“Thank you for coming,” Elsie said, helping to divest Jean of her wet raincoat and hood, which she hung from a curious pair of carved wooden antlers by the door. “Kitty’s had her nap and she’s quite lively.”

She showed Jean into a large, brightly lit day room, in which the “lively” Kitty lay encased but for her head in the iron lung, a monstrous metal contraption like a coffin made out of an old Morris Minor. It was impossible not to be startled by the sight of a fellow human thus entombed and it took all of Jean’s self-control to hide her consternation. But Kitty herself seemed quite unruffled, cheerful even.

Someone had placed a chair near her head at a comfortable distance for conversation, and an angled mirror above her, from which a rosary was hanging, gave a partial view of the room.

“Here you are. Here’s your visitor,” said Elsie, withdrawing with carefully planted steps to avoid the wheeling poodle.

“Hello,” said Kitty, turning her neck in its rubber cuff and smiling a welcome.

Her fair hair was curled and set in the latest style, and her cheeks were rouged. She wore a pair of tortoiseshell glasses of powerful magnification.

“I’m so pleased to meet you at last,” said Jean, disconcerted by the mechanical whoosh and gasp of the air pump as it did its work. “The other girls from St. Cecilia’s spoke so warmly of you. And all this time you’ve been under my nose, so to speak.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ve such fond memories of St. Cecilia’s.”

“Really?” said Jean, staggered by Kitty’s fortitude. “None of the other girls was anything like as positive about the experience, and they surely had far less to complain about than you.”

“We were all more or less immobilized, but I suppose being paralyzed I was the only one who wasn’t in pain,” said Kitty. “So in a way I was better off.”

“Do you remember Gretchen in particular?”

“She was a nice girl. The best of the bunch. I didn’t get to know her too well because she was at the far end of the ward by the window and I was at the other end nearest the door. But she was a favorite with everyone, because she was so pretty and gentle. Martha was her special friend. The beds were too wide apart for them to hold hands, so they used to hold the ends of a rolled-up towel between them. Isn’t that sweet?”

“I suppose so,” said Jean, surprised by this unexpected picture of Martha’s vulnerability.

“Sometimes the nuns would get Gretchen into a wheelchair and offer to take her out for a walk, but she always said, ‘No, just wheel me to the end of the ward so I can talk to Kitty.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”

“Were there ever any male visitors on the ward?”

“No, we didn’t see any men,” said Kitty with faint disdain. “Unless you count my angel. Angels are always male, aren’t they?”