The God Squad (23 page)

I had settled into St Patrick’s Ward and didn’t want to leave, but by now realized that being moved from place to place was an inevitable part of my life. Despite that, every move was a traumatic one. Even though I had witnessed and experienced suffering during my months there and lived with the seemingly endless visits of the priest to administer extreme unction, I had come to like the place, even love it. Nurses and patients were good to me and treated me as someone special. There were lighter moments, like the empty proposals of marriage which always took the form of a question like: ‘How would ya like to put yer shoes under the same bed as meself?’

‘You’re a desperate man,’ the nurse would reply, laughing.

‘Desperate! Bejasus I am! You can put that to music.’

Mother of Mercy Ward was a small neurosurgical unit with no more than ten beds. There were two rooms off the corridor reserved for private patients or people recovering from major brain surgery. In contrast to St Patrick’s, it was very quiet and the patients appeared to be more ill. Many of the beds were screened off, but every patient I could see had a plaster covering part of his head. Some had their heads completely shaved and covered with a heavy cream-coloured sticking plaster. Their faces were stained by disinfectant running like pink tears down their cheeks and along the back of their necks.

The nurses shifted busily around the ward with no real rapport between them and the patients as there had been in St Patrick’s. Whenever I made noise I was reprimanded by a nurse. Patients muttered at me, one elderly man shouting at the nurse on duty to ‘get that child to hell out of the place’.

I hated Mother of Mercy Ward, hated its drabness and silence. I hated the cranky old men groaning their way out of the world, though by now I had become so used to death that I accepted the ritual of it as just part of each day. I resented having to stay in bed with no-one to play with.
Some nurses and visitors would bring in comics which I kept stacked in a neat pile at the end of my bed. I never felt comfortable beneath the bedcovers and so I spent most of the day outside them. Whenever the Matron was expected, I was hastily rushed under the covers which were tucked in tightly to ensure that I remained there. It was the same whenever a doctor, priest or nun was visiting the ward, or during visiting hours on Sunday.

My closest friend during those days was a young nun, a novice of barely nineteen or twenty, freshfaced and good looking despite the unattractive habit she had to wear, which only allowed her face and hands to be exposed. Her friendship towards me and the love I felt for her were in marked contrast to my feelings for the nuns in the School at Cappoquin, who by now were nothing more to me than bad memories. I was so used to calling nuns ‘Mother’ that I found it difficult to address Sister Catherine as ‘Sister’ for a while. She spoke softly, even when I irritated her by not bothering to learn spellings she had set me. She often asked me to learn pieces out of an old green-covered catechism she had given me and was always pleased when I answered her questions and never angry when I didn’t.

One day she gave in to my persistence and had agreed to play a game of draughts with me when the Matron unexpectedly arrived into the ward. She glared icily at the young nun before beckoning to her with her wrinkled finger. Sister Catherine grew visibly distressed as the matron rebuked her for being intimate with a patient. When she reminded the Matron that I had no-one else to play with she responded through her gritted teeth: ‘Your job, Sister, is to look after the patients, not to play with them.’

I felt desperately guilty as Sister Catherine wept openly. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was but couldn’t bring myself to. It would have been too embarrassing for both of us. As
she walked out of the ward accompanied by the matron I wondered if she would ever talk, never mind play with me again.

The nurses wore white uniforms with white veils that hung from their heads like kites. They were heavily starched and held in position with three white hair clips. They wore badges which gave the initial of their first name. Nurse M. Duffy was giving me my medication one day when I asked her what the ‘M’ stood for. She refused to answer and, when I persisted, said that the patients were not supposed to know the nurses’ first names because nurses were not allowed to be familiar with them. Eventually she told me her name was Margaret but warned me never to call her that out loud, or both of us would be in trouble.

‘I heard the other nurses calling you Mags,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m going to call you.’

I teased her and she playfully put her hand across my mouth to stop me. As she did, I bit on the loose skin of her fingers which made her pull her hand away.

‘Play a game of Ludo with me, Mags, and I won’t call you Mags.’

‘I will not,’ she said. ‘Do you want Drac to catch me?’

‘Who’s Drac?’

No sooner had I asked the question when I realized she meant the matron. I remembered what happened with Sister Catherine and I understood Margaret Duffy’s refusal to play with me.

Not long after I arrived there the consultant neurosurgeon came to see me. Unlike most of the consultants I had come across during my years in hospital, he didn’t have a large group of students with him, just one other doctor. He was friendly towards me and adopted the habit of gripping my nose between the joints of his first two fingers
and twisting it gently. It was a gesture designed to make me less nervous of him.

Whenever he wanted to discuss something with the staff of the ward or the doctor accompanying him, he stepped back from the bed and stood in the middle of the ward. Though I could always hear what he was saying I didn’t always understand it. But I understood when he told the ward sister he wanted to carry out some investigative surgery and would be taking me ‘down’ the following morning. I trembled at the mention of the word ‘down’, which could only mean one thing. I was to be operated on. This time under general anaesthetic. Using his own head as a model he explained to his houseman how he intended to insert plates into my head to be used for various procedures in the future. One would be inserted at the top of my head towards the front and another at the back. He also described the need for ‘burr holes’ to relieve intracranial pressure. The precise nature of the condition was not clear and the surgery would be purely investigative. Before leaving he twisted my nose and mentioned that he would see me in the morning. I nodded, fighting to hold back the tears.

In the afternoon, Sister Catherine came to my bedside, her face strained as she left a covered tray on the bed-table. She asked me softly not to touch anything as she walked across the ward for screens to put around my bed. Her voice trembled as she said she had to get me ready for the theatre. There was silence between us for a minute before she took a small nurse’s scissors from a white leather pouch attached to a belt around her waist. She ran her fingers lovingly through my long straight hair before beginning to cut it. As the scissors snipped tufts of hair into her hand I wept silently and though she did her best to comfort me, I
couldn’t stop. When the scissors could do no more she unveiled the tray and filled a basin with warm water into which she dropped a bar of soap and a shaving brush, similar to those I had seen many men use to lather their faces before shaving. As the brush soaked, she carefully unwrapped a blade from its paper and inserted it into the open jaws of the silver razor. With a circular motion of the brush on the soap she prepared to lather my head for shaving. At first her movements were jerky as the razor jumped over the longer hair, dragging rather than shaving it. Sister Catherine apologized for hurting me, and replaced the original blade. I touched my head and was shocked by how prickly it felt. Other parts had no hair at all.

The ward sister came behind the screens and asked how Sister Catherine was getting on. She was satisfied with what had been done and wondered if my head felt cold. When I said it did, she suggested I wear a pixie. She left and returned with a green knitted one. She put it on and I threw it to the floor.

‘Don’t you like it?’ the ward sister asked.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘it’s stupid looking.’

‘Well isn’t it better than having nothing at all on your head?’

I kept silent.

‘Please yourself,’ she said, and left.

Sister Catherine returned to take away the screens. I asked her to leave them.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Because I don’t want anybody to see me like this,’ I sobbed.

‘Now be a big man and stop crying, you look fine to me. Nobody is going to laugh at you, I bet they won’t even notice.’

She removed the screens. I lay down and wondered if any
of the other patients would notice me. They didn’t. Later that evening Margaret Duffy woke me and offered me something to eat. I refused at first and only accepted when she reminded me I would have nothing else before surgery.

‘Why did she have to cut all my hair off like that?’ I asked in desperation. ‘And why do I have to have an operation anyway?’

‘Your hair will grow again soon, and the operation is only a very minor one. It’ll be all over in a matter of minutes and you won’t feel a thing.’

I sat up in bed, very self-conscious of my bald head, and wondering if the domestic staff serving the meal would comment. I tapped on the boiled egg, making only a halfhearted effort to break its shell. I pushed the spoon down and the soft yellow yolk ran down along the eggcup and onto the white plastic plate. One of the men was tearing a slice of white bread into strips and dipping them into his egg, I copied him and enjoyed the taste. Once I had finished eating, a ‘Fasting’ sign was hung at the head of my bed. My locker was searched for food and any that was found removed. I lay motionless wondering what was going to happen to me and thought of other patients I’d seen coming back from the theatre with tubes suspended from their bodies. I could visualize my face covered in pink antiseptic fluid and my head in sticking plaster. I stared at the young man in the next bed who had been admitted just a few days after me. At twenty-one, he was the nearest of all the patients to me in age – twelve years my senior. He lay flat on his back, his eyes wide open, never blinking, staring at nothing on the ceiling. His life was sustained by liquid food and glucose from inverted glass bottles hanging from drip stands. His urine passed through a plastic tube into a bottle at the side of his bed. At intervals during the day, a nurse checked it and made notes on his chart. From a hole
beneath his chin, a rubber tube protruded which drew off phlegm that accumulated on his chest. The sound made by this tube was the most sickening I have ever heard.

On the evening before my own operation I watched as the parents and friends of this young man gathered at his bed, watching and praying that he would come out of his comatose state. His mother had to be supported physically by his father as she wept and wondered aloud why she had ever allowed her son to become involved in rugby.

Vincent Flynn was in a deep coma as a result of an injury he’d received during a game. A scrum collapsed and he was caught underneath. When play resumed, he was left lying on the ground, motionless. It was his birthday. I watched his mother squeeze her son’s hand so hard that her own knuckles went pale. It was as though she was desperately trying to awaken him. She looked at me but I turned away, embarrassed at how I looked and ashamed of myself for being caught prying.

When only Vincent’s parents remained at his bedside, they knelt and prayed out loud. His father asked me to join in and I did. They recited decades of the Rosary and finally a plea to God to allow their son to be all right ‘if it be your holy will’.

Before being given my sleeping tablets, I was checked by a doctor, who listened to my chest and checked my pulse. With a small pen-like torch he looked into my eyes and down my throat. I was tempted to say it was sore, because I knew that could prevent surgery. When he finished and was satisfied about my health, he said he would see me in the morning, in the theatre. That night before going to sleep, I was given more tablets than usual.

I was not allowed to wake properly the following morning. I felt a needle puncture my skin but my senses were too numb to react. Even as I was being dressed in a
theatre gown, I made no attempt to resist. I couldn’t.

My memories of being placed on the trolley and wheeled from the ward are vague. Most of the images are blurs, foggy scenes involving nurses and hospital orderlies. On the way to the theatre I became fully aware of what was happening as the doping effect of the drugs wore off and I became almost fully alert. Whatever potency that remained in the drugs was nullified by the awful sense of terror within me. I tried to sit up but the strong hand of the orderly pressed firmly down on my shoulder making it impossible to move.

I screamed as I was wheeled into the sterile atmosphere of the theatre where doctors and nurses quickly gathered around in an effort to stop me. Within seconds, my arm was strapped to a plastic-covered piece of wood and a doctor stood over me with a needle and syringe in his hand. The overhead bright circular light hurt my eyes and as I struggled to break free from the people restraining me I felt my right forearm being pierced. A nurse asked me to count to ten. By three the room was beginning to spin, by five I was losing consciousness. I don’t remember reaching six.

When I returned from theatre, I was put into one of the small rooms off the main ward. As I came out of the anaesthetic and became more aware I could make out the blurred figure of a nurse sitting beside my bed. I could feel a soreness in my head which I wanted to rub but she prevented me. Every few minutes, her voice reminded me that I was back, and that everything was all right. For the next few hours I drifted from semi-consciousness to unconsciousness, only waking fully when my thirst became unbearable or the pain from the operation overrode the effects of the drugs. I felt the cloth of the sphygmomanometer being wrapped around my upper arm and tightened as my blood pressure was taken, and then the
hissing of air as the pressure was slowly released.