m so sorry.

  That’s Miss Ffrench-Mullen in the picture, the dear friend I live with—when I’m not camping in box rooms, that is. We met in the Belgian refugee relief effort, and she’s funding my clinic.

  Clearly Dr. Lynn did nothing in the conventional way. I was suddenly aware that I was being nosy; I muttered my thanks and turned towards the door.

  Has the O’Rahilly infant tried the breast?

  Oh, she’s latched on well already.

  Very good. Nourishment direct from above. Not that these slum women have much to spare, Dr. Lynn added with a sigh. That baby will suck the marrow from her mother’s bones and still have less chance of surviving her first year than a man in the trenches.

  That horrified me. Really?

  She said sternly, Infant mortality in Dublin stands at fifteen per cent—that’s what living in the dampest, most crowded housing in Europe will do. Such hypocrisy, the way the authorities preach hygiene to people forced to subsist like rats in a sack. Year after year newborns are sent out in their frail battalions, undefended against dysentery, bronchitis, syphilis, TB…and the death rate for illegitimates is several times higher again.

  I thought of Honor White’s babies. The difference between them and Mary O’Rahilly’s could hardly be physiological; I supposed those born out of wedlock had so few on their side fighting to keep them alive.

  Dr. Lynn rolled on furiously. Ah, well, constitutional debility, the cushioned classes sigh. But perhaps slum children wouldn’t be so bloody debilitated if we tried the experiment of giving them clean milk and fresh air!

  I felt rather hectored but also shaken by her fervour.

  She put her head to one side, as if weighing me up. In our proclamation, there’s one line that’s very close to my heart: cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

  I stiffened at the mention of the manifesto the rebels had pasted up all over the city two years ago announcing their imaginary republic; I remembered skimming a copy (bottom torn off) on a buckled lamppost. I said gruffly, But to found a nation on violence?

  Now, Julia Power. Has any nation ever been founded otherwise?

  Dr. Lynn held up her palms. And really, she added, would you call me a violent woman?

  Tears prickled behind my eyes. I said, I just don’t understand how a physician could have turned to the gun. Nearly five hundred people died.

  She didn’t take offence; she looked back at me. Here’s the thing—they die anyway, from poverty rather than bullets. The way this godforsaken island’s misgoverned, it’s mass murder by degrees. If we continue to stand by, none of us will have clean hands.

  My head was spinning. I said, faltering: I really have no time for politics.

  Oh, but everything’s politics, don’t you know?

  I swallowed. I’d better get back to the ward.

  Dr. Lynn nodded. Tell me, though, your brother, the soldier—has he come home yet?

  The question caught me off guard. Yes, Tim lives with me. Though he’s…not what he was.

  Dr. Lynn waited.

  Mute, if you must kno
w. For now. The psychologist said he should recover in time.

  (Not quite a lie, just an overstatement.)

  Dr. Lynn’s mouth twisted.

  I asked accusingly, What? You don’t think he will?

  I’ve never met your brother, Nurse Power. But if he’s been to hell and back, how could he not be left altered?

  Her words were gentle but they crushed me. I was the one who knew him, and I couldn’t deny the truth of what she was saying. I should face it—the old Tim was not likely to come back.

  I turned to go.

  The doctor wound up the gramophone’s crank.

  The song hadn’t a tune, exactly. One woman singing, very melancholy at first, with strings behind her. Then her voice blazed up, slow fireworks.

  I didn’t ask, but Dr. Lynn said, It’s called Liebestod. That means love death.

  The love of death?

  She shook her head. Love and death at the same moment. She’s singing over her beloved’s body.

  I’d never heard the like. The sound got huger and huger and then the voice descended gently; the instruments went on for a while before they stopped too.

  On the stairs on the way down I found my knees were jerking under me. I supposed it had been a while since that half bowl of porridge. A few minutes more away from the ward was unlikely to make much difference, so I hurried all the way down to the canteen in the basement and loaded up a tray to carry back up to Maternity/Fever.

  When I came in, Bridie cried, Look at that!

  As if I’d laid out some banquet.

  Everything all right while I was gone?

  She said, No bother at all.

  Good work, I told her, just as Dr. Lynn had told me.

  None of the patients were hungry except Delia Garrett, who took some bread and ham. Bridie had a plate of stew, and I managed some bacon and cabbage.

  Don’t eat that bread, Bridie, it has a spot of mould.

  I’ve a cast-iron stomach, she assured me as she put it in her mouth.

  I’m terribly sorry.

  That was Honor White in a stiff voice, followed by a volley of coughs.

  I stood up, wiping my mouth. What is it, Mrs. White?

  I think I may have wet the bed.

  Don’t worry, it could happen to a bishop. Come on, Bridie, we’ll change the sheets.