A Dublin Student Doctor (20 page)

“It’s been wonderful, Fingal.” She looked up into his eyes and he saw the amber flecks in the grey.

Again the pipes began. This time the song was slow, soulful. Fingal recognised “Lord Lovat’s Lament.” The notes soared, faded, rose again, a keening for a loss, a fitting requiem for the year 1934.

“That’s beautiful,” Kitty said. “So haunting.”

“You’re beautiful,” Fingal said softly, “and you haunt me.” He bent and put his lips to hers.

“Thank you, Fingal,” she said. “You are fond of me, aren’t you?”

He swallowed and came close to saying more, but the pipe music changed to a rattling rendition of an Irish song, “The Minstrel Boy.” Perhaps, he thought, the interruption was not a bad thing. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to tell her he was falling in love, but he had another mistress and he must stay with her for eighteen more months until he graduated as Doctor Fingal O’Reilly. He kissed Kitty then took her hand.

He looked up at the stage. Cromie finished playing, pulled the drones from his shoulder, and tucked them and the bag under his arm. He stood at attention. A man wearing a waiter’s white jacket offered a silver tray to the sweating piper.

He stretched out his hand, lifted a small silver goblet, and held it at arm’s length.
“Sláinte,”
he bellowed, put the vessel to his lips, and tilted his head back. To a roar of approval Cromie held the goblet upside down over the tray to show every last drop of whiskey had been swallowed.

“Happy New Year,” he yelled, wobbled, and sat firmly on the bag of his pipes, which shrieked as it deflated. Cromie stayed on his bottom, legs asplay, knobby knees shining in the lights.

“Oh, Lord,” said Fingal as he watched Charlie Greer bend over Cromie, who was starting to topple sideways. “Come on, Bob, we’ll have to give Charlie a hand to get Cromie back to his room.”

“Don’t worry,” Bob said. “I have my car. You and Charlie and your ladies stay on. Bette and I’ll run poor old Cromie home, tuck him in, and be back here in no time.”

It didn’t take long for the three friends to put the now-snoring Cromie in the back of Bob’s car. When they returned to the ballroom Kitty was alone. “Your partners, boys, have gone to powder their noses,” she said. “They’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Fingal saw how the light was reflected from her hair. “Come on. One last dance.” He took her hand, warm in his, led her onto the floor, took her in his arms, and together they danced.

The band’s singer, a countertenor, crooned,

… something deep inside cannot be denied …

Kitty laid her cheek against his and he felt the softness of her, inhaled her musk.

… when a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes.

He felt her move back and heard her whisper, “You won’t let it die, Fingal, will you?”

“No,” he said, “I’ll not.” And he knew he meant it.

18

Heal What Is Wounded

“I’m bollixed.” Cromie walked into the Dun’s students’ mess. He yawned, flopped into a chair, and heaved his legs up on a low circular table.

Fingal, who had been sitting, absently tracing the names of generations of resident students carved into its wooden top, stopped, and looked up.

Bob Beresford arrived and yawned mightily. “We’d a bad night last night,” he said. “Hardly slept a wink. A few more like that and never mind the pleasure of sharing call with Cromie and having you two here to greet me in the morning. I’ll be rethinking my plans for Finals Part I in June. And I’m bloody well not going on rounds this morning.”

This from the man who before Christmas was seriously considering passing his exams. “Balls,” said Fingal. “‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.’ We can manage without sleep for the odd night. It was two
A.M.
when we packed it in on New Year’s Eve. Didn’t seem to bother you back then, Bob.”

“That was two months ago,” Bob said, “Cromie’s not Bette Swanson, and don’t you quote Proverbs at me, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. The ant and her constant working be damned.” He lit a Gold Flake.

“All right, Bob, you’re tired,” Fingal said, “but you’re not seriously thinking of giving up.” Fingal was convinced that the more Bob learned about all aspects of medicine, understood how satisfying it was, the more he’d want to be a doctor. Perhaps not a clinician, but he’d seemed to have had his interest piqued in research that evening before Christmas.

Beresford grunted.

“Look,” Fingal said, “June’s four months away, and we’ve only to pass pathology and microbiology, materia medica and therapeutics, and medical jurisprudence and hygiene. It’s not a whole hell of a lot.”

“It sounds like a whole hell of a lot right now. That’s six bloody courses, Fingal.” Bob rubbed his eyes and yawned again. “We’ll see. Right now I don’t even feel like passing wind.”

Fingal laughed. “The three of us’ll keep nagging at you if you don’t keep studying. Right, lads?”

“I don’t care. I’m going to bed.”

“Doctor Micks won’t be pleased,” Charlie said.

“Don’t worry, Bob,” Fingal said. “I’ll tell him you’ve got a rare blood group and are donating blood, or you were bitten by a rabid badger.”

“Fingal, don’t be daft,” Bob said, but at least a small smile flicked across his lips.

“I’ll come up with some excuse for you,” Fingal said, “provided that tonight we review the pathology of cirrhosis of the liver together. I know you cut the lecture to go to the races.”

“I’d planned to see Bette tonight and—” Bob must have seen how Fingal was glaring at him. “Oh, all right.”

“And Charlie will be with us too,” Fingal said.

“Aye,” Charlie said. “It’s a pest that those Thursday pathology and microbiology lectures clash with rugby practice. Fingal and I missed hearing about cirrhosis too.”

Conflict between important classes and rugby was indeed a pest. The last international match this season would be played between Ireland and Wales in March at Ravenhill in Belfast. They’d no chance of selection, but there was always next year. Both he and Charlie were doing everything in their power to improve their game, but they had to study too.

“Cirrhosis of the liver. Sounds about as exciting as watching bubbles float down the Liffey,” Bob said, and looked at Cromie. “Jaysus, lad, by the way you threw up outside my car on New Year’s morning I’d say it’s a subject you should be studying with us.”

“I must,” said Cromie with a straight face, “I must have got a bad bottle.”

Fingal laughed. “You want to work with us, Cromie?”

“Not tonight, thanks.”

“We do need to catch up,” Fingal said. He and Charlie would never miss a practice now and would work on staying fit throughout the summer too. Fingal could practically taste that place on the Irish side, but he had to attend seventy-five percent of all lectures or repeat the course. He was meeting the target, just, by attending every class on Monday and Tuesday.

Bob stubbed out his smoke. “I’m off.” He paused. “By the way, Fingal, we admitted an old friend of yours this morning. Mister KD. In failure again.”

“What? Bugger.” Fingal clenched his teeth. “Thanks for telling me, Bob. We’ll see him on rounds.” He glanced at his watch. “And we’d better not be late for Doctor Micks.” He stood. “Come on, lads.” Fingal wondered just how sick Kevin Doherty was.

“Very” had been the answer. He’d managed a smile when he recognised Fingal, but had lapsed into semiconsciousness. His heart failure was worse and he was having another bout of atrial fibrillation. Doctor Pilkington had restarted treatment with quinidine. Fingal determined to go back to Saint Patrick’s Ward as soon as he had finished his afternoon work.

*   *   *

“Suture duty, you and me, Charlie,” Fingal said, as they walked to outpatients. “And Cromie and Bob, now he’s rejoined the ranks of the living after his nap, are doing skin diseases, aren’t you?”

“We are,” said Cromie. “I always feel itchy after a session there. All those rashes. Still, the treatments are pretty simple, ‘If it’s dry, wet it; if it’s wet, dry it.’ That’s what Doctor Wallace says.”

“When he’s not lecturing on medical jurisprudence,” Bob said. “I’d rather listen to someone reading a laundry list.”

“But a subject we’ve to pass in June,” Fingal said, “and he’s a damn good teacher. By the way, Bob, Doctor Micks accepted my explanation that you had migraine, but he delivered a homily about his having difficulty issuing certificates of good standing to students who missed too many sessions.”

Bob shrugged.

The outpatients department was a long, narrow room with two side aisles and a single central aisle. Ranks of plain, wooden, backless benches marched from the rear to the front arranged in blocks with dividing passages separating the seating. Each block was outside the door to an area dealing with a particular branch of medicine. Patients came, went to a desk, and were directed to wait outside the section where their needs could be met.

Bob and Cromie left to go to dermatology. Fingal and Charlie headed for the suture room. The waiting hall was packed.

“I think,” Charlie said, “Doctor Whiteside, the consultant in charge of outpatients, was understating the case when he told us, ‘In these halls you may see scabies, fleas, lice, tapeworms, diarrhoea, tonsillitis, conjunctivitis, galloping consumption, syphilis, boils, blains, sebaceous cysts, eczema—”

“And all the other ills that afflict us humans. We’ll be seeing tons of that and more in general practice,” Fingal said. “It’s tough on the customers here, but it’s a hell of a place to learn.”

He strode on past the mass of huddled humanity aware of a low hum of conversation punctuated by nurses’ cries of, “Next, please,” and hacking coughs. Chronic bronchitis and pulmonary tuberculosis ran rampant in the crowded damp rooms of the slums.

Fingal and Charlie entered a small room with a bright overhead light. The smell of disinfectant was overpowering. A middle-aged man, his hand wrapped in a blood-soaked rag, sat on a wooden chair. He wore dungarees and a duncher, from under which poked tufts of grey hair that seemed to have been starched. He had one eye and a leather patch over what was probably an empty socket. A student nurse stood beside the chair. Charlie winked at her. Fingal knew that under Elizabeth O’Rourke’s fall, her thick hair was copper-coloured. In the last month she’d succeeded the dark-haired country lass from Maynooth as Charlie’s companion. As Fingal had predicted, Charlie Greer had found a way to circumvent the strictures of the lady superintendent, Miss Northey.

“Hello, Nurse,” Charlie said. “What have we got?”

“You’ve got feckin’ nuttin, mate,” the man remarked, dolefully. “It’s me what’s got a chisel slice as wide as the Grand Canal in me right palm. Me whole feckin’ hand’s cat.” He curled his lip.

“Did you say, ‘cut’?” Charlie said.

The patient snorted. “By your accent, son, I’d say youse is from the wee north?”

Charlie nodded.

“Us Jacks say t’ings different here. We say ‘cat.’ Youse’d say ‘bollixed,’ or ‘banjaxed.’ ‘Cat’ means feckin’ useless.”

“Oh,” said Charlie, “I’ll remember that, Mister—?”

“Duggan. Willy Duggan, builder by trade. At least I was ’til I bollixed me hand,” the man said with a sniff. “I’d be better with a hook.”

Fingal started to fill in the emergency card. Name, age, address, occupation, religion, complaint. “Will you do Mister Duggan?” he asked Charlie.

Charlie shook his head. “Your turn.”

Times had changed from six months ago when the pairs of green students had had to work out a fair system for doing procedures. Hilda and Fitzpatrick had practically come to blows when he kept hogging cases. Every one of them had been keen as mustard. Now they were all blasé about routine tasks.

“Could you get the things ready please, Nurse?” Fingal asked as he washed his hands, put on gloves, then swabbed the man’s injured hand and peered at the gash. “It’s going to need stitches,” he said.

“Ah sure, dat’s all right,” said Willy Duggan, builder by trade.

Fingal kicked a wheeled stool close to a stainless steel table that was now covered with a towel. He sat on the stool, asking Willy Duggan to place his injured hand on the table. Fingal disinfected the wound and covered the hand with a green towel with an elliptical gap through which the calloused flesh and red gash were visible.

He and Nurse O’Rourke prepared an injection of local anaesthetic.

“Right,” he said. “Just a little jab.”

It had been months since Fingal had flinched when he slipped a needle home, but he still recognised he was injecting a human being.

“I’m going to start sewing in a minute,” he said.

“Dat’s all right. Go ahead.”

Fingal stitched away with little fuss, a far cry from his first clumsy attempt when they’d started attending here.

“Finished,” he said, removing the green towel. In the middle of the area of disinfectant-stained skin stood a row of neat black silk stitches. “Come back in seven days and we’ll take them out.”

Willy scrutinised the work. “Dat’s very neat,” he said, “t’anks.” He grinned. “You’d make a bloody good carpenter with hands like yours. I don’t suppose you’d want to switch trades?”

Fingal shook his head. “No thanks, but why do you ask?”

“Jasus,” said Willy, “wit’ all this slum clearance and rebuilding I’m up to me arse in work, but I can’t get tradesmen for love nor money.”

“I’m surprised to hear that.”

“It’s true. Men who’ve served their apprenticeships are rare as hens’ teeth. I can’t even get lads with no skills to carry a hod or stack bricks.”

“Why not?” Fingal asked. “I’d have thought with all the unemployment, men would be delighted to earn a wage.”

Duggan made to spit but stopped himself. “Most of dem bowsies would rather hang around street corners and play pitch and toss for pennies.”

Fingal knew the game. Any number of players, coat collars turned against the damp, stood a fixed distance from a wall and threw coins. That was the pitch. Whoever landed closest to the wall collected all the other coins, threw them up in the air, the toss, and yelled “Heads” or “Tails.” He kept all those coins displaying the emblem he had specified. The player who was second nearest repeated the process and so on until all the coins had been claimed. What a soulless way to kill time and perhaps win enough to buy a pint.