An Irish Country Family--An Irish Country Novel Read online

  “Lots of time for a jar,” Jack said.

  They passed the redbrick Royal Ulster Yacht Club and neared Luke’s Point, where they’d turn into Ballyholme Bay on the last leg. “Thon shark, bye, it got me thinking.” Jack shook his head. “Here we were sailing happily along on a perfect day, pretty much at peace with the world, when there’s a violent eruption from the deep. Bit like Ulster—”

  Barry guessed what his friend was thinking.

  “Just when it seems all is sweetness and light, the old animosities have been festering under the surface, and suddenly burst through again.”

  “I still think things could settle,” Barry said.

  “They’d better,” Jack said. “When, not if, Helen qualifies in June, she still has a houseman’s year to do starting in August. We’re still thinking about mebbe going to Canada, but,” Jack grimaced, “Helen’s having second thoughts.”

  “Oh?” Barry pricked up his ears. The last time he and Jack had discussed this subject, Barry had assumed it was a fait accompli, which had saddened Barry to think of losing his best friend. Now was there some hope that Jack Mills and his wife-to-be might stay in Ulster after all? “What’s up?”

  “It’s not just that she feels an obligation to the marquis, she’s worried sick about leaving her ould dad. You know he’s a widower. She’s all he’s got by way of a family here since Helen’s mum died ten years ago of kidney failure.”

  “Jack, it’s your and Helen’s call, I shouldn’t try to influence you, but,” he looked Jack in the eye, “I’d be delighted if you two stayed.” Barry felt a glimmer of hope he recognised as selfishness. But it didn’t stop him smiling.

  Jack shrugged. “I thought I’d my mind made up. Certainly, my prospects would be better in Canada, but Helen’s been thinking out loud to me about giving things here a chance to settle. One more year while she does her houseman’s stint and gets full registration.”

  “Would you still get married?”

  Jack nodded. “My folks won’t like it. We’ll have to hope Alan will.”

  “I don’t know Alan Hewitt all that well, but by reputation he’s a fair-minded man. And he loves his daughter.”

  Jack said, “We’ll just have to see,” and he brightened. “Who knows what will happen by next August?” Jack leaned aft and touched Barry’s arm. “You and I had a lot of fun as housemen in the Royal Victoria. I’d like Helen to do hers there too.”

  Barry chuckled. “We did. I was thinking about it too, just before Moby Dick showed up.” Barry shook his head. “Do you know what Cervantes said?”

  “The Don Quixote bloke?”

  “That’s him. He said, ‘A man must eat a peck of salt with his friend before he knows him.’ We didn’t just have fun together. There were some pretty hairy moments too.”

  Jack nodded slowly, and Barry was sure the allusion had not been lost. “A peck of salt.”

  “Dear Lord, Jack, is it really six years ago since we started?”

  “It is,” said Jack. “Indeed, it is.”

  “Remember our first day?”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Jack said.

  They sat together in companionable silence.

  Barry Laverty kept an eye on the sail, the wind, and the sea, hoping Jack and Helen would stay, letting his mind drift. How Jack had felt on that day had been unclear to the young Barry Laverty, but he himself had greeted the challenges ahead with a mixture of pride and anxious anticipation about how he might cope.

  Barry looked out over the sea. Back in ’63 he’d been as churned up inside as that patch of ocean after the shark had breached.

  4

  In the Force and Road of Casualty

  August 1, 1963

  August 1, 1963. For the new batch of housemen at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital, this was the first day on duty, following qualification in June and graduation in July. Once the next twelve months were over, the newly qualified doctors would be fully licensed physicians and could pursue whatever career path they chose. But for now, they were at the beck and call of the service to which they were attached.

  Doctors Barry Laverty and Jack Mills strode along the hospital’s main corridor, the tails of their long white coats flapping behind them. They had been summoned from their breakfast in the housemen’s dining room in the East Wing.

  “God alone knows what’s going on in casualty,” said Barry. Four of them, including Barry and Jack, had been assigned there for three months in staggered shifts. “You’re supposed to be on the noon-to-six shift, Jack, and I’ve got the short night, six to midnight. Curly Maguire and Norma Fitch are there this morning. Shouldn’t they be able to manage?” For a moment Barry wondered about Norma. He knew from their student experience how rough some of the casualty patients could be, and a few of the male housemen had wondered, would a woman, and a petite one at that, be able to cope?

  “Should be, unless there’s been some kind of multiple-victim accident. But we’ve been sent for, so we must be needed.” Jack held open one of the double doors from the main corridor. “Holy Moses. Would you look at that?”

  Both young men stopped in their tracks.

  Ahead stretched row upon row of benches, filled by people waiting their turn to see a doctor. Some were standing or leaning against walls. Most of the men wore dunchers and many were smoking. The buzz of muted conversation was intermittently pierced by coughs, groans, and the lusty yelling of babies and children. Working-class women did not have the luxury of babysitters. Inured by three and a half years’ exposure, Barry barely noticed the aroma of disinfectant that pervaded the whole hospital, but here there was a faint smell of unwashed socks and bodies. Even in 1963 not all the terrace houses in the slums of Belfast had running water.

  “How the blazes are we going to get through all this? There’s only four of us. There must be sixty people in here.” Barry had never seen so many patients crowded into the waiting hall.

  In the ten years Barry had known Jack Mills he had never seen him truly fazed, and his friend answered with his usual aplomb. “Remember what the very upper-class registrar said when we complained about the amount of routine work we’d to do?”

  “Mike Patrick? Remind me.”

  Jack adopted plummy aristocratic tones. “In this life, young fellow, there will always be a certain amount of shite to be shovelled. Might one suggest you simply get yourself a long-handled spade?” Jack lengthened his stride and resumed his usual County Antrim accent. “Come on, hey bye. It won’t be as bad as all that.”

  Despite his concerns, Barry managed to chuckle and followed his friend, now turning left onto a narrow aisle between the waiting crowds and the plaster room, where casts were applied or removed. Before turning right onto a corridor leading to the ambulance room, he saw a student nurse taking a patient into room B, directly ahead, where minor cases were seen.

  They walked along the passageway to the casualty senior sister’s office.

  “Better report in with Sister,” Jack said. “See what’s up.” He knocked on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Sister Branna “Bernie” O’Byrne, originally from County Wicklow, sat hunched over her desk.

  “Morning, Bernie,” Jack said.

  Smart in her red uniform dress, white apron, and starched white fall—the triangular headdress worn by all Royal nurses above the rank of student—the senior sister glared at Jack and Barry. “I know I’ve to call you youngsters ‘Doctor’ now, but by all that’s holy, you’re going to earn that title today. It’s like Paddy’s bleeding market out there.”

  The usually unflappable Bernie was giving Barry reason to worry. “But you and your nurses will help, Sister O’Byrne,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.

  She sniffed. “We’ll have to. I’ve never seen the waiting room so jam-packed.” He had learned long ago that a student and now a houseman’s best friends were the senior nurses. It was wise not to fall foul of them, and occasionally calling them by their full title was a sens
ible thing to do. Bernie pointed through the glass front wall of her office to the scene outside. The ambulance room had three curtained-off examining spaces on either side, separated by a central aisle. Past the last cubicle, double doors stood open. It was through them that stretcher cases arriving by ambulance were wheeled in.

  “Your friends are already at work in there on two acutely ill recent admissions, and room B’s chockablock. I want you two out there.”

  Barry smiled and felt relieved. He felt reasonably able to deal with minor cases.

  “And if we need more help in here for something more serious, I’ll send for one of you. Off you trot.”

  “Right, Sister,” said Jack.

  As they left her office, Barry heard retching coming from inside the nearest curtained-off cubicle. A voice he recognised as Norma Fitch’s said, “Please try to lie still, Mister Duncan.”

  They retraced their steps to the waiting area and took a right turn to room B, with its six curtained-off spaces.

  “Good luck, mate,” Jack said, and pulled back the curtains of the first cubicle.

  Barry took the first examining space to his right, where a balding, middle-aged man, grey eyes with laugh lines at their corners, sat on a wooden chair holding a sock and shoe. His right foot and ankle were wrapped in a grubby pink tensor bandage. He grinned at Barry. “My God,” he said, “is this what youse school kids do in your summer holidays?” He laughed.

  Barry knew he looked younger than his twenty-three years. He was proud to have qualified as the youngest member of his class, but he’d never been one to stand on his dignity and he wanted to get a move on. “Only on Thursdays,” he said, and inclined his head toward the bandaged ankle. “Bad ankle?”

  “Aye. Gave her a right wrench, so I did. I should have known better than til be kicking a football around with a bunch of kids.”

  “Let me take a look at your card.” Barry lifted a four-by-eight ruled card from a small rack attached to the wall. He read:

  Alfred Stewart. 45. Labourer. Date first seen July 22. 17 Ravenhill Road. Protestant.

  C/O Sprained right ankle.

  O/E Tender swollen.

  X-Ray NBI

  R Strap D10

  The hieroglyphics, when translated, meant: C/O, complaining of; O/E, on examination; NBI, no bony injury; R, treatment; and D10, follow up in ten days.

  “So, how’s it feeling today, Mister Stewart?”

  “Dead on, Doc, and no offence meant when I said you look young. It’s only oul’ Alfie, taking a hand out of you, like.”

  “No offence taken,” Barry said. “Let’s have a look at your hoof.” He bent, undid a safety pin, and unwound the bandage. No bruising. No swelling. Good. “Can you move it?”

  “Aye.” Alfie Stewart did, in all directions. “I can walk on it too.”

  “Go on then. Let’s see.”

  He stood and paced along the floor. No sign of a limp. “I think I’m dead on,” he said, “but you’re the doctor, sir.”

  I am, Barry thought, and it feels very good. “I think,” he said, “we can chuck out the bandage, and you can put on your sock and shoe.” He opened a pedal bin and dropped the soiled bandage in. As Alf Stewart laced up his shoe, Barry wrote on the card, Sprain healed. Discharge Aug 1, and replaced it in the rack. “Off you trot, Alf. You’re well mended.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The moment he let himself out through the curtains a student nurse popped in to ready the place for its next occupant.

  Barry, relieved he’d been able to deal with the patient so quickly, felt his confidence growing. Within the next fifteen minutes he’d discharged a man who’d had a foreign body removed from his eye three days ago, and sent home, cured, a nosebleed packed two days before. Then a sprained wrist treated a week ago. Barry was beginning to feel he was getting the hang of this.

  Sister O’Byrne appeared, handed him a card, and said, “Nip over to the suture room, please, Barry. Nurse Clarke needs you there.”

  “Thanks, Bernie.” Barry smiled. They were back to Christian names, which meant she was back in her usual, highly competent form. As he crossed the waiting hall, a patient, a woman at the extreme left of the front bench, stood and followed a student nurse into room B. In rapid succession, each patient moved up one seat, and one of the few now standing took the last vacated place at the back of the hall. It was this serpentine movement of the crowd that had led to some irreverent medical student of bygone years naming the unfortunates who came to casualty “the snakes.”

  Barry read his next patient’s card.

  Mrs. Dympna Kilpatrick, 32. Housewife. Date first seen July 27. 18b Falls Road, Catholic.

  C/O Cut palm of left hand

  O/E Two-inch incision sutured.

  R Five black silk sutures. Tetanus vaccine D6

  Sutures were usually removed on day seven. Oh well.

  He went into the suture room where a woman sat wearing a knotted headscarf over red hair. Her left hand was stretched out palm up on a green sterile towel covering a stainless steel table on casters. The hand was painted brown with the antiseptic Betadine.

  A student nurse wearing a mask and rubber gloves stood at the patient’s far side, facing Barry. “Doctor Laverty,” she said.

  “Don’t let me hold you up, Nurse Clarke.” Barry had worked with the young woman before. He’d always admired Virginia Clarke’s green eyes, auburn hair, and trim figure.

  She bent over the patient. “Only one more to go, Mrs. Kilpatrick.”

  “Great.” The patient looked at Barry. “Hello, Doctor. How’s about ye?”

  Barry smiled and said over his shoulder as he washed his hands, “I think I’m supposed to ask you that.”

  “I’m doing—” She sucked in her breath.

  “Sorry,” Nurse Clarke said.

  “That’s all right, dear, and I am doing rightly, Doctor. This wee nurse has a quare soft hand under a duck, so she has.”

  “All done,” Nurse Clarke said, straightening up.

  Barry dried his hands, crossed to be closer to the patient, and looked at the scar. It was red, as was to be expected, but there was no sign of infection and it was healing well. “Looks very good,” he said. “Can you dress it please, Nurse?”

  In moments, a fresh dressing had been applied.

  “Leave that on for another five days,” Barry said. “If it starts to feel sore or suppurate—”

  “Excuse me, Doctor, but what’s sup-supturate, like?”

  Barry smiled. “If there’s any sign of beeling”—Belfast for infection—“go and see your own doctor, please.” He retrieved her card from where he had set it on a shelf. Healed, Discharge. Aug 1.

  “I’ll do that, sir.” She turned to Virginia Clarke. “And thank you too, Nurse. I’ll be running on.” She left.

  Nurse Clarke was stripping off her rubber gloves. Then her mask.

  She really did have amazing depths to her eyes, but Barry told himself to get a grip. There were dozens more patients to see and he’d no time for dalliance. Pity. Physically she was a stunner and he knew she had a wicked sense of humour. “Thanks, Virginia,” he said.

  “Barry,” she said, “I know its bloody bedlam out there, but may I ask you something?”

  “As long as it’s quick.”

  “I thought we took out stitches on the seventh day.”

  Barry frowned. He’d wondered about that too. Day six had seemed a bit early. “We do.”

  “I’ve seen two day-six removals today.”

  Barry frowned. “That is unusual. I’ll ask Sister O’Byrne. I’ll let you know. You’re here all day, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Until four.”

  Damn it, there was something special about those eyes. Barry, always shy around women, steeled himself. “I’ll be off tomorrow night. I don’t suppose you’d—”

  “Sorry,” she said, cutting him off and looking him right in the eye, “we have a class and I don’t want to miss it. Getting qualified’s important to me.”<
br />
  “Of course. I’m sorry.” As always when he was flustered, Barry’s right hand flew to his head to smooth a tuft of fair hair that never seemed to lie properly. “Well—yes—um—I’d best be off.”

  Barry Laverty, he scolded himself, why, why are you so ham-fisted when it comes to pretty girls? You tried to ask her out. She said no. He was embarrassed, yes, but he knew he embarrassed easily. Was his pride hurt? A bit, but it was hardly a catastrophe—nothing ventured, nothing gained. But, damn it, she was a very pretty girl.

  He went back across the waiting hall.

  The crowd was thinning. The last bench was nearly empty. He’d seen five patients, a couple a bit more quickly than he would have liked, and if Jack had done the same and Hilda or Curly had been able to pitch in, perhaps the task wasn’t going to be as daunting as it had first seemed. Barry felt a certain relief. But already he was thinking about people as nosebleeds and sprained wrists. There was no getting to know your patients in this madhouse. Before he could turn into room B, a student nurse called, “Ambulance room, Doctor Laverty.”

  Barry swallowed. Here comes the real test, he thought, and lengthened his stride.

  “In there, Barry,” Bernie said, pointing to two ambulance attendants pushing a laden trolley into the area nearest the door.

  He gave her Dympna Kilpatrick’s card and closed the curtains behind him.

  One blue-uniformed attendant was leaning over the patient, a man in his sixties, Barry guessed, who lay quietly under a grey blanket on a trolley. A chair at its head stood against a wall where an upright sphygmomanometer was affixed.

  The attendant had a stethoscope in his ears and was wrapping the sphygmo cuff around the patient’s left upper arm before taking his blood pressure. Barry noticed an Ambu bag, a face mask connected to a self-inflating rubber balloon, lying on top of the blanket.

  The other ambulance man said, “Your man’s doctor reckons he’s had a heart attack. He has a two-year history of angina. About two hours ago he sent for his GP because he had bad chest pain going into his jaw and down his arm.”

  Certainly sounded like a coronary.

  “When we got there, his blood pressure was one hundred over sixty and his pulse fast and very irregular. He was sweating. His doctor had given him a quarter of morphine for the pain and a tablet of digitalis for the irregular heartbeat and sent for the ambulance. Me and Bert there was sent out.” He looked at his watch. “That would have been an hour ago.”