An Irish Country Doctor (4 page)

He rinsed his razor and looked in the mirror. Just a tad of red in the whites of his eyes. Had the sherry affected his judgement so
much? Certainly he had no recollection of actually agreeing to take the job, but it seemed that once O’Reilly made up his mind, lesser mortals had no choice but to go along. Well, in for a penny…. He dried his face, went back to his garret, and dressed. Best pants, best shoes, clean shirt …

“Move yourself, Laverty. We haven’t got all day,” O’Reilly roared up the stairwell.

Barry ignored the command. This was a medical practice, not the navy, and the sooner Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, lately surgeon commander, recognized that Barry was not there to be ordered about like some able-bodied seaman, the better. He knotted his Queen’s University tie, slipped on a sports jacket, and headed for the stairs.

“Eat up however little much is in it, Doctor Laverty dear.”

Barry looked up from his plate of Ulster mixed grill—bacon, sausages, black pudding, fried eggs, tomatoes, lamb chop, and slices of fried soda bread—into the happy face of Mrs. Kincaid. He saw silver hair done up in a chignon, black eyes like polished jets set between roseate cheeks. A mouth smiled above her three chins.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good lad. You’ll be having this for breakfast a lot,” she said, setting a plate in front of O’Reilly. “Himself here is a grand man for the pan, so.”

Barry heard the soft Cork lilt of her voice, with the habit Cork folk had of adding “so” at the end of a sentence.

“Go on with you, Kinky.” O’Reilly lifted his knife and fork and dug in with obvious gusto.

Mrs. Kincaid left.

O'Reilly muttered something through a mouthful of black pudding.

"I beg your pardon?"

O'Reilly swallowed. "I forgot to warn you about Kinky. She's a powerful woman. Been with me for years." 

"Oh?" 

"Housekeeper, cook, and Cerberus."

"She guards the gates of Hades?"

"Like the three-headed dog himself. The customers have to get up very early in the morning to put one past Kinky. You'll see. Now get stuck into your grub. We've to be in the surgery in fifteen minutes." Barry ate.

Mrs. Kincaid reappeared. "Tea, Doctor?"

"Thank you."

She poured from a Belleek teapot and nimbly moved her fourteen stone to where O'Reilly sat mopping up the last of an egg with a slice of fried bread. She poured his tea and gave him a sheet of paper. "That's your afternoon calls for today, Doctor," she said. "Maggie wanted you to drop round, but I told her to come into the surgery."

 "Maggie MacCorkle?" O'Reilly sighed and dabbed at an egg stain on his tie. "All right. Thanks, Kinky." 

"Better she comes here than you drive ten miles to her cottage." Mrs. Kincaid cocked her head and studied the mess on O'Reilly's tie. "And take off the grubby thing, and I'll wash it for you, so." To Barry's surprise, O'Reilly meekly undid the knot and handed the tie to Mrs. Kincaid, who sniffed, turned, and left, remarking, "And don't forget to put on a clean one." 

O'Reilly finished his tea, rose, and said, "I'll be back in five minutes; then it's into the salt mines for the pair of us."

"Jesus," whispered O'Reilly, "would you take a look? You'd need five loaves and two small fishes to feed that bloody multitude." Barry, who had no doubt that O'Reilly would be perfectly happy to cast himself in the role of the Deity, craned round the big man and stared through the gap where O'Reilly held ajar the door to the waiting room. It was standing room only. How on earth was O'Reilly going to see so many patients before noon? O'Reilly opened the door wide.

"Morning."

A chorus of "Morning, Doctor O'Reilly" echoed from the waiting room.

"I want you all to meet Doctor Laverty," he said, propelling Barry forward. "My new assistant."

Barry smiled weakly at the mass of enquiring faces. "Doctor Laverty has come down from the Queen's University to give me a hand."

A voice muttered, "He looks awful young, so he does."

 "He is, James Guiggan. The youngest doctor ever to take the first prize for learning at the university." Barry tried to protest that he was no such thing, but his mumbled denial was drowned by a chorus of oohs and ahs. He felt O'Reilly's hand grip his forearm and heard him whisper, "Remember lesson number one."

Never let the customers get the upper hand echoed in Barry's head as O'Reilly said, "Right. How many's here for tonics?" Several people rose.

O'Reilly counted. ". . . Five, six. I'll take you lot first. Hang on a minute." O'Reilly turned and headed for the surgery. Barry followed. He watched as O'Reilly produced six hypodermics, filled them with a pink fluid from a rubber-topped bottle, and laid them in a row on a towel on top of a small wheeled trolley. "What's that, Doctor O'Reilly?"

O'Reilly grinned. "Vitamin B12."

"B12? But that's not.."

"Jesus, man, / know it's not a tonic . . . there's no such thing.
You
know it's not a tonic, but. . ."--his grin widened--"
they
don't know it's not a tonic. Now, go get 'em."

"All of them?"

"Every last one."

Barry headed for the waiting room. Heavens, this was hardly the kind of medicine he'd been taught. He avoided the stares that greeted him and said, "Would all those for tonics please follow me?" The six victims did so meekly, silently.

His little procession trooped into the surgery where O'Reilly waited by the trolley.

"Along the couch."

Three men and three women dutifully faced the examination couch.

"Bend over."

Three trousered and three calico-dressed backsides were presented. Barry watched, mouth agape, as O'Reilly moved his trolley to the start of the line. He stopped and grabbed a syringe in one hand, a methylated spirits-reeking cotton-wool ball in the other. He dabbed the calico over the first derriere with a ball. "Listerian antisepsis," he intoned, as he jabbed the needle home.

"Ouch," yelped a skinny woman. The process was rapidly repeated down the line--dab, jab, "Ouch"--dab, jab, "Ouch"--until O'Reilly stood before his final victim, a woman of massive proportions. He dabbed and stabbed. The hypodermic flew across the room as if propelled by a giant catapult and stuck in the wall, quivering like a well-thrown dart.

O'Reilly shook his head, filled another syringe, and said, "Jesus, Cissie, how many times have I to tell you, don't wear your stays on tonic day?"

"Sorry, Doctor, I forgo . . . ouch!"

"Right," said O'Reilly. "Off you go. You'll all be running around like spring chickens when that stuff starts to work." 

"Thank you, Doctor sir," said six voices in unison. The patients filed out and left by the front door.

O'Reilly retrieved the syringe-dart, laid it with the others, turned to Barry, and said, "Don't look so bloody disapproving, boy. It'll do them no harm, and half of them will feel better. I know it's only a placebo, but we're here to make folks feel better." 

"Yes, Doctor O'Reilly." There was some truth to what the older man said, and yet. . . Barry shrugged. For the moment he would keep his counsel.

"Now," said O'Reilly, planting himself in the swivel chair and putting on his half-moon spectacles, "be a good lad, nip along, and yell, 'Next.'"

Barry spent the morning acting as a runner between the waiting room and the surgery, and sitting on the examining couch watching and listening as O'Reilly dealt with a procession of men with sore backs, women and their runny-nosed children, coughs, sniffles, and earaches--the myriad minor ailments to which the human race is heir. Occasionally, O'Reilly would seek Barry's opinion, always, at least in front of the patients, treating the advice with great solemnity. Barry noticed that O'Reilly knew every patient by name, rarely consulted a medical record, yet had an encyclopaedic knowledge of every supplicant's medical history.

At last. The waiting room was empty.

O'Reilly sprawled in his chair, and Barry returned to what now was his familiar place on the couch.

"So," asked O'Reilly, "what do you think?"

"Not much about you injecting people through their clothes, and I won no prizes at university." Barry glanced at O'Reilly's nose tip. No paleness.

O'Reilly produced his briar and lit it. "You've a lot to learn, Laverty." He stood up and stretched. "Country folk are a pretty conservative lot. You're a young lad. Why should they trust you?" Barry stiffened. "Because I'm a doctor." O'Reilly guffawed. "You'll find out. It's not what you call yourself, Doctor Laverty; it's what you do that counts here. All I did was give you a head start."

"I suppose that's what you were doing every time you asked for my advice?'

O'Reilly looked over his half-moons at Barry and said nothing. Someone knocked on the door.

"See who that is, will you?"

Barry walked stiffly to the door. Head start, he thought. As if he wasn't fully qualified. He opened the door to a woman in her sixties. Her face was as weathered as a piece of dried dulse. Her upper lip sported a fine brown moustache. Her nose curved down, her chin curved up like that of Punch in a Punch-and-Judy show, and when she smiled he could see that she was as toothless as an oyster. Her ebony eyes twinkled.

She wore a straw hat with two wilted geraniums stuck in the hatband. Her torso was hidden under layers of different coloured woollen cardigans, and under the hem of her rusty ankle-length skirt peeped the toes of a pair of Wellington boots. "Is himself in?"

Barry felt a presence at his shoulder.

"Maggie," he heard O'Reilly say. "Maggie MacCorkle. Come in." Barry remembered Mrs. Kincaid mentioning the name at breakfast. The new arrival pushed past him. O'Reilly ushered her to the patients' chair and went and sat on the examining couch. "This is my assistant, Doctor Laverty. I'd like him to see to you today, Maggie. Nothing like a second opinion." 

Barry stared at O'Reilly, nodded, and strode to the swivel chair. "Good morning, Mrs. MacCorkle."

She sniffed and smoothed her skirt. "It's Miss MacCorkle, so it is."

 Barry glanced to where O'Reilly sat, arms folded. Expressionless. "Sorry. Miss MacCorkle. And what seems to be the trouble?" 

It was her turn to glance at O'Reilly before she said, "The headaches."

"I see. When did they start?"

"Lord Jesus, they've always been acute, but last night they got something chronic, so they did. They were desperate." She leant forward and said with great solemnity, "I near took the rickets."

 He stifled a smile. "I see. And where exactly are they?" Barry followed the classical history-taking protocol like a minor bureaucrat hewing to his rulebook.

She whispered conspiratorially, "There." She held one hand above the crown of her flowery hat.

Barry jerked back in his chair. No wonder O'Reilly had sighed when Mrs. Kincaid announced that Maggie was coming. He wondered where O'Reilly kept the necessary forms for certifying that someone was insane.

"Above your head?'

"Oh, aye. A good two inches."

"I see." He steepled his fingers. "And have you been hearing voices lately?"

She stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I . . ." He looked helplessly at O'Reilly, who slipped down off the couch.

"What Doctor Laverty means is, do you have any ringing in your ears, Maggie?"

"Ding-dong or brrring?" Maggie asked, hitching herself up in the uneven chair and turning to O'Reilly.

"You tell me," he said.

"Ding-dong, Doctor dear."

O'Reilly smiled at her over his half-moon spectacles. Clearly encouraged, she continued. "Ding-dong it is. Dingy dingy-dong."

An apt description of the woman herself, Barry thought. "Mmm," said O'Reilly, looking wise. "Mmm. Ding-dong and two inches above. Now are the pains in the middle or off to one side?" 

"Over to the left, so they are."

"That's what we call 'eccentric,' Maggie."

That's what I'd call the pair of you, thought Barry. "Eccentric? Boys-a-dear. Is that bad, Doctor?" 

"Not at all," said O'Reilly, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Fix you up in no time."

Her shoulders relaxed. She smiled up at her medical advisor, but when she turned to Barry, her stare was as icy as the wind that sweeps the lough in the winter.

O'Reilly leant past Barry and grabbed a plastic bottle of vitamin tablets from the desk. "These'll do the trick." Maggie rose and accepted the bottle.

O'Reilly gently propelled her towards the door. "These are special, Maggie."

She nodded.

"You have to take them exactly as I tell you." 

"Yes, Doctor sir. And how would that be?" O'Reilly held the door for her.

"Half an hour." His next words were delivered with weighted solemnity: "Exactly half an hour before the pain starts."

 "Oh, thank you, Doctor dear." Her smile was radiant. She made a little curtsey, turned, and faced Barry, but she spoke to O'Reilly. Her departing words stung like the jab of a wasp. "Mind you," she said, "this young Laverty fellow . . . he's a lot to learn."

In a Pig's Ear