A Dublin Student Doctor (6 page)

“I haven’t a clue,” Bob said, paying for the fresh drinks. “I’d not been planning to go that far with my studies.”

“I know exactly where we should go. It’s a short bike ride from my digs, Bob’s flat, or you two’s rooms in Trinity to Grand Canal Street and Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital. It has just about everything we need.” Fingal put a hand into his knapsack and pulled out the
Regulations of the School of Physic.
“Medical wards, surgical wards, a fever wing.” He winked at Charlie. “And they have a home for student nurses nearby.”

“Great,” said Charlie, and lifted his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

“They don’t do obstetrics. Closed the unit in 1903, but I reckon the Rotunda up on Parnell Square is where we should do our five months of midwifery, but we’ve got to get medicine and surgery out of the way before we can.” He lifted his new pint. “Thanks, Bob.”

“My pleasure. You’ve really done your homework on this, Fingal.”

“I have,” said O’Reilly. “Now look. I’ll arrange for us to see the Secretary of the Medical Board at Dun’s and get signed up.”

Cromie said, “So we’ll stick together, the fearsome four, to do our clinical work at Sir Patrick’s.” His words were a little slurred.

O’Reilly smiled. Cromie was a tower of strength in many ways, but, unlike Fingal, had a weak head for drink.

O’Reilly lifted his glass. “To the next two years at Sir Patrick Dun’s, may the work be interesting and the
craic
continuous”—he fixed Bob with a stare—“for all four of us.” He drank to a chorus of “Hear. Hear.”

“Damn right, and we’ll start tonight,” said Charlie. “When these are finished, let’s get our tea and then go to the floating ballroom at Butt Bridge.”

To which Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly had replied, “I’m your man, Charlie Greer.”

5

The Fleeting Image of a Shade

O’Reilly looked at his watch and reckoned it was time to leave the cafeteria and see if Mister Gupta had good news. He climbed a flight of stairs and began to walk the length of the busy main corridor of the Royal Victoria Hospital. A couple of uniformed nurses passed him. A few folks in civilian dress, relatives of patients, no doubt. Medical students in bum-freezer short white coats. House staff in long white coats. A cleaner slowly advanced along the corridor pushing an electric floor polisher, known in Belfast as a bumper.

Once on the ward O’Reilly stopped at the nurses’ desk. The young woman wore, beneath her starched white apron, a navy blue uniform that identified her as a junior sister. He thought she looked tired, with the typical pallor of night nurses, but her blue eyes were lively when she looked up and started to say, “I’m sorry, but visiting hours are—”

“I’m Doctor O’Reilly,” he said. “Come to see Mister Gupta and my patient Donal Donnelly.”

“Oh,” she said. “Donnelly. The head injury. They should be back soon. Mister Gupta took the patient back to X-ray.”

“Back?” In casualty he had understood that Donal would have his X-ray before being admitted.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “the films weren’t very clear and Mister Gupta thought the ultrasound showed a possibility of bleeding, but he wants to be absolutely certain there is a skull fracture before he calls Mister Greer in from home.” She shrugged. “He did a seven-hour surgery for an astrocytoma today.”

“Brain tumour surgery’s tough.” O’Reilly could imagine his friend now in his big house on Harberton Park, sitting watching telly with his wife Noreen, probably dozing off in the middle of
The Avengers.
After an operation like that he’d be knackered. “With a bit of luck, we’ll not have to trouble Charlie tonight,” O’Reilly said.

Sister’s eyebrow rose. “Charlie?”

O’Reilly laughed. She thought he was being too familiar with her chief. “Charlie Greer and I were classmates at Trinity. Back in the Stone Age.”

“Oh,” she said. O’Reilly could imagine the unspoken, “Well, that’s all right then.” Gupta wouldn’t bring in a senior consultant unless there were serious grounds. That he hadn’t done so immediately told O’Reilly that the young man was not unduly concerned, but by repeating the X-ray he was taking no chances. Sensible. The latest imaging techniques had failed to give clear answers. Until they did, the only way to decide how Donal was doing was still the old analysis of symptoms and signs. That way of assessing a head injury had not changed since Fingal had been a student at Sir Patrick Dun’s. “Any change in Donal’s clinical state?”

“I’ve his chart here,” she said, and handed it to O’Reilly. The pulse rate was slower, the blood pressure stable, and the respiratory rate much slower. That was good. Patients who had suffered cerebral bruising, which was what Mister Gupta suspected, usually had a period of reaction when all those changes happened. O’Reilly sure as hell hoped that this was what was going on and that the next phase would be resolution with Donal regaining consciousness. He read on. Level of consciousness, unchanged, but the patient had spontaneously turned on his side. That too was a sign of the reaction period. Pupils equal and reacting to light. Good. Reflexes normal. Better. “When do we expect them back, Sister?” he asked.

“Twenty minutes—half an hour. We have our own X-ray department here in Quin House and the new Procomat automated film developer is a lot quicker than doing it by hand.”

He chuckled. “When I was a lad we used to hold glass film plates over the patient.”

She smiled and, he thought, tactfully refrained from comment.

“May I wait here?” he asked.

She beckoned to him. “Come round and have a pew. Can I make you a cup of tea?”

He smiled. Tea. Ulster’s answer to anything from a laddered stocking to nuclear war. “Please,” he said.

“I’ll be right back.” She rose. “Mister Gupta’s really very good. Try not to worry too much.” She left, heading for the ward kitchen. He had to smile. Usually it was him telling someone else not to worry. And, damn it, she was right. He should bide patiently. He looked at his watch. Ten past ten. It didn’t seem like more than four hours since Donal had come a cropper.

It would be dark outside now and the curtains of the four-bedded wards were all closed. These rooms against the wall of the hexagonal Quin House abutted a corridor that separated them from the single-bed isolation wards forming the inner hub. All rooms were glass-fronted. The building had been regarded as revolutionary when it was opened in 1953.

Charlie had invited Fingal to the occasion. A much more serious Charles Greer than the young man who’d suggested going dancing at a floating ballroom back in ’34. That had been a good night and yet Fingal had had no difficulty waking up the next morning. Youth, he thought wryly. He’d have more trouble nowadays getting his fifty-six-year-old bones out of bed at eight in the morning after a night of dancing.

O’Reilly crossed his legs at the ankles, locked his hands behind his head, and leant back in his chair. He could so clearly picture himself coming to in his digs, the sparsely furnished, linoleum-floored, ground-floor bed-sit at 23a Westland Row and remembering the night before. Charlie had been right about having fun. She’d been a pretty lass, that Finnoula—he had to struggle to remember her last name—Branagh. That was it. Branagh. Third-year botany student.

He’d taken her home by tram, kissed her goodnight, and had been pleased when she’d said she’d be delighted to go to the pictures with him on Saturday night. The Savoy Theatre on O’Connell Street had opened in 1929 and could seat three thousand. That was where they’d seen
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Sullivan. Now there was an Irish lass who’d done well for herself.

*   *   *

The springs of the single bed creaked as Fingal threw back the blanket. He felt the chill in the air. His stomach grumbled, but not in anticipation of the usual gruel accompanied by a pot of weak tea and a rationed two slices of bread and margarine that his landlady referred to as breakfast. No, once he’d showered and dressed he’d walk from here to his family home. Ma wasn’t expecting him, but he knew bloody well she’d put on an Irish breakfast that would leave you ready to call the cows home.

He let himself out of the front door, pausing as he always did to lift his cap to the plaque on the wall of the terrace house next door. Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde had been born there at Number 21. And a young Father had bestowed those names, less the
O’,
on his second son.

With a bit of luck, Father wouldn’t be home. He usually gave tutorials on Saturdays. Things between them had become very icy once Fingal had announced, back in ’27, that he was going to sea. They’d thawed over the years, but only by a degree or two. Fingal had made a point of popping in regularly to see Ma and had loyally eaten Christmas dinner at home ever since he’d started his medical studies. But while Lars and Fingal got on well, he and Father were only able to maintain a surface civility, and the depth of his father’s disappointment was palpable. Fingal strode on, humming “Lazybones.” It had been a big hit last year for the American band leader Ted Williams.

“Excuse me, sir?” A short man stood on the footpath. He wore laceless army boots, ragged moleskin trousers, a dirty, collarless shirt, and a threadbare Ulster overcoat. Two bronze medals were pinned to its left breast. The right coat sleeve was sewn back because his arm had been amputated below the elbow. He wore a tweed duncher tilted to one side.

The man’s pinched face was grimy, his cheeks blue, and Fingal saw that below a nicotine-stained moustache the upper two front teeth had gone. “Could you spare a penny, sir, so a poor, old sodger-man could get a cup of tea on a feckin’ cold morning?” He held out his left hand palm up and shivered.

Christ, Fingal thought. Poor divil. There were more beggars per square mile living in the Dublin tenements than in the slums of Bombay. Some of the saddest cases were wounded ex-servicemen who had fought in the Boer and Great Wars. They were barely supported by meagre pensions from their now-departed Imperial masters and despised by their fellow countrymen for having fought for the British. For centuries the British Army and Navy had provided jobs and a steady income for many of Ireland’s chronically unemployed, but a new Irish nationalism had burgeoned after the executions of the leaders of the Easter Rising and had made anything English despised.

Fingal thrust his hand into his trousers pocket. “Here,” he said, “here’s a florin. Get yourself a decent breakfast.”

The beggar’s eyes widened. “Holy Mother of God. Two whole feckin’ shillings? Ah, t’anks, yer honour. T’anks.” He snapped to attention and saluted with his left hand holding the shilling between his bent thumb and his palm. “Arragh Jayus, t’anks a feckin’ million, sir.”

“‘Breakfast,’ I said. Not a wheen of jars.” Fingal tried to sound stern.

Already the man had scuttled away in the direction of the alleys of the Liberties where the
poitín
and porter, the weakest ale brewed by Guinness, were cheap and plentiful. Och well, Fingal, he told himself, if the poor divil gets a bit of warmth in a shebeen and a few hours of drunken solace with his mates, a cigarette or two, why not? Fingal had lengthened his stride, eager to be home to see Ma, have his breakfast, and a nice cuppa.

*   *   *

“Here’s your tea, Doctor O’Reilly.” The nursing sister set a small tray on the desk. “What do you like in it?”

O’Reilly sat up. Uncrossed his ankles. Someone had dimmed the lights on ward 21. “Milk and sugar, please.”

She poured. Handed him the cup and said, “And there are some McVitie’s Rich Tea biscuits.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

“I’m going to have to leave you, I’m afraid,” she said. “We’ve a full ward and it’s time I made my rounds.”

“Go right ahead,” he said. “No word from Mister Gupta?”

“Not yet, but it won’t be much longer. No news is good news. Enjoy your tea and biscuits,” she said, and left.

No, O’Reilly thought, no news is exactly that. No bloody news. But he’d have to bide. He lifted a biscuit and dipped it in his tea. Ma, he remembered, had always served tea, McVitie’s Rich Tea biscuits—no Dublin hostess would dare omit them—chocolate digestive biscuits, and Cook’s homemade shortbread and chocolate éclairs when people had come for afternoon tea. Never mind afternoon tea, he thought, Cook always put on a hell of a breakfast at Lansdowne Road.

6

Mother Will Be There

Fingal climbed the stone steps to the front door, admiring the delicate wrought-iron railings and the Virginia creeper that clung to the house’s red brick. The leaves were spring green. Come autumn they would be scarlet daubs of cheering colour among the sad leafless trees.

He stabbed the brass doorbell push and heard jangling in the hall, feet approaching.

“Master Fingal.” Bridgit, the maid, opened the door. She looked smart in her black dress, white pinafore, and crimped white cap pinned to grey hair parted in the middle.

O’Reilly grinned. “Morning, Bridgit.” To her, despite his twenty-five years, he was still “Master,” not “Mister.” Bridgit had been with the family for as long as he could remember. She’d probably helped change his nappies.

She led him to the drawing room. Fingal’s mother sat in a wing-backed armchair in the bay of the bow window. The low morning sun put highlights in her blonde hair and cast her in shadow beneath a landscape in oils in the style of the French Impressionists. It was one she’d painted last year while Father had been fishing on a holiday to Ramelton in Donegal.

She turned from her
Irish Times
and smiled. “Thank you, Bridgit. Fingal. What a surprise. How lovely to see you.” She frowned. “Have you had breakfast?”

He shook his head. “Morning, Ma.”

She tutted.

Typical Ma. Always worrying about her two grown sons. She probably thought that without food he’d be on the verge of collapse. He crossed to her and dropped a kiss on her head. As ever, her pearls were round her slender neck. “I’ve not eaten—yet.”

“Is there anything special you’d like, son?”

He shook his head. “Not much,” he said. “Something light. Porridge. Couple of rashers and two eggs please, Bridgit. Sausages. Bit of black pudding. Soda farl. Tomato. Maybe a couple of kidneys? Lamb chop?”