An Irish Country Doctor (9 page)

"Of urine."

"Oh."

"Dip one of those dipsticks in it, and put the stick on the dressing table."

Mrs. Fotheringham looked dubiously at her handful of cardboard, sniffed, and said, "Very well." She sounded, thought Barry, like an English memsahib who'd been asked to clean up a heap of elephant manure from the streets of colonial Bombay--and who would do so, but only for the sake of the empire. "And," O'Reilly bored on, "I want you to repeat the test every hour on the hour until Doctor Laverty and I come back to read the results."

"Every hour? But--"

"It's a terrible imposition, Mrs. Fotheringham, but. . ." --O'Reilly put one large hand on her shoulder--"I know I can rely on you." She sighed.

"Should give us the answer, don't you think, Doctor Laverty?" Barry nodded, knowing his earlier attempts to stand up to O'Reilly had been ineffective, sure that any protest he might make would be rolled over with the force of a juggernaut, and despising himself for his lack of courage. "Good," said O'Reilly to Barry. He turned to Mrs. Fotheringham, who was sorting out the little pile of cardboard. "Get started at three, and remember, this test will sort out once and for all just how sick your husband is. Mind you, I'm pretty sure I know what's wrong with him." She nodded meekly.

"Don't bother to see us out," said O'Reilly, striding to the door. "You're going to have a busy night."

Barry sat stiffly in the Rover. He was angry about O'Reilly's hocus-pocus and angrier at his own inability to intervene. He watched as streaks of yellow made pastel shadings in the grey of the false dawn, and fidgeted in the seat. "Go on," said O'Reilly, "spit it out."

"Doctor O'Reilly, I-"

"Think your history taking stinks, and you're up to no good with all that buggering about with the dipsticks." 

"Well, I-"

O'Reilly chuckled. "Son, I've known the Fotheringhams for years. The man's never had a day's real illness in his life." 

"Then why didn't you just tell them to wait until the morning?"

"Would you have?"

"If I knew the patient as well as you obviously do, I might." 

O'Reilly shook his head. "It's another little rule of mine. If they're worried enough to call at night, even if I'm damn sure it's nothing, I go."

"Always?"

"Lord, aye."

Nothing in O'Reilly's tone suggested pride to Barry. There was no hint of smugness, simply a matter-of-fact statement of how things were in the big doctor's particular universe. "I see," Barry acknowledged grudgingly, "but what was all that nonsense with the test? I've never heard of any such procedure."

"Ah," said O'Reilly, turning into the lane at the back of his house. "'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"

"You'll not put me off by quoting Hamlet, Doctor O'Reilly." 

"No," said O'Reilly, as he braked, "I didn't think I would, but you'll have to wait until we go back to the Fotheringhams' if you want to find out the answer. Now be a good lad, hop out, and open the garage door."

While O'Reilly parked the car, Barry waited in the lane. He looked past the lopsided steeple of the church to where the clouds were being lit by the rising sun.

"Begod," said O'Reilly, standing by Barry's shoulder and staring up. "Red sky in the morning, sailor, take warning. I wonder what the rest of today's going to have in store for us?"

Water, Water, Everywhere

Never mind sailors taking warning; anyone caught out in the summer gale that had blown up in the early hours would be getting drenched. Barry listened to the rain clattering off the surgery's bow windows. He glanced at his watch. Even at almost noon the lights were still needed in the room. Barry stretched and ran a hand over the back of his neck. He was feeling the effects of a broken night. He watched O'Reilly usher an older man with arthritis to the door. The morning had been busy, and yet O'Reilly showed no signs of fatigue. A fresh gust shook the panes.

"Jesus," said O'Reilly, "I wonder if there's an old lad wearing a long gown and a beard running round the Ballybucklebo Hills looking for gopher wood and trying to keep all the animals together two by two?" 

"He'd not be doing that. He'd have Shem, Ham, and Japheth to do all the running around for him," Barry muttered. 

"Sensible man, Noah," said O'Reilly with a grin. "Trot along and see who's next." 

Barry shook his head and went to the waiting room to discover that only one patient remained, a young woman with long auburn hair that had a sheen like a freshly shelled horse chestnut, and green eyes set in a freckled face. "Good morning," he said. "Will you come through, please, Mrs. er . . . ?"

"Galvin," she said, standing with some difficulty, one hand supporting the small of her back, the other holding her swollen belly.

"I'm a bit slow getting about," she said, giving him a weak smile. "That's all right; take your time." Barry stepped aside as she waddled past.

"Doesn't look as though it'll be long now."

"Just a week more." She went into the surgery. "Morning, Doctor O'Reilly."

"How are you, Maureen?" O'Reilly asked.

"Grand." She rummaged in her handbag and gave him a small plastic urine-sample bottle.

O'Reilly took it and handed it to Barry. "Pop a dipstick into that, would you?"

Barry took the specimen over to the sink and tested the urine. He found nothing wrong. As he worked, he heard O'Reilly say, "Can you get up on the couch, Maureen?"

She turned her back to the table and sat. "Are you sure there's only the one in here, Doctor O'Reilly? I feel like the sidewall of a house." 

"It was only a week ago when I examined you," he said, "but if it'll make you happier, we'll get Doctor Laverty to lay on a hand." 

"I heard you'd a new assistant," she said.

O'Reilly bent and put one arm under her legs. "There you go," he said as he lifted her legs onto the couch. He reached past her. "Stick that pillow under your head."

She lay down, and Barry watched and listened as O'Reilly asked the routine late antenatal questions, took her blood pressure, and palpated her ankles to make sure there was no swelling. "Right, let's see your bump."

She lifted the skirt of her maternity dress. The blue of the material was bleached, and a small patch was neatly sewn on one side. O'Reilly pulled the top of her underwear down until Barry could just see a wisp of pubic hair at the bottom of her distended abdomen. He noted the silver snail tracks of stretch marks on her flank, her umbilicus turned inside out from the pressure of the uterus that filled the abdominal cavity. He stepped back and waited while O'Reilly examined her. Maureen's green eyes never left O'Reilly's face. Barry saw her concern, watched as O'Reilly's face betrayed no expression. "Doctor Laverty?"

Barry moved to the table. As he did so, he rubbed his palms rapidly together trying to warm them. "This won't take long."

"Take your time, Doctor." She flinched as he began his examination. "Sorry."

"Cold hands is the sign of a warm heart." She smiled at him.

He examined the belly, felt a single baby's back on her right side, the hardness of the head just above the pubic symphysis. He grasped the head between the outstretched thumb and finger of his right hand. It refused to budge when he tried to move it from side to side. "Here," said O'Reilly, handing Barry a fetal stethoscope.

He laid the wide end of the aluminium trumpet over the abdominal wall and bent to put his ear to the flattened earpiece. Tup-tup-tup-tup. . . . Barry listened, counted, and looked at his watch. "A hundred and forty." He saw the narrowing of Maureen's eyes and the questioning lines appear in her forehead. "Absolutely normal," he said, pleased to see the little furrows disappear. 

"So?" said O'Reilly.

Barry trotted out the formula he had been taught. "There's a singleton, longitudinal lie, vertex presentation, right occipito-anterior, head's engaged, heart rate . . ." 

"A hundred and forty," said O'Reilly. "The rest's right too."

Barry felt smug.

"So are you worried now, Maureen?"

Barry looked at the woman's face. The furrows were back and were keeping company with three deeper ones that ran upwards from the bridge of her nose. She glanced from O'Reilly to Barry, then back to O'Reilly. "Not if you say so, Doctor." 

"Just like Doctor Laverty said, Maureen, there's one baby, just the one . . ."

Some of the furrows flattened.

". . . Straight up and down, the back of its head is on the right-- that's the most normal way--and the head's dropped. The little divil's halfway out already."

Her forehead became smooth, a twinkle shone in her green eyes, laugh lines appeared at the corners. She gave a contented sigh. "That's great, so it is."

Barry cleared his throat. He saw how he'd baffled the woman with his jargon. She hadn't understood a word of his "singleton, right occipito-anterior" talk, but O'Reilly had gone right to the heart of the matter in plain English.

"Come on." O'Reilly helped her off the couch. She adjusted her underwear and straightened her dress. "Right," he said, "same time next week."

"And if the waters break or the pains start, I've to phone you." 

"You'll be fine, Maureen," O'Reilly said. "By the way, how's Seamus?"

"His ankle's on the mend, Doctor, and he hopes you liked the lobsters."

"We did." O'Reilly took her elbow and began to steer her to the door. "Tell him to pop in next week, and I'll take another look at his hoof."

She stopped and looked him in the eye. "Seamus means well. He's a heart of corn, but sometimes--"

"Don't you worry about Seamus," said O'Reilly. "I'll take care of him." He winked at Barry, who had a vivid mental picture of an airborne supplicant with a dirty foot. That Galvin was this young woman's husband?

"You'll not need to much longer," she said in a whisper. "You'll not tell no one, Doctor, but my brother--"

"The builder in California?"

"Aye. He's got a job out there for Seamus, and we've saved up for the tickets. We're going after the baby's born."

"Wonderful," said O'Reilly, and Barry wondered whether his colleague's delight was due to the Galvins making a fresh start or to the practice losing one of his less favourite patients. 

"Now don't you tell."

"I promise."

"I'll be in next week." She left.

"I'll be damned," said O'Reilly. Moving to the desk, he sat and wrote the results in Maureen Galvin's record. "Maybe the worthy Seamus'll have to do an honest day's work in America. I wonder where they got the money? He's a carpenter by trade, but to my knowledge he's hardly done a hand's turn here." He looked up. "One of life's little mysteries. By the way," he asked, "was her urine clear?"

"Yes," said Barry. He hesitated. "I'm sorry I didn't explain things to her better."

O'Reilly fished out his pipe and lit it before he said, "Ah, but you will the next time, won't you?"

"I will."

"Grand," said O'Reilly. "Now tidy up those urine-test kits. We've another test to go and read after we've had lunch."

"Wonderful, Kinky," said O'Reilly, pushing away his plate, "and those lobsters last night? They'd have brought a tear to a glass eye."

"Get on with you, Doctor O'Reilly," Kinky said. Barry saw the corners of her eyes wrinkle and dimples appear in her ample cheeks. "It was only a shmall little thing, so." 

"They were delicious, Mrs. Kincaid."

"Aye, so, well you need to keep up your shtrength, Doctor Laverty. Judging by the shtate of your corduroys, you'd been running a race through the Bog of Allen yesterday."

"Very muddy," Barry agreed.

"Don't you worry," she said. "I've them washed and hung up to dry."

"Thank you."

She bustled away, calling over her shoulder, "And I think the good Lord's looking out for you today. There's no calls in at all, and it roaring down out there like water from a fire hose, so." 

"It is that," said O'Reilly, "but there's no peace for the wicked. We've to go back to the Fotheringhams'."

"We wouldn't have to," Barry ventured, "if it wasn't for that weird 'test' of yours."

"Patience, son," O'Reilly said. "I'm sure the major and his lady are having a wonderful time."

Not even the passing of Barry's legs would tempt Arthur Guinness to stick his muzzle out of his kennel into the downpour that thrashed the back garden, knocked young apples to the sodden grass, and stung Barry's face as he followed O'Reilly to the car. "Nice day for ducks," O'Reilly remarked, as he swung out of the garage.

Barry listened to the drumming on the car's roof, heard the rhythmic back-and-forth squealing of the windscreen wipers as they fought a losing battle against the downpour, saw drops ricochet from the steaming surface of the road. O'Reilly, refusing to make any concession to the poor visibility, hurled the car round the twists and turns.

Barry, to distract himself from O'Reilly's kamikaze attitude to driving, muttered," 'Water, water, everywhere, / And all the boards did shrink, / Water, water, everywhere . . .'"

"'Nor any drop to drink.'" O'Reilly finished the verse. "Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772 to 1834, poet and opium addict. Water," he continued, turning into the Fotheringhams' drive, "I wonder how these folks have been getting on with it?"