The God Squad (15 page)

‘I don’t want to go to sleep with my hands under the covers,’ I answered.

‘Why not?’

‘Because the nuns said it was a sin.’

She smiled and told me that she always slept with her hands under her bedclothes and never committed a sin.

‘What other nonsense did those nuns tell you?’ she asked.

‘They said I had to sleep with my hands crossed, because I might die while I was asleep.’

‘Put your hands under the covers. I promise you won’t commit a sin, and you definitely won’t die. Everyone sleeps with their hands inside the bedclothes and they’re not dead, are they?’ she said, smiling.

‘No,’ I replied, as she tucked me in again. I kept my hands covered until I was sure she was gone. Then I took them out and crossed them as I had done for so many nights of my life. Eventually I went to sleep.

On the first morning of my stay in Cork breakfast was served early and immediately afterwards the nurses began to rush about tidying beds. Some patients complained that they only had a few hours sleep. One man who was particularly contrary remarked: ‘You’d swear it was the Pope of Rome himself that was coming.’

‘Now, Mr O’Brien, there’s no need for that,’ a nurse said good-humouredly.

‘Consultants be damned,’ the patient retorted.

‘You’d be in a bit of a mess if there weren’t any.’

‘Bejasus, I wonder about that,’ he said acidly.

‘Watch the language, Mr O’Brien. We have a young child in the ward now.’

He grunted and turned on his side in an attempt to ignore what was happening.

The bustle that went on before a consultant visited a ward was something that I was to become used to as my time in hospital progressed. Floors were swept, ashtrays removed from bedside locker tops and cleaned. Every bed was freshly made up so that it would be easy to turn back the covers should the doctor require it. Charts, medical notes and x-rays were left on bedtables, carefully positioned at the foot of each bed. Outside the ward I heard the shuffling of feet and the muffled sound of voices. A senior nurse opened the doors and a tall good-looking man in his mid fifties came in followed by a group of about twelve students. I watched as he walked around the beds, his voice deep and loud as he enquired from a patient about his health, then muted slightly as he discussed something with the nurse in charge of the ward.

The consultant and his students came to my bedside. He asked the nurse when I had been admitted and where I had come from and read the letter of referral brought to the hospital by Mother Paul. Then he invited one of the students to examine me and offer a diagnosis. The other students formed a semicircle with the consultant behind them, watching closely. My pyjamas were removed and the student checked my reflexes, pulse and breathing. He took a pin from the lapel of his white coat and told me to close my eyes. As he touched me with it, I had to say whether he was using the pointed or the blunt end. Next, I had to stretch out each arm and, with my eyes shut, bring my index finger to touch the tip of my nose. He asked which was ‘the bad foot’ then took a bunch of keys from his pocket and
dragged one of them along my left sole, causing my toes to turn down.

‘Do you have any pain?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Do you remember ever twisting your foot while playing?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever have a bad fall?’

‘No.’

‘What about pins and needles, did you ever have them?’

‘No,’ I answered again.

The consultant came to the bedside and squeezed the calf muscles of each leg, before asking his student for a diagnosis.

I vividly recall him saying ‘Post Polio’. The consultant and the students discussed whether the diagnosis was accurate, and though there appeared to be some disagreement among them initially, the consultant agreed with the student. He did say it was nothing serious, and that physiotherapy would help. Before moving away he said he expected I would be able to go home within a month. A nurse helped me back into my pyjamas, and remade my bed. Though I was not being allowed home at once, I was comforted by the fact that I would be out of the hospital within four weeks, having no reason to doubt the word of a doctor.

I unwrapped the parcel Tom O’Rourke had given me. It was a jigsaw of over a thousand pieces. The picture on the box was of a tall ship sailing through enormous waves with its sails fully blown. One of the nurses brought me a table which she felt would be big enough to accommodate its size. I opened the box and spilled all the pieces out, fumbling through them for any two that would fit together. I was becoming frustrated and was just about to put it all
back in its box, when another nurse offered to help. First, she said, I should find all the pieces with a straight edge, and demonstrated what she meant. Then when I had all these together I could start to make up the jigsaw.

I did as she said and was delighted when I had a string of more than ten pieces. Whenever any of the staff had time they would add a few more pieces, until eventually the picture began to form. The blue and white of the clouds, and the deeper blue of the sea. Huge foaming waves beating off the side of the ship. Working for hours each day on the jigsaw passed the time, and after three weeks it was eventually finished. I was proud of it and took great care to ensure it would not be accidentally broken. Staff who helped boasted about the part they played in its assembly.

It was at night that I missed St Michael’s most. I missed the sounds of the other children sleeping, the jangle of the nuns’ bell ringing to get me out of bed to use the pot. The sounds in the ward were totally different to what I had been used to. Eerie groans of men in pain or snoring loudly. The familiar red glow from the perpetually burning bulb at the feet of the Sacred Heart statue was replaced by a cold white fluorescent light shining through the glass partition between the corridor and the ward. When I could not sleep I prayed. Not the prayers I had been taught in Industrial School, but prayers I made up. I begged God to make me better so I could leave hospital, promising that I would never sin again if he granted my prayer. Because I had associated hospital with death I also begged to be allowed to live. The first thing I did every morning was to thank God for not allowing me to die during the night.

I hated Sundays in hospital. They began with the night nurses waking the patients very early to prepare them for receiving holy communion. Beds had to be made, patients washed and shaved. Anything on top of a locker was either
removed from the ward altogether or placed inside it. Despite protests from some of the men, old newspapers were thrown out. A nun prayed loudly, as she moved up and down the ward, prodding anyone who appeared to be drifting off to sleep. ‘Lord Jesus,’ she intoned, in a manner designed more to keep people awake than to pray, ‘make us worthy to receive you.’ Despite this, it was not unusual for someone to snore loudly during prayers, a source of embarrassment to the nun and the man who had to be woken by her. The arrival of the priest was heralded by the gentle ringing of a bell carried by a nun who walked some twenty or thirty feet ahead of him. Again anyone verging on sleep was quickly woken to take communion.

After breakfast, silence had to be maintained as the patients waited for Mass to be broadcast on Radio Eireann. The voice of a priest came from a large wooden radio on a shelf in a corner of the ward. Many of the men fixed their eyes on its illuminated circular dial as the priest reminded his listeners that the Mass they were about to hear was for those who were sick in hospital, and for those who through no fault of their own, could not attend church for the Holy Sacrifice. They took well-worn black-covered missals from their bedside lockers and followed the Mass reverently. On one occasion, I remember someone turned on the radio thinking they were listening to Mass. It was a Protestant service being broadcast on the BBC, at which the nun in charge took great exception, saying that we shouldn’t be listening to it at all before abruptly turning it off.

For an hour in the afternoon relatives and friends of the patients came to visit them. Nearly all carried paper bags filled with fruit or biscuits, as well as Lucozade or orange to drink. I watched the visitors and often eavesdropped on their conversations. Children were strictly forbidden to enter the wards as visitors, they had to wait down in the hall
or out in a car. It was not unusual to see a man in bed pleading with the sister in charge to allow his sons or daughters in to see him. Rules were rules, and such demands were very seldom granted. Some people took a chance on ‘smuggling’ children in to see their fathers or grandfathers. Once caught, they were ushered from the ward by an orderly. Wives dutifully went through their husbands’ bedside lockers, removing fruit that was beginning to rot. Pyjamas for washing were taken away and replaced by freshly ironed ones, and a check was made on the toilet bags to ensure there was enough soap and sharp razor blades. The absence of visitors around my bed aroused curiosity among the patients and their visitors. They would come and talk to me, bringing a bar of chocolate or a packet of crisps before they enquired where I was from and what I was in the hospital for.

‘It’s a long way for your poor mother and father to have to come,’ one lady said.

‘They’re dead,’ I said, not realizing the impact it would have on her. After a momentary silence she asked me where I lived.

‘In an Industrial School.’

She left my bedside and returned to the person she had come to visit. I knew they were talking about me because they stared in unison, with shocked expressions. When they noticed me looking at them, they smiled and I smiled back. Whenever people asked what had happened to me, I told them confidently that I had Post Polio.

‘Are you getting better?’ they would ask.

‘Yes,’ I always replied, though I was unsure if I was or not. Their advice was always the same.

‘Don’t forget to say your prayers and remember that God is good.’

The end of visiting hour was signalled by a nurse walking
through the ward ringing a heavy brass bell and smiling at people as she told them politely that ‘time was up’. Many took no notice until a more senior nurse came in and virtually ordered them out. Gradually they left. I often saw a weeping wife holding on to her husband’s hand for as long as she could, wondering out loud when would he be ‘right’. As she’d leave she’d pull a white handkerchief from her coat pocket and wipe her eyes, her sorrow infectious. Her husband’s eyes would also fill with tears as he urged her to go with a wave of his hand.

During my third week in hospital, I wrote to Mother Paul and told her I was looking forward to coming home. I asked her to tell all the boys that I was asking for them and mentioned that I was praying for her and the other nuns every night and looking forward to seeing them all again soon. One of the nurses posted the letter for me and every morning when the letters were given out to the other patients on the ward I waited for a reply. None ever came.

Three weeks became four and I had settled into the routine of the hospital. I became accustomed to bedpans and bottles and had even grown used to the doctors as they went on their ‘rounds’, although I did worry that one day they might decide to do surgery on me. The idea of having an operation terrified me, and I hoped I would never be taken to theatre. Too often I had seen screens being drawn around a bed or a ‘fasting’ sign hung up. Whenever there was someone for an operation, an air of tension gripped the ward. A sense of fear among the other patients. The radio was turned down so low it was almost impossible to hear. There was a sense of urgency in the manner the nurses came and went from behind the cordoned-off bed. No sooner had someone been told that they were being ‘taken down’, than a nun rushed to his bedside wondering if he
would like the hospital chaplain to hear his confession. I never knew anyone who refused. As I grew older in hospital, I came to know these nuns as the God Squad.

Despite intensive physiotherapy there was no real improvement in the way I walked. When the consultant asked me to walk across the ward after four weeks I did my utmost to get my foot into its proper position. He expressed openly his disappointment at the failure of the exercises he had been so confident of bringing success, and looked at me apologetically before writing a short note which the ward sister put into an envelope.

Later that day when a nurse came to my bedside and told me to get dressed, I sensed something was about to happen. I wanted to be told that I was going back to St Michael’s but my instincts told me otherwise. A nun approached me as I sat dressed on a wooden chair beside the bed and remarked on how nice I looked in my suit. I wanted to ask where I was going and yet didn’t want to know. She smiled broadly and told me that I was being sent to a hospital nearer the school.

I immediately broke down and in desperation asked why I had to be moved. I had settled into the hospital. It had taken the place of St Michael’s in my life. I was becoming used to its routine, its sounds and its smells. It had become my home. As I wept the nun tried to persuade me I would be much happier, before telling me that I would only be in the other hospital for a week. When I asked what would happen if my foot didn’t get better then, she replied confidently that it would.

For the first time in almost four weeks I walked with my boots and socks on. I went to the table where my jigsaw had been since it was completed. I began to take it apart, first piece by piece, then in bigger chunks, before eventually scooping the remainder into its box. Then I put the box
into a bag given to me by one of the patients. I sat by my bed waiting for the ambulance to arrive.