She had supposedly been going home after dinner yesterday, but the snow that had fallen for most of Christmas Day had made the roads impassable. Getting back to Belfast for her regular shift in charge of the neurosurgical ward at the Royal was not an option, so she had telephoned to arrange for a friend to work for her. She had spent the night at O’Reilly’s home at Number 1, Main Street. O’Reilly had been insistent she come to this hooley before she went back to town.
Kitty was talking to the host and hostess, Bertie and Flo Bishop, who because of their stoutness always reminded Barry of John Tenniel’s illustrations of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Kitty, who was in her early fifties, did not. She was slim and chic tonight in a black, knee-length pencil skirt over mulberry stockings and patent-leather pumps. It amazed Barry that any woman could stand for hours in stiletto heels, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
He glanced at Patricia, who was speaking to O’Reilly, and doubted she had noticed Barry’s appraisal of Kitty. The heels accentuated the curve of her calves, and Kitty O’Hallorhan had a very well-turned leg.
Her ivory silk blouse was open at the neck, revealing cleavage. Her nose was a little too large, her lips too full, but her eyes, grey flecked with amber, shone with the laughter that was never far beneath the surface of the woman who had known O’Reilly when they were both students in Dublin. She had come back into the big man’s life five months ago. It would be interesting to see how matters evolved between her and the widower O’Reilly.
“Here you are, Kitty.” O’Reilly handed her a glass and slipped his arm around her waist. “So there you are, Barry. Have you a drink?”
Barry showed his glass of sherry. “I’m fine, Fingal,” he said.
“Patricia?” O’Reilly asked.
“Fine, thank you.”
“Right,” said O’Reilly. “We’ll get away from the bar so other folks can get in.” He let go of Kitty and roared, “Coming through.” O’Reilly, like a bluff-bowed tug, moved ahead and parted the waters.
It seemed miraculous to Barry that the four of them fetched up in a relatively quiet backwater. Kitty and Patricia were already deep in conversation. He was pleased by how the two women had become friends in the short time since they’d met last summer.
O’Reilly lifted his glass and said, “Sláinte.” He drank.
“Sláinte mHaith.” Barry sipped.
“Quite the ta-ta-ta-ra,” O’Reilly said. “Are you having fun?”
Barry nodded and said seriously, “And not just at this party, Fingal.”
“Oh?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” said O’Reilly with a smile. “Now there’s a thing. Mind reader, am I?”
Barry smiled. “Fingal, sometimes you can be a tad infuriating.”
O’Reilly guffawed. “Indeed I can be, when it suits me.”
“You do know perfectly well what I’m talking about,” Barry said.
“Fair play to you, Barry. I’ll not tease you anymore. You’re having fun here in Ballybucklebo, aren’t you? That’s what you mean?”
“It is.” Barry nodded. “And in the practice with you, Fingal.”
“Me working you like a Trojan, threatened lawsuits, competition from Doctor Fitzpatrick in the Kinnegar just up the road notwithstanding?” O’Reilly raised one eyebrow.
“You never promised me it would be all plain sailing. I just wanted to thank you for taking me on last July and to tell you, before we go back to full-time work in the new year, I’m going to do my very best in the practice and have every intention of …” He was distracted by a look on Kitty’s face. Her eyes were wide, her brow wrinkled, as she mouthed a single word that, despite his inability to hear above the racket, Barry could lip-read as “No.” Her mouth stayed open.
And as is often the way at cocktail parties, as if on cue everyone stopped talking. Everyone save Patricia Spence, whose voice Barry heard distinctly above the music. “I mean it, Kitty, but I don’t know how I’m going to tell Barry it’s over.”
“It’s what?” He whispered and swallowed. He couldn’t move.
He saw her looking at him. Her hand covered her mouth. She must know he’d overheard. He stood as if paralyzed. It’s over? Over? She can’t mean it. Drops of sherry splashed onto his hand that held the glass. He looked down. His hands were trembling and he felt chilled.
Barry shook his head and tried to go to her, but Constable Mulligan was yelling at the top of his voice, “Doctor O’Reilly. Doctor Laverty. Come next door, quick. Mr. Coffin’s choking, so he is. He’s terrible blue looking. Come quick.”
2
Nothing but to Choke a Man
Barry thrust his glass at a bystander and tore after O’Reilly. Kitty, trained nurse as she was, followed.
“Out of my light,” O’Reilly bellowed. “Let the dog see the rabbit.” He knelt beside Mr. Coffin, who lay on the drawing room carpet making guttural noises, struggling to breathe. His boot heels drummed on the floor. A half-eaten sweet mince pie was clutched in his right hand. The left clawed at his throat. Spittle flecked his lips, and his lips and cheeks were turning blue.
O’Reilly hauled the man into a sitting position and with a hand the size of a soup plate whaled him on the back with seemingly sufficient force to drive his spine against his breastbone. O’Reilly clouted the man again.
Mr. Coffin’s eyes rolled up into his head, but his breathing did not improve.
“Bugger,” said O’Reilly, laying the patient flat. He turned to Barry. “He’s choking. He’s got mince pie stuck in his trachea. Those thumps didn’t get it out.” He rummaged in his pocket and produced a large penknife. “We’ll have to do a trachy.”
Barry flinched. He knew it was possible to make an emergency incision in the trachea—a tracheostomy—to save a life, but he’d never seen it done.
The gramophone blared.
I’ve got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow—
“Turn off that music,” Barry called.
Click. Silence.
“Kitty,” O’Reilly yelled, “get Flo to give you one of those things she uses to hold up the crust of a steak-and-kidney pie. If she has a kettle boiling, scald the thing and bring it back here, give it to Barry, then phone for an ambulance.”
“Right.”
“Somebody bring a bottle of whiskey.” O’Reilly glared around. “I need four men. Donal … Fergus Finnegan … Archie … Bertie.”
They stepped forward.
Typical O’Reilly, Barry thought. Not a moment’s hesitation when it comes to deploying his troops. Barry wasn’t sure he could have found the courage to act as O’Reilly was about to. He was glad his senior colleague was here.
“You.” O’Reilly pointed at Bertie. “Lie over his legs. Keep him pinioned.”
The councillor did and the heel drumming stopped.
O’Reilly’s voice could be heard over the noise of Mr. Coffin’s gasping. “Donal, Fergus, take a shoulder apiece and hang on like grim death. He’ll thrash like all bedamned when I cut.” O’Reilly opened the knife. The blade reflected the light from the overhead fixture. “You, Archie, when I tell you, take hold of his head and push it as far back as it will go to expose his neck. Barry, kneel down by his other side. Kitty’s going to get you a steel tube. It’s about two inches long and an inch wide at one end and tapers to about half an inch at the other.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Good lad.” O’Reilly smiled at Barry. “And don’t worry. I’ve done dozens of these. They had a diphtheria vaccine in the thirties, but a lot of mothers, the superstitious eejits, wouldn’t get their kids immunized. If a child got the disease, it was often a trachy or the kid would die with all that clabber in its wee throat.”
Barry stripped off his sports jacket. This could get bloody. He understood why O’Reilly hadn’t time to explain things to Mr. Coffin. Getting things organized, making sure Barry was able to play his part, and operating must take precedence and had to be done w
ithin four minutes or the undertaker would start to suffocate.
But although Mr. Coffin could not speak, he could hear. The man must be petrified. To be thankful for small mercies, he had a good skinful taken. The alcohol would dull his senses.
Barry knelt and looked him straight in the eye. There was naked fear in the man’s gaze.
“Mr. Coffin. Can you hear me?”
The slightest nod.
“We’re trying to help you.”
Another tiny nod.
Barry put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’s going to hurt.” Mr. Coffin’s eyes widened. “But it’ll be over quickly and then you’ll be able to breathe. You’re not going to die. I promise.”
It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do.
Barry snatched a look around. Most of the partygoers had moved away, but the morbidly curious were still craning forward. “Come on, folks,” Barry said. “You heard Doctor O’Reilly. Let the dog see the rabbit. Move back, please.”
“Here’s the whiskey,” a voice said.
“Pour it over my knife, my hands and Doctor Laverty’s, and save a taste for your man’s throat.” O’Reilly held his hands out. “It’s not such a terrible waste of the craythur,” he remarked. “Luckily it’s only Scotch, not Irish.”
Barry held Mr. Coffin’s gaze with his own and gave his shoulder one last, he hoped, reassuring squeeze. “You’ll be breathing in just a minute,” he said.
The fumes of the neat spirits stung Barry’s eyes, but alcohol was antiseptic.
“Right, Archie,” said O’Reilly. “Push his head back.”
Barry was glad he didn’t have to stare into Mr. Coffin’s eyes anymore.
O’Reilly knelt at the victim’s right side. He put his left index finger on the bottom of the Adam’s apple, and his thumb and middle finger on either side of the trachea. “He’s going to lepp,” he said. “Hold him.” He put the knife’s blade between his finger and thumb and sliced down.
The patient tried to buck but was restrained. Judging by the grunts and sounds of heavy breathing coming from the four men it was taking a great deal of effort to hold him.
The wall of the trachea was visible, red muscle with white rings of cartilage.
Blood ran from both sides of the wound over the man’s neck and onto the carpet.
“Barry … Barry.” Kitty tugged at his shoulder. “Here.” She handed him a warm metal tube.
O’Reilly glanced at Barry. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
O’Reilly cut into the trachea. “Get the tube in.”
Already the patient’s chest had inflated, and Barry could hear some air being sucked in. He could see anxiety in Fingal’s eyes. Barry shuddered. It took courage and a good deal of compassion to slice into an unanaesthetised man. He wondered for a moment if he was going to be able to push the steel tube into the hole O’Reilly had cut. Damn it, this was no time to let his friend down—or the patient.
“Sorry, Mr. Coffin,” he said, gritted his teeth, placed the tube over the tracheal incision, and pushed. To his delight it slid into place.
He felt a current of air on the back of his hand as Mr. Coffin sucked air into his oxygen-starved lungs, then exhaled a great shuddering breath. A fine spray of blood sprinkled the back of Barry’s wrist. He looked at the man’s face. Already his colour was improving. When Barry was a student, it had been a standing suppertime joke for one student to ask another, “And how many lives did you save today?” What O’Reilly had just done had saved a life. “Well done, Fingal,” Barry said quietly.
“Aye,” said O’Reilly. “Kitty, did you call for the ambulance?”
“I did. They’ll try to get through, but it might take a while in this snow.”
“Fair enough.” He got to his feet. “Your man’ll survive until they get here. I’ve morphine in the car. I’ll fetch it because he’s going to be sore. Barry, go and get yourself cleaned up. Kitty, keep an eye on Mr. Coffin. He should be fine until I get back.”
Kitty nodded.
O’Reilly stood.
It seemed incongruous to Barry, but nevertheless well merited, when he heard a muted round of applause.
“I’ll tidy up in a minute,” Barry said. He’d decided he’d keep an eye to the patient for a little longer. “Do you hear that, Mr. Coffin? You’re going to be all right.”
The undertaker’s breathing came in short gasps. His eyes begged for help, but although his lips moved, no words were formed. The air that usually made the vocal cords vibrate to produce speech was going to and from his lungs through the metal tube beneath the larynx.
“It’s all right, Mr. Coffin,” Barry said. “I know you’ve a sore throat, but Doctor O’Reilly’s gone for morphine. He’ll be back very, very soon.”
Some of the fear left the undertaker’s eyes.
“Can you lie still?” Barry asked.
The man’s lips moved and he tried to nod.
“Fair enough,” Barry said. Then to the men holding the patient he said, “You can let him go, and thanks a lot for helping.” For a moment he had a vivid mental image of the orlop deck of one of Nelson’s warships, with tough, tarry-pigtailed sailors letting go of a rum-befuddled man. They’d been holding him down as the ship’s surgeon amputated a leg.
Donal, Fergus, Archie, and Bertie Bishop stood. Barry noticed how pale the councillor’s usually ruddy cheeks were and how his hands trembled.
“Boys-a-dear,” said Donal, the wonder in his voice clear. “See that there what Doctor O’Reilly done? I would not’ve had’ve believed it if I had not’ve would’ve been here.”
The other three nodded in solemn agreement.
Ulster as she is spoke and comprehended, Barry thought, trying to hide his smile.
He stood. God, but he had a crick in his back. And damn it, his new trousers were covered in blood. O’Reilly’s housekeeper, Mrs. Kinky Kincaid, would kill him. He’d lost track of the number of times in the last six months she’d had to clean or mend a pair of pants for him.
He looked around. The other partygoers were huddled together at the far end of the room like a flock of animals needing the nearness of each other for comfort and seeking guidance from the lead animal.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Barry said, “may I have your attention? Please?” Every eye was on him. He smiled at Maggie Houston, née MacCorkle. He’d not noticed her before. She was hanging onto Sonny Houston’s arm. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Doctor Laverty, and the gentleman who did the operation is Doctor O’Reilly. I’m sure most of you know him.”
There was a murmur of assent.
“Mr. Coffin got food stuck in his gullet and he was suffocating.”
Maggie’s mouth fell open. She was wearing her dentures.
“Doctor O’Reilly made an incision into the windpipe so Mr. Coffin can breathe. It looked messy, but actually he lost very little blood and”—Barry glanced down—“most of that seems to be on my pants.”
He noticed one or two flickering smiles.
“Let me by.” O’Reilly’s voice rang out and the little crowd parted, much, Barry thought, as the Red Sea had done for Moses.
O’Reilly, panting from his exertions—he must have run to and from the car—knelt beside Mr. Coffin, preparing a morphine injection. Barry wondered if the senior practitioner would exhibit the same lack of attention to ordinary routine Barry had witnessed his first week on the job in Ballybucklebo while watching O’Reilly inject his patients with a tonic. Sure enough, O’Reilly dabbed a cotton ball soaked in methylated spirits on a trouser leg and rammed the needle through the serge and into the patient’s thigh muscle.
Still kneeling beside the patient, O’Reilly said, clearly enough for everyone to hear, “When the ambulance gets here, Mr. Coffin, they’ll take you to the Royal. The surgeons there will give you an anaesthetic, clear out your throat, and sew you up.”
Mr. Coffin’s eyes widened. He sucked in a great breath.
“You’re going to be
fine,” O’Reilly said, laying a hand on the patient’s arm. Even as he did so the morphine started to take effect, and Mr. Coffin’s eyes fluttered and closed. His breathing was steady and slow. O’Reilly stood. “I’m going to get cleaned up,” he said. “He’ll be grand. Just fine.”
Barry saw heads nodding in agreement.
O’Reilly headed for the bathroom.
The atmosphere was less tense. “Mr. Coffin will be home in a day or two, and all he’ll eventually have to show for his troubles will be a small scar where the incision was,” Barry said.
“The poor oul’ eejit was half cut already before Doctor O’Reilly finished the job,” a voice remarked.
There was a communal chuckle. “Half cut,” along with “tore,” “legless,” “paralytic,” “flootered,” and “stocious,” was one of the many Ulster euphemisms for “drunk.”
“I hope he gets better soon,” the voice said. “He’s the only undertaker we’ve got. His business is the dead centre of Ballybucklebo, so it is.” The words were delivered with absolutely no inflection.
Someone else said, “It’s a good thing we have our doctors too, so it is. They’re two learnèd men.”
Barry grinned. He noticed the sounds of conversations beginning. He distinctly heard Cissie Sloan’s hoarse tones as she said, “… and hasn’t Doctor O’Reilly been known to do that wonderful operation where they remove the whole brain, clean it, and put it back? I heard about it at Sonny and Maggie’s wedding.”
There was a chorus of amazed “oohs” and “aahs” from her audience. “Sure cutting somebody’s throat is only wee buns to a doctor like him.”
Barry laughed and as he did he felt a presence at his shoulder. It was O’Reilly and Kitty.
“Your coat,” O’Reilly said, handing Barry his sports jacket.
“And your drink.” Patricia, who had come into the room, gave Barry his sherry. She did not meet his eyes.
Barry’s smile fled as he shrugged into his jacket and accepted the glass. The intensity of the medical emergency had, for the moment, made him forget the words he had heard Patricia say to Kitty. Now the warmth he’d felt because he’d successfully helped O’Reilly in a life-or-death situation turned to an icy chill. He couldn’t bear to look at her.