Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor Read online

  On his right, a door lay open and a hum of conversation spilled from what must be a waiting room. A woman in nurse’s uniform approached from down the hall. “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Doctor O’Reilly. I’ve an appointment with Doctor Corrigan at eleven.” He noticed blue eyes behind rimless glasses. Her hair was hidden under the nurse’s headdress that encircled her forehead and fell to her shoulders. She looked about thirty.

  “Pleased to meet you. Edith O’Donaghugh. I’m one of the midwives attached to the dispensary.” She pointed to a closed door. “He’s in there with a patient. You go into the waiting room. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  “Thank you.” The room was filled with a series of narrow backless benches arranged in rows, the front four occupied. Fingal decided to stand at the front of the room.

  “It’s me feckin’ back, sir,” a man sitting in front of him said.

  Fingal eyed the man, who was looking at him expectantly.

  “You’re a doctor, aren’t you? You’re dressed like one.”

  “No, I’m—Well, yes, I am a doctor.” I am a doctor, thought Fingal, and couldn’t help grinning.

  “Meself? I’m a tugger. Pull round a two-wheel cart all day like a feckin’ oul’ horse,” the man said without rancour. “I ricked me back lifting heavy shite out of the cart two days ago. I seen Mister O’Leary, him w’at’s got the chemist’s shop on Thomas Street, and he made me up a lotion, charged me tuppence. He’s a good skin, O’Leary, but this lotion? Stung like a feckin’ wasp but done me bugger all good.” He curled his lip. “So I come to see Doc Corrigan. But you’ll do fine. I’m in a rush.”

  Fingal smiled. “I don’t actually work here. I’ve come to see Doctor Corrigan too.”

  The heavily pregnant woman beside the tugger laughed up at Fingal. “Big healt’y young fellah like yourself? You look well filled enough to me, but if you’re sick take yer place at the end of the queue.”

  Rank apparently has no privileges here, Fingal thought.

  “My granny from County Clare swears there’s nothing like a poultice made of bog onions for sprains.”

  “Sure,” said the tugger, “and w’at would a oul’ culchie know about sprains?”

  She sniffed, pulling her shawl round her. “Just because you Dublin Jackeens t’ink the place’s the centre of the feckin’ universe, dere’s no need to believe all country folks is stupid. My granny had a County Leitrim prayer too, for sprains.”

  “Go on den, I’m all ears.”

  Fingal heard the reverence in her voice as she crossed herself, bowed her head, closed her eyes, and intoned, “Our Lord was going over the mountains and his foal’s foot he sprained. Down he got and touched the sprain and said he, ‘Bone to bone, blood to blood, nerve to nerve, and every sinew in its proper place.’” She straightened and opened her eyes. “If it does you any good, and I hope it does, you’re welcome to it.”

  “T’ank you, missus,” said the man, “and I’m sorry I called yer granny a culchie. It’s the oul’ back makes me grumpy.”

  Fingal smiled. Dubliners. It would be good to be working with them in their own neighbourhoods.

  “Doctor O’Reilly?”

  He turned. “Doctor Corrigan is just finishing,” said Edith O’Donaghugh. “He says to go straight in as soon as his patients come out.”

  “Thank you.” As he headed for the hallway, he heard her say to the pregnant woman, “Come on now, Mary, down to my room and we’ll have a look at you. And you just bide, Lorcan O’Lunney. You and your back’ll get their turn after Doctor Corrigan has finished with Doctor O’Reilly.”

  The door to the surgery opened and a woman came out carrying a squalling infant in her shawl and holding the hand of a little girl of about eight. Fingal would have known her cornflower blue eyes anywhere. He bent and said to her, “Hello, Finnoula Curran, Finnoula of the fair shoulders. Nice to see you again.”

  She smiled shyly at him. “I remember you comin’ to Francis Street. You’re the Big Fellah, Paddy’s doctor when he was in hospital.”

  “The very one,” Fingal said with a smile. Not long ago, a feisty, one-armed ex-army sergeant named Paddy Keogh from here in the Liberties had called Fingal the “Big Fellah”—the same name given to Michael Collins, a hero of the war of independence fifteen years ago. The nickname had stuck and by it Fingal had become known around Francis Street. Fingal straightened and said to the woman, “It’s all right, Mrs. Curran. Finnoula and I are old friends. I hope she’s keeping well.”

  “Finnoula’s grand, but Aidan’s teethin’. His bawlin’ has the whole family up at night. Doctor Corrigan’s given me a scrip’.”

  Fingal guessed it would be for chloral hydrate, one grain to be taken by the noisy Aidan at the adults’ bedtime.

  “I’m sure it’ll work,” he said, and leaving them, went through the door.

  In a sparsely furnished room Doctor Phelim Corrigan sat on a tall stool behind a desk that could have come from a Dickensian counting house. He was a short, rotund man in, Fingal guessed, his middle fifties. His pinstripe-trousered legs dangled well above the floor, and the man wore a badly fitting brown toupee with its parting exactly centred on his head. Wire-rimmed spectacles blurring a pair of pale, watery eyes sat on a bulbous nose. “O’Reilly?” He didn’t get down or offer to shake hands.

  “Yes, sir.” Fingal’s naval training had him standing at attention. Today he’d worn the new suit he’d bought for graduation, a good choice because Doctor Corrigan obviously believed the dignity of his profession should be reflected in the practitioner’s attire. He wore a wing collar and dark tie under the jacket of his suit.

  “Ye sounded like an Ulsterman on the phone?”

  “I am. Originally from Holywood, County Down.”

  Fingal could hear neither distaste nor approval of his northern roots when Doctor Corrigan said, “I’m a Connaught man meself. Mainistair na Búille, County Roscommon.”

  Fingal knew the town of Boyle and its ancient monastery and he’d already placed Doctor Corrigan for a Roscommoner. They always said “ye.”

  “Ye’ve already told me all I need to know professionally, Doctor O’Reilly. As long as I take a shine to ye, ye can have the job. I’m desperate for help.” He yawned. “Delivery at three this morning then back here in the trenches at nine.”

  Fingal hid a smile. Babies didn’t keep bankers’ hours.

  “Now ye’re fresh out of Trinity and want to be a dispensary doctor?” He yawned again and made no attempt to cover his mouth. There were dark circles under his eyes. “Ye need yer bloody head examined. I’m going to tell ye what ye’re in for—every second day ye’ll be on call twenty-four hours, and every other weekend. I hope ye’ll be one of two assistants if I can attract someone else. Then it’ll be one weekend in three and less night work.”

  “I’d prefer that,” said Fingal, “but I’d be happy to work one in two.”

  “Ah, youth,” Doctor Corrigan said. His grin was sardonic. “Being on call’s not all,” he said. “By way of an encore, ye get to be registrar of births, marriages, and deaths, and district medical officer of health for a princely ten to fifteen pounds a year, and vaccinator and TB prevention officer. How’s that sound to ye?”

  “Pretty hectic,” Fingal said. He’d had no inkling the work was anything but clinical medicine. Even in the five years of medical school, he’d come to loathe paperwork.

  “It is. Still, ye get a generous two whole weeks’ holiday annually, so ye can spend yer riches in some exotic seaside spot like Greystones or Malahide.” Doctor Corrigan slipped down off the stool and stood on the uncarpeted plank floor. “Now,” he said, “the old dispensary committee—”

  “Dispensary committee?” Fingal asked.

  Doctor Corrigan twitched his head. “Lord, did they teach ye nothing at Trinity?”

  “Not about how the dispensary system works, sir.”

  “New graduates? Mewling infants.” Doctor Co
rrigan shook his head. “Babes in arms. Lambs to the slaughter. See those seats?” He pointed at two plain, cane-backed chairs that stood beside a leather examining couch. Horsehair stuffing was jutting through where the leather was torn. “Plant yer benighted arse on one.”

  Fingal obeyed.

  Doctor Corrigan said, “There are three types of customers. The payers are the private patients, and if ye’re in practice up on Merrion Square—like Oscar Wilde’s dad Sir William, the ear, nose, and throat surgeon was—ye’re in the money.”

  “I don’t imagine there are too many payers in the Liberties and the Coombe, or the Quays and the Northside for that matter,” Fingal said.

  “True on ye, but funnily enough the madams in Monto, the old red light district up by Amiens Street Station, had the dough and some of them like May Oblong and Becky Cooper would pay for their girls too.” He must have registered Fingal’s look because he pushed his specs up to the bridge of his nose and said gruffly, “Ye can take that look off yer face, young man. My information is strictly through my professional relationship with the ladies. Now,” he said, shooting his jaw and patting the toupee in place, “where was I? Right, three types of customers. If ye do get a payer, ye can charge a fee. It helps bolster the so-called salary we get for looking after the other two classes. The first is those who have jobs and belong to approved societies that workers and their employers pay into weekly for medical care. Those societies pay our salaries for when we see the insured patients. Then there’s the poor—and the great gross from the Liberties and the Coombe are in that third category. The poorest divils can apply to a member of the dispensary committee I mentioned earlier and get issued with a ticket for free medical advice and medicine at dispensaries like these or get visited at home. That’s the way it has been since 1851, but everything’s changed politically with an act of Parliament in 1933 that’s finally being implemented this year.”

  Fingal heard something beside him and turned to the doorway where a youth of about sixteen in ragged pants to his shins and a collarless shirt covered in blood stood panting, one hand cupped over his nose.

  “So, Doctor O’Reilly, I seem to have lost yer attention. Ye’ve the look of a man who cares little for the administrative details of our profession. Bring on the sick and the dying, ye say. Well, I’ll tell ye, Doctor—”

  “Doctor Corrigan, we, ah, we seem to have a patient at the door.”

  “Jasus Murphy.” He stood in front of the youth and shot his jaw. “Not more bloody fighting, Eamon?”

  “No, Doctor, sir. Dere’s been an accident on Aungier Street. A tram hit a man on a bike. I was on the tram and the driver braked so hard I banged me feckin’ nose.”

  “Is the cyclist still down?”

  “I t’ink so.”

  “Right. Eamon, take yerself along the hall. Sister O’Donaghugh will fix up that nose. It’s a bloody good thing midwives train as general nurses first. Doctor O’Reilly, we are going to run there straightaway and see what we can do. Carry my bag. It’s there,” he pointed, “beside the door.”

  3

  I’m Not Even a Bus; I’m a Tram

  Fingal trotted, holding the battered leather bag. “Carry my bag”? Was he being offered the job of doctor or bloody medical orderly? He’d been used to giving orders as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. Next time he’d tell Corrigan to carry his own damn bag.

  They ran out of Aungier Place and onto Aungier Street, halted, and looked right to a stopped tram. The pole that connected the tram to overhead wires drooped over one side. A small crowd had gathered and as Fingal passed it he noticed the mangled remains of a bike crushed under a front bogey.

  The tram driver was bent over a man lying on the cobblestones. Doctor Corrigan tried to push his way through the press of bodies with Fingal hot on his heels.

  A man in a duncher and patched jacket muttered, “Quit your barging, you bollix,” but a woman beside him said, “Houl’ yer wheest. Dat’s Doctor Corrigan.”

  “I’m a doctor, too,” Fingal said, trying to get past.

  The man in the duncher squinted at Fingal, then smiled and said, “Hello dere, Big Fellah.” He put his hands on his hips and yelled, “All right, you bunch of bowsies, quit your rubbernecking. Dere’s two doctors here, so move back and let the dogs see the rabbit.”

  As the crowd started to move aside Fingal thought, This man must have seen me out on my rounds as a medical student only months ago. Being recognised by folks like Finnoula Curran and now this fellow was something he’d enjoyed while working among the tenement dwellers. He knew it was one of his reasons for wanting to practice here. His own upbringing had been privileged, yet he felt a sense of belonging whenever he was in the tenement slums of Dublin. Perhaps it was akin to the feeling of community he’d always known from his earliest days growing up in a small village in Ulster and later in the enclosed world of his boys’ boarding school, the camaraderie of his medical class.

  Finally Doctor Corrigan and Fingal stood beside the tram driver, who stared at the new arrivals. “I couldn’t have missed him. Honest to God, sirs.” He was pale and trembling.

  “I’m sure ye couldn’t,” Doctor Corrigan said. “It was an accident, and I know about bikes and tram tracks. Anyone who lives in Dublin does.”

  “T’ank you, sir.” Fingal heard the relief in the man’s voice. “The conductor’s sent for the Peelers and the ambulance.”

  “Good. Now, Doctor O’Reilly, if ye’ll take a look at the patient?” Doctor Corrigan stood aside.

  “Me?” Fingal frowned.

  “No. The other Doctor O’Reilly,” Doctor Corrigan said, and shook his head. “Yes, of course—ye. Get on with it, young man.”

  Sarky bugger, Fingal thought, and wondered if this was going to be some kind of on-the-spot practical examination of his clinical skills. He cocked his head, darted a glance at the senior man, then knelt by the patient, setting Doctor Corrigan’s bag on the ground. By God, Corrigan could carry the bag back when they’d finished here. If Fingal was going to work with the man it would have to be established at the start that while he might be Corrigan’s junior, Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly was nobody’s skivvie.

  He turned his attention to the patient, whose head was pillowed on the driver’s jacket. “I’m Doctor O’Reilly,” Fingal said. “Where does it hurt?” Even as he waited for a reply he’d taken the man’s wrist. The pulse was regular, didn’t seem unduly rapid. By his ragged full shock of black hair and clear complexion, Fingal guessed the man to be in his middle twenties. His face was creased and he gritted his teeth, but he was having no difficulty breathing.

  “Me feckin’ left ankle,” the man said. “Don’t touch it. For God’s sake, don’t.”

  “I won’t.” Fingal looked the man in the eyes. Young man’s eyes. Both pupils were equal in size and neither constricted nor dilated. “Your head feel all right?”

  “Me nut’s grand,” the man said, and grimaced.

  “Where are you?” O’Reilly asked.

  “Dat’s a feckin’ stupid question. Do you t’ink I t’ink I’m up in the Phoenix Park lying on the grass wit’ me arm round a pretty wee mot?” His face screwed up, he groaned and reached down toward his left leg.

  “I know it sounds daft,” Fingal said, “but I am trying to help. Just tell me where you are.” He glanced up to see Doctor Corrigan nodding in what Fingal took as approval. So he was being tested.

  “All right. I’m lyin’ on Aungier Street and I’ve a banjaxed ankle. A horse reared up. A bloody great barrel of Guinness fell off a dray and near poleaxed me. I swerved and the wheels of me bike got stuck in the feckin’ tram lines. The poor oul’ driver couldn’t stop and he knocked me arse over teakettle, but it was an accident.”

  No disorientation there and no intent to blame the tram driver. Fingal said, “Thank you. That does help. Now I’m going to take a quick gander.” His general examination would be rapid because he was already sure that the man had suffered no potentially lethal injuri
es. Fingal was aware of another presence and looked up. “Officer,” he said to a large Garda sergeant who turned from questioning the driver.

  “You carry on, Doc,” the policeman said. “I’m getting the facts from the tram driver. I’ll have a word wit’ yourself when you’re done wit’ that poor divil on the floor.”

  “Right.” Fingal ran his hands over each of the patient’s arms. Nothing broken there. An abdominal injury was pretty unlikely. “Are your guts all right?”

  “Never better, sir.”

  Fingal decided he’d leave the belly alone. Nor was there any sign of bleeding. “Mister…?” Fingal asked.

  “Finnegan. John-Joe Finnegan. From the Coombe.”

  “Mister Finnegan,” Fingal said, “how’s your right leg?”

  “Feels grand to me,” he said. “Look.” Even lying on the cobbles he was able with no difficulty to flex it at the knee. “It’s the udder one. At me ankle.” He swallowed. “It’s not so bad now, if I don’t try to move it, but, och, Mother of Jasus, if I do.” He sucked air between his teeth.

  Either the ligaments of the joint had been badly torn or the ankle was broken. Likely a Pott’s fracture. Fingal turned to report his findings to Doctor Corrigan as he might have to a senior doctor when he was examining a patient in his student days, but there was no sign of the man. He must have slipped off back to the surgery. There had been a lot more patients in the waiting room. He might have said “Cheerio,” Fingal thought, or “Carry on, Doctor O’Reilly. You’re doing fine,” but he’d simply vanished. Never mind, there was a more pressing matter to attend to. “I’m going to take a look at the bad ankle,” he said.

  “Go easy, sir. Please?”

  “I will.” Fingal gently removed a bicycle clip and eased the leg of the man’s moleskin trousers up his calf. Mister Finnegan’s left foot lay twisted to the side, an angle of nearly ninety degrees to the shin, and as he wore no socks, the increasing swelling and bruising were obvious. This was no sprain. “I’m afraid it’s broken,” Fingal said. At least there was no evidence of bone penetrating the skin, unless there was damage he couldn’t see without moving the leg. If there was, it would be classified as a compound fracture with a risk of infection, and that could lead to amputation. “They’ve sent for an ambulance,” he said. “You’ll need an X-ray and it’ll have to be set.” And, he thought, the surgeon can examine the break properly once John-Joe is under anaesthesia. Right up Donald Cromie’s street, Fingal thought. His friend had taken a distinction in orthopaedic surgery in their final examinations.