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

  “And his BP’s ninety over fifty now,” Bert said, pulling the stethoscope from his ears.

  “He needs admission to ward 6, men’s cardiology,” Barry said.

  “Bijizzis. He needs more than that,” Bert said. “I’ve lost his pulse, sir.”

  Barry saw the patient’s eyes staring, the pupils widely dilated. He grabbed a wrist. No pulse. Barry yelled, “Nurse. Cardiac arrest,” then said as calmly as he was able, “Get the Ambu bag ready, Bert. I’ll do the cardiac massage.”

  Barry clambered onto the trolley and straddled the patient’s legs. He crouched and put one hand flat on the man’s sternum, the other on top of the first, and began rhythmic chest compression of two inches, sixty times per minute. “Ventilate.”

  Bert placed the face mask over the patient’s nose and mouth and started compressing the bag at a rate of one ventilation every thirty compressions.

  “Yes, Doctor?” a student nurse asked.

  “Ask Sister to phone 5 and 6. Tell them I’m bringing a cardiac arrest patient who I think needs defibrillation.”

  “Right.”

  “Ready, lads?”

  The first attendant took hold of the rear of the trolley. Bert steered the front with one hand while continuing to compress the bag. Once they were out from behind the curtains, Sister O’Byrne assigned a staff nurse to bag duty while the two ambulance men steered the trolley.

  Barry was tiring but could not stop his external cardiac massage. He was vaguely aware of passing into the main corridor and turning left, heading for ward 6. Those in the corridor—nurses, students, physiotherapists, relatives—cleared out of the way.

  A voice said, “Hang on.”

  Barry felt the trolley stop. “What?”

  “It’s all right, Barry. The cardiac team’s here.”

  Barry managed to gasp, “Thanks,” before climbing off and letting Doctor John Geddes and his staff take over and immediately head for the cardiac unit, where the defibrillator would be standing by. Barry stood bent over, hands on knees, pulling in lungfuls of air before straightening up and saying to the staff nurse, “We’d best get back to casualty.”

  “I thought you did very well, Doctor Laverty,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Barry said, and glowed. He’d been able to cope with minor cases and now he had not panicked in a critical situation. Maybe, after a few more weeks here, he’d begin to feel more like a doctor and less like a student. He hoped so. He looked back in time to see the team and trolley disappear through the ward’s blue plastic doors. He hoped the anonymous patient would survive and recover.

  Jack Mills was coming the other way. “Well done, mate,” he said, and clapped Barry on the shoulder. “Bernie’s a right good head. She said we’re getting well ahead, Curly and Norma can cope for half an hour, it is their shift after all, and I’ve to take you to the cafeteria for a cuppa.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Barry said.

  Jack lit a cigarette as they passed 5 and 6.

  Barry hesitated, wanting to know how his patient was doing, but Jack said, “We’ll look in later if you like. Give them peace now to do their job.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They went downstairs to the arched ceiling cafeteria known as “The Caves” beneath wards 6 and 7. Jack bought the coffee. They found a table.

  “So,” Jack said, “how are you enjoying your first day as a houseman?”

  Barry put down his cup. “It’s great to feel you’re actually doing something useful.”

  Jack grinned. “Remember Dr. Kildare on the telly?” His accent changed to American. “Doctor Gillespie, the senior man, says, ‘So how are you enjoying your internship, young man?’ And Doctor Kildare, dripping sincerity, says, ‘It’s hell, sir—but I’m loving every gruelling minute.’”

  Barry rolled his eyes and shook his head but couldn’t stop laughing. He recognised it as a release from the anxious feelings of a few minutes ago. Then he managed, “You, Mills, are a buck eejit of the first magnitude, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was nine. We’ve a year to decide what kind of doctors we’ll be, and I intend to make the most of it.” He took another mouthful of coffee. “Mind you, I hope every day in casualty isn’t like this.”

  It was Jack’s turn to laugh. “It won’t be, I promise.”

  Barry frowned. “How do you know?”

  “Did you notice how the return dates on the cards seemed a bit odd?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Bernie told me that she’s worked out that our immediate predecessors set it up for our, I hesitate to say, amusement. As long as it didn’t jeopardise the individual patient’s care, starting ten days before the last housemen were due to leave, they scheduled as many return visits as possible for today instead of spreading them out. We are in the middle of a deliberate deluge of return visits all timed for our first day. And that’s on top of any new ones that come today.”

  “The crafty buggers,” Barry said, but managed to smile. “Even so, we seem to be coping.” He shook his head. With direct entry to medical school after high school, young doctors were exactly that. Young, and with a pretty immature sense of humour too. “And it’s a relief to hear today is unusual. I need to tell”—Barry eyed Jack and decided not to mention Virginia’s name—“one of the student nurses. She was wondering about the return dates on the cards.”

  “Aye. You wouldn’t be meaning that wee nurse Virginia Clarke, would you?”

  Barry’s coffee cup stopped inches from his lips. “I would.”

  “She’s a cracker.”

  “Would you come to the point, Mills?” Barry’s pulse had sped up.

  “And not a bit shy.”

  “Oh?”

  “I asked her to come with me tonight to see Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

  Damn you, Mills, Barry thought. Damn you. Putting Jack Mills anywhere near a pretty girl was like setting iron filings close to a magnet. Instant attraction. Barry felt his pulse throbbing in his temple. He sighed. Faint heart never won fair lady, he supposed, but Jack was right, Virginia Clarke was a wee cracker.

  Jack laughed and blew a perfect smoke ring. “She put one hand on her hip—and told me,” Jack’s voice became falsetto and indignant, “‘Take a hike, Jack Mills. If you were the only pebble on the beach I’d go for a swim first. Go out with a boy like you? Away off and feel your head.’” He took a drag and in his normal voice said, “She might be restful on the eye, but she’s a feisty one.” He chuckled. “Never mind. To mangle an old saying, and sticking with beaches, there is no deficiency of gill-bearing aquatic creatures in the seven seas.”

  Barry knew his tone was wistful. “I do think she’s terrific.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Not again, Barry. When we were schoolboys in sixth form you fell head over heels for the mam’selle who was meant to be helping us with our French conversation.”

  “I know. It was silly, but she was a looker.” Barry sipped his coffee. “You didn’t know about the girl I took out in the summer holiday between leaving school and starting at Queen’s.”

  “You never told me, you devil. I didn’t know you had. And it wasn’t love at first sight?”

  Barry laughed. “I took her out twice. She’d a giggle that would have gutted a herring at six fathoms.”

  Jack grinned. “Love ’em and leave ’em. I tried to tell you that, mate, but did you pay attention? First week here you met a nurse, swooned, took her out for six months, and went into a year’s decline when she decided to move on.” Jack blew another smoke ring.

  Barry pursed his lips and said, “I know, I know, but I don’t seem to be able to help myself if I really like a girl.”

  “I understand,” Jack said, and Barry heard the sympathy in his friend’s voice. “That next one, that wee brown-eyed radiographer, hit you hard too. You were head over heels and she dumped you.” Jack shook his head. “I think you’re still licking your wounds.”

  Barry
nodded. “A bit,” he said. And he’d confess that to no one but Jack.

  Jack leant forward. “Barry, we’re both too young to get married. We have careers to make. Can you not see that right now girls are for fun, and lots of them feel that way too about us? One day for both of us the right one will come along, but for now?” Jack’s voice adopted the tones of East Belfast, “Why would you buy a cow when you can get a bottle of milk at the grocers?”

  Barry chuckled. “All right,” he said, “point taken.”

  “And,” said Jack, “if you do fancy Nurse Clarke, take another shot. I’ll not stand in your way. The worst she can do is say no.”

  “Mebbe,” Barry said, and laughed with his friend, but inwardly he was delighted. Maybe, just maybe it might be worth risking another rebuff if he asked Nurse Clarke again?

  5

  Think Only What Concerns Thee

  April 12, 1969

  Barry could still taste his yacht club pint when Jack parked outside the Lavertys’ bungalow on its private peninsula on the south shore of Belfast Lough. “You coming in?” Barry asked. The Hillman Imp was here. Sue was home early from her folks’ farm outside Broughshane. “Sue’d be pleased to see you.”

  “Sorry, but no thanks,” Jack said, “I’ve a big list tomorrow, hey. A gastrectomy, varicose veins, a hernia, and two gall-bags.” Surgeon talk for gall bladders, thought Barry. He’d never liked how surgeons referred to the conditions they were treating rather than the patients who had the conditions. “I’d like to put my feet up tonight.”

  “Fair enough. Keep in touch.” Barry got out, and as he was closing the car door he heard Jack say, “Give Sue our love,” before he drove off with a wave, bouncing over the rough ground.

  Barry stood outside the low wall of his back garden absorbing the spring evening. A glossy blackbird, stiff tail jerking as it ran along the top of the wall, scolded him, and from the shore came the song of never-ending seduction of the rocks by the waves.

  Barry had his hopes up now that perhaps Jack and Helen would stay in Ulster. Mind you, the glacial rate of promotion of junior surgeons could tip the scales. At least one-third of Barry’s class had emigrated to America or Commonwealth countries, and even GP jobs were becoming tight.

  The demented barking of Max, Sue’s springer spaniel, came from behind the closed back door. “Shut up, Max,” Barry called. You’d think the daft dog would recognise him by now.

  Sue Laverty, née Nolan, her long copper plait undone and hanging free around her shoulders, stood in the open back doorway, smiling at Barry and holding on to the tail-thrashing Max’s collar. “Jack not coming in?”

  Barry shook his head and kissed Sue. “He’s a big slate tomorrow.” He patted a now-silent Max and followed Sue into the kitchen. “So, how were things in Broughshane?”

  “Pretty good. Mum’s in fine form. We had our chat. Dad’s keeping well, always a relief given his heart attack history. I rode Róisín, but poor old girl, she could only manage a trot. None of us are getting any younger.”

  “Come on then—old girl,” and he patted her bottom, “let’s go through to the lounge.” She took his hand and her touch warmed him.

  Barry, as always, let his gaze rise for a moment above the small front garden, out across Belfast Lough, where earlier he and Jack had been sailing. His thoughts of the shark vanished. “Good Lord, look at that.” He crossed to the picture window.

  Sue followed.

  Heading up toward the Port of Belfast was a tall ship.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Barry admired the three towering masts, the long bowsprit standing proud above a creamy bow-wave.

  “I’ve never seen one before except on the telly.”

  Barry was entranced. It wasn’t every day he was privileged to watch a throwback to the romantic age of sail. C. S. Forester’s books about Horatio Hornblower, a Royal Naval officer in Nelson’s day, were still some of Barry’s favourite reads.

  He studied the rig. “All her square sails are furled on the yards except the fore and main topsails. Those are the second from the bottom ones on the fore and main masts. And look.” He pointed. Tiny figures were swarming aloft up the shrouds, then out along the main topsail yard. “They’re going to furl that sail.”

  “Quite the sight,” Sue said, “but I’m glad they invented the aeroplane. It would have taken us forever to get to Paris on one of those.” She kissed him. “And I did so enjoy Paris, and on Saint Valentine’s Day too. You were very romantic.”

  Barry had a moment of seriously erotic thoughts about that trip, but something more important had happened there. Sue, concerned about their apparent inability to conceive, had promised not to let her worries become an obsession and interfere with their life together, and bless her, she had kept that promise. “Come on,” he said, “you’ll be getting me all hot and bothered. Paris was a great adventure and Jack and I had one today too. Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “In a sec,” she said. “Let’s watch this first.”

  “Of course.” Barry and Sue watched as the flapping main topsail was hand-hauled up to the yard, then the topmen secured the sail to the spar and began making their way below.

  “Bloody brave if you ask me,” Sue said, leaving the window and plonking herself on the love seat, where Barry joined her. “Can you imagine climbing out along that thingy?”

  “It’s called a spar or yard,” Barry said.

  “All right. Spar. It must be fifty feet above the deck. And there’s a bit of chop out there.”

  Max sprawled out in front of the fireplace and Tigger, a stray tabby they’d rescued from a December gale last year, climbed up on Sue’s lap. She stroked the little cat.

  “So. Tell.”

  “Well, we were pottering about, taking it easy, when a bloody great basking shark breached not ten feet from our beam. I could smell the fish, it was so close, and you should have seen the splash when it hit the water.”

  “Golly. A shark. Weren’t you scared?”

  “I’d read that the creatures are harmless, but poor Jack, to quote Cissie Sloan, he ‘near took the rickets.’ We’d a great afternoon, Jack and I, and he and Helen are having second thoughts about emigrating.”

  “Oh, Barry, that’s good news.” She snuggled closer to him. “I know how much you’d miss your old pal.”

  Barry nodded. “That square rigger got me distracted. I was asking you how things went in Broughshane.”

  Sue looked away. Stared out the window before looking him in the eye. Her voice was level. “I told you I had my chat with Mum…”

  “And?” His doctor half well knew the mental torments women with apparent infertility went through, and he had been pleased Sue had been willing to open up to her mother. “What did she say?” He put his arms around her.

  “She said I was a lucky woman to be loved by a man like you.” And before Barry could say anything Sue kissed him and said, “I do love you, Barry.”

  He could feel his pulse speed up and the anticipation in the pit of his stomach.

  “Mum said I should try to be patient. Carry on seeing Doctor Harley. That things often had a way of working out. It was all right to be unhappy sometimes. And if I needed to talk some more, she was always there.” Sue smiled at Barry. “I’m glad I told her. It helps.”

  “That’s all that matters.”

  Sue managed a tiny smile. “And that’s all I’m going to say about Mum today, but it did help—a lot.” The smile faded. Her words were matter-of-fact. “Today’s the twelfth. My period’s due in twelve days.” She looked down, then back at Barry. “We might still get lucky, but if not, Doctor Harley wants to arrange my laparoscopy for about ten days after the twenty-fourth. That would be May the third, but that’s a Saturday so he’ll probably get it done on the Friday. That’s not long to wait, is it?”

  “No. No, it’s not, my darling.” Barry dropped a gentle kiss on her head and stroked her hair.

  “So, we’ll just have to bide, and I
’ll try not to say any more about it until after it’s done.”

  The phone in the hall rang. He was tempted to leave it until the caller gave up. He wasn’t on duty, after all, and he didn’t want to interrupt this moment with Sue. But it went too much against the grain to not answer the thing. In their first junior clinical clerkship in 1960, students had been expected to take twenty-four-hour call, and nine years later he still couldn’t ignore a ringing phone. “Just be a minute, pet,” he said.

  Sue moved aside.

  “Hello? Laverty here.”

  “Doctor Laverty, I do be sorry to trouble you, and you being off duty, so—”

  Kinky Auchinleck. Was she on telephone-answering duty? Sometimes if all the doctors were out, O’Reilly would ask her and Archie to come over, watch telly, and field phone calls as she had done when she was O’Reilly’s live-in housekeeper.

  “—but Archie and I were watching telly at Number One and something’s come up and I wonder if you could help?”

  “I’ll try, Kinky.”

  “Doctor Nonie’s still away, Doctors Nelson and Emer are out on a maternity call, and Doctor O’Reilly and Kitty are at the Rugby Club. It’s Guffer Galvin, sir, and he asked for you specifically.”

  “It’s about Anne.” It wasn’t a question. Barry’s old patient had had a lobar excision two years ago for an undifferentiated oat-cell lung cancer. The pathologist had not expected her to survive for much more than a year.

  “’Fraid so. She’s short of breath and—”

  “I’m on my way.” He could take a detailed history when he got to their house on the council housing estate.

  “Thank you, sir. I am sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Kinky. Don’t worry about it. Now, I’m off.” Barry replaced the receiver. Damn. Damn. Damn. Sue needed him, but so did the Galvins. “I’m sorry, Sue,” he said, “but I’m the only one—”