Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor

  “Bollix,” said a disgruntled Colin.

  “Here,” said O’Reilly, giving the boy an enormous gobstopper. “That’s for being brave.” He rose. “Off you go so I can finish the surgery.” And finally get a late lunch, he thought. As he strode for the door, he heard Connie say, “Say thank you to Doctor O’Reilly, Colin.”

  The boy’s response was muffled by a mouthful of sweetie.

  The mystery of why Brenda Eakin had said “we” was resolved as soon as O’Reilly went into the waiting room. “Who’s next?”

  All four women stood. Donal, still holding Tori, remained seated. “Is wee Colin all right?” Brenda said.

  “He will be.”

  “That’s grand. None of us is sick, sir—”

  “And I just come for til keep Julie company and til show her my handiwork.” Donal pointed to the roses. “I think they’re dead on and the ladies like them too, isn’t that right?”

  There was a chorus of agreement and Mairead Shanks spoke up. “No harm til you, sir, but the whole place is a lot easier on the eyes than the way it used to be.”

  “Thank you,” O’Reilly said. “I’m sure Mrs. O’Reilly will be gratified by your vote of confidence. But if no one is sick, why—”

  The women all turned to Brenda Eakin. “Doctor O’Reilly, us four wondered if we could have a wee word, like?”

  “Of course.” His gut growled. The sooner he’d heard what the women had to say, the sooner he could get to his lunch. “Now let’s go along to the surgery.” He led the way.

  “I’m afraid I’m a bit short of seats, but if you’ll have the swivel chair, Brenda, and Julie—how’s Margaret Victoria coming on, by the way?”

  “She’s already standing if she can hold on to something, and she waves bye-bye.”

  He heard the pride in her voice and she was right to be so. Only a very few kiddies of seven months would have mastered those two skills. “Terrific,” he said. “Now, if you and Mairead would take the other two chairs I’ll nip through to the dining room and get one more.”

  Jenny was on her own at the table. Kitty was at work on this the first Wednesday in December. “Kinky’s keeping your kedgeree warm,” Jenny said.

  “Just need a chair,” he said, lifting one. “Won’t be long.” The spicy aroma wafting from Jenny’s plate of half-eaten dinner made him salivate.

  Back in the surgery he set down the dining room chair so that when Mary Dunleavy, the publican’s daughter, had taken her place he’d be facing a semicircle of seated young women. “Now, what’s all this about?”

  Clearly Brenda was the spokeswoman. She wriggled in her chair, clasped one hand in the other, looked down at the carpet and finally back to O’Reilly.

  “Go on, Brenda,” Julie said. “We’ve come with you to give you a bit of moral support, you know.”

  Brenda took a deep breath and the words came out in a rush. “You told Flo Bishop that Doctor Laverty’ll be coming back in the new year. She told Cissie Sloan and then Cissie told…”

  O’Reilly was having a mental picture of the Biblical Genesis: “And Adam begat Seth. Seth begat Enos. Enos begat Kainân…” “And you four found out,” he said, hoping to cut the litany short.

  “That’s right,” Julie said, “and when I think what that nice young doctor has done for all of us in Ballybucklebo, we’re powerful pleased to have him back in the village, so we are.”

  “’At’s right,” said Mary, who was normally a reticent girl. “We think he belongs here.”

  “I’m pleased too, and you’re right, Mary, he does,” said O’Reilly, his mind more on Kinky’s kedgeree and hoping that this welcoming delegation had come to the point.

  “But,” said Brenda, blowing out her breath against pursed lips, “and I know I’m as guilty as the rest, but we didn’t like the notion of a lady doctor.”

  “’At’s right,” Mary said, and the other two nodded in agreement. “Not at first.”

  O’Reilly thought he was beginning to understand.

  “But some of us younger women,” continued Brenda, “and cross my heart, no harm til you or Doctor Laverty, sir, there’s women’s things like them smear tests.”

  The Papanicolaou cervical smear for the early detection of cervical cancer had only recently been introduced to Northern Ireland.

  “And,” Julie joined in, “Flo said Doctor Bradley’ll be leaving us soon.”

  “And she was quare nor smart about my endometriosis,” Brenda said.

  “And you ladies would like me to keep her on?” O’Reilly said, and it was no lie when he continued, “And so would I.”

  He saw all four women smile and Mary nudge Brenda and say, “See? I told you he’s no oul’ targe and he’d understand, didn’t I.”

  He let the remark pass. “Trouble is,” he said, “there’s really not work for three doctors in this practice. I’d really love to keep her, but…”

  A silence hung—and hung.

  “I’ll tell her what you said. Doctor Bradley will be flattered, I know.”

  “We thank you for that, don’t we?” Brenda said. “And for your time, sir. We understand, but it’s a pity. When it comes to doctoring, Doctor Bradley’s dead on, so she is. There’s a brave wheen of the younger lasses of the village and townland who’ll be disappointed, so there is.”

  O’Reilly took no offence at the implication that he and Barry were now a disappointment. It wasn’t really a popularity contest.

  The other women murmured in assent and all four rose.

  “We’ll not hold you any longer, sir. It’s your lunchtime,” Julie said, “and I need to be getting back to Donal and Tori.”

  “It was good of you til see us, sir,” said Mairead Shanks, the last to leave. “We’ll all be very happy to see Doctor Laverty too.” She closed the door.

  O’Reilly fished out his pipe and lit up. That had been very gratifying and it bothered him to have to disappoint some of the women of the village, but a promise to Barry was a promise. Come on, man, he said to himself, the warm kedgeree nearly forgotten, think. There must be something you can do to keep Jenny, but what? He rose and went next door.

  Jenny looked up from her empty plate. “Finished?”

  He nodded and took his pipe out of his mouth. “The last lot were four ladies who want you to stay. I’d like that myself.” He took his usual place. “I am really sorry.”

  “Please, Fingal. Don’t worry. I’m doing fine. Doctor Sinton has offered me a part-time job. I’ve told him I’d like to think about it because if you can manage without me this afternoon there’s something else I’d like to pursue in Belfast.”

  “Away you go,” said O’Reilly, “and good luck with it, whatever it is.”

  “Thanks.” She rose just as Kinky appeared.

  “There you are, Doctor dear,” she said, setting a steaming plate in front of him. “Eat up however little much is in it.”

  49

  … A Broken Thing Mend

  “Another pint, Fingal?” Diarmud called over the long bar to where Fingal, Charlie, and Bob Beresford sat at one of the tables in Davy Byrnes. The place was half empty. Subdued voices rose and fell.

  “Two, and Bob?”

  Bob nodded.

  “A small Jameson, and, Diarmud?”

  Diarmud, who was drawing a pint from the high barrel, said, “W’at?”

  “Will you have one yourself?”

  “Is the Pope feckin’ cat’lic? I’ll put one in the stable for after nine turty, t’anks, Fingal.” Nine thirty was closing time and he’d not pour his drink until then.

  “So I’ll have the pleasure of the company of the pair of you in Dublin until the end of February?” Bob lit a Gold Flake. “Doesn’t seem like five months since we were in here, just out of medical school, all dewey-eyed about our futures. Hardly discussed anything else that night. Lot’s happened since then.”

  “You can say that again,” Charlie said.

  “Doesn’t seem like five months since we—” Bob be
gan solemnly.

  “Stop it, Bob.” Fingal chuckled. “And you are right. It doesn’t.”

  “Funny how it’s turned out,” Charlie said. “When I start more training I’ll be working in the same hospital as Cromie.” He took a pull on his pint. “I saw him when I was up north applying for the position. He’s being taught by a Mister Calvert. Seems to be very happy.”

  “Absent friends,” Bob said, and sipped his Jameson.

  Fingal and Charlie drank.

  Over at the bar, a man in a bespoke overcoat and a bowler hat said in a hectoring voice, “I’ll have another claret, my good man, and get a move on. I haven’t got all feckin’ night.”

  Fingal and his friends looked over to see how Diarmud would reply. He had his back to the customer and the look of a man who has found something unpleasant on the sole of his shoe. He winked at Fingal, who had expected Diarmud, no respecter of self-appointed superior persons, to use a simple Dublin dismissive like “gerruptheyard—sir,” a politer version of “feck off.” Instead Fingal lip-read the barman’s, “Bite the back of me bollix, you miserable gobshite,” before he turned and said, all sweetness, “Certainly, sir.”

  It was a moment or two before the three stopped laughing and Charlie said, “Getting back to job prospects, after I leave here in March I’ll be doing a locum for a G.P. in Bangor up north until August, that’s the start of the hospital junior doctor hiring year in Belfast, then I’m to work at the Royal Victoria under Mister Samuel Irwin. I think it helped in my interview that I’m a rugby player. He’s been capped nine times for Ireland and was president of the IRFU for ’35 to ’36.”

  “And you two’ll find out about your sporting future soon, won’t you?” Bob said, blowing a smoke ring.

  “Trial’s next Saturday,” Fingal said, “and it’s important, but so are our medical futures. You seem to be all set, Bob.”

  “I think so. The people at the Rotunda told Professor Bigger about Prontosil working for puerperal sepsis. So now we’re pretty sure that drugs can kill bacteria. And it seems that not only aniline dyes can affect germs.” Bob leaned forward in his chair. “Did you know healers have been treating infected wounds effectively with blue-mouldy bread in Europe since the Middle Ages?”

  Fingal shook his head.

  “Mouldy bread?” Charlie let out a bark of laughter. “Away and feel your head, Bob.”

  “Don’t laugh. In 1871, Joseph Lister tried an extract from a fungus called Penicillium as part of his regime for aseptic surgery. It was too weak, but then in 1928 Alexander Fleming showed that Penicillium rubens could kill bacteria in the lab. Damn frustrating because it doesn’t work in people. Although one of Fleming’s students, a Doctor Paine from Sheffield, actually cured a few eye infections with it in 1930. My boss now has me looking at the effects in the lab of a whole bloody host of different moulds on bugs. So far no luck, but you never know.” He grinned. “It’s fun finding out new things, and I love working in the library stacks looking at old documents.” He looked down. “Sometimes I think I’d have been happy as a historian, but Auntie’s legacy…”

  Fingal was well aware that Bob had originally studied medicine only because of an aunt’s bequest that specified his course of study.

  “And even so, and saving your presence, Fingal, my work beats toiling with the great unwashed. And who knows, perhaps all of this research will lead to something really useful one day.”

  Fingal chuckled and took the last swallow from his glass. “I for one like working with the great unwashed,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing it much longer. I’ve to move on, and through no choice of my own.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry about that,” Bob said.

  “Gentlemen, your gargle.” Diarmud set the glasses on the table and accepted payment from Fingal. “T’anks. And pay no attention to ‘Rags’ Rafferty.” He nodded toward the demanding customer. “He’s a bookie from Blackrock in for a jar and he’s still pissed off because I took him for fifteen quid on a daily double last summer. Youse were in here dat day. Youse all rubbed my rabbit’s foot.”

  “I do remember,” Fingal said.

  “Anyroad, Rags likes to t’ink he’s Lord Muck from Clabber Hill, but I pay no attention to the gurrier.” Diarmud took Fingal’s coins and left.

  “Jasus,” said Charlie, looking round, “Diarmud’s true value for money. I’ll miss him and Davy Byrnes.” He took a swallow. “Still, we have until the end of February and you’ll be staying on in Dublin, won’t you, Fingal?”

  “I expect so. Doctor Davidson’s a man of his word. I’ll just need to sort out the details with him.” Fingal puffed on his pipe. “I’ll probably enjoy obstetrics,” he said. “I mean, bringing new babbies into the world. How can you argue with that? But,” he sighed, “I’ve had a great time as a G.P.”

  Bob stubbed out his cigarette. “What’ll you do once Charlie moves north? Keep on the flat on Adelaide Street?”

  “I hadn’t thought much about it.”

  “If you want to save a few bob, you could always let it go. Move in with me,” Bob said. “Couple of bachelors together.”

  “I should have thought you enjoyed having the place to yourself,” Fingal said, eyeing his friend. Bob had been without a girlfriend since the glamorous Bette Swanson had moved on.

  “I’m still licking my wounds from Bette’s departure. You know she left me for some entrepreneurial type with pots of money. I suppose a lowly medical researcher isn’t up to dear old Bette’s standards. She was fun, though.” For a moment Bob sounded wistful, but brightened and then said, “Truly, Fingal, I would enjoy your company.”

  “Thanks, Bob. I’ll let you know once I’m certain I’ve got the Rotunda job.”

  “Can one of youse doctors come quick?” Diarmud had returned. His voice was urgent. “A wee mott’s gone arse over teakettle on the cobbles outside and hurt herself.”

  Fingal set his pipe down. “I’ll see to it,” he said. “Probably only bruised feelings, but just in case it’s not—”

  “I’m right behind you, Fingal. No point you coming, Bob. You’re hopeless with patients.”

  “Hey, steady on,” Bob said, and laughed. “All right, go off and play the white knights.”

  Outside, a small crowd had gathered. Fingal simply said, “Coming through,” then knelt. “Hello,” he said, and raising his voice, “I’m a doctor.” Those closest to the victim drew back. She was a petite blonde with the most piercing blue eyes. Her oval face was pale and she was biting her lower lip. Surrounded by a half-dozen scattered books, she sat on the kerb with her feet in the gutter. She was nursing her right wrist with her left hand. Her arm was bent at the elbow, the palm of her hand facing her chest. “What happened?” he asked.

  She looked up at him and spoke through clenched teeth. “I was in a hurry, trying to get from Trinity to the flower seller on the corner of Saint Stephen’s Green before she packed up.”

  He squatted beside her. No hint of a Liberties accent. Probably comes from a good family and, judging from the books, she’s an undergraduate.

  “I feel like such a fool. I tripped over a cobblestone, put out my right hand to save myself…” She grimaced and cradled her hurt. “Oooh, that’s sore. I heard a snap and there was a horrid pain. When I sat up, my wrist looked stupid.” She ground her teeth again. “I think I’ve broken it.”

  It was the classic history of how a Colles fracture of the wrist was caused, often in older women. He hadn’t been out of medical school for so long that he also didn’t remember that the fracture was named for a Regius Professor of Surgery here at Trinity in the nineteenth century. “Sounds like it,” Fingal said, “Miss…?”

  “Elaine Butler,” she said.

  “Doctor Fingal O’Reilly.” He gently laid his fingers on her left wrist. Her skin was chilled and her pulse was rapid, but he didn’t bother counting exactly how fast. She clearly was not in shock.

  “Anything I can do?” Charlie asked.

  Fi
ngal looked up. “I’m pretty sure she’s got a Colles. Nip in and see what Diarmud has that we could use to splint it and bring a couple of tea towels for bandages.”

  “Right.” Charlie left.

  “That was Doctor Greer,” Fingal said. “I’ll not disturb your arm now, Miss Butler. I’ll get a good look at it when we put a splint on, but my guess is that you’ll have to go to hospital, have a short anaesthetic, and have it set properly and put in a plaster cast.”

  She frowned. “So why splint it now?”

  He shrugged. “The ends of broken bones rubbing together can be pretty damn sore, Miss Butler. The splint will immobilise it so we can get you to hospital more comfortably.”

  “I see. Thank you, and please call me Elaine.”

  “Right.”

  Charlie reappeared and handed Fingal two pieces of wood that looked like slats from the back of a chair, and three tea towels. “Here you are, Fingal.”

  Fingal accepted them and said, “Charlie, this is Miss Butler. Now, give me a hand with the splint.” He looked into those blue eyes. “I’m sorry, this will hurt for a moment, but we’ll be as quick as we can.”

  “Please go ahead.”

  Charlie needed no instructing. He held his hands so that one was under her right hand, the other supporting the forearm. When Elaine took her left hand away, the fork-shaped deformity of the injured wrist typical of the Colles fracture was immediately apparent. Fingal took no pleasure from the rightness of his diagnosis as he put one slat along the forearm’s front, with the end of the wood level with the outstretched fingertips. The second slat went on the back of the forearm and in moments they were bandaged in place with two tea towels held in place by strips torn from the third. “Done,” Fingal said. As he had worked, he had hardened his heart to her subdued whimpering. He’d been impressed. Many grown men roared and howled when a Colles fracture was being splinted.

  “Thank…” she took a deep breath, “you very much, Doctors.” Although sweat beaded her forehead, she said, “That’s more comfortable already.”