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.”
“Is that all?” The list seemed alarmingly anemic. “There is nothing else we can do?”
Matron closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. “Nothing. Make sure you get rest yourselves, and nourishment. You’re no good to them if you come down with it. Alice, you already look exhausted.”
It took me a confused moment to understand that Alice was Boney, whose first name I’d never known.
“Nurse Weekes,” Matron commanded hoarsely. “There is a telephone in my office. Have you used such an instrument before?”
“Yes.”
“You must communicate with the nearest medical hospital. You must speak to the doctor in charge and tell him we need patients evacuated. You must also communicate with the village and warn them of an outbreak.”
I had no idea how to do any of this, but I held on to my panic. “Yes, Matron.”
“Nurse Shouldice.” She turned to Nina. “You are to deal with Paulus. Get an update on the issue with the generator. Make sure the men delivering supplies do not come into the house. The kitchen has permission to reduce meals, as the sick men cannot take solid food, but make sure there is a constant supply of beef tea. Alice, you are to go to bed. You are back on shift to relieve these two for rest in five hours.”
That finished her; she could not speak further, and she drifted off into sleep. We went our separate ways. Within a few hours I found Mr. MacInnes at the foot of the stairs, sitting on the bottom step doubled over. We’d sent the men out for exercise, but there was no one to supervise them and a few of them had come back in, wandering the halls. I hoped no one had fallen outside or run off over the marshes. I helped MacInnes into bed and tucked him in. That made ten of the patients down.
“Can I help?”
I turned and found Jack in the doorway. He hadn’t fallen sick. I was so happy to see him I almost cried.
“Yes,” I answered him. “Do you know how to use a telephone?”
? ? ?
Exhaustion turned everything to a blur. There were cloths and pitchers of water, my fingers wrinkling as I endlessly mopped brows, throats, arms, and legs. There were journeys down the long, dark corridors of Portis House, the walls shimmering in my exhaustion, the groans so loud in the walls I wondered whether I imagined them. I sat at the small table in the kitchen, trying to choke down a biscuit and a cup of tea, as Nina told me Boney had gone to bed and not got up again. We had another patient to care for.
At some point I sat in Matron’s empty office, uncomfortable in the chair behind her desk, as Jack sat across from me. He had one leg crossed over the other knee and regarded me steadily as I fumbled with the telephone. Gently he gave me suggestions and we sorted out how to get through to the post office in Bascombe, where I told the postmistress what was happening and asked her to spread the word in the village.
Then we spent another twenty minutes reaching the hospital at Newcastle on Tyne. The head doctor there didn’t want to talk to me about an influenza outbreak at a madhouse, but I wouldn’t let him stop me. I finally got myself patched through to the head administrator and by then I was so frustrated, so angry, and so very tired that I told him Jack Yates, England’s hero, was here on his deathbed, along with the sons of many other prominent families, and if help was not sent I would post letters detailing why to the relatives of every single one of my patients, including Archie’s father, the newspaper baron. I was told a detachment of ambulances would be sent right away to evacuate us and take in the sick.
I hung up the telephone and looked across the desk at Jack, who was as healthy as ever. He had a half smile on his face.
“Well-done,” he said.
“That does it,” I told him. “If Syd hasn’t told the newspapers, this will seal it for you.”
He raised a brow. “England’s hero?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
It took four hours to prepare the patients for evacuation. Any semblance of a routine had vanished now, and the few patients who remained healthy pitched in to work if they were capable. One by one the sick were carried down to the large front hall, using the hospital’s single stretcher. Paulus and Roger, the last two orderlies who weren’t sick, alternated with Jack and Captain Mabry, while other patients helped if they could. Martha was brought down from the nursery, and Matron and Boney were brought up from their rooms. We put the sick on the floor in neat lines, to ease the process of transferring them to ambulances once the vehicles arrived. As the main hall started to look like the aftermath of a bloodless battle, I looked out the window and saw that it had started to rain.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Will the ambulances be able to cross the bridge?”
“I think so.” Jack looked out the window over my shoulder. The air was hot and humid, and sweat trickled down his temples from carrying stretchers down the stairs. “It isn’t raining very hard. Still, they must get here soon.” He paused. “Kitty, look.”
But I had already seen. Through the thin curtain of warm rain, a lone girl on a bicycle was approaching from the road.
“It’s Maisey,” I said, remembering her promise to bring mail. “She can’t come in here. You carry on. I’ll go talk to her.”