A Dublin Student Doctor (42 page)

“Thank you, sir. But how did you know?”

“Sir Sam Irwin, president of the Irish Rugby Football Union, is a friend of my father, the Marquis of Ballybucklebo. Played a bit myself once too.”

“I appreciate your sympathy, sir.” And now he was able to place where he’d seen the man. “Played a bit”? Fingal had seen photographs in the
Irish Times
of this man scoring a try for Ireland, but he was clearly too modest to mention it.

“Perhaps next year?”

“I hope so.”

“O’Reilly, forgive me, but you’re a medical man, are you not?”

“Not quite, sir. Final-year student.”

“I wonder if I could ask a great favour?”

Fingal nodded.

“Lady Laura had a misadventure mounting. The horse shied and she twisted her ankle.”

“Please, John, don’t make a fuss,” she said.

Fingal was taken by the softness of her voice. She sat her mount sidesaddle with fluid grace, looking like a female centaur, her long skirt melding with the contours of the horse.

“Would you, O’Reilly, be able to assure us that my wife hasn’t broken her ankle?”

Good God. Fingal had completed his orthopaedics, knew a fair bit about fractures, but still. “Well, I—”

“John, it’s really not necessary.”

“Laura, I don’t want you riding if you’ve broken that ankle.”

She sighed. “Mister O’Reilly.” She bent, rucked up her skirt to knee level, bent her knee, hauled off her boot, and thrust her sock-encased foot at Fingal. Her calf, and a well-turned one at that, was smooth and tanned. “I think it’s perfectly fine, but please have a look if you wish,” she said.

A snatch of a Cole Porter song ran through Fingal’s mind.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking.

“I wonder if you could move your horse away from the crowd, my lady?” And he followed while she walked the animal around a low wall.

“Please, proceed, Doctor,” she said.

“Not quite doctor, yet,” he said, and looked up to catch her returning his wry smile. “I’ll have to take off your sock.”

“Please carry on.”

Fingal took a deep breath. He held her foot in one hand and gently peeled off the woollen sock. “I hope that didn’t hurt,” he said, handing it to her.

“Not at all.”

It would have if a bone had been fractured. Fingal quickly examined the offending joint. She had little difficulty moving it. There was some tenderness and a good deal of swelling on the lateral side but certainly no evidence of a break. “It isn’t broken, but it is sprained, my lady,” he said. “You should rest it.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but I’ll not miss the hunt for only a sprain.” She smiled and there was fire in those pale blue eyes. “As long as we tell John it’s not broken, everything will be fine. You’ll support me in this, won’t you?” He hadn’t thought her smile could become any brighter, but when she asked, “Please?” Fingal was convinced her face was somehow lit from within.

He inclined his head. “Certainly, Lady MacNeill.”

“Thank you.” She busied herself putting on her sock and boot, but looked up to fix him with a curious look. “Queen’s student, then?”

He shook his head. “Trinity.”

“Trinity? Dublin?” She stopped with her boot halfway on. “I don’t suppose you’d know a chap called Beresford?”

“Bob Beresford? From near Conlig? He’s in my class.” Hadn’t Bob told him about a girl? A girl who’d married a man who was both an army captain and the son of a peer. A man called Lord John MacNeill? She was this girl with the radiant face and pale blue eyes.

“How is he?” she asked, and Fingal heard a wistful tone in her voice.

“Bob? He’s fine. With a bit of luck he’ll graduate this coming June.”

“I do hope so,” she said, rearranging her skirt. “I knew him—only vaguely, you understand.” She looked up quickly, then busied herself with the reins. “But he didn’t seem terribly interested in qualifying, or getting serious about anything—or anyone.” She turned the horse’s head sharply. “Thank you, Mister O’Reilly,” she said. “I’d best rejoin John. I’ll tell him your diagnosis, but not your suggested treatment.” She saluted him with her crop and walked the horse away.

That is one beautiful, spirited woman, Fingal thought. He ambled back to his brother. So she was the girl from Cultra that Bob had let slip away. And she’d not asked to be remembered to him. It was a bloody good thing he’d not said how Bob had changed, was making an effort to qualify. Some hares should be left to sit. He caught up with Lars as he was finishing his drink. “Come on, brother,” Fingal said as the hunting pack was let out of the yard. “Looks to me close to kickoff time. We’d better get clear of the horses.” The huntsman sounded a warning on a short straight horn. Those standing began to mount. Those already mounted turned their horses to face up the road.

“Finish your drink,” said Lars, “and we’ll go back to the car. They’ll be heading inland soon. We’ll nip up a side road. There’s a hill with a great view.”

Fingal took the last swallow, found a wall to put his glass where Davy’d find it, and set off with his brother. Fingal’s mind returned to that evening studying leukaemia with Bob Beresford. “It wasn’t until she’d married an army captain that I realised I’d let a gem go.” That gem was now Lady Laura MacNeill and if looks were anything to go by she was a corker. He thought of Lars and Jean Neely, and of Kitty O’Hallorhan with her soft grey eyes and soft laugh, who had been willing to wait because she understood how important his studies were. Who’d told him she loved him. Fingal inhaled. It seemed all the best people let gems go. Certainly Bob had called Kitty a jewel.

Fingal got into the car and sat quietly as Lars turned right, climbed a long hill, then parked. “Out.”

They crunched through a shallow drift and stood in front of a dry stone wall. Fingal looked down. In the distance the Mourne Mountains seemed to hold up a porcelain sky so delicate it looked as if it might crack if left unsupported. High clouds drifted to the south. A skein of grey-lag geese, tiny marks against Strangford Lough, moved in a ragged vee over the wishbone-shaped Long Island. It lay beside the neighbouring Round Island. The two were white moonstones in the blue enamel of the still waters. They were owned by a wildfowling syndicate of four physicians led by a Doctor Jimmy Taylor from Bangor.

Inland the little fields were wrapped in a snowy eiderdown that rose and fell over the drumlins, the round hills of County Down. Their bordering hedges and dry stone walls were limned with white. Patches of brown bracken and dark green whin bushes were all the colour to be seen.

He heard the huntsman’s horn, the belling of the pack, and in the valley not far below saw a russet blur, a fox racing across a field of unbroken snow. Fingal knew the creatures’ numbers must be controlled, they ate chickens and game birds, but his heart went out to the animal running in what must be mortal terror. It vanished under a blackthorn hedge.

The hounds had the scent and tore along, noses to the ground, tails in the air, an untidy string of twelve couples, twenty-four dogs spread out over a field.

A hoarse cry of, “View Halloo.” Someone had spotted the quarry in the open.

The horses, brown and chestnut, black and grey, thundered across the field hard on the hounds’ heels. He could hear the drumming, see earth and snow thrown up from the hooves. As they came nearer, the riders and steaming animals took clear shape. He had no difficulty recognising the army officer and his wife galloping side by side, Lady Laura MacNeill’s ponytail a chestnut battle ensign streaming in the wind of her passage. Clearly her ankle was troubling her not one whit.

A man’s black peaked hunt cap blew off. “Tally-ho.” He’d seen the quarry too. Headgear forgotten, he urged his horse on.

In small groups and singly, horses and riders leapt at the hedge where Fingal had last seen the fox. Up. Seem to hang. Over. Land. But not all. Two horses wandered, reins dangling as foxhunters picked themselves up. One remounted. The other limped as he led a grey away from the hedge and clearly was heading for home. The stragglers were still attempting the hedge and now the last horse baulked and unseated its rider, who quite unaccompanied cleared the hedge and landed with an audible thump. Fingal was happy when the unfortunate picked herself up and walked to a gate.

Three up to Brer Fox. Fair play to the creature.

The sounds of the hunt died in the distance until barely audible, drifting on the still air came the cry, “Gone awaaay. Gone awaaaay.”

He smiled. The hounds had lost the scent, and the fox, probably in its lair by now, was safe.

“That’s it, Fingal,” Lars said. “Unless you want to go and welcome them back.”

Fingal shook his head. “It was quite the sight. Thanks for bringing me.”

Lars smiled. “I’m glad we got a fine day for it.”

Fingal laughed. “‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, into the valley of death rode the six hundred.’ Stirring stuff this fox hunting, but my cheeks are like blocks of ice and I’m foundered. Home, James, for a hot half-un.” He piled into the car.

He still carried a mental picture of Lady Laura’s dancing ponytail, her refusal to let a sprained ankle stop her from revelling in the chase. It would be better not to mention to Bob that Fingal had met her. No need to open old wounds.

Fingal swayed as the car turned a tight corner. Twigs scraped along his side and he looked out to see a blackthorn hedge like the one the fox had first taken cover under. Fingal was pleased that the animal had outwitted its pursuers. He glanced at his brother. The fox had got away from the pursuing hunt just as Jean Neely had from Lars. Just as Bob had let Laura go. And just as the fox was now safe and getting on with its life, so was Jean Neely, so was Laura MacNeill. Both women had moved on, fallen in love again.

Fingal O’Reilly stared through the windscreen and felt a great unease at the thought of Kitty O’Hallorhan marrying someone else. Did he really have to let her get away too? He’d chased her off and wished to God he hadn’t. To hell with the colleague she was reportedly seeing. Fingal had told Charlie he’d ask her for a second chance after the exam results were in. They were. He’d passed. So what was holding him back?

41

From His Mother’s Womb Untimely Ripp’d

“Come on, Bob.” Fingal shot to his feet. He’d been startled by the jangling of an electric bell in the Rotunda gentlemen’s mess. It and other strategic sites in the hospital, like the women’s common room, had bells. They were the summons for all medical students to drop everything and hurry to the labour ward. Something unusual was about to take place and they were to observe.

Cromie and Charlie were on labour ward duty so they’d be there. Hilda and Fitzpatrick would be trotting over from the antenatal clinic.

They were in the first of eight weeks of structured practical instruction in midwifery and gynaecology, the introduction to a course that would consume five months. They’d already attended the ten introductory lectures given at Sir Patrick’s by the King’s Professor of Midwifery, O’Donel Browne.

“What do you reckon?” Bob asked as he closed the door behind them.

Fingal shook his head. “Dunno. Could be anything. Forceps, breech—” He’d seen one breech delivery and had been impressed by the skill of the accoucheur, a skill no doubt that had taken time and experience to attain. Fingal had observed three normal confinements. All students had to watch five then conduct deliveries themselves under supervision, some in the hospital, some in the patients’ homes.

He was liking midder. The women weren’t sick. Well, some with complications of the pregnancy were, but on the whole this speciality was a lot more cheerful than the ones where watching the likes of Kevin Doherty die was an integral part of the work. Every woman he’d observed was happy once the baby was born. As he heard it said, “Och sure, but doesn’t a babby bring its own welcome?”

And in midwifery there were techniques that could turn difficulties around and lead to excellent outcomes. Fingal lengthened his stride, pushed open the door to the labour ward, and entered a rectangular room. Beneath three large windows in the far wall was a row of enamel sinks. Electric lights hung on long flexes from a high ceiling. Even in midwifery the cornerstones of good care were light and airiness. Of the five cast-iron-framed beds in the room, one was vacant and three were occupied by labouring women.

The fourth was surrounded by the resident house officer, here called the clinical clerk; two midwives; the rest of Fingal’s group of six; and ten other medical students. Some were from Trinity, but others were from the undergraduate school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and there was one Scottish chap from the University of St. Andrews. A senior obstetrician, Doctor E. Hastings Tweedy, stood at the head of the bed speaking to the group.

At regular intervals one of the three women in the other beds moaned, cried out, begged the Holy Mother for relief. One kept wanting her own mammy. Midwives and midwives in training listened to the babies’ heart rates and examined each patient to determine her progress. At the appropriate time she would be delivered either by a medical student or a student midwife. Consultants like Doctor Tweedy were summoned only for complicated cases. Their private fee-paying patients who had normal deliveries were confined in nursing homes or their own beds, and not subjected to the ministrations of students.

“It stinks in here,” Bob said.

There certainly was an astringent aroma. Fingal wrinkled his bent nose. “It’s Dettol, a new antiseptic. Have you read the Davidson report?” he asked. “I did last night.”

“Not yet. Not in detail, but I know it’s about last year’s outbreak of puerperal fever, postpartum infection, here. There were five maternal deaths. It’s on my list.” Bob grinned at Fingal. “Honestly. It is. I will read it. I promise. I know it’s important. Postpartum infection is serious stuff.”

“You’d bloody well better. It could be a step to the greatest advance in years. The infection’s caused by the haemolytic
Streptococcus.
Doctor Davidson has three recommendations to combat it. One is using this new antiseptic, the second is wearing masks, because Davidson cultured the bacterium from throats and noses of doctors and nurses and reckons they were the source.” Fingal lifted a couple of masks from a box on a table near the door, handed one to Bob and started to tie his own. “And, the third is a drug that prevents the development of streptococcal blood poisoning in mice. They’ll be running a trial here.”