Silence for the Dead(84)

“You saw her.” Boney shook her head. “She didn’t look well.”

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now,” said Nina. “Supper’s to be served in half an hour. We’ll just have to do it all without her.”

I half expected Matron to reappear during supper or as we cleared the dishes, nagging us about one rule or another, but she didn’t. I pulled Paulus aside the first chance I got. “Matron’s ill,” I said.

He looked amazed. “I wondered where she had got to.”

“We’re short-staffed,” I said. “It worries me.”

It wasn’t just the shortage, of course; it was the fact that it was Matron who was missing. The threat of Matron’s wrath was what kept the men in line during the day-to-day routine. If it got out among the men that she was sick in bed, we might have a discipline problem. I vaguely noticed that the idea didn’t terrify me, as it would have on my first day here; it merely seemed like a problem to be solved.

Paulus caught my meaning immediately. “I’ve got one of my men out back, taking a look at the generator. It’s been acting up all day. I’ll bring him back into the house and I’ll tell the others to be on their guard.”

“I think that would be helpful. I hope it’s temporary and she’s well by tomorrow. There can’t be anything worse than Matron getting a serious illness.”

But I was wrong. As I passed the common room, Captain Mabry’s voice called to me. “Nurse Weekes, I believe Somersham is unwell.”

Somersham was sitting at the end of one of the sofas, sagging over the arm like an unwatered plant. As I watched, he put a hand up and cradled his forehead. “It’s just a headache,” he said.

“Nonsense, lad,” Mr. MacInnes chimed in. “You look like death sitting up.”

Somersham’s skin was gray under the pale stubble on his cheeks. I touched his forehead. He was feverish, but there was no need to panic the men in the room. “Nurse Shouldice,” I said calmly as Nina appeared in the doorway behind me, “I believe Mr. Somersham is not feeling well.”

She was equally calm. “Isn’t he? Well, let’s go, then. Off to bed.”

We helped him up the stairs and into bed. He was hot as coals, with alarming red blotches showing high on his cheeks.

Nina, worried, caught my eye as she pulled the cover over him. “Should we take him to the infirmary, do you think?”

“No, no,” he protested from the bed between us. “It’s just a headache. Had it since yesterday. It’ll go away.”

Nina and I looked at each other again. “Martha,” I said. She’d had a headache the previous night before going on night duty, and she’d been in bed all day.

“I’ll take care of him,” Nina replied. “You go check on her.”

I hurried up the stairs. The hot sun was setting behind a bank of cloud, the air as thick as cotton wool. The storm was coming. Please, I thought as my feet hit the steps. Please, please, don’t let Martha get sick. But when I reached the nursery, the beds were empty, and she didn’t answer when I called her name.

She’d gotten almost as far as the bathroom when she collapsed, perhaps in search of a glass of water. She was crumpled on the floor, one arm awkwardly under her head, her cotton nightdress hiked halfway up her thighs. I knelt beside her and pulled the nightdress down. Her legs were thin with sinew, her knees bony.

When I rolled her over, I saw the same feverish spots on her cheeks. Her eyes were glassy. “Kitty,” she said. “You have to warn Matron.”

“Ssh,” I said. “Warn her of what?”

“The men will catch it,” she breathed. “You have to warn Matron. It’s influenza.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


Everything happened fast after that. Influenza, it seemed, was a quick disease, its onset unstoppable once started, felling people like ninepins. In twenty-four hours half the patients were down with it, and half the orderlies, too.

Nina, Boney, and I worked like dogs. We let Archie out of the infirmary and replaced him with three of the first patients, but as more went down we ran out of room and kept the men in their own beds, making rounds and nursing as best we could. I was apprehensive about going into Creeton’s room, where his restraints had just been lifted though he was confined to his room. I shouldn’t have worried. He was unaffected by the flu, but he lay in bed and turned his back to us, unmoving and unspeaking.

Boney, whom I’d never seen do much actual nursing, was suddenly everywhere: ordering the able-bodied orderlies to haul supplies, herding the patients to bed, carrying trays, filling pitchers of water. How the fever had come here, we had no way of knowing. Portis House was isolated, but we’d had a string of visitors, including Syd and the patients’ families. We also got deliveries of mail and supplies several times per week, and sometimes messages were run over the bridge and into town.

“Rest and fluids,” Matron dictated from her bed. She was awake for a few brief minutes and we nurses had crowded into her room, hoping for wisdom. Nina fluffed the pillow behind her head. Matron looked different in her nightdress, her glasses gone and her hair askew, but even with her weakened voice she was still unmistakably Matron.

“They must have rest,” she said. “Beef tea if they will take it. As much water as they will drink. Lemon for vitaminic strength. Keep the healthy men segregated as much as possible. Do not leave the sick to lie on sheets they have sweated through. Open the windows for ventilation, especially at night.”