I said, The same black hair as yours.

Now the baby was crowning, I could free Mary O’Rahilly from Walcher’s position. I lifted her right leg up and set the flat of her foot against my belly.

Bedrests out, Bridie.

She tugged them away.

The mattress jerked back down and Mary O’Rahilly with it. I thrust one of the wedges behind her head and helped her up until she was semi-inclined.

Will I put them back—

Leave them, Bridie! Just hold her other leg for me.

She ran around the bed and lifted Mary O’Rahilly’s left foot.

Shrinking back against the wall, in the cot on the left, Honor White was transfixed.

Here it comes, Mrs. O’Rahilly.

She held her breath and shoved so hard with her feet, I staggered backwards.

A conical head, gummy with blood, facing sideways, straight across the room.

Bridie cried, Janey mac!

Half in, half out; always a weird moment, between worlds. The colour was good but I couldn’t tell anything more. I said, The head’s here. Nearly over, Mrs. O’Rahilly.

As I spoke I was checking for the cord. So as not to introduce germs, I didn’t use a finger, only tipped the tiny face towards the mother’s spine and…yes, there was the cord, wound around the neck. In this position, the cord might keep the body roped inside, or it might get compressed, which would starve the baby of blood; either way, I had to free it. At least it was only looped around once. I hauled on the cord till it was long enough to pull over the small skull.

A hasty physician would grab the head now and deliver the body himself, but I’d been taught better. Watch and wait.

On the next pang, I said: Come on, now, bring out your baby!

Mary O’Rahilly went quite purple.

The most extraordinary thing, one that I’d seen so many times and never tired of seeing: the pointed head turned down like a swimmer’s and the infant dived out into my hands. Alive.

Bridie laughed as if she were at a magic show.

As I wiped its nose and mouth, it was mewing already, breath animating the wet flesh. A girl. Her legs were skinny, her privates dark and swollen.

Well done yourself, Mrs. O’Rahilly. You have a fine girl.

Mary O’Rahilly let out something between a cough and a laugh. Maybe she couldn’t believe the impossible job was done. Or that girl was the word for her minute daughter now, never again for her seventeen-year-old self.

While I waited for the thick blue cord to stop pulsing, I checked the baby for the basics—all her fingers and toes, no tongue-tie or sunken fontanelle, no imperforate anus or clicky hips. (Almost every infant did come out perfect, even from women who bore all the stigmata of poverty, as if nature designed babies to take as much as they needed, no matter the cost to the mothers.) No signs of asphyxia despite those hours jammed against the pelvic bone. No sign that the mother’s illness had done the baby any harm.

The cord delivered its last blood and was still now. I laid the tiny girl facedown on her mother’s softened belly so I’d have my hands free. Mary O’Rahilly’s fingers crept down to touch the sticky skin.

I tied ligatures around the cord in two places, then scissored through it. I wrapped the baby in a clean cloth and gave her to Bridie to hold.

The redhead was flushed, exuberant. Oh, but that was something, Julia.

Mary O’Rahilly begged: Show me?

Bridie held the girl low enough for Mary O’Rahilly to get a good look.

Before the mother could ask, I said, They come out with slightly pointy skulls if they’ve had a long journey, but it rounds out in a few days.

Mary O’Rahilly nodded blissfully. She had a splash of red in her left eye where she’d burst a blood vessel by pushing, I saw now.

Honor White spoke up in an asthmatic voice from the bed on the left: The one that gives most trouble, the mother loves double.

I stared.

She added, ’Tis a saying.

Maybe from her part of the country; I’d never heard it. I thought of the trouble, in several senses, that Honor White’s first baby must have brought her, and all the further trouble ahead of her.

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.