Typhoid Fever
from Angela’s Ashes
Frank McCourt
The room next to me is empty till one morning a girl’s voice says, Yoo hoo, who’s there?
I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or someone in the room beyond.
Yoo hoo, boy with the typhoid, are you awake?
I am.
Are you better?
I am.
Well, why are you here?
I don’t know. I’m still in the bed. They stick needles in me and give me medicine.
What do you look like?
I wonder, What kind of a question is that? I don’t know what to tell her.
Yoo hoo, are you there, typhoid boy?
I am.
2
What’s your name?
Frank.
That’s a good name. My name is Patricia Madigan. How old are you?
Ten.
Oh. She sounds disappointed.
But I’ll be eleven in August, next month.
Well, that’s better than ten. I’ll be fourteen in September. Do you want to know why I’m in the Fever Hospital?
I do.
I have diphtheria and something else.
What’s something else?
They don’t know. They think I have a disease from foreign parts because my father used to be in Africa. I nearly died. Are you going to tell me what you look like?
3
I have black hair.
You and millions.
I have brown eyes with bits of green that’s called hazel.
You and thousands.
I have stitches on the back of my right hand and my two feet where they put in the soldier’s blood.
Oh, did they?
They did.
You won’t be able to stop marching and saluting.
There’s a swish of habit and click of beads and then Sister Rita’s voice. Now, now, what’s this? There’s to be no talking between two rooms especially when it’s a boy and a girl. Do you hear me, Patricia?
I do, Sister.
Do you hear me, Francis?
I do, Sister.
4
You could be giving thanks for your two remarkable recoveries. You could be saying the rosary.1 You could be reading The Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart 2 that’s beside your beds. Don’t let me come back and find you talking.
She comes into my room and wags her finger at me. Especially you, Francis, after thousands of boys prayed for you at the Confraternity.3 Give thanks, Francis, give thanks.
She leaves and there’s silence for awhile. Then Patricia whispers, Give thanks, Francis, give thanks, and say your rosary, Francis, and I laugh so hard a nurse runs in to see if I’m all right. She’s a very stern nurse from the County Kerry and she frightens me. What’s this, Francis? Laughing? What is there to laugh about? Are you and that Madigan girl talking? I’ll report you to Sister Rita. There’s to be no laughing for you could be doing serious damage to your internal apparatus.
She plods out and Patricia whispers again in a heavy Kerry accent, No laughing, Francis, you could be doin’ serious damage to your internal apparatus. Say your rosary, Francis, and pray for your internal apparatus.
5
Mam visits me on Thursdays. I’d like to see my father, too, but I’m out of danger, crisis time is over, and I’m allowed only one visitor. Besides, she says, he’s back at work at Rank’s Flour Mills and please God this job will last a while with the war on and the English desperate for flour. She brings me a chocolate bar and that proves Dad is working. She could never afford it on the dole.4 He sends me notes. He tells me my brothers are all praying for me, that I should be a good boy, obey the doctors, the nuns, the nurses, and don’t forget to say my prayers. He’s sure St. Jude pulled me through the crisis because he’s the patron saint of desperate cases and I was indeed a desperate case.
Patricia says she has two books by her bed. One is a poetry book and that’s the one she loves. The other is a short history of England and do I want it? She gives it to Seamus, the man who mops the floors every day, and he brings it to me. He says, I’m not supposed to be bringing anything from a dipteria room to a typhoid room with all the germs flying around and hiding between the pages and if you ever catch dipteria on top of the typhoid they’ll know and I’ll lose my good job and be out on the street singing patriotic songs with a tin cup in my hand, which I could easily do because there isn’t a song ever written about Ireland’s sufferings I don’t know and a few songs about the joy of whiskey too.
6
Oh, yes, he knows Roddy McCorley. He’ll sing it for me right enough but he’s barely into the first verse when the Kerry nurse rushes in. What’s this, Seamus? Singing? Of all the people in this hospital you should know the rules against singing. I have a good mind to report you to Sister Rita.
Ah, don’t do that, nurse.
Very well, Seamus. I’ll let it go this one time. You know the singing could lead to a relapse in these patients.
When she leaves he whispers he’ll teach me a few songs because singing is good for passing the time when you’re by yourself in a typhoid room. He says Patricia is a lovely girl the way she often gives him sweets from the parcel her mother sends every fortnight. He stops mopping the floor and calls to Patricia in the next room, I was telling Frankie you’re a lovely girl, Patricia, and she says, You’re a lovely man, Seamus. He smiles because he’s an old man of forty and he never had children but the ones he can talk to here in the Fever Hospital. He says, Here’s the book, Frankie. Isn’t it a great pity you have to be reading all about England after all they did to us, that there isn’t a history of Ireland to be had in this hospital.