Page 25 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

“Nurse O’Halloran,” she’d said sternly, “it is nearly curfew. Furthermore, you will catch a chill standing out here, and then you will be of no use to anyone.”

“I’m of no use to anyone already,” Maggie had replied on the start of a broken sob she’d managed to suck back in. She knew the superintendent despised self-pity, and she hated it herself, but in that moment she found she couldn’t keep herself from feeling it, a wave that rolled over her and threatened to pull her under.

To her surprise, Miss Caldicot did not reprimand her for her moment’s weakness. “Today was a hard day,” she said instead, her tone gentler. “And during your training, there will be many such hard days. And part of that training is to learn how to live through them, Nurse O’Halloran, and accept the weight of them without bowing beneath it.”

Maggie had nodded jerkily, her blinded, tear-filled gaze still on the sky. “I don’t know if I can,” she’d whispered. The sight of that baby, so tiny and blue, and then the mother, barely able to take in the sight of her dead child before her own life leaked out onto the sheets…

Maggie had closed her eyes against the memory, but she’d still seen it. She never couldunseeit, she’d realized hopelessly. For all the good she was doing, that she wanted to do, it was mere drops in an endless ocean of pain.

“You can and you will,” Miss Caldicot had barked, making Maggie jump a little. The time for sympathy had clearly come to an end. “You’re too good a nurse to be wasted on self-pity,” she’d snapped. “Get to bed, Nurse O’Halloran. Things might not look better in the morning, and undoubtedly someone else will die tomorrow, and you will have to stand there and do nothing, because there is nothing youcando, but there will be other patients who need your care, who are better for it, and standing here staring up at the sky as if you’re the only person in the world who has felt the weight of its sorrows does no one any good at all, least of allyou.”

She’d turned back inside without waiting for a reply, and Maggie, realizing her superintendent was right and feeling ashamed of her moment of self-indulgence, had hurried to her room and was in bed before the bell had rung.

Now, Maggie pushed such thoughts away as she focused on the task at hand. “One part mustard powder to two to five parts flour,” she recited under her breath, taken straight from Clara Weeks’Text Book on Nursing, one of the manuals the student nurses had to learn practically by heart. “Mix into a paste with tepid water and spread evenly between two thin sheets of muslin.”

She smiled faintly as she did what was required, glad of both the knowledge and ability that had been only recently gained. Back on the ward, she applied the plaster to the poor woman’s chest. Every time she coughed, the terrible sound rattled through her whole body, like a freight train screeching into the station. She looked to be over seventy, and Maggie knew a cough such as this could very well be the end of her.

But, please heaven, not today. Not under her watch.

“I’ll return in thirty minutes to remove it,” she told the woman, briefly resting one hand on her shoulder. “Try to get some rest.”

When Maggie returned to the rotation, Miss Caldicot nodded toward her. “I have just been given word that Dr. Brown needs assisting on a delivery in the maternity ward,” she told her. “You may go, Nurse O’Halloran, and assist her with the birth.”

Maggie swallowed hard; the last delivery she’d helped with had been the poor, dead baby several weeks ago, and she knew Miss Caldicot knew that.

“Nurse O’Halloran?” the superintendent prompted, and Maggie nodded quickly.

“Yes, Miss Caldicot,” she said, and hurried to the maternity cottage, which was adjacent to the main building.

When she arrived, Dr. Brown, whom she’d seen only in passing since the start of the program, was already elbow-deep in a bucket of water mixed with bichloride of mercury, to disinfect her hands.

“Good morning, Nurse O’Halloran,” she greeted her warmly. “Wash and disinfect your hands, and then we’ll get to work.”

Maggie had learned in her lectures that handwashing had not been routinely practiced by doctors until some forty-odd years ago, after the adoption of the method by a Hungarian doctor whose insistence on washing had cost him his job. Many doctors—most of them, Dr. Brown had told her, male, of course—had dismissed the practice as superstitious, likening it to a religious ritual rather than good science.

Now, thanks to the more recent wider acceptance of Dr. Lister’s germ theory, all physicians and nurses washed their hands before examining a patient, and cases of women dying in childbirth from puerperal fever had greatly reduced… and yet even so, bearing a child was still considered, for any woman, a risky and potentially life-threatening enterprise.

Maggie prayed today would have a happier outcome than the last time she’d assisted with a delivery.

“The patient is a woman in her late twenties, having birthed two children living,” Dr. Brown informed her briskly. “Her water broke an hour ago, and her pulse is steady.” She gave Maggie a reassuring smile. “The baby is in classic cephalic position, so I anticipate no problems.”

Maggie breathed a silent sigh of relief. Had Miss Caldicot assigned her to such a simple case to make up for the last one? Sometimes, she supposed, seeing the work they did succeed could soften the blow of the bitter times when they’d failed.

“Could you fit the bed with a rubber sheet, please, Nurse O’Halloran?” Dr. Brown instructed, and Maggie set about her work.

Less than an hour later, the baby came bawling into the world, his little red face screwed up in outrage that he’d been taken from his clearly comfortable circumstances, nestled snugly inside his mother’s womb.

“Welcome to the world, little man,” Dr. Brown greeted him gently, before handing the boy to his mother. “Nurse O’Halloran, please wash the baby and, in due course, the mother as well.” She turned to the weary woman, the little boy bundled in a blanket and held to her breast. “Congratulations.”

As Maggie prepared to wash the baby, Dr. Brown went over to wash her hands.

“You seem to have settled in well here, Nurse O’Halloran,” she remarked with a smile.

“I hope I have,” Maggie replied as she reached for a basin. It was the first time she’d had a chance to speak to the doctor since she’d started the program, and she was pleased with Dr. Brown’s observation. “I… I really must thank you for?—”

“Now, now.” Dr. Brown waved her stammering gratitude aside. “There’s no need for that. From all accounts, you are proving yourself admirably. Miss Caldicot speaks well of you, I know.”

“Does she?” Maggie blushed at the thought of such praise.