She listed the most common for him: ear, eye, and sinus infections; birth defects from cleft palates to spina bifida; breathing difficulties; influenza and the contagious diseases from measles to typhoid that killed so many children.
He was looking through glass panes set in the double doors to a small ward where Anna counted seven cots arranged in a semicircle around a nursing station.
She said, “The standards here are very high. It’s a relief.”
“Not always the case?”
She could feel her cheek muscles give an involuntary twitch. “I’ve gotten myself into more than one difficult situation because I pointed out what should have been obvious. A Dr.—well, call him Jones at—a hospital that will remain nameless—shouted names at me when I said that his shirt cuffs would contaminate any bedside he visited.”
“He called you names?”
“He was outraged and especially inventive. He called me a trouble-monger and a devil-dealer.”
Anna wore such insults as a badge of honor. As if she were made stronger by such run-ins and must give herself credit.
“What are these children here for?” he asked her.
“They do some surgery, children born with umbilical hernias and the like. Most are here because they were born too small and frail and have breathing difficulties or seizures, heart irregularities. And infections, of course. Most of them will die of infections because they have no natural immunity.”
She said Most of them will die with perfect calm. Jack supposed that someone who worked with children like this had to build a wall in order to survive at all.
“But every once in a while,” she went on, “one of them will surprise you and fight like the devil.”
“Do you see that more often in boys or girls?”
She looked away as if she had to sort through data before she could answer. “Both, I think. All races, too. There’s no predicting where the spark will show itself. It’s what keeps me going, knowing that sometimes the least likely will pull through.”
“I wonder,” he said, feeling his way carefully, “why you chose to work with sick children when you could have been treating old ladies with gout.”
She laughed outright. “Really?” she said. “You really wonder about that? Because I thought you knew me better. I would die of boredom or frustration or both.”
He said, “I do know you that well. I just wanted to hear you put it into words.”
Sister Mary Augustin came back with a man in a surgeon’s tunic, but even without it Jack would have recognized him by his hands, which were much like Anna’s: scrubbed so often and so hard that they struck other people as overused.
Mary Augustin introduced them to Dr. Reynolds, who had just come out of an emergency surgery.
Jack supposed it was inevitable that they get into a discussion of a six-month-old infant with something called an intussusception. It had to do with the abdomen and intestines. He picked out words like ileo-ileac and tumor and linea semilunaris and then, oddly enough, telescope. Anna had forgotten all about him, but Jack understood what it was to get caught up in the details of an interesting case. More than that, he considered jealousy one of the great flaws of his countrymen. And it didn’t hurt at all that Dr. Reynolds was short and bald with a paunch like a small melon.
They were on to a discussion of another case, all three of them walking into the ward toward one of the nursing sisters who was leaning over a cot. The infant in question might be ill but it was not weak, Jack thought, given the power of its lungs.
He wandered off to explore and found a ward where a small group of children were very mobile. All of them had some kind of dressing—he saw some plaster casts and slings—but otherwise they could be his own nieces and nephews. One of the nursing sisters came to the door, asked some questions, and then invited him to come in.
“The run-arounds always like company, but be aware, they will climb you like a mountain and wiggle their way into every pocket.” Run-arounds was a good name for these small bumbling dynamos. She was right; every child in the room was headed in his direction, all of them as eager and indiscriminately affectionate as puppies.
? ? ?
SISTER IRENE WAS the kind of woman you would pass on the street and not notice at all, unless you met her gaze, which was keen and directly unsettling. Jack doubted that children ever found the courage to lie to her, not with that gaze focused on them. There was nothing cruel or insensitive in her, Jack thought, but she would not tolerate much nonsense, which was why she reminded him of his mother. And with a place like this to manage, that was understandable.