An Irish Country Doctor Page 18

"Tell him not to worry. Accidents happen."

  "He's very busy. Him and his rocking ducks." Her green eyes sparkled. "He says we're going to make a mint. That you've fixed it up for him to sell the whole lot of them to a firm in Belfast."

  "Umm," said O'Reilly. "Maybe."

  "I know it'll all work out, Doctor. Me and him and wee Barry Fingal out there in all that sunshine."

  "I hope so," said O'Reilly, taking her by the arm and leading her to the door. "We'll see you in five weeks."

  "If we're still here," she said, and as she left, Barry heard her in the hall singing to Barry Fingal. "California here we come, right back where we started from . . ."

  O'Reilly closed the surgery door. "I hope to God she's right. I'll just have to put the screws on my friend tonight, or think of something else." He folded his arms and stroked his chin with his left hand. "And we're going to have to sort out Julie MacAteer. She's next."

  "What did the test say?"

  O'Reilly grunted. "Bloody typical." He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. "Look at that."

  Barry read the results of an Aschheim-Zondek pregnancy test. "'Urine toxic. The mice died.' Oh, great."

  "Right, and Mrs. Kincaid's no further on finding out about the mystery woman of Ballybucklebo." He blew out his cheeks. "I'll go and get her."

  He returned moments later and offered Julie MacAteer a seat. She sat, knees together, feet flat on the carpet, hands folded in the lap of her tartan skirt. "Am I?" she asked, her voice steady. "We don't know. The test didn't work. I'm really very sorry," Barry said.

  "My period's not come."

  Barry swallowed. "Julie, we can do another test. It'll only take a few days."

  "I know I'm pregnant," she said flatly.

  "You may be right," Barry said, "but let's make sure." "I suppose so. Mind you, if I just wait another few months I'll know for certain, won't I?" She sniffed and used the heel of one hand to dry her eyes.

  O'Reilly spoke quietly. "That's true."

  She spun in the chair to face him. "What'll I do?"

  "Doctor Laverty's right. We'll repeat the test. But in the meantime we've made arrangements for you to go to Liverpool. Just in case."

  "Liverpool?" She sat back in the chair. "In England?"

  O'Reilly nodded. "They'll take good care of you there. No one here need know."

  "I'd have to have the baby. Give it up?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, Jesus." Her tears flowed, smearing her mascara.

  "It'll be hard on you," O'Reilly said. "I know that." Barry watched her shoulders shake. She took two deep breaths. "I've no choice, have I?"

  "I'm sorry," O'Reilly said gently, "unless--"

  "Unless?"

  "Unless you can tell us who the father is."

  She shook her head, tossing her corn-silk hair. "No." Barry, shifting in the swivel chair, was about to speak when he caught O'Reilly's glance. Barry realized that if he interfered it would seem to the young woman that they were ganging up on her. "I can't do that," she said. "I just can't."

  "That's all right," said O'Reilly. "I understand."

  "No, you don't. Nobody does." She gave two more deep sobs and stiffened her shoulders. "Can I bring in a specimen this afternoon?"

  "Yes," said O'Reilly. "Go on home now. Give it to Mrs. Kincaid when you come back."

  "All right."

  "She'll make you a cup of tea. Would you like that?"

  Julie nodded. "Liverpool. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." She sniffed deeply.

  Barry offered her his handkerchief.

  She took it, blew her nose, and returned it with a small smile. "Here."

  He stuffed it in his pocket.

  She stood. "I just knew I'd have to go away. I just knew. I've already given my notice."

  "Oh?" said O'Reilly. "And who's your boss?"

  "I'm not telling."

  "Fair enough." O'Reilly held out his hands, shoulders high, palms out. "None of my business."

  "I'd better be going." She rose. "Can I wash my face, please?"

  "Of course."

  Barry watched as she tidied herself up.

  "I'll tell Mrs. Kincaid to expect you," O'Reilly said, as he opened the door. "You'll like her."

  "Liverpool" was the last thing Barry heard Julie MacAteer say as she left.

  "Four o'clock. Time I was going," said O'Reilly, leaning against the mantel in the lounge, his briar belching.

  Barry shifted in his armchair, coughed, and wondered if the captain of HMS Warspite had ever asked Surgeon Commander O'Reilly to lay down a smoke screen for the entire Mediterranean Fleet. "Aren't you leaving a bit early?"

  "I've to pick up Donal and Bluebird and drive them up to Dunmore Park; then I'll take a run-race over to the Royal. See how Sonny's getting on."

  "He should be on the mend by now."

  "I hope so, but what we're going to do with him when he gets out of hospital is beyond me. He can't go on living in his car."

  "Maybe he'll be so grateful to Maggie for taking care of his dogs that he'll fix his roof and ask her to marry him . . . and she'll say yes . . . and let him move in with her until his place is fixed up."

  "Aye. And Councillor Bishop will buy all of Seamus Galvin's rocking ducks and use the lumber to do the job at Sonny's. The father of Julie MacAteer's wee bastard will turn out to be Sean Connery, who'll whisk her off to Hollywood and make her his leading lady in the next James Bond film ..." O'Reilly knocked the dottle of his pipe into the fire-place. "And the Reverend Ian Paisley will enter a Jesuit novitiate."

  Barry laughed.

  "I don't think the pair of us are going to unravel the riddles of the universe today." O'Reilly stuffed his pipe into his jacket pocket. "You just keep an eye on the shop until it's time for you to go out yourself."

  "I'll do my best."

  "I know that," said O'Reilly, looking Barry in the eye. "I told you I've been watching you, son. You've the makings of a damn good GP."

  "Thanks, Fingal." Barry knew he was grinning, but why not? Praise from O'Reilly was praise indeed. "I will do my best."

  "God," said O'Reilly, "you sound like a fornicating Boy Scout. Well, you stay here and do your good deed for the day, Baden Powell. I'm off, and you have fun tonight. You've earned it." Barry sat back in his chair. O'Reilly had been right. There was a great deal of satisfaction to be gained from the routine of a busy general practice, and it was gratifying, very gratifying, that O'Reilly was pleased with Barry's work and trusted him sufficiently to leave him in charge. Still, being left alone was a little unnerving. He stood and walked to the window just in time to see the black Rover roar off along the Belfast Road.

  He heard the front door close and looked down. Julie MacAteer walked down the front path. She must have brought her urine specimen. Poor lass. It was a hell of a thing for her to be pregnant by a-- what was O'Reilly's word?--a gobshite who refused to take responsibility. And all the secrecy. Why wouldn't she tell her physicians who she worked for? Something worried away at the back of Barry's consciousness. Something that somebody had said about a maid giving her notice. An Antrim girl.

  He hadn't heard Mrs. Kincaid come in, and he jumped when she said, "Would you like some tea, Doctor Laverty?"

  "Please."

  "It's a bit stewed." Mrs. Kincaid set a tray on the sideboard. "I made it for that nice MacAteer girl, the wee lamb."

  "How is she, Mrs. Kincaid?"

  "She puts up a brave front, so. Very private. Himself asked me to try to find out about her." She handed him a cup. "Milk's in it, the way you like it."

  "Thanks." Barry took the cup. "And what have you discovered?"

  "Not much. No one in the village seems to know her. But she works somewhere here, or out in the country a ways. Her hands are soft, so she'll not be working on a farm."

  "So what could she be doing?"

  "Maybe she's in service. Lord Ballybucklebo still has a gamekeeper and a couple of maids."

  And then Barry remembered that it was Counc
illor Bishop who'd said his wife was fit to be tied because their maid had given her notice.

  "Mrs. Kincaid?"

  "Doctor Laverty, I'd be very pleased if you'd call me Kinky, like himself."

  Barry felt flattered. "All right, Kinky."

  She smiled.

  "Kinky, could Julie MacAteer be working for the Bishops?"

  Kinky's small black eyes narrowed. "Aye, so."

  "Could we find out?"

  "On Monday I'll be going to the Women's Union. Mrs. Bishop's a member."

  "Could you ask her?"

  "I will, so."

  "Good. What kind of woman is Mrs. Bishop anyway?"

  "She's no oil painting but she's a decent soul. What she sees in Ulster's answer to Adolf Hitler is beyond me. I suppose she didn't want to end up as one of nature's unclaimed treasures."

  "She must have been pretty hard up to take him." Mrs. Kincaid's chins wobbled as she chuckled and said, "Hard up? Maybe for a husband, but she'd inherited a parcel of money from her father. Adolf didn't have two pennies to put on the eyes of a corpse before he married her."

  "Interesting," said Barry, finishing his tea. He heard the front doorbell.

  "I'll see who that is," said Kinky.

  "It's all right, Kinky. I'll go." It might just be my first patient, Barry thought, looking at his watch. "I've plenty of time before I've to get ready."

  "Aye, so," said Kinky, as the bell jangled again. "You're just like himself when he started here. Raring to go like an angel of mercy on roller skates."

  As he left the lounge he saw her smile like a mother whose youngster has just won a Sunday-school prize.

  A large, familiar-looking woman stood on the step. She wore a straw hat and a floral-patterned dress with the dimensions of a small bell tent. Barry noticed her white court shoes, over the edges of which the flesh of her ankles drooped. "Doctor Laverty?"

  "Yes."

  "Could I have a wee word?"

  "Certainly, Mrs . . . ?"

  "Sloan. Cissie Sloan. I'm one of the tonics." Her voice was coarse and rasping.

  "Come into the surgery." Barry stood aside to let her squeeze past. She was the one who'd been wearing her stays when O'Reilly had tried to inject her with vitamin B12. "What can I do for you?" He closed the door and went to the swivel chair.

  She perched her bulk on the patients' chair. "Cold in here," she said.

  Barry was surprised that she felt cold as the room was overly warm.

  "I feel the cold something chronic."

  "Do you? Is that why you came?"

  She shook her head. "I've been under Doctor O'Reilly for six months, and he's doing me no good."

  Barry controlled his smile despite his mental picture of the gargantuan Mrs. Sloan being mounted by an enthusiastic, but clearly outclassed Doctor F. F. O'Reilly.

  "I come for a second opinion. He's away, isn't he?"

  "Yes." News travelled so fast in Ballybucklebo, Barry thought, that it must practically attain the speed of light.

  "Donal Donnelly's my nephew. Him and his dog and Doctor O'Reilly's away to Belfast. Donal told me. The day you come here, Doctor O'Reilly said you was the youngest doctor that ever won a prize for the learning."

  "Well, I-"

  "So I want you to tell me what's wrong with me."

  "I'll try. Can you give me a few clues?"

  She pushed herself back into the uneven chair, folded her meaty arms, and grunted. "I thought you were an expert. Finding out's your job."

  "I know, but I do have to take your history, perhaps examine you."

  "Ask away then."

  Barry, with great patience and with growing concern that the consultation would make him late for Patricia, managed to mine a few nuggets of clinically relevant information from the slag heap of Cissie's detailed reminiscences; reminiscences delivered in a husky, drearily slow monotone. "I first took poorly on a Thursday. No. No. I'm wrong. It was the Wednesday that Donal's other dog died. The one with the wee short tail. . . So I said to Aggie, that's Aggie Arbuckle that was . . . now she's Mehaffey. Married to Hughie, him that's Maggie MacCorkle's second cousin . . . on the mother's side . . . Anyway, Doctor O'Reilly says to me . . . you know what he's like . . . you'd think he was Jehovah giving out the Commandments to Moses . . . he says to me, 'You're run down, Cissie. You need a tonic' And here's me taking the tonic every six weeks for six months and I'm no better--"

  "Right, Mrs. Sloan." Barry finally managed to stem the tide. Let's see if I've got this right. You've been tired for six months and it's getting worse?"

  "Aye."

  "You feel the cold?"

  "I do."

  "Muscle cramps?"

  "Desperate. In my legs. And you'll not believe this, Doctor. I've been putting on weight."

  "Never," said Barry, inwardly congratulating himself for being able to keep a straight face. "Has any of your hair fallen out?"

  "How did you know that?"

  Barry ignored her question but asked, "Are you constipated?"

  "Constipated? I've been like an egg-bound hen for months"-- she dropped her voice to a whisper--"and I haven't seen my monthlies since January."

  Barry tapped his pen against his teeth, leant forward, and peered at her face. Her eyebrows stopped about two-thirds of the way to the corner of her eyes. Her complexion was pasty yellow, and there were puffy bags beneath both eyes.

  "Let me have a look at your neck." He stood and moved behind her chair. "It's all right, I'm not going to strangle you," he reassured her, as he placed his fingers over the front of her throat. Underneath the fat he could feel a solid, rubbery mass. Barry stepped back. She was right. She wasn't simply tired. She had all the classical manifestations of an underactive thyroid gland. Fingal had missed the diagnosis.

  "What do you think, Doctor?"

  Barry coughed. He was unsure how to answer her honestly and at the same time preserve O'Reilly's professional reputation. "I'm not sure," he said. "We'll need to arrange a test at the hospital."

  "The hospital?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Have I cancer?"

  Barry flinched. It was possible, but her thyroid gland was smooth, not hard and craggy. "I don't think so." He saw her relax. "I think your thyroid is a bit underactive."

  "Why'd O'Reilly not do the test?"

  "Urn . . ." Lord. The truth was that he'd probably been in a hurry and had missed the diagnosis. "It's new. I only heard about it this year."

  "See. I was right to come and see you."

  "But if the test shows what I think it'll show, we'll need Doctor O'Reilly to prescribe your treatment. He's much more experienced than I am." Two weeks, Barry thought, it had taken only two weeks for him to start bending the truth, but he couldn't let O'Reilly down. "Would you like me to explain to you about the thyroid and the test?"

  She shook her head. "Not at all. I'd not understand a word. Just you fix it up. You can tell me when you get the results."

  "I'll go and make a phone call," he said. "Wait here." The laboratory was still open when Barry phoned. Yes, they'd arrange for her to have a radioactive iodine uptake test. Could he fill out a requisition and ask her to bring it with her to the metabolic laboratory at ten o'clock on Monday morning? "Here," he said, handing her the form. "Monday morning at the Royal. Go to the information desk. They'll show you how to get to the lab."

  "Thank you, Doctor Laverty, sir." She rose and left.

  "My pleasure," he said, and he meant it. He had been worried about being left all on his own, but unless something dramatic happened between now and half past six when he would leave to pick Up Patricia, he would be quite happy to feel just a little smug.

  The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

  Barry took one last look in the mirror. He probably hadn't needed to shave for a second time that day. He winced as the Old Spice aftershave stung. He brushed his hair, knowing that it was a futile gesture. Before long the tuft would be sticking up again like the crown of a broken hat, but at l
east he'd tried. He tied a half Windsor knot in his Queen's University tie. He glanced down. His shoes were newly polished and his corduroys pressed. He silently thanked Mrs Kin . . . no, Kinky.

  He ran downstairs and into the lounge. Before he collected his sports jacket from where it hung on the back of a chair, he pulled out his wallet. One thing about being so damn busy, it didn't leave much time for spending money. He had almost thirty-five pounds.

  Plenty.

  He slipped into his jacket. "You behave yourself, Lady Macbeth. The white cat, who lay on the hearth rug, opened one eye.

  "I'm off," he said.

  The telephone began ringing as he cleared the last stair. He hesitated. O'Reilly had said to let Kinky take care of any calls. He lifted the receiver. "Hello?"

  "I want to speak to Doctor O'Reilly."

  "I'm sorry. He's in Belfast."

  "Is that young Laverty?"

  "It's Doctor Laverty, yes. Who's speaking?" He could overhear a conversation at the other end of the line: "O'Reilly's away." "I want to see O'Reilly." "You can't. You'll have to make do with Laverty."

  He snorted and raised his eyes to the heavens at Kinky, who had appeared from her kitchen.

  "Are you still there, Laverty?"

  "Yes."

  "This is Mrs. Fotheringham. It's very urgent."

  "I see."

  "I want you to come at once. The major's been taken ill. Very ill."

  "What seems to be the trouble?" He glanced at his watch. Six fifteen.

  "It's his neck. He's got a terrible pain in his neck."

  He is a terrible pain in the neck, Barry thought. "Could it wait until the morning?"

  "I want him seen now."

  Barry knew he couldn't justify sending for an ambulance for a man with a stiff neck. "Very well," he said. "I'll be right over."

  "Don't be long." The line went dead.

  Barry replaced the receiver. "It's all right, Kinky. Major Fotheringham has a stiff neck. I'll just nip round there. It's almost on my way."

  "Why don't you telephone your wee girl? Tell her you might be I late?"

  "I will." He lifted the phone and dialled. Damn it, the line was engaged. "Busy," he said. "I'd better get my bag."

  "You run on, Doctor, and don't you worry. I'll take care of things here. What's her number?"