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Sarah Rogers is born as Sarah O'Connell in Dublin on the last day of 1897. In the words of her mother, she was her little miracle child – born nearly a decade after her youngest brother and nearly two after the eldest.
At 7, Sarah works with her mother at the Laundry because the O'Connells need every dime to pay for rent each months. She grows up in the hot and humid air of a factory, working 12 hour shifts that leave her hands bloody and her body exhausted.
She spends nearly a decade working in a factory until her hands are as rough as an old woman. It is during that time that her brother come home bleeding and bruised more often than not and Sarah realizes she has a gift.
Her hands, rough and worn out from a hard days work, fix up her brothers and then the Great War starts and she volunteers at the local hospital.
Being a nurse is everything. It pays better than the laundry does, so she resumes her studies – reading and writing and numbers and the Head Nurse pronounces her acceptable and she moves to the job full time.
She is known as Scary Sarah by her third month working and she wears the title with pride. When Scary Sarah comes by, work is done efficiently, quickly and with precision. If that is the reputation she will die with, Sarah thinks she will be happy.
She meets Joseph Grant Rogers at the hospital. While he is kind and sweet and gentle, talking in soft and gently tones and smiling sweetly at all the nurses, he is also English and Protestant so most of the other nurses stay far away from him.
Sarah does not.
Perhaps it was the lack of Irishness that attracted Sarah to Joseph Rogers in the first place, because 9 Irish Men as brothers was more than enough for a lifetime. She ignores the fact that he is Protestant and spends more and more time at the bedside of an English Soldier while her brothers are out in the streets fighting for Irish Independence.
She marries him young and is widowed young.
She stands over her husbands grave 3 months after marriage, not shedding a tear, because after three funerals she has no more tears to spare, only resignation in her heart. Her belly feels heavy, even if she is barely showing and the priest – the only other attendee – puts a hand on her shoulder and offers quiet condolences.
She boards the ship to America the next day.
No widow of a Protestant English Soldier would survive the revolution, Stiofan had said quietly as he kissed her farewell, especially not the single mother of the child of an English Protestant Soldier. He tears up as he promises to keep her updated on the situation in Ireland.
America will be the next adventure of her life, Sarah decides on the ship as she watches the only home she had ever known grow smaller as the ship sailed away. The journey there is however probably the hardest in her life. Most of her fellow travelers either judge the ring on her finger, her growing belly or the rosary around her neck.
When they do arrive at Ellis Island, Sarah has lost 10 pounds and she feels weak as an old woman as she steps out of the boat and onto American soil.
The immigration officer looks at her belly pointedly and only as Sarah acknowledges being a widow does he shrug and stamp her papers with a bright red “married”. And as quickly as that Sarah stands on the streets of New York with three dollars to her name, pregnant and with no place to stay.
A week later she finds an apartment. It is a small room for which the landlord charges absurd amounts of money, but she has a roof over her head and a place to have a child in a few months. She shares the kitchen and the bathroom with a young Italian couple and an Irish family. It had been a larger apartment once, Maria Rinelli tells her the first evening, but when more immigrants came their landlord split the four bedroom apartment into three smaller ones.
She finds a job quickly, because every city needs qualified nurses and from what her fellow nurses tell her, Sarah is lucky. Both the Rinelli's and the Connolly's were kind and good peoples. They ask little questions, but Siobhan Connolly wants to set Sarah up with one of her brothers and Maria Rinelli smiles sadly when she catches Sarah looking at the only picture of Joseph.
Together the three of them cook dinner, Maria Rinelli teaching her and Siobhan Italian Dishes that Sarah has never tried before. Maria Rinelli also calls for the midwife when Sarah's labor starts and Siobhan Connolly holds her hands tight as she screamed through the pains of childbirth.
Sarah might have left Ireland and her family there, but she finds a new one in the Rinelli's and the Connolly's.
She baptizes Steven Grant Rogers after her eldest brother and her husband, both long dead but surviving in her little boy. In private she calls him Stiofan and sings songs in the language of her parents. In public he is Steve and she takes care to work on her own American Accent.
Stiofan is in the hospital for the first time when he is 3 months old. The doctors say he only has partial hearing out of his right ear and is colorblind on both his eyes. They say he will probably not survive beyond his first year.
He does.
Stiofan grows like a weed despite the doctors words. During every visit they tell her to be prepared and he survives and survives, even his first bout of pneumonia as a 6 month old and the development of his asthma afterward. Sarah thinks she is lucky to work at a hospital where the doctors know and like her, as they do not charge her for every examination.
At the ward, she sends for the local pastor whenever there is a Catholic on the deaths bed, despite the resident doctors scoffs, and holds vigil over them and says all the right prayers and so the pastors are there for her when Stiofan nearly dies from pneumonia at 3 years old.
Sarah learns enough Italian to hold the rites in Italian and offers comfort to the Irish in Gaelic. She speaks to the doctors in English and translates when the sickness reaches a patients brain. She works tirelessly and hard and Nonna Petrelli, who moves in after the Connolly's move out, takes care of Stiofan when Sarah works a double shift.
She raises Steve in Gaelic, in the language of her ancestors, and Nonna Petrelli only speaks Italian even if Sarah knows the ancient woman understands English perfectly well. Stiofan speaks Gaelic and Italian before anyone even has the thought of teaching him English. Alfonso Petrelli, Nonna's grandson who moves in with her the summer before Stiofan starts school, teaches him English, carefully pronouncing the words so Steve can hear them correctly.
And Stiofan is sharp as a whip, so when school does start, Stiofan speaks with a faint accents, but his English improves with everyday. Sarah still fears for his life every time he gets a cough, but she thinks her son is determined to survive anything the world throws at him.
Nonna Petrelli's grandsons all offer to marry her, but Sarah likes being alone. She likes the comfort of not needing to worry about anyone but herself and her son. She likes working at the ward, because it is good and honest work and she knows Stiofan is in good hands with Nonna Petrelli.
When Mario Rinelli marries and has his first child, the Rinelli's little apartment is stuffed to the brim with 6 adults and an infant, so they move out and it is then that Stiofan shyly admits that he has a friend in school whose parents are looking for a place to stay.
Ana and Danut Barnes barely speak English and they flinch at every loud sound. Their son James is a year younger than Stiofan and was born as Janim Barna in Romania. They had changed it to the much more American James Buchanan Barnes as they entered the US.
In their eclectic little apartment, the Barnes' do not matter, but the first time Sarah hears someone on the street call Ana Barnes a filthy Jew her temper snaps.
If being an Irish Catholic in America is difficult, than being Jewish and Eastern European is nearly impossible.
Ana pales every time someone comes too close to her and one night over wine, she confides to Sarah that she and Danut left Romania after his family was killed for being Jewish. She fears, Ana says, the Americans are just as bad.
Sarah, who has heard anti-catholic and anti-Irish sentiments since she entered the country, does not know what to say. She tells Ana the story of how her own family shunned her for marrying a Protestant back in Ireland and how he was shunned for marrying a Catholic by the English.
Religion, Sarah says, just gives assholes an excuse to be bullies.
Janim and Stiofan are best friends from the moments James beats up the WASWASPs who takes Stiofan's lunch money every day and Ana and Sarah both breathe a sigh of relief that their sons have someone in their corners.
Both Ana and Sarah learn to call their sons by their Americanized names after Stiofan brings home the story of Janim being beat up by a classmate after hearing of his heritage.
Still, James teaches Steve a few phrases in Romanian and Hebrew and the Rogers-Barnes chrismukah celebration confuses even Nonna Petrelli, whose tolerance barely extends to her Jewish neighbors.
Sarah takes James with her to Mass on Christmas Eve and Steve accompanies the Barnes' to the local Synagogue days later.
By the time the markets crash, the boys are as close as brothers and Ana and Danut have acclimatised to living in America.
There is an influx of funeral at church and they make Sarah's good Catholic soul cry out. There is an unspoken agreement that no one speaks of suicide, but within months good pillars within their community have lost their lives to the crash.
The Barnes' come out victorious out of the crash. They do not lose money in the initial crash and capitalize on the fear afterward. They make enough money to buy a small place a couple of blocks away, in an up-and-coming neighborhood.
It is just in time for Alfonso Petrelli, who had lost everything including his young wife to the crash, to move into their place. Alfonso, a decade older than when he had been when he had proposed to Sarah, spends most of his time drinking the loss away and it takes Sarah and Nonna Petrelli's combined strength to keep him from dying.
Steve still cries as he says goodbye to James and he gets pneumonia a few weeks later, bedridden and weak and this time even Sarah is not sure if her little boy will make it. The staff at the hospital is kind enough to give her vacation and she sits at Steve's bedside and prays.
And despite school and work, James and Ana are by Sarah's side. James says prayers in Latin and Gaelic and Romanian hovering over Steve, washing his face with a damp cloth and Ana cooks up a Romanian Folk Medicine that was neither kosher nor proved by modern medicine, but she only says:
“He might be a goy, but he is Janim's mensch.”
Steve gets better against all odds, after Sarah has said the last rites 5 times and he does not seem much weaker than before. He blushes a bright red when he realizes he missed a month of school, but immediately turns around to chastise James for the same.
Sarah is happy her boy found a friend as important as James, she thinks, as she watches her boys grow up.
The Barnes' make good business, while Sarah struggles to feed herself and Steve. When she works triple shifts at the hospital to make up for the time she spent by Steve's side, he stays with the Barnes and Ana assures her that it is the least they could do for the Rogers.
Steve goes over to the Barnes even after Rebecca and Margo and Cassie are born. Him and Bucky stay inseparable and Sarah takes the two boys to Coney Island on Steve's 13th birthday.
They spend money Sarah should not spend, but it is all worth it as Sarah watches her son follow Bucky onto one ride after another. Steve throws up after the third ride, but he still follows Bucky onto the next and he smiles brightly at her as she stays outside holding the boys snacks.
Both Sarah and Ana share a knowing look at Chrismukkah as Steve and Bucky shyly exchange gifts. Steve has sketched Bucky and Sarah wishes she could pay for Steve to be an artist, because her boy has a gift.
Bucky hands Steve a sketchbook, leather bound and engraved with Steve's initials. Sarah's boy tears up at the sight, and she knows it must have cost the Barnes' a small fortune.
Like your uncle, she tells Steve later as she flips through the sketchbook, because Cillian was an artist too. He had died during the Great War, but his sketches would have survived. Perhaps, she thinks, she will go back to Ireland to her parents house.
She misses Ireland more now that Steve is older. She wishes her son could see the country his ancestors hail from. He still speaks to her in Gaelic when they are alone, but he does not understand the connection Sarah immediately has with others raised in Ireland.
Steve is, in a word, American.
Perhaps it is her homesickness that makes her contract TB. The doctor do after all say emotional distress makes women more susceptible to it. She tries to hide it from Steve at first, but it does not work for long.
For all the tears she had spilled at Steve's sickbed over the years, Steve spills at least 5 at hers. She hates seeing her boy so broken, as he rests his head on the blankets and weeps.
The doctors try and make him stay away from her side, but Stiofan is as stubborn as ever. God always let me live, he says clearly, so he will let me live now.
Ana, Danut and James take turns visiting and make Steve bathe and sleep. Sarah is grateful for them, as she always was and as she feels her body wither away she also spends more time smiling than she had in a long while.
Not much longer, the doctors tell her one day, and she calls Steve to her side.
“You must always do good, Stiofan.” She tells him, smiling through her tears. Steve sobs as he looks at her. “I will come back and haunt you if you do not.”
She does not really fear that he will not, she knows she raised a good man, but who knows what her little boy with his spitfire heart and quick wits could do in life.
She dies in her apartment, the very same apartment she had lived in since she had arrived in New York, with her son by her side and not a single regret in her heart.