plenty of time to reflect on my sins in the big ward upstairs and I should beg  God’s  forgiveness  for  my  disobedience  reciting  a  pagan  English poem about a thief on a horse and a maiden with red lips who commits a terrible sin when I could have been praying or reading the life of a saint. She made it her business to read that poem so she did and I’d be well advised to tell the priest in confession. The Kerry nurse follows us upstairs gasping and holding on to the banister. She tells me I better not get the notion she’ll be running up to this part of the world every time I have a little pain or a twinge. There are twenty beds in the ward, all white, all empty.The nurse tells Seamus put me at the far end of the ward against the wall to make sure I don’t talk to anyone who might be passing the door,which is very unlikely  since  there  isn’t  another  soul  on  this  whole  floor.  She  tells Seamus this was the fever ward during the Great Famine long ago and only God knows how many died here brought in too late for anything but a wash before they were buried and there are stories of cries and moans in the far reaches of the night. She says ’twould break your heart to think of what the English did to us, that if they didn’t put the blight on the potato they didn’t do much to take it off. No pity. No feeling at all for the people that died in this very ward, children suffering and dying here while the English feasted on roast beef and guzzled the best of wine in their big houses, little children with their mouths all green from trying to eat the grass in the fields beyond, God bless us and save us and guard us from future famines. Seamus says ’twas a terrible thing indeed and he wouldn’t want to be walking these halls in the dark with all the little green mouths gap- ing at him.The nurse takes my temperature, ’Tis up a bit, have a good sleep for yourself now that you’re away from the chatter with Patricia Madigan below who will never know a gray hair. She shakes her head at Seamus and he gives her a sad shake back. Nurses and nuns never think you know what they’re talking about. If you’re ten going on eleven you’re supposed to be simple like my uncle Pat Sheehan who was dropped on his head.You can’t ask questions.You can’t show you understand what the nurse said about Patricia Madigan, that she’s going to die, and you can’t show you want to cry over this girl who taught you a lovely poem which the nun says is bad. The nurse tells Seamus she has to go and he’s to sweep the lint from under my bed and mop up a bit around the ward. Seamus tells me she’s a right oul’ bitch for running to Sister Rita and complaining about the 198