A Dublin Student Doctor (47 page)

“I said, ‘I can’t make you study nuclear physics, yet, but I will not finance your medical studies.’”

“But you have, Father, for the last two years, and I thank you for it.” And for letting the barriers between us down, he thought.

“Your mother is a most persuasive woman.” He smiled. “Mind you, had I still been convinced that I was right she would never have changed my mind.”

Fingal had difficulty believing what he was hearing. A suggestion that Father recognised he’d been wrong?

“Fingal, I was in error. Utterly and completely and too stiff-necked to recognise it.”

Fingal’s mouth opened.

“Doctor Micks seems to believe you are one of the best students he’s had through his hands for years, even if a bit irresponsible at times.”

Fingal lowered his head then looked up and smiled. “There’s a nurse at Sir Patrick Dun’s, Sister Mary Daly, who would have agreed with that.”

“I’m sure it’s water under the bridge now, son, and I know from your mother how hard you’ve been working.”

“Because I fai—”

“I heard about that too, but you made it up in December.” Father pointed through the window at the stadium. “I can guess what it cost you.”

“Rugby?” Fingal shrugged. Father didn’t know about Kitty. Losing her cost a hell of a lot more.

“I’ve also seen you working,” Father smiled, “from a very close distance. You’re considerate and I believe technically skilled. Lars has told me about the patient you lost. How it hurt. How you came back. I admire that.”

Fingal’s eyes widened.

“At this point, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, I am convinced you have been right ever since you were thirteen. You were predestined for a career in medicine and you had learnt what I’d always preached. ‘To thine own self be true.’ Well done.”

“Thank you, Father,” Fingal said softly. “As you taught us I’ve tried to follow Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes.”

“To my chagrin for a while, I admit.” Father inclined his head in acceptance then said, “We may only have one point of disagreement now.”

“Oh?”

“I believe, and so does Doctor Micks, that you should follow the advice I was given about you by Doctors Millington Synge and Saint John Gogarty.” Father leant forward and touched Fingal’s knee. “Specialise, my boy. I’m still your father and it is still my responsibility to guide you.”

No, Father, no it’s not, Fingal thought, but I understand why you believe it is. “I might,” he said. “I’ve nearly finished my midwifery and of all the branches of medicine I’ve enjoyed it most.”

“Excellent,” Father said. “I am glad we are in agreement. I am delighted.” His smile was radiant.

It was a tiny deception, but that smile made it worthwhile. Not long after his chat with Paddy Keogh, Fingal had decided that once qualified he’d work as a locum tenens for dispensary doctors in the Liberties, but he was keeping open the thought of a specialist career later. “That’s all very well, but you know that Finals start in less than three weeks. I’ve to pass them first.”

Father said, “You will. I promised your mother I’d be at your graduation and, by God, I will. I’d have been there four years sooner with none of this to worry about.” He pointed at the used transfusion equipment. “I was wrong. I’m sorry, Fingal. I was wrong. I apologise.” He rose. “Stand up.”

Fingal obeyed.

“I am proud of you now, boy, and when I see you up on the platform getting your degree my heart will be so full I’ll be the proudest man in the hall, in all the thirty-two counties of Ireland. Make me proud, son,” and with that he stepped forward and took Fingal in a gentle hug.

46

This Is the Beginning of the End

“I,” muttered Bob Beresford, “I am utterly tee-bloody-totally knackered.” He lit a Gold Flake.

“You, Beresford, are not alone,” Fingal said. “Nobody suggested Finals would be wee buns.” He shifted in his chair. Early evening sunbeams slipped into Bob’s flat and highlighted the Van Gogh print. To Fingal’s eye it hung skew-whiff.

“Thank God we’ve only today and tomorrow left to go,” said Charlie Greer.

“Feels more like a lifetime,” Cromie said. “It’s been a desperate way to spend the start of June.”

Fingal ambled over to the picture and adjusted the alignment of the frame. On Monday, ten days ago, they’d started at nine and for two days had answered three one-hour essay questions in morning and after-lunch sessions. Their knowledge of medicine, surgery, midwifery, and gynaecology had been tested at a theoretical level. Fingal’s fingers still had writer’s cramp. He hoped the examiners had been able to decipher his scrawl. He squinted at the whorls of painted stars. “That straight, Bob?”

“Near enough,” Bob said. “I’m more worried about getting my answers straight tomorrow.”

Every evening the lads congregated here for a postmortem of their day and a discussion of what the next session might hold for them.

Since writing the papers, the students had each on a daily basis been assigned to one of Dublin’s teaching hospitals. There they had been doing their “clinicals” by examining a case relevant to a particular speciality, making a working diagnosis, and presenting their findings and proposed investigations and treatment options to two examiners. That completed, they were tested orally later in the day in the same discipline.

“So,” Fingal said, plopping back down in his chair and pulling out his briar, “what do the inquisitors of the Trinity College School of Physic have in store for you lot tomorrow?”

“Midwifery clinical in the morning at ten, oral in the afternoon. At the Rotunda,” Bob said.

“Me too,” Fingal said. Getting from hospital to hospital could be a nightmare.

“I’ll give you a lift. Pick you up at nine.”

“Thanks, Bob.” Now that all their courses were over, Fingal was living at Lansdowne Road. It gave him a base and the sustenance of Cook’s meals. It also allowed him to keep an eye on Father, who still, apart from a nagging cough, seemed well. The transfusions, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, were fighting a stern rearguard action and holding fast. Ma was naturally delighted to have her grown-up boy back at home.

“You two?” Fingal asked Cromie and Charlie.

“Surgery,” Cromie said, “I hear Professor Fullerton can be tough.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll be at Doctor Steevens’ Hospital tomorrow.”

“Mental diseases,” said Charlie. “I’ve practiced ‘filling in a form to commit a lunatic to a public mental hospital’ ’til I can do it in my sleep. They always ask you to do one. It’s in the regulations. I had my surgery yesterday. I’d great luck. A case of gallstones in a man, but he presented exactly like that lass who thought Fitzpatrick was calling her a feckin female.”

“Colleen Donovan,” Fingal said. “I remember her.” A heavy blonde who’d fixed Fitzpatrick with a steely glare and demanded, “W’at’s wrong wit’ bein’ a woman?”

Bob said, “Talking of luck, did anyone hear what a jammy bugger Fitzpatrick is?”

“What happened?” Charlie said.

“Thyroid disease,” Bob said.

“You mean he’s got it?” Cromie said. “Nothing trivial I hope?”

Bob shook his head. “No, he’s the picture of health, but the fates aren’t so much smiling on the bastard as having fits of hysterical laughter. Being a betting man, I’d not like to have called the odds of it happening, but each of his cases so far, surgery, midder, and gynaecology, have all been patients with thyroid disease. A subject about which naturally he is a walking encyclopaedia.”

“So,” Fingal said, “he must be doing well.” And despite his desire to prevent Fitzpatrick winning the prize, Fingal hadn’t been able to come up with a way to stop him.

“‘Doing well?’ That’s like saying the American sprinter Jesse Owens just ambles along. That bloody prize is guaranteed to go to Fitzpatrick,” Bob said, curling his lip, “unless he really messes up on his medicine case.”

“I wonder,” said Fingal quietly, “if we could help that happen? I’d not want him to fail, but the thought of him getting a prize really grates.”

“Don’t look at me,” Cromie said, “I’ve no ideas, but if you do come up with anything, Fingal, let us know. I’d hate to see the medal go to that arrogant gobshite.”

“Hear, hear,” Bob and Charlie said together.

“If I do, I’ll let you know, but I’m much more interested in us. Where did you do your surgery exam, Charlie?”

“I was at Baggot Street. And I, uh, that is—” Charlie fidgeted with his fingers, then looked Fingal in the eye. “I ran into Kitty.”

Fingal had a vivid recollection of an essay question in the written exam.
Discuss eclampsia.
It was a condition in which apparently healthy pregnant patients could throw an unexpected violent fit. The Greek
eklampein
literally meant “a bolt from a clear sky.” Fingal, who tried to avoid remembering his disastrous meeting with Kitty in January, thought the description particularly apt at the moment. “How is she?” He was surprised when he was able to get the words out and sound unconcerned.

“She wishes us all the very best of luck. Asked me to give you her regards,” Charlie said. “And seeing how she’d had to put up with us lot at Sir Patrick Dun’s, she’s coming with Virginia on Friday night when she holds Cromie’s hand as the dean reads out the results.”

“I’ll take all the support I can get,” Cromie said. “No impersonal list on a notice board after Finals Part Two. The examiners meet at five
P.M.
on Friday. Regular bloody Star Chamber. They decide who passes.”

Fingal noted Cromie had omitted uttering the dreaded
F
word as if saying “fail” might portend bad luck.

“Then his high holiness, the dean, resplendent in his academic robes, will appear in the Trinity quad and solemnly read from an alphabetical list.” Cromie intoned sonorously, “‘Anderson—pass. Cumberland—’” He shook his head. “Strong men have been known to faint.”

If Kitty had sent him a personal message and was coming on Friday, did it mean she’d turned down the marriage proposal? Wanted an excuse to see him? Fingal didn’t dare hope, and yet.

As he often did when he needed time to think, he fired up his briar and hid behind a smoke screen.

*   *   *

Fingal sat on a hard wooden chair in the corridor outside the antenatal ward of the Rotunda. He inhaled hospital smells. The new antiseptic Dettol overpowered most of them. Groups of midwives passed him chatting, laughing, unconcerned. He envied them their routine. In a moment he’d be summoned to examine his obstetrical case.

He ran over his mental checklist. Date of last period, regularity of cycle, estimated date of confinement, number of previous pregnancies and what had happened in each. That last was critical. The teachers always stressed how much of midder practice was trying to anticipate possible complications by understanding antecedent events. For five months here at the Rotunda it had been, “Lord help the student who doesn’t know the previous history.”

In this exam Fingal would have twenty minutes to take the history, examine the patient, make a working diagnosis, order tests, and suggest treatment. One examiner was none other than Doctor Bethel Solomons, Dublin’s High Panjandrum of obstetrics and gynaecology.

The door opened. “Mister O’Reilly.” Sister smiled at him. “Bed 6. Good luck with Mrs. EF.”

“Thank you.” He walked down the ward and slipped through the curtains closed round the bed. A rosy-cheeked woman sat up. She looked about forty. Her grey hair was done up in a tight bun. Her belly was distended. “Would you be my student chap?” she said, smiling at him.

“I am. Fingal O’Reilly. I’m here to examine you, Mrs.?”

“Grand, so, and it’s Eithne Flynn.” Her accent was pure County Cork. “It’s for your exams?”

“It is. I’m going to ask you a few questions, examine you if that’s all right.”

“Fire away.”

Fingal rapidly ran through the routine and discovered she was thirty-nine and her pregnancy was at twenty-eight weeks. She was due on September 3. She’d answered clearly and accurately. This was going to be a breeze.

He smiled and asked, “And how many’s this one, Mrs. Flynn?” Five or six most certainly, he thought.

“Twenty-one.” She smiled and cocked her head at him.

Fingal’s jaw dropped. How in the name of the wee man was he going to get the details of twenty previous pregnancies in twenty minutes, never mind take the rest of her history, examine her, and work out a diagnosis? Twenty-one? Why him? He gritted his teeth. No help for it. Get on with it, man. “And when, when was the first?”

She frowned. Her lips moved. She ticked off the fingers of one hand with the index finger of the other. “The first was Eugene and that was in 1914.”

“Any complications?”

“Oh yes.”

God help me if the other nineteen were complicated too.

“The complication is that I’m wrong. The first was Ambrose and he was born in 1915.” She shook her head. “Jasus, but my head’s full of hobby horse shite. It was not Ambrose at all. He was 1917. It was Noreen, and she was in ’15, or was it in ’13?” She paused, screwed up her face, then said, “If it helps, I remember it was the year the Home Rule for Ireland Bill was thrown out by the English House of Lords, the bollixes.” She looked up as if seeking inspiration.

“That was 1913,” Fingal said. He imagined the cartoon character Felix the Cat banging his head on a brick wall in frustration. Fingal glanced at his watch. Three minutes gone already. At this rate it would take an hour just to work out all twenty. He took a deep breath. Just be calm, he told himself. “Take your time, Eithne,” he said. “Do your best. I’m in no rush. I’m sure it’s difficult for you. I’ve trouble remembering things myself sometimes, and twenty’s a brave wheen.” But please, please try. And hurry.

She leaned across the bed. “Mister O’Reilly is it?”

“It is.”

“You are in a rush, I understand, but you’re not being cross with me. And you called me Eithne. That’s nice. You’re not like the nasty young man who came yesterday, so.”

Fingal resigned himself. He’d let her chat for a few minutes then concentrate on her present problems. Perhaps the examiners would be understanding if he got that right. “Thank you.” He wiped a sweaty palm on the leg of his trousers.