Julia arrives at the Maternity/Fever ward and learns that her patient Eileen Devine died during the night.

A young volunteer named Bridie Sweeney arrives at the ward to help Julia, though Julia is disappointed by her inexperience.

Orderly Groyne brings in new patient Mary O'Rahilly and gossips about the ward's controversial new doctor, Dr. Lynn.

Delia Garrett goes into premature labor and delivers a baby girl who is stillborn.

Julia manually removes Delia's retained afterbirth to stop her from bleeding to death.

Dr. Lynn arrives, examines the ward patients, and trusts Julia's medical judgment completely, earning Julia's respect.

Ita Noonan falls from her bed and dies; Dr. Lynn confirms her unborn fetus is not viable.

Julia assists Dr. Lynn in performing a postmortem examination on Ita Noonan's body.

Julia uses a repositioning technique passed along by Dr. Lynn to successfully deliver Mary O'Rahilly's healthy baby.

Honor White's labor stalls dangerously and Julia donates her own blood in a desperate vein-to-vein transfusion.

Honor gives birth to a baby boy with a cleft lip but refuses to hold or kiss him.

Julia and Bridie discover the nurses' dormitory has been converted to a ward and sleep the night on the hospital rooftop.

Bridie admits she lied about having already had the flu, and Julia recognises that Bridie is now showing symptoms.

Bridie's flu symptoms worsen rapidly through each color stage and she dies, leaving Julia heartbroken.

Julia chases Sister Luke down the street, accuses the nuns of abusing orphans like Bridie, and takes baby Barnabas home.

Julia Power begins her shift in the makeshift Maternity/Fever ward and immediately confronts death, grief, and emergency as her patients battle influenza alongside the challenges of childbirth. A young volunteer, Bridie Sweeney, arrives to help, and a skilled but controversial female doctor, Dr. Lynn, earns Julia's hard-won trust by recognising her abilities. The ward sees both tragedy and triumph as one patient delivers a stillborn child, another dies of the flu, and a third delivers safely only through Julia's quick thinking. By the second night, the bond between Julia and Bridie has deepened into something neither names, making Bridie's sudden death from influenza on the third day all the more devastating. Rather than let Honor White's orphaned newborn enter the same system that failed Bridie, Julia fights through every obstacle to take him home and raise him as her own.

The essential events driving the story from first death to final rescue.

Julia commutes to work by bike and tram, observing Dublin's shuttered shops and pedestrians wearing flu masks.

Physician Dr. Prendergast visits the ward and tells Julia that the hospital's new doctor is a woman.

Julia teaches Bridie how to thoroughly wash her hands and sterilize medical tools to protect the patients.

Father Xavier arrives uninvited to offer religious comfort to Delia Garrett after the loss of her stillborn baby.

War-veteran orderlies Nichols, wearing a metal face mask, and trembling O'Shea arrive to collect Ita's body.

Julia scratches symbols on the back of her watch to record both Ita Noonan's death and Delia's stillborn baby.

Orderly Groyne carries new patient Honor White into the ward while gossiping about Dr. Lynn's rebel politics.

Sister Luke tells Julia that Honor White has already lived once before at a mother-and-baby home for an unwed pregnancy.

Groyne argues that women should not have the right to vote; Julia retorts that women have always paid the blood tax.

Armed police officers barge into the ward searching for Dr. Lynn; Julia and Bridie tell them they cannot find her.

Dr. MacAuliffe orders risky pelvic surgery on Mary O'Rahilly, but Julia repositions her instead and delivers a healthy baby.

Julia finds Dr. Lynn hiding in a small makeshift office, disguised as an officer's widow to avoid arrest.

Delia Garrett is discharged from the hospital on the third morning and leaves in a wheelchair brought by Groyne.

Julia and Bridie give Honor's unnamed newborn the name Barnabas White and perform an informal baptism together.

Sister Luke objects to Julia taking Barnabas home and insists Julia must first obtain permission from a priest.

Seen through the secondary beats of the story, Dublin in 1918 emerges as a city simultaneously held together and torn apart by pandemic, war, and political unrest. Julia's daily commute, the understaffed hospital corridors, and the blunt opinions of orderly Groyne all paint a vivid picture of the world pressing in beyond the ward's door. Significant arrivals — Honor White with her shameful history, a disguised Dr. Lynn hiding from police — reveal the social and political pressures bearing down on everyone inside the hospital. The third day brings a quiet discharge, an improvised baptism, and a confrontation with Sister Luke that forces Julia to name the injustices Bridie endured at the convent. These moments, taken together, give texture and weight to the novel's compressed three-day world.

The supporting events shaping the ward's social and political world.

Julia greets her old nurse friend Gladys Horgan at the hospital canteen and sees how overwhelmed every ward has become.

Julia secretly uses a nail from the wall to scratch a mark on her watch recording Eileen Devine's death.

Ita Noonan grabs Bridie's hand so she can feel the baby kicking; Julia shows Bridie a medical illustration of a fetus inside the womb.

Julia quietly tells Bridie to guard her face, explaining that a worried nurse's expression will frighten patients.

During the autopsy on Ita, Julia and Dr. Lynn argue over the justice and violence of Ireland's independence movement.

Riding the tram home, Julia sees a man slumped against a wall with a flu-blackened face at the end of the terrible rainbow.

Tim surprises Julia with Halloween barmbrack and she discovers both a wedding ring charm and a spinster's thimble baked inside.

Julia notices an unexplained bruise on Tim's face the next morning and wonders whether a neighbor attacked him over his war service.

Julia asks Bridie about her birthday and learns Bridie does not know it because she was given up as an infant.

Dr. Lynn pierces Mary O'Rahilly's amniotic sac to speed up labor and spare her a longer, more exhausting ordeal.

Honor White's water unexpectedly breaks and Julia discovers the baby is positioned faceup, dangerously complicating the delivery.

Julia and Bridie look at the stars from the rooftop and debate whether each person's fate is written in the constellations.

Bridie confides that she was sexually abused by adults at the orphanage; Julia tells her that none of the dirt is hers.

Bridie kisses Julia on the rooftop and Julia realises she has fallen in love with Bridie.

Julia obtains Father Xavier's permission to take Barnabas, then rushes back to find that Sister Luke has already left with him.

Beneath the medical urgencies of the ward, a series of quiet discoveries and emotional shifts redefine what Julia knows about herself and the people around her. Small private rituals — secretly marking deaths on a watch, sharing Halloween barmbrack, offering Bridie half a birthday — reveal the tenderness Julia extends to those in her care. Conversations with Dr. Lynn challenge Julia's political certainties, while Bridie's gradual revelations about the cruelty of convent life shatter Julia's assumptions about the world outside her own experience. A night on the hospital rooftop brings the novel's most intimate turning point, as Bridie kisses Julia and Julia discovers she has fallen in love. The pool closes with Julia racing to claim baby Barnabas — a final act shaped entirely by everything Bridie has revealed and given her.

The revelations and turning points that transform Julia's understanding of herself and the world.