An Irish Country Love Story (27 page)

“She would be welcome to borrow it when she's home again,” Sonny said.

“Thank you.” Barry opened his bag. “I've got some welcome news for you.” He produced the forms and smiled. “I've brought your test results and I'll come right to the point. You do have pernicious anaemia, and the treatment is working.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I am very relieved. Very relieved,” Sonny said. “And I'm not surprised. I've been feeling much better every day since we started the injections.”

Jasper wandered over, thrusting his head onto Sonny's knee, demanding Sonny pet him.

“You're forgiven, you know,” Sonny said, and stroked the dog's flank.

Jasper head-butted Sonny like a cat demanding attention.

Barry watched the old man and his dog, each happily at home with the other.

He'd been right not to insist on a bone marrow biopsy or a gastric fluid analysis. Sonny's reticulocyte count was now 50 percent and his haemoglobin was on the rise. Barry allowed the feeling of satisfaction at taking a chance and being right to sink in, along with the warmth of the sun. What was even more important, though, was the satisfaction of having been able to spare a delightful and scared old man pain and discomfort. And what's more, in general practice, when you made a diagnosis, you had to follow up, and Barry would have been pretending if he didn't admit it was gratifying when a patient said thanks.

“You remember that your haemoglobin level was very low?”

“I do. When numbers apply to one's self, you don't forget them. It was six and should have been fourteen point eight.”

“It's nine point five now. Another couple of weeks and it should be back up to that fourteen point eight mark. Then we'll cut your injections down to once a month.”

Sonny laughed. “I'll not mind that,” he said, “and do you think you could teach Maggie to give me them? I really have been quite a drain on your resources having a doctor call every day.”

Barry smiled and opened his bag. “It's our job, Sonny. We don't mind.”

Sonny needed no bidding. He rolled up his shirtsleeve. In moments, today's injection was given.

“Thanks,” Sonny said.

“Honestly. It's no bother,” Barry said, putting his gear away, “and it'll be Doctor O'Reilly's turn tomorrow. I'll have a word. I'm sure he could teach Maggie.”

“Excellent,” Sonny said.

Barry rose, and said, “I'll be trotting on now. Please don't get up.”

“Thanks again for everything, Doctor,” Sonny said.

Barry smiled and wandered off down the path, noting the little clumps of snowdrops and crocuses blooming in the sun. He turned as he closed the gate behind him, looking back at one of the most contented men he had ever known. Sonny Houston sat clearly engrossed in the excavation of Troy, surrounded by all his faithful canine friends, well on the mend from a disease that only forty years ago would have killed him.

He waved and Barry waved back and turned to go, but for a moment was distracted by a bleating from the next field. He glanced across. The lambs that had been born before Christmas were growing and one, in the inexplicable way of its kind, was bouncing on stiff legs like some ovine pogo-stick jumper revelling in the weak sunshine. The green field, bounded by dry stone walls, was mottled with white ewes heavy in their winter fleeces. Several lambs, including two black ones, were nuzzling at their mothers' teats. It wasn't spring yet, but the year was moving along. The promise was there.

Damn it all, the smartest thing Barry Laverty had done in his twenty-six years had been to decide to go to medical school. He paused. That had been the beginning of the journey that found him here, at the edge of this field at the top of the Ballybucklebo Hills. He'd worked bloody hard and qualified, he'd accepted the offer of a crusty old GP named Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's to work in his rustic village, and now he was about to marry Sue Nolan.

High above him, the thrush's notes soared in a sweet, liquid ode to joy.

 

23

Cries, and Falls into a Cough

“Thank you, Nonie, for coming down early from Belfast on a Monday morning, especially coming by train,” O'Reilly said, wondering whether he should take the last piece of toast.

The kitchen where the three doctors were having breakfast was cosy and filled with the aroma of Kinky's freshly toasted raisin bread. “Barry here told me about your possible narcolepsy. How did things go with Doctor Millar on Friday?”

Nonie sipped her coffee. “He was very understanding,” she said. “There's no test that says the diagnosis is certain, but he had me have an electroencephalogram and a skull X-ray. No abnormal brainwaves, no space-occupying lesions, so I don't seem to have epilepsy or a brain tumour, which,” she smiled, “I must say is a great relief.”

“To all of us,” Barry said.

“He told me that we'd have to work with a probable diagnosis of narcolepsy. I'm taking amphetamine ten milligrams every day when I wake up and we can increase the dose by ten more milligrams up to a maximum of sixty until I have the nodding off under control.”

“Does that mean,” Barry asked, “that you'll be fit to drive, see patients?”

She shook her head. “I mustn't drive until I've been a month free from uncontrollable napping, he said. He reckons if I take my first pill at eight thirty and start the surgery at nine I should be able to cope. And if I don't do any procedures, I'd be no risk to patients.”

O'Reilly scratched his chin. “Mmmm,” he said. “So you couldn't make home visits for a while except maybe the odd one you could walk to. Most home visits are out in the country, of course. If it's walkable, patients usually come to the surgery. No driving means no night call too.”

“Not until Doctor Millar gives me the go-ahead to drive.”

“And that could take a couple of months.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“I'd not mind,” Barry said. “Now that Doctor Fitzpatrick's joined the rota, it'll still only be one in three. Although my trip—”

“You'll still get your trip to Marseille, Barry. I'm sure Ronald and I can cope for a while.” O'Reilly saw the look of relief on the young man's face. “I suggest, Nonie, that you continue to run your well-women clinics and take some extra surgeries. Barry and I will handle emergencies and home visits. All right with you, Barry?”

“Fine by me, although that's easy for me to say seeing as I'll be away for a week,” Barry said.

O'Reilly thought he saw Nonie's eyes glisten. She sniffed and said, “I believe you are both being very generous.”

“Rubbish,” said O'Reilly. “You're ill. It could be Barry or me and we'd have to work out a way to carry on.”

“I'm still very grateful,” she said, “and I'll have to ask your indulgence on something else too.”

“Oh?” said O'Reilly.

“I've to stop smoking. I may be a bit tetchy for a few days. It's killing me.”

“Good for you,” Barry said. “You'll be all the better for it in the long run.”

“You two are wonderful,” she said.

O'Reilly had to laugh. Before he himself could harrumph, Barry had beaten him to it. “Right,” he said. “I'll have a word with Fitzpatrick and we'll see how we get on.” He looked at his watch. “All this blethering won't get the baby a new coat today. Nonie, upstairs. If we get an emergency while Barry's making home visits, you can take over the surgery and I'll see to the case.”

“Thank you both,” she said. “I'll do that and while I am upstairs…” She smiled, and it was a wicked little smile. “I'll try not to fall asleep.”

*   *   *

“So, Julie, everything seems pretty normal. Blood pressure's up a tad, but nothing to worry about.” It was no worse, according to Barry's reading in the antenatal record. “Your blood work has all come back and is satisfactory. Keep on taking the iron and folic acid, drink lots of milk, plenty of fresh vegetables. Hard this time of year, I know. But do your best.”

“Yes, sir.” Julie adjusted the waist of her tweed skirt and slipped down off the examining couch. “I-I felt the wee one move last week,” she said, smoothing down the fabric. “I never felt Tori until I was five months gone. Is that normal?”

“Twenty weeks is the usual for first pregnancies, but women who have been pregnant before can feel what we call ‘quickening' any time after sixteen weeks. You're eighteen weeks now, so it's what we would have expected.”

“Great,” she said. “Donal's been going round like a bee on a hot brick getting a new crib in Tori's room ready for this one. Do you know Tori's one year and seven months now? Gets intil everything. Wants for til do everything herself. If I hear ‘I do it' once more…” She shook her head and laughed. “She'll be all grown up before we know it.”

“Enjoy her,” O'Reilly said, feeling a pang for his never-born child who'd died in 1941 and would have been twenty-six now. A year younger than Barry. At least now, since Christmas when he'd finally laid that ghost, he was comfortable acknowledging his loss.

“He's hung one of them mobiles over the new crib,” Julie said. “All soccer players.” She slipped into her raincoat and used her right hand to flick her long blond hair in a shining cascade over the coat's collar. She smiled. “He's bound and determined to believe that I'm having a wee boy.”

“You might be, but we'll have to wait and see.”

“Fair enough, sir.” She picked up her shopping basket from where she'd left it on a chair and said, “I'll be trotting on. I've til nip off til the butcher's. Get some nice lamb's liver and rashers for Donal's tea.”

She buttoned her coat. “Come back in a month?”

“That's right, and you know to get hold of one of us if you're worried about anything.” He walked her to the door. “Off you go, Julie.”

She went out the front door and he walked back to the waiting room, pausing only to glance at the shut door to the dining room before heading on. Tonight, February the sixth, at seven o'clock, the borough council would be meeting to discuss the fate of Number One Main Street and, by God, he and Kitty would be there.

O'Reilly stuck his head round the waiting room door, as ever admiring the mural of floribunda roses that Donal Donnelly had painted. Only one patient was left, an older man wearing a duncher, Dexter raincoat, collarless shirt, moleskin trousers, and scuffed boots. He looked up when O'Reilly entered. Even from the doorway, O'Reilly could hear the man's chest wheezing. It was that time of year when the cold and damp exacerbated chest conditions.

The man coughed and said in a hoarse voice, “How's about ye, Doc?”

“I think, Willie John Andrews,” O'Reilly said, “the question should be how are you?”

“Not so hot, sir.” He wheezed. “I doubt but I have a wee touch of the brownkitees.”

O'Reilly smiled. “Just listening to you I'd be inclined to agree. There's a lot of bronchitis about right now. Come on to the surgery. I need to take a look at you.”

As they walked along the hall together, O'Reilly asked, “Still working at Mackie's Foundry?”

“Aye. Man and boy forty-nine years. Pay's good, but it's a desperate smoky place. There's a brave wheen of the lads with the chronic brownkitees and a thing the doctors at the Royal call, em … Och, bollix, I've forgot.”

“Emphysema?”

“That's the fellah. Anyroad, hospital's just down the road from Mackie's, and if our folks is sick they go til casualty there when they come off shift.” They paused at the surgery door. “My lungs's been grand until now,” Willie John Andrews said. “I never smoked a fag in my puff and I was playing Gaelic football until you mind I broke my left arm five years ago?”

“I remember it very well,” O'Reilly said. “Wasn't I at the clubhouse at a meeting when you did it, and didn't I splint it for you before you went to hospital to get it set?” He laughed. “You were fit to be tied. Swore once you were better, you'd give the Galwayman who broke it, and I quote, ‘A bloody good dig in the gub.'”

He ushered Willie John into the surgery.

“Didn't get the chance,” he said. “Seemed like a good time to be giving it up. Not gettin' any younger, Doc.” Willie John Andrews coughed, a wet, hacking noise.

“I hear you. Now, Willie,” O'Reilly said, “let me give you a hand.” He helped the man take off his raincoat and clamber up on the examining couch. “I haven't seen you for a while. Not since you had to have your appendix out last year.” And that, apart from the usual childhood diseases, was the extent of the man's previous medical history. “So, tell me about this chest of yours.”

“I took a wee head cold last week, and now I've a terrible hirstle in my thrapple. I was up half the night hacking and bringing up phlegm and it's dead sore behind my breastbone, so it is.”

O'Reilly smiled at how expressions that had originated in Scotland were firmly entrenched in Ulsterspeak. And wasn't “hirstle” practically onomatopoeic for the wheezing the man made as he breathed? O'Reilly noted that his skin was hot and sweaty, but not burning up. His lips were pink, not the blue associated with cyanosis. His pulse and respiratory rates were both rapid, but not galloping. Although he was having some difficulty breathing, his nostrils did not flare nor did the great strap muscles in his neck stand out. “Hoist up your shirt.”

Willie John complied. His skin was flushed and his chest moving rapidly in and out but there was no in-drawing of the muscles between the ribs. All the negative findings suggested that he was unlikely to have pneumonia.

O'Reilly laid the inner edge of his palm on Willie John's back. “Say ‘ninety-nine.'”

“Why ninety-nine, Doc? Why not seventy-four or a hundred and eight?”