An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea (18 page)

O'Reilly nodded. He had a lot to learn about this condition. “Will you sit in with me next time she comes?”

“I'd be delighted,” Barry said.

“Good,” said O'Reilly. “I'm going to need your help.”

“That's generous of you to say so, Fingal.”

“Och,” said O'Reilly, “you don't keep a dog and bark yourself.” Having saved a little face, he continued, “Now, when you went to get Lorna, was the waiting room busy?”

“It was filling up.”

O'Reilly took a three count before grinning and saying, “Then be a good lad and nip along there and yell, ‘Next.'”

 

12

The Pity of War

“I,” said Angus Mahaddie, “am knackered.” The little man had managed to shave during the long night, but there were dark bags under his eyes. “But it's our turn to see the postops and arrange premeds, so we'd better get at it.”

“I've been brighter myself.” Fingal was yawning, and no wonder. Tuesday's bombing raid on the dockyard had been a big one and none of the surgical staff had had much sleep until about three on Thursday morning, when the last of the wounded had been treated.

Things were now returning to their normal routine, but managing to snatch only about six hours' sleep in the last forty-eight had hardly been conducive to feeling full of vim and vigour.

The Germans had come over in waves of about sixty to a hundred Heinkel 111 and Junkers 88 bombers, heavily escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters. They'd pressed home attacks until late afternoon. Those fighter pilots of the RAF's 11 Group who had survived the dogfights must be even more exhausted than Fingal. He thought about the airmen, some of them barely out of school when they joined up. Poor boys.

Angus led the way onto Admiral Collingwood Ward, a Florence Nightingale type that had been created years ago by knocking out the wall between two smaller rooms to make one large, better-ventilated space. A bow arch was all that remained of the previously intervening wall. If he closed his eyes, Fingal could have thought himself back in Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital in Dublin. The same unmistakable hospital sounds and smells filled the air.

Looking through the archway to an identical room, he saw rows of cast-iron-framed beds on each side—nearly all occupied. Large windows in the whitewashed walls let in the pale autumn light. He and Angus had been working nonstop since he'd left the admiral at five thirty on Tuesday afternoon. When he'd had a spare moment to think about anything other than administering anaesthetics and making postoperative rounds to ensure that the patients were indeed recovering from the effects of his efforts, he'd struggled with his conscience, knowing he should let Deirdre know the truth about their wedding plans. But even if he'd had the time to call, which he hadn't, the telephone exchange had been hit by a bomb and the General Post Office engineers were still making repairs.

“Morning, Sister Blenkinsop,” Angus said.

“Morning, sir. Morning, Lieutenant O'Reilly.” The QARNNS senior sister in charge of the ward's nurses was a tall, angular, iron-grey-haired woman who Fingal already knew was the absolute mistress of her trade. She was tidy in her starched headdress called a veil, short cape called a tippet, and white apron over a dark blue dress. “Ready when you are.” She was accompanied by a junior sister and a young VAD.

“We're getting back to normal now, sir,” Sister said. “We've got all the ones from downstairs back up to the wards and a number of the recovering ones taken by train to inland hospitals away from the bombing. Some of the less badly injured go to convalescent homes in the Meon Valley.”

Which, Fingal thought, would account for the empty beds.

“Thank God the Jerries haven't been back, but we're quite ready if there is another raid.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Angus said. “Perhaps we're going to get a bit of a reprieve down south here. The BBC said this morning on the eight o'clock bulletin that the Luftwaffe hit the City of London and the docks again last night.” He shook his head. “Again.”

“Poor devils,” Sister said.

“Twenty-six consecutive night attacks on London since September the seventh. The bastards—sorry, ladies—the Huns can't be everywhere at once, so poor old London's loss, at night anyway, seems to be our gain.” He coughed, and said, “And as we can't stop the air raids, we can at least do our part in fixing up the damage. Now, Lieutenant O'Reilly's the one being trained, so he'll do the work. I'll only give advice if I'm asked.” Although Angus managed to smile, it was a tired one.

“I'll do my best, sir.” Fingal stifled a yawn, feeling the stubble on his chin, which hadn't seen a razor for two days. Since “flying solo” on Tuesday afternoon he, with gradually increasing confidence, had given ten anaesthetics by himself, although with three tables in service in the theatre Angus had always been nearby working on another patient. David White had manned the other table and another trainee the third. As yet Fingal was unsure of just how many procedures they'd done, but with two operating theatres going all out it must have been close to sixty major cases and Lord knew how many walking wounded.

Between shifts in theatre, shifts on the wards, and snatched meals and naps, there'd been no time for social chitchat, and Fingal had only been able to give Angus a curt “not good” after his interview with the admiral. That felt like a hundred years ago. “Let's get started, please, Sister.” It was always politic to keep on the good side of senior nurses.

The little entourage moved to the first bed, where a patient was trying to lie at attention, as regulations prescribed. Bloody regulations. Fingal clenched his teeth. A cylindrical cage under the blue-and-white blanket held the bedclothes over where his legs had once been. Crushed under a toppled dockyard crane. The cage kept the weight of the bedclothes off the stumps.

Sister handed Fingal a clipboard where the man's temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and number of bowel motions had been recorded. He scanned the numbers quickly and said, “Good morning, Benson. You seem to be doing well.” All the man's vital signs had been normal, but doing well? Fingal grimaced at his own banality and deep in his guts could feel the hurt of what he saw. Twenty-three and no legs. What a bloody waste.

He looked into the eyes of the drowsy man, whose pupils were constricted, the results of morphine given for pain relief. The man mumbled something. Patients heavily dosed with the opiate often did and it was nothing to worry about, but Fingal still struggled to understand what the man was trying to say, alas to no avail.

“We'll keep him on a quarter of a grain of morphine every six hours please, Sister.” Fingal handed her back the clipboard, which she immediately passed over to the VAD to write the order.

The next patient, like several others, was sitting beside his bed stiffly, with arms folded. They all wore the hospital uniform, serge trousers and blue shirts. Fingal took a deep breath. Above a distinct smell of disinfectant hung the stink of Sinclair's glue, the adhesive used to attach traction devices to the skin of broken limbs. He could see two patients farther along the ward in Balkan beam beds with gantrys, ropes, pulleys, and weights keeping traction on the splinted limbs.

Those poor divils would have been left alone up here during the raid on Portsmouth with the racket of exploding bombs and antiaircraft fire, the ward lit by garish red and yellow flashes as the bombs went off some miles away. Even today, there lingered a whiff of brick dust and smoke mingling with the usual hospital smells. The smoke was not only from fires. Portsmouth Dockyard was ringed with generators called “Smokey Joes” that were lit up to try to generate a smoke screen.

Many of the German planes would have passed directly overhead, because the raiders often used the hospital's distinctive water tower as a navigation point. Waiting for a bomb to hit the hospital must have been terrifying for those men—alone, vulnerable, unable to move a muscle to save themselves.

“Here you are, sir.” The sister handed Fingal a chart. “Chief Petty Officer McIlroy. He's an instructor at the gunnery school on Whale Island. If we've no emergencies, he's booked for a—” She lowered her voice to a whisper as a sop to the man's privacy. “—haemorrhoidectomy. He's been examined by the admitting doctor and is fit for anaesthesia.”

“Fine,” said Fingal, “and no previous illnesses?”

“No, sir,” she said.

“Usual omnopon and scopolamine premed then, please. Usual timing.”

“Excuse me, sir,” the man said in a thick Ulster accent, “begging your pardon, but you're one of my lot, aren't you?”

“From Ballybucklebo.” Fingal was surprised to find how homesick he felt hearing the man's harsh tones.

The patient's grin was vast. “Away off and chase yourself—sir. You never are. I'll be damned, and me from Helen's Bay, just down the road, so I am. And my old oppo, fellah called Thompson, he's just been posted til…” he lowered his voice, “
Warspite
. He's a Ballybucklebo man.”

“I don't think I knew him back in Ireland,” Fingal said. “I was on
Warspite.
I'll be going back to her so maybe I'll meet him there.” He ignored Sister impatiently clearing her throat. “One of our gunnery leading seamen…”

“Alf Henson. He's on my course. Sharp as a tack, thon one, sir. He'll go far, so he will.”

Sister cleared her throat once more. “I'm sure that's very interesting, Chief Petty Officer,” Sister Blenkinsop said, “but we must be getting on.” She fixed Fingal with a glare and then glanced over to Angus, as if asking the senior to pull rank. But the Highlander was clearly being true to his word and had no intention of interfering. Instead he took a sudden interest in his fingernails.

“Good luck,” O'Reilly said.

“Thanks a million, sir. You've made my feckin' day, so you have. Up till now it's been a right pain in the arse.”

Fingal stifled a smile and saw Sister Blenkinsop raise her hand to her mouth to hide her own grin.

And so the round went until Fingal and Angus had completed their duties and had retired to Sister's office for a cup of tea and a piece of her homemade shortbread. The office was at the end of the ward and had a small bow window looking onto the ward so she could keep an eye on her staff and her patients. They met David White coming off duty.

“Eh,” said Angus, leaning back in his chair. “This is the first chance we've had to talk about anything other than what gasses to use. I'm guessing your remark, that the interview was ‘not good,' means you can't get permission?”

Fingal nodded. “I've to wait until I'm a lieutenant-commander.”

Angus shook his head. “I know when promotions are made, laddie. Too late for you. I'm very sorry.”

“That's pretty rotten,” David said. He helped himself to a sugary wedge of shortbread, bit into it, and said, “Sister, this shortbread is jolly good.”

Sister Blenkinsop was stirring her tea with one hand and writing up progress notes with the other. “I got the recipe from my mother and she used to win prizes at village fairs with it.”

“It really is top hole,” David said.

Fingal glanced over at David. Pretty rotten. Top hole. These bloody English public school boys all sounded like something out of the fictitious Greyfriars School created by Frank Richards, or Kipling's
Stalky and Co
.

He must have seen Fingal's scowl, realised the enormity of his waxing lyrical over shortbread when his friend had received bad news. “Dreadfully sorry, Fingal,” he said. “I really am.”

“Can't be helped,” Fingal said. He shrugged. “I appreciate the sympathy and I know in the grand scheme of things, there're worse things happening—” He gestured out the door to the ward. “But the damnable thing is, I—well, I haven't told Deirdre yet. I feel like a bloody fool. I was so sure it would be all right. I've had no time since the raid, and now the phones are out.”

“So the admiral didn't say anything about—”

Fingal leaned forward in his seat. He knew he must look like a cat ready to pounce. “Yes?”

“Eh, I'm sorry, lad. I shouldn't be getting your hopes up,” Angus said, and frowned. “It's just that I'm surprised the boss didn't think of it, but running this place since the Blitz started has been a hell of a job—”

“Didn't think of what?” Fingal remembered the towering stack of files on the man's desk.

“And he never loses control, but he must be constantly preoccupied. He's being relieved next month by Admiral Bradbury. The old man'll need a rest.”

“But what didn't he think of?” Fingal was close to shouting.

“There may just be a way to speed up your promotion.”

“What?”

“May be, and I don't want to get your hopes up, but if I can get hold of a friend of mine in London.”

“Come on, Angus, tell me,” Fingal said. “What way?”

Angus shook his head. “Just bide for a wee while until the phones come back on. Sister tried about ten minutes ago, but our switchboard can't get through.” He looked at his watch. “Nine thirty. I tell you what, seeing as how you can't phone your lassie, would it help if I let you go out for a couple of hours? Things are slow again now.” He looked at David. “You'll not mind filling in for Fingal?”

“My pleasure,” David rushed to say, clearly trying to make amends for his earlier lack of sensitivity. “And if you want the car…” He offered the keys.

Fingal jumped up and had to restrain himself from grabbing them out of David's hand.

“Be back for twelve thirty,” Angus said. “The phones may be working by then, and when they are I'll start making enquiries. But, laddie?”

“Yes.”

“I'll not be saying anything until I have the answer cut and dried.”