In her absence I cleaned the dead woman, working gently, as if Ita Noonan could still feel everything.
You can’t be a little bit dead. If you’re not in the ground yet, you’re one hundred per cent alive.
Then she lifted the breastbone and frontal ribs in one go, the raising of a portcullis. That made me tremble. How frail my own rib cage; how breakable we all were.
Here we are in the golden age of medicine – making such great strides against rabies, typhoid fever, diphtheria – and a common or garden influenza is beating us hollow. No, you’re the ones who matter right now. Attentive nurses, I mean – tender loving care, that seems to be all that’s saving lives.
As far as I could tell, the whole world was a machine grinding to a halt. Across the globe, in hundreds of languages, signs were going up urging people to cover their coughs.
I was taught that being a good nurse means knowing when to call a doctor.
Maybe history really boiled down to how the hell did we happen to happen?
Well, as they say, all cats are grey in the dark.
Neither of us mentioned the kissing, so as not to burst the bubble by touching it. So as not to think about what it meant for the two of us to kiss.
Ventilation and sanitation will be our nation’s salvation.
The truth was quicker than a lie, so I told it.
Is that from the thing you were telling me – red, brown, blue, black?
So instead of poverty, I’d write malnourishment or debility. As code for too many pregnancies, I might put anaemia, heart strain, bad back, brittle bones, varicose veins, low spirits, incontinence, fistula, torn cervix, or uterine prolapse. There was a saying I’d heard from several patients that struck a chill into my bones: She doesn’t love him unless she gives him twelve.
Well so long as you’re awake, does it matter how you were woken?
Jenny was easy to enjoy but hard to know.
To travel is to turn the pages of the great book of life.
Trian’s so close now, within arm’s reach of the hatchet. He could snatch it up in half a second. The Prior’s face is shining like an angel’s. Trian shuts his eyes and drops to his knees. But still he sees that triumphant smile, and still he wants to kill the man. He hits his own chest so hard he winds himself. To long to do murder, to savour it in your heart, that’s nearly as bad as to do it. Trian’s in mortal sin and he can’t escape. He batters himself again and again.
Our faith stands like an island,’ he proclaims, ’lashed by a sea of doubt.
He’s altered, he knows; he’s brewing an infection of the spirit. These days, when he goes poking around the Plateau in search of anything remotely edible – the last of the bitter spoonwort, campion, dock, stonecrop, spurrey, tree mallow, even flakes of orange lichen, in hopes their colour might carry some vigour – in the back of his mind, Cormac is picking a fight. As he and the Prior keep adding to the walls of the chapel – almost roof-height now – his fury rises too.
I didn’t know I was swearing fealty to a lunatic.’ For a moment Artt can’t catch his breath. ‘I see now you won’t rest till you’ve made this island a hell on earth,’ Cormac says. ‘I release myself from my vows.