The Parting Glass (60 page)

He rested his head in his hands, trying hard to remember. It seemed imperative to remember it now, not later, when he could go home and find the article.

“Think!”

Not just wheat, but
milk,
as well. Grains and milk. A diet free of all gluten found in wheat and most other grains, and casein, the phosphoprotein found in dairy products. The anecdotal evidence from parents was extremely positive, although too little hard research had been done. The diet didn’t help every child and certainly didn’t cure autism, but it did seem to affect some children to the point that eventually they began functioning in a normal range.

Even some children for whom the diagnosis of autism was completely dropped later in their lives.

“Kieran…not eating.”

He looked up, and the room swam. The noise and the crush seemed to poke at him in waves, but he didn’t care. Kieran’s appetite had vanished when he cut his tooth and more recently when he fell so ill. He’d had juice to drink and little more. Peggy had remarked on it.

“Gluten and cas—casein.”

Peggy had conducted a trial of this yet unproven theory, and she hadn’t even known she was doing it. Kieran’s diet had changed temporarily. Kieran’s behavior had changed temporarily, too.

Even drunk—and he
was
drunk, “stocious” as his father would have said, blootered, plastered—he was too good a scientist to believe it was that easy. But he saw the window of opportunity. The child was in hospital now, and the hospital could restrict his diet while he remained. Peggy could continue a diet free of most grains and dairy when she took him home. They could monitor his behavior, see if anything improved. There were many dietary substitutions that could be made, and the child’s nutrition wouldn’t suffer. Peggy was the sort of mother to follow through religiously if she thought her son would improve.

Had the symptoms of Kieran’s autism begun when Peggy introduced him to solid food, when, perhaps, she had gone off to medical school and stopped nursing him?

Finn wanted to know. He wanted to know more than he wanted to remain here and drink his pint, where he was safe, where nobody asked anything of him except money. Here, where he could drink enough to forget that he was a shell of the man he had been.

He got to his feet, and the room spun. He was not surprised. He had consumed so much in such a short time that he ought to be out on his feet. He fought a wave of nausea, gripping the edge of the table until it passed.

What if he forgot? What if he found a place to spend the night and in the morning his revelation was gone for all time? Worse, what if he remembered in the morning and discovered this was a drunk’s revelation, filled with nothing but hot air and hyperbole? For a moment he weighed the two alternatives.

There was a third. He could write himself a note; then, in the morning, over a cup of coffee and a raging hangover, he could evaluate it.

And leave Peggy alone tonight, wondering where he had disappeared to and why. Wondering how she could ever have seen something in him that clearly wasn’t there.

He hung his head, and the room spun. Shame spiraled through him, and dizziness followed in its wake. “God…” He was praying, not cursing. What had he become that he could let his private misery overcome his need to help her through this?

He loved Peggy Donaghue, and he loved her son. And this, more than anything he had done tonight, had sent him to this terrible, bleak place inside himself and to this pub filled with strangers. He was afraid, so very, very afraid, to love again.

He stumbled outside. The hospital wasn’t far away. He had walked here, relishing each step that added distance between them. Ten minutes and he’d arrived at the pub. If he made it back, it would take far more than ten now.

He struggled to stay on the sidewalk. Each step was a puzzle to solve. Staying upright took a gymnast’s concentration. Minutes passed. He turned a corner, hoping he knew where he was going. Castlebar, which once upon a time had been as familiar as Shanmullin, was now strange and menacing, and the streets were a maze to untangle.

The night air did little to clear his head, but by the time he finally arrived at the hospital, he thought he was steadier. He straightened his jacket, made sure the zipper on his trousers was up. He ran hands through his hair, and he prayed.

Inside, the hospital was a rabbit warren of corridors and rooms. He paused in the lobby and swayed on his feet. The lift wasn’t far away, and he made the trip with only a gallon of false dignity holding him erect. Luckily he was alone inside, and still alone when he reached the floor he wanted. He stumbled stepping off the lift, and nearly fell. Humiliation filled him, but he started down a corridor, bumping against one wall when he had to avoid a cart in the middle of the hallway. Luckily it was late, and the hospital was nearly empty.

Except for one too familiar man walking toward him.

“O’Malley? I thought you’d gone.” Joe Beck stopped just in front of him and frowned. He examined Finn; then his expression turned to disgust. “You’re stinking drunk, aren’t you?” Beck looked around, and, seeing no one else, he pulled Finn into the nearest room, which happened to be a linen supply closet.

Finn went without protest. He was too unsteady on his feet to make a stand.

“Look at you.” Beck shook his head. “We’ve got to get you out of here before somebody else sees what I see.”

“I’m going to see—Peggy.”

Finn made a grab for the door, but Beck stepped in front of it. “Don’t act the maggot. You think they’ll let you practice here ever again if somebody reports you? In case you’ve forgotten, drunks don’t make good doctors.”

“Kieran Donaghue—”

“Is
my
patient. I’m the doctor of record, and you aren’t going anywhere near him the way you are now.”

Finn tried to shove him away, but Beck shoved him back. Finn fell against a shelf, which tipped, starting a landslide of towels onto the floor.

“Listen to me!” Beck said urgently. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Kie—Kieran Donaghue has—” Finn couldn’t get his tongue around the more convincing scientific explanation. Nor did he have the ability to explain his reasoning. “Just listen—” It came out as “lis-shun.” He was not drunk enough to escape embarrassment at his own slurred speech.

Beck interrupted. “Kieran Donaghue is fine now. You did a good thing tonight. You always were the best. Did you know you had a gift the rest of us envied? I wanted to be as good as you. Now? Now you’re a stumbling, drunken fool. You’re wasting the talents God gave you. You’re a disgrace to the profession. You make me sick.”

“Kie—ran may be ’lergic to grains and milk.” Finn was proud that he had formulated the sentence. “’S’autism, it might—”

“Go home, Finn!” Beck lowered his voice, and suddenly the anger was gone. “It’s gibberish. Don’t you know that? Your brain isn’t working like it ought to. You pickled it tonight. Kieran’s on a ventilator. What matter is it if he’s allergic to anything right now?”

“Have to…tell Peggy.”

“Do you really want her to see you this way?”

Finn hung his head. What had he done? He had the most promising of news for Peggy, yet he had destroyed his chance of delivering it. And why had he come? Beck was right, of course. By coming, Finn had put his future here at risk. He didn’t know if he even wanted a future, but he wanted the option. Damn it, he wanted the option.

“Look.” Beck put his hand on Finn’s shoulder. “I’m going to find an orderly, then we’re going to get you out of here without anybody else having to see you. I know a place where you can sleep this off. Nobody has to know.”

Finn looked up. Even now, he could see that Beck was actually trying to help him. “Why?”

Beck stared at him. “Because I made a mistake with that boy, and you had to clean up my mess. I should have done a culture, like Miss Donaghue asked. Epiglottitis can be a casualty of strep. Not often, but often enough. If I’d caught it then…”

Finn shook his head, a bad idea under the circumstances. For a moment he thought he might pass out. “You wouldn’t make a different decision…Beck. Even if you had it to do over again. You did—you did what you thought was right.”

His own words pierced through the alcoholic haze. He might as well have been speaking of himself. In that moment it was as clear to him as it should have been before he fell off the wagon, as it should have been if years of regret and shame hadn’t dulled his spirit. Like Beck, he would not, could not, have made a different decision.

If he was in the water with his two little boys right now, even now, knowing what he knew about the outcome, he would still do what he’d done that day two years ago. He would try to save them both. What else could any father do? What other choice could he have lived with?

“I did think it was right,” Beck said. “But maybe I was wrong.”

“Next time…you’ll listen.”

“It’s going to haunt me until I know.”

“You can’t go back in time.” Finn heard his own words, and he knew that, drunk or not, he had never said—and would never again say—anything more profound. It was a simple, unavoidable truth.

“You can’t go back.” He looked up at Beck. “That’s all I’ve thought…That’s all I’ve wanted since the accident, you know. To go back…”

Beck, an unemotional man, a man who rarely saw people as anything except flesh to heal, swallowed hard. His eyes misted. “I know, Finn. We all know, and we’re so sorry.”

chapter 39

F
inn had never cried for his family. He’d nearly been dead when rescuers found him after the accident, and afterward he had fought for his life. Then there had been funeral arrangements, Bridie’s emotional state to think of, selling the house he could no longer abide living in, trying to resume his practice and later giving it up.

And finally, hours and hours of drinking to ease the pain.

He had never cried. He had never allowed himself to cry.

On the morning after he saved Kieran’s life, Finn looked into a strange mirror at a man he was only beginning to know. Last night Joe Beck had persuaded a spinster aunt to give Finn her guest room. She was a tight-lipped woman with an overly tidy house and a blessedly underdeveloped need for gossip. She put him to bed and told him where clean towels were kept. Then she left him alone in a room in which he could comfortably have done surgery.

Despite his drunken state, he had not gone to sleep immediately. By the time Miss Beck closed the guest room door, he was sobbing. He thought of everything he had lost; then, one by one, he laid them all to rest. His beautiful, ethereal Sheila. Little Mark. Baby Brian. The life they had led together. The man he had once been. All gone and never, never, to return.

He could never go back.

He awoke to a world he didn’t know, sitting up in a strange, antiseptic bedroom and feeling as if he lived in a stranger’s body. How would he live now? Since the accident, each morning had started with regret. Regret had been his breakfast companion. He had lunched with it, and allowed it to sit between himself and his beloved daughter each night at dinner. He had survived the accident, but he hadn’t been glad to. With the magical thinking of a child, he had wished for what he had lost, bargained at times, held on tightly to every memory to punish himself, as if by doing so he might wake up one day and find it had all been a terrible dream.

And now he had to start this morning as a new and different man. A man with another life, yes, but a man with the right to another round of happiness. He could never bring back what he had lost, but he could move forward.

He stared at the man in the bathroom mirror. Eyes red-rimmed, cheeks flushed, a day’s growth of beard. He saw that his hostess had been there before him. A disposable razor, a fresh toothbrush, a new bar of soap.

He almost smiled. He had needed a place to begin. And it was this simple. First things first. He said a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

Peggy felt better after taking a brief shower down the hall from her son’s room and changing into the clean clothes she had brought with her. The nurses had been more than kind. They had taken care of her as if she were a patient, too. And they had taken marvelous care of her son.

Now she stood by her son’s bed and gazed down at him. She was alone with him for once, the other occupants of the room in X ray or being moved to less restrictive quarters.

Every time she gazed at Kieran, he looked better. His color had improved immensely. Dr. Beck had stopped by at seven to examine him and say that if the swelling continued to decrease Kieran would be extubated by nightfall. She hadn’t asked about Finn again. What would be the point? He had made his decision and made it clear.

She had so much to be thankful for. Finn had saved Kieran’s life. Eventually, perhaps in fifty years, that would be the only thing she remembered about him.

“He looks good.”

She whirled at the sound of Finn’s voice. She was as astonished at his presence as she had been at his absence last night.

Finn strode to the bedside and lifted her son’s chart, paging through it, checking what test results had come in and which were still out. He nodded. “Exactly what I hoped to see.” He looked up. “And Kieran’s mother looks better, too. Did you get some sleep?”

“What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He reached for the pen in his shirt pocket and uncapped it. Then he made a notation in Kieran’s chart. He held it out to her. He had crossed out Dr. Joseph Beck as the physician of record and substituted his own name.

“The chart should reflect that I’m Kieran’s doctor.”

She was angry, frustrated, and terribly, terribly confused. “Finn, I can’t take much more of this.” Tears filled her eyes. She was tired of crying, but there were the tears anyway, proof that crying oneself dry was a fallacy.

“Just say you’ll have me as his doctor,” Finn said.

She nodded, because talking had become temporarily impossible.

“I left here last night and got stinking drunk,” he said. “And in that state, something occurred to me.”

“You’ve started—” she drew a deep breath “—drinking again.”