Chapter Twenty-Five #2
They left the following afternoon, traveling by train to Holyhead and then crossing the Irish Sea by ferry to Dublin.
There they spent the night at the Shelbourne, Dublin’s most luxurious hotel, where the Irish constitution had been signed by the Dail months earlier.
But despite its ties to the rebels, the hotel, with its top-hatted doormen and elegant restaurants, was a conservative bastion and a prime favorite with well-heeled British visitors.
Thomas felt right at home, while Rynn, who was even more keenly aware of the change in her circumstances now that she was back among her own people, did not.
It was only when she took Thomas on a chauffeured tour of the city, which still bore significant damage from the Easter Rising, that she truly started to feel that she was home again.
The General Post Office, where a number of rebels had made their last stand, was entirely gone, burned out, and the backs of the buildings lining the alley behind it, through which she’d run as she and a cadre of her fellow nurses had rushed to aid as many of the wounded as they could, were still black with soot.
Sackville, Abbey and Henry Streets in the central part of the city were likewise still in ruins from the fires that had swept them.
Closing her mind to the emotions the lingering devastation provoked, Rynn set herself to pointing out more cheerful sights, including at Thomas’s request such personal landmarks as the former Dan Lowrey’s Palace of Varieties, now the Empire Palace Theatre, where her mother had last performed, the Mater Hospital, where Rynn had completed her nurse’s training, and the house on Dunville Avenue, where she had lived as a young child with her parents before her mother’s death had precipitated their move to Bundoran.
She barely remembered any of that part of her childhood, she assured Thomas when he commiserated with her over the hurt caused by her mother’s death and the upheaval that followed.
If that wasn’t strictly true, what was true was that she saw no point in revisiting any part of her past that was painful.
She chose, instead, to enjoy this day with Thomas, and to be happy.
The next morning, they traveled on to Bundoran. Higdon met them at the train station and, because Glenna and Granny with her
were off on their victory tour with the schoolchildren, drove them straight to Ballyshannon Court. No longer in use as a hospital,
it still had not fully transitioned back into its former life as a private home. Much of the medical equipment had been left
behind, stored in the vast cellar. The furniture that had been removed to make way for the care of patients had not yet been
replaced. Full of apologies because the house was short-staffed, which she blamed on having received no more than two days’
notice that they were coming, Mrs. Frampton was on hand to greet them, along with Lynette and Anna, and Cyril the footman.
The slight awkwardness because Rynn, formerly considered part of the staff, was now one of the family instead, was easily
overcome with the wonderful adaptability of the Irish.
After settling in, Thomas was restless and wanted to go outside. He was looking tired but refused his chair and insisted on
walking with his sticks.
“You don’t want to do too much,” Rynn cautioned him.
“Actually, I want to do everything.” He smiled at her. “Aren’t you the person who told me I’ll never get better if I don’t try?”
“Are you really going to throw my words back at me like that?”
“All I’m trying to say is, you were right.”
He looked so innocent as he said it that she laughed, gave up and went outside with him without any more protest.
It was the most beautiful summer’s afternoon, and as they made their way slowly through the kitchen garden and along the path
that led to the cliffs Rynn felt her spirit expand like a wilted flower soaking in water after a drought. The murmur of the
surf, the cloudless sky as blue as St. Patrick’s robe, the salt smell of the sea, the cooling breeze blowing in off the ocean
to lift the loose tendrils of hair from her temples, called to her in a way that nothing, none of the luxuries, none of the
grand houses or ballrooms or personages, none of the storied sights of the admittedly magnificent city of London, had come
close to doing.
“This place suits you,” Thomas said as they stood looking out over the bay. They’d only gone as far as the nearest overlook,
certainly not all the way to the Point because Rynn still feared overtiring him despite his assurances that he was fine, but
they could see the Strand and the sea stacks and the Fairy Bridges and the rippling ocean all the way to the horizon. Boats
of all descriptions scuttled across the waves. Seagulls wheeled and cried. The sun had started its downward trajectory, and
ribbons of pink and orange twisted across the sky.
“It’s home.” Glancing at him, she discovered that he was looking at her rather than the view.
“It’s beautiful. Not as beautiful as you, not even close, but in its own wild way.”
She smiled at him. “We should start back,” she said, and suited the action to the words. He fell into step beside her, maneuvering across the uneven ground on his sticks with commendable skill.
The fever came on him in the middle of the night. They shared a bed now—so unfashionable!—and Rynn woke up to the feel of
him shivering violently beside her.
“Thomas?”
“It’s all right. It’s just my head hurts. And I’m so cold.”
Rynn sat bolt upright and reached for the lamp beside the bed.
As soon as the light came on and she looked at him, she knew.
Besides the shivering, he was bone pale. His breathing was labored. And his lips were turning blue.
Panic struck her clear through to her heart.
He fought to live. She fought to save him. Dr. Lowry came, masked and gowned, to do what he could. Fearful of infecting his
other patients—he had left a laboring woman to come to Thomas’s aid and would be returning to her—he came no closer than the
bedroom doorway, making the diagnosis at a glance. He left Rynn with aspirin and oxygen syringes and little else. His parting
advice, to keep him comfortable, terrified her.
“Am I going to die, then?” Thomas asked hours later between painful coughs thick with the fluid filling his lungs. Fighting
for his life with every bit of nursing skill she had, Rynn feared she was losing. Night was falling again, and he was worse,
far worse. The purple spots that came with advancing cyanosis mottled his cheeks. His ears had started to turn blue, slowly,
from the lobes up. Swaddled in blankets, he huddled in their bed, drowsy with fever and lack of oxygen, propped up in what
was almost a sitting position to help him breathe.
“No.” She was on her knees beside the bed, trying to keep him with her now by sheer force of will.
“I want you to know, you are everything I could ever have wanted in this world. Could ever have dreamed of. More than that.”
“You can tell me all this when you’re better.”
He tried to smile, grimaced instead, then started to cough again.
After that, he sank back on the pillows and closed his eyes. As midnight approached, the liquid gurgle of his breathing, the
tortured rise and fall of his chest as he fought to draw in air, the spreading, mottled blue of his skin, filled her with
dread.
Wet compresses, camphor to open his airways, generous doses of whiskey, quinine, nothing seemed to help.
“I love you, Thomas.” Despair roughened her voice. The lamplight spared her no detail of his sweat-darkened hair, brushed
roughly back from his forehead, his flaring nostrils and parched lips, parted and trembling as he struggled to breathe, the
bruised look of his skin.
At first, she thought he hadn’t heard, that her words hadn’t penetrated the stupor he was lost in. Then his hand, which had
been flaccid in hers, stirred. His closed eyelids twitched, and then they lifted.
“I love you, Thomas,” she said again. Clear and emphatic, so there was no mistake.
His fingers tightened on hers. He smiled, the smallest, faintest ghost of a smile, but she knew he heard and understood.
“Rynn.” It was no more than a breath of sound, but his eyes were clear and looking into hers with recognition for the first
time in hours, and she felt the faintest flutter of hope. Her hand tightened on his as she gathered every remaining bit of
strength she had and willed it into him.
“I’ve been waiting so long to hear you say that,” he said.
With his eyes locked on hers, something profound passed between them, a meeting of hearts and souls.
The fierceness of her resolve to fight on despite the overwhelming odds had her breaking eye contact to cast a desperate glance at the medicines on the table: the aspirin, the camphor, the empty syringes of the oxygen Dr. Lowry had advised injecting under his skin.
Nothing, nothing, nothing: none of it had helped.
Something had to.
Thomas exhaled with a deep, shuddering sigh. She looked back at him in time to watch the light in his eyes fade, and his lids
close.
Panic galvanized her. Exhausted no longer, she leaped to her feet, grabbed his shoulders.
“Thomas! Thomas, stay with me!”
Even as she leaned over him, frantic, his face went slack and his hand went limp in hers as he died.