THE BLIGHT INSIDE
The others are all glaring at me from the bottom of their beds.
“Get up,” they hiss. Only Úna – who stands directly opposite me – isn’t staring, is silent: her eyes are lost somewhere on the empty bed to my left. The door barges open and Úna wakens; she stands straight, to attention, they all do. I shut my eyes.
“Aoife, what the Balor are you doing in bed?” Miss Kinny's elephant stomps grow louder, louder, until my water-filled ears detect a whoosh! and my legs and arms feel a prickling cold. I struggle my eyes open. Dying leaves and crumpled pieces of newspaper outline my nightie, like I’m in a nature journalist’s coffin. If death had inhabited a body; it had surely picked mine. I meet Miss Kinny’s appalled eyes.
“I can’t go out there. I’m too ill,” I say, adding a cough for good measure.
“Nonsense. It’s just a cold.” Miss Kinny goes to push me up, but her hands freeze, clearly concerned about touching my funeral flowers, and instead she shoos them at me like I’m a pigeon she’s trying to force back out the window. I don’t budge. “Many ladies have gone out before you when they had far worse illnesses than a cold—”
“Like Ivy!” pipes Hilary.
“Very true.” Nods Miss Kinny, turning to the bed behind her. “Dagda rest her soul.”
“But she didn’t know she had appendicitis then, she’d only been sick in my shoe!” I say, cutting Miss Kinny’s blessing short. “Maybe I actually have influenza, and you sending me out there will make it ten times worse – it’ll be the knife to my heart!”
Miss Kinny turns back to me, her
