Last week Martha and her quarantine island staff were alerted to the imminent arrival of a ship carrying diphtheria. Now as the sick and dying arrive, they must do what they can.
In the second chapter of three, Penelope Todd takes up the story...
On a day when every small mercy counted, Martha the matron was grateful when grey dawn broke with still no word from the Pandora - likely indicative of the chaos aboard the stricken ship. By the time she had called everyone awake and headed with chief nurse Dora down to the wharf, the island was humming with anticipation.
Liesel had risen at the first hint of movement downstairs, pulled on her cape, and gone with Jimmy across the snowy hillside to stoke the fires. Cook followed them to the hospital kitchen, to haul out the largest vats and rummage through pantry and safe for bones, vegetables and oats, so that newcomers able to stomach them could be offered broth or gruel.
Down on the wharf, Gregor the gardener scraped the boards clear of hail and snow with the back of a rake. He was scattering the remnant ice with gravel from the beach when they saw the first boat leaving the Pandora. Martha sent Gregor running up for stretchers, bearers and the wheelbarrow. She marched to the end of the jetty, pulling up her hood to keep the needles of ice from her neck, and watched the longboat's four oars rise and fall as it slewed over the steely water.
Children made up the first contingent, wrapped for the journey in capes and blankets, with canvases tossed higgledy-piggledy over all. Only the four rowers showed any sign of vigour as the boat swung hard against the ladder where high tide (another mercy) gave them only a short climb up.
Martha and Dora began to assess the waifs being bundled over the top of the ladder and on to the wharf. It was extraordinary, Martha had cause to observe many times that day, the physical and mental reserves available to the individual, and thus to the whole group, in such a time of crisis. In the ensuing days their normal duties and timetables would be suspended as they all worked every hour they could, Martha sending each away for rest, or food or "a brisk walk in the fresh air'' as she saw fit. But this first was the day of marvels when the metal of each was tested and rang true, or true enough that it seemed they had as much cause for hope as for despair.
As soon as word came of the first boat's arrival, Liesel and the available nurses hurried over from the men's ward. Anne threw fresh wood on to the kitchen fire, gave the soup pot a stir, topped up the kettles of hot water on the stove and added bricks to the collection in the oven. In the emptied women's ward, Liesel and Susannah checked over the trolleys laden with washcloths and towels, washing, spit and vomit bowls, liniments, tinctures and elixirs. What could these tokens of hygiene and order avail against the approaching bedlam? Liesel wondered as she hurried, drawn by the sound of voices, to the big doors, and pulled them open.
Behind Gregor with three babies in the wheelbarrow came the four rowers, delivering seven children in their arms and on their backs, accompanied by Dora and three more infants on a stretcher. All needed to be stripped of their foetid garments, cleaned and warmed. Dora determined their position in the ward according to the apparent advancement of the disease. Liesel found herself working closest to the dispensary, having been allotted two children fighting, or perhaps already succumbing to the fight, for their lives. They were a boy of about 10 and a girl half his age. Glands swelled their necks and she knew from Martha's lessons, and because of the extreme difficulty with which they drew breath, that their throats were laced with the membranous exudate produced by the disease.
She, like all the nurses, wore a cotton mask over nose and mouth, but otherwise there was nothing for it but to muck in, stripping away filthy clothes to be replaced after a hasty wash with warmed flannel gowns; cleaning crusted noses and mouths; placing hot fomentations on thin chests and wrapped-up bricks beside them in their beds. She offered the children gargles and liquids, but when these proved unmanageable, she swabbed their throats with the same muriatic acid and honey that they'd spat on to their fronts. When she pulled the swab back from the boy's mouth, he gagged after it a rope of pale grey, and at once began to breathe more freely, sat up, and asked for a drink. The girl grew feebler with every ministration, and yet as soon as Liesel had fixed these two as best she could, they heard men's voices and the stomp of boots at the door as the next boatload of patients was delivered.
Here were older children and two women; all weary, bewildered and ill. Neither woman was mother to a child in the ward, but one was able to tell them - between bouts of coughing - which children were related to one another, whose mother had already died, whose was still on her way and in what condition. This time Liesel tended two girls of about 14; again, one looked likely to pull through after six days with the disease, while the other, newly infected and febrile with icy extremities, bled from the nose and retched bright gobbets of blood into the scrap of flannel she clutched as if it were her life.
Hail from a pewter sky rattled the windows as Liesel stripped down the sicker girl on the old sheet spread for the purpose on her bed. She murmured feeble reassurances as she sponged and brisked her dry. She called to Susannah, scurrying towards the dispensary, for another gargle of potash. Liesel bound the filthy hair of both girls in turbans of clean rag - one day there would be time for delousing and disinfecting, though it was hard to imagine when.
Young people and women made up the next boatloads and finally, late in the morning, the men arrived. Liesel joined again in the washing and warming of patients, scribbling her requests for medicaments on the endless brown paper list beside the pharmacy cupboard, each item to be scored through by Jane as it was dispensed.
Jane, the youngest wardsmaid, had proved adept at pharmacopeia and would spend hours of every coming day mixing poultices and spreading unguents into linen pockets to be heated on the lid of the hissing water steriliser. She made up the chlorine water that was offered to all patients capable of swallowing it, every two hours: pulverising the potash and adding to it hydrochloric acid, in vials that she hurriedly corked to keep the biting fumes within.
Liesel learned that the little girl's parents were being sent to the quarantine barracks with the other 150 passengers and crew. When Matron ordered her away for a meal that first day, Liesel begged to be allowed to linger with the child, Carol.
"You must get away from this ...'' Matron's look took in the beds jammed close, mewling infants, bleak-eyed women, and the man who, even as they spoke, failed to climb on to his bed, sliding instead to his knees and lowering his head to the cold floor.
"I hate to leave her, Matron. She seems terribly ill.''
"She is terribly ill, Liesel. I think she'll die, as several will before this plague is finished. Our job is to survive and to be of use. Sit with her a few minutes, then at midday, go, and don't return before three. Promise me.''
Liesel knelt beside Carol's low cot. Her bruised eyes were closed, her mouth opening and closing like a fish's. Liesel held the cold hand beneath the blankets and hummed snatches of songs and lullabies that came to mind. When the clock clanged 12 she washed her hands in lime and ran from the ward to the barracks. She asked for Carol's mother to be brought to the doorway.
It seemed a miracle that the baby in the woman's arms was so round and bonny when the mother herself looked as if she hadn't slept, hadn't eaten or cared for herself in a very long time. Liesel told her that Carol was peaceful, that they were doing all they could, but ... there was no comforting end to the sentence and the mother seemed to know it.
"May I not come and hold her, just for a minute?''
Liesel wished she hadn't come.
"Matron is having a window made; it'll be in by tomorrow, where you can come and see ...''
"Will she last until then? We almost lost her twice on board.''
"We're keeping her warm, with poultices on her all the time - she's more restful.''
Liesel looked at the baby's dimpled knee. "But Matron says she's not likely to do well.''
"I know she's a sick mite.'' The woman hitched the baby higher. It tugged at her hair and squealed. "But I thought, now we're here, now there's a hospital ... What does the doctor say?''
"He'll be here soon as he can. We're following the best prescriptions for the illness. Matron makes sure of that.''
The woman's eyes cast about; towards the ship at anchor, to the hospital where her daughter lay dying, and down at the small child who had appeared beside her and clung to her skirt.
"I'm so sorry,'' Liesel said. "I'll be with Carol whenever I can. I'll find you again later, and tomorrow ...''
"Tomorrow's another day. Give her my love.'' The woman hid her face in the baby's neck.
"I will,'' Liesel said. "Over and over.'' Her tears welled up as she turned and fled for the house.
University Book Shop short story series
