Honor White breathed, God save us.

It was a prayer of hope, but I all I could hear in this woman’s husky voice was mortification and loneliness.

Delia Garrett demanded, Do you mean to leave me on this thing all evening?

I lifted the bedpan out from under her, wiped her clean, then fetched antiseptic gauze and dabbed her stitches ever so gently.

Bridie, could you empty and rinse this in the lavatory? And get me another chilled pad for Mrs. Garrett.

Good evening, Nurse Power.

I turned to see Sister Luke addressing me through her mask, looking as starched as ever.

Where had the hours gone? I glanced at the clock and saw it was nine o’clock on the dot. I supposed I’d feel bone-weary if I let myself think about it. But I didn’t want to leave.

I noticed that both Mary O’Rahilly and Honor White were rigid, laying eyes on the night nurse for the first time—she was an Egyptian mummy come to life.

Sister Luke snapped the string of her eye patch as she tightened it. How did you get on today?

I couldn’t think how to sum up all that had been packed into these fourteen hours. I pictured their faces: Ita Noonan taken off in convulsions, despite all I did; the unnamed Garrett girl born dead before I could do anything for her at all. Her mother might have bled out, though, but hadn’t. Such an arbitrariness to all their fates.

In a low voice, I brought Sister Luke up to date. Mrs. White’s pneumonia needs watching, I told her, and so does Mrs. Garrett’s wound. The only one in labour is Mrs. O’Rahilly, who hasn’t been making much headway, so Dr. Lynn’s just broken her waters.

Sister Luke nodded as she hung up her apron. Having a long old time of it, are you, Mrs. O’Rahilly?

The girl managed a nod and a wet cough.

The nun quoted philosophically, Well, Woe unto them that are with child.

Irritation stiffened my spine. Some older nurses seemed to think every woman who’d had relations with a man—even her husband—should expect the punishment that followed. I hardly liked to leave this weary and frightened girl in the nun’s hands.

I said, Mrs. O’Rahilly may have more chloral to help her sleep through her pangs, if need be.

But what would the night nurse consider need?

I warned her, If the pangs get much stronger or start speeding up, step into Women’s Fever and have them call a midwife down from Maternity, right?

Sister Luke nodded.

And as there are so few physicians on duty, Dr. Lynn’s given permission for any of these patients to have whiskey, chloroform, or morphine.

Above the mask, the nun’s eyebrows arched at this breach of protocol.

Bridie dashed in with the chilled moss pad.

Sweeney, have you been making yourself useful?

It seemed a curt form of address, but Bridie only shrugged.

I took the pad from her hand and said, Indispensable, in fact.

That made the corners of Bridie’s mouth turn up.

The nun was unpacking an apron. The queue I passed outside the picture house! Grown men, women, and children, all gasping to get into the great germ box.

Well, the small pleasures of the poor, I murmured as I got my coat on. Can you blame them?

Sister Luke jerked a fresh pair of mackintosh sleeves up past her elbows. Courting death, so they are. Off you go now, Sweeney.

Her rudeness took me aback.

But Bridie grabbed her coat and left the room.

I said a quick good night to my three patients and put my cape and bag over my arm.

I thought I might have lost her, but I spotted her below me. Bridie!

I caught up to her and we headed down the noisy staircase together. You shouldn’t let Sister Luke boss you about that way.

Bridie only smiled.

And she’s very harsh on cinemagoers, I added. In depressing times, doesn’t one need a cheap escape?

I saw a picture once.

Oh, yes? Which one?

I don’t know what it was called, she admitted. By the time I managed to slip off and sneak into the cinema by the side door, the story was half told.

Slip off from where? I wondered. And why sneak in by the side door—hadn’t she the price of a ticket?

Bridie said, But I do remember the heroine was only gorgeous, a wee slip of a thing. She was marooned, and this fellow showed up, and next thing, they had a baby!

She laughed a little bashfully.

Then wouldn’t you know, another ship turned up with his wife on it…

I asked, This was a couple of years ago?

The title came back to me. Hearts Adrift, I told her. Mary Pickford and…I forget.

Mary Pickford? echoed Bridie. I didn’t think she’d have an ordinary name like Mary.

She’s quite something, isn’t she? Nothing ordinary about her.

Hearts Adrift; Bridie brought out the phrase with a slow savor. Oh, I’m getting it now, adrift because they’re shipwrecked.

Didn’t you love her in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?

I’ve only seen the one picture.

Sympathy stopped me in my tracks. Once, in her roughly twenty-two years? I’d been going to the cinema ever since I’d come up from the country, and Tim came along with me after he moved to Dublin. Did Bridie’s parents not let her out in the evenings or hadn’t they two pennies to rub together? But I couldn’t shame her by asking.

I continued down the steps. Then it’s as well it was a good one, I suppose.

Bridie nodded with one of her gleaming grins.

The plot of Hearts Adrift was coming back to me. At the end, when Mary Pickford leaps into the volcano…

I thought I’d die with her!

(Bridie’s eyes as wet as shore pebbles.)

I said, I can’t remember what happens to the baby, though. Do the married couple take it away with them?

No, no, she has it in her arms when she jumps.

Bridie mimed that, protective arms caging the invisible infant on her chest, her face lit up with ecstasy.

It was such a pleasure to be able to chat for a minute without worrying about patients. But at the base of the stairs, staff pushed past us in the hullabaloo of shift changeover.

Are you all right walking home in the dark, Bridie?

I’m grand. Where do nurses sleep?

Well, big lodging houses, most of them, but I rent with my little brother. I take a tram and then cycle the rest of the way. Tim’s twenty-six.

I added that belatedly, in case I’d made him sound like a boy.

Bridie nodded.

He enlisted in ’14, I surprised myself by telling her.

Did he? How long was he gone?

Nineteen months at first. Then he sent word from Macedonia that he’d been made second lieutenant, and I should expect him home on leave. But he never turned up, and it took me three days to discover that he was in hospital with trench fever. No sooner did he get over that than they told him it had counted as his leave, and he was being posted back.

Bridie groaned.

Well, I said, one has to laugh.

(What I didn’t mention was that when Tim had finally been shipped back to me from Egypt fourteen months after that, he wasn’t speaking.)

Good night, then, Julia.

I was still oddly unwilling to let the conversation end. Have you far to go?

Bridie jerked her thumb left. Only down the street.

Her eyes dropped briefly.

She added, To the motherhouse.

Oh, now I understood why Sister Luke took such a proprietorial tone. Bridie’s shabby clothes, too, the lack of free evenings and spending money…