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not?’
    Sister Joyce relented. ‘Thank you for the coffee, Joe. You’re right, it is Christmas and the nurses will be upset.’
    As Joe looked at her in shock, she gave him a smile. A rare event in itself and one certainly never witnessed before by Joe, who had been a patient on the ward for almost two months.
    ‘Thank you, Sister,’ he said, grinning back, before he left to join the others in the day room.
    *
    Fionnuala and Helen were still at Jack’s bedside.
    ‘Open the window to let his spirit out,’ Fionnuala whispered to Helen.
    Helen did not regard herself as religious, but it was a routine followed by every single nurse in the hospital after the death of a patient. There were enough ghost stories flying around the hospital as it was, and there were certain wards which every student nurse dreaded being sent on to for a night shift.
    ‘Isn’t he just gorgeous?’ Helen turned back from the window and stroked the young boy’s hair away from his face and his cheek with her finger. ‘He’s like a young James Dean.’
    Fionnuala was busy washing the dirt of the building site from Jack’s body, dirt which the night nurses had had no time to deal with.
    ‘The poor, poor love,’ Helen said. ‘He’s the same age as my little brother. God only knows what it would be like at our house, if this happened to our Steven. I don’t think my mother would ever get out of bed again. I can’t imagine any of us would.’
    Fionnuala dried Jack’s limbs with the towel and pulled the sheet up and over his many broken bones.
    ‘Will you close his eyes?’ she asked Helen.
    ‘Aye,’ Helen replied, as she gently coaxed Jack’s eyelids, with the long dark eyelashes, down and, for the last time, closed his film star brown eyes.
    Fionnuala and Helen stood still for a moment, at his side. Fionnuala wanted to pray, but she felt this might make Helen uncomfortable.
    Helen looked up at Fionnuala, ‘God rest his soul,’ she said, as a tear slipped down her cheek.
    Fionnuala took her handkerchief out of her own pocket. ‘God rest his soul,’ she responded and with a sob between them, they slipped out from behind the curtains to head to the office for further instructions. As Helen passed the window, and despite the cold, she pushed it even further, opening it onto the widest setting.
    When they reached the office, the doctors were still there. One was filling out the death certificate and the ward register, while the other was talking to Sister Joyce.
    ‘Would you like me to talk to the relatives?’
    ‘Well, I would, if I knew where they were,’ she replied. ‘I tried to phone, as soon as he arrested. The number we have from the work mates who brought him in, is for a shop near to where they live. They have just called back, to say his parents left the house last night and are on their way to Liverpool.’
    ‘What shall we do with the lad then? If his parents aren’t here to see him, we should send him straight to the morgue.’
    ‘Let’s give them an hour,’ Sister Joyce replied. ‘They won’t be allowed into the morgue and it seems a bit harsh, if they travel all this way and then don’t even get to say goodbye to their son.’
    ‘That’s a good idea,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s a shame it’s Christmas morning.’
    Fionnuala had noticed that doctors in the hospital varied in their attitude towards the nurses. Some were friendly and spoke to them as equals. These were mostly the very junior doctors, however; the vast majority treated the nurses as handmaidens, barking out their orders with an air of superiority and importance. One such doctor had made Fionnuala cry on her very first day, something she was determined would never happen again. The consultants were regarded as mini gods and only Sister Joyce was allowed to speak to them, unless they asked a nurse a direct question.
    Sister Joyce took in the girls’ tear-streaked faces at a glance.
    ‘It’s Christmas morning, nurses,’ she said, ‘and it