It was unusual for nurses to refer to patients by their first names. Donal Donnelly must have made an impression. “Please,” O’Reilly said.
“Quite the character.”
“I do know. What’s he been up to?”
She laughed, and he could hear affection belying her words. “The sooner we get that buck eejit off my ward the better. He’s been running a poker school, and making book on what time the tea trolley will get here.”
“He’s what?” O’Reilly couldn’t help laughing. “He’s incorrigible, that man. Still, it’s a sure sign he’s on the mend.”
“We moved him to a four-bedded ward on Monday morning. By Monday evening it was a miracle he didn’t have a roulette wheel working,” she said. “Make sure you keep an eye on your wallet when you see him, Doctor O’Reilly. At least he’s being discharged tomorrow.”
Still chuckling, O’Reilly walked along the corridor of the octagonal building. Donal had been moved from a single room in the inner core, where the critically ill patients were nursed, to one on the outer side of the corridor, which meant he was getting better. Two of the other recovering patients in Donal’s ward were playing cards at a table in the space between the beds. The third was in bed, snoring.
Donal, head swathed in a turban of white bandages, sat on a chair by his bed reading a tattered copy of Reader’s Digest. A vase of wilted flowers kept a bunch of grapes and bottle of Lucozade company on a bedside locker. His bed was close to a window that gave a view across a lawn to the red-brick Royal Maternity Hospital.
Donal looked up and grinned. “How’s about ye, Doc?” Donal’s buck teeth had survived the fall intact.
“I’m fine, Donal. How are you?”
“I’m keeping rightly, so I am. Dead on. The ould dome still hurts,” he pointed to his bandages, “but, och, I never worry.” He indicated another chair. “Grab a pew, sir. Right decent of youse to come and see me, and that lady friend of yours, Sister O’Hallorhan? She’s been a real corker. The way she looks after me is great, so it is.”
O’Reilly was not surprised that Donal thought Kitty O’Hallorhan, whom he had met several times in Ballybucklebo, was outstanding. She was. And of course she’d give Donal a bit of extra TLC because he was Fingal’s patient. He sat. “I’ll tell her you said so next time I see her.”
“Thanks, sir. I’m getting out the morrow,” Donal said. “Julie’s coming at ten for til take me home.” He took a deep breath. “One of the nurses told her you saved my life. I’m very grate—”
“Wheest, Donal. All I did was get you into an ambulance.”
“From what I hear, I’ve been one jammy bugger.”
“You’d some luck, I grant you, but it’s Mister Greer and Mister Gupta, the doctor who saw you first when you were admitted, you need to thank.”
“No harm til youse, sir, but you’re a hard man to thank, so you are.”
O’Reilly made a guttural noise. “Bollix,” he said. He’d only done what any doctor should have. “You’ll be glad to get home,” he said, changing the subject.
Donal’s smile faded. “Huh. I’ll not be sorry for to see the back of this place, though. That Sister Hoey. See that one? See her?” Donal’s tone rose.
O’Reilly caught himself glancing in the direction of the door even though he knew that in Ulster, the expression didn’t actually mean you could see someone. Donal was using “see her” for emphasis, and none too kindly either.
“Right spoilsport, so she is. Them three lads?” Donal nodded at his wardmates. “We had a wee poker school going, but she stopped it. And she made me give them back their money on the book I was making on the tea trolley, so she did, before it got here.” He pouted. “I’d’ve made three pounds if she’d not interfered.”
“You’re no dozer, Donal Donnelly,” O’Reilly said, chuckled, and leant closer. “As one betting man to another, how in the name of the sainted Jasus were you sure you were going to win?” Donal had a reputation for arranging for dogs to win greyhound races.
Donal shook his head and held a finger to his lips.
“All right, Donal. I understand.”
“But I would have won. Sure thing.” He winked at O’Reilly.
O’Reilly rose.
“Excuse me, sir, could I ask you a wee quick question, like, before you go?”
“Of course.”
“When I get home and my feet under me, would you and maybe Doctor Laverty have time to look at a house?”
“A house? What house?” For many Ballybucklebo folks their doctor was, along with their priest or minister, the font of all wisdom and expected to render opinions on nonmedical matters too.
“I may be a bit hazy about the crash and what went before, like,” said Donal, “but Julie told me I won a right clatter at the races and she’s got a wee bit put by.”
O’Reilly smiled. He’d helped Julie acquire some of that “wee bit.”
“We’d like for to buy a house, so we would. Nothing special, like, but a place of our own, and I’ve heard, on the quiet like, of one that might be going cheap, you know. It’s a lovely wee place, so it is,” Donal said. “It’s only a ways out of the village on the Bangor side. Where there’s a big hairpin bend in the Bangor Belfast Road? It’d be close enough for me to ride my bike to work.” He grinned. “Or nip into the Duck.”
“You’re a bloody menace when you’re sober on that multicoloured bike,” O’Reilly said. “I shudder to think of you with a skinful riding it on the Bangor Belfast Road.”
Donal looked at O’Reilly in much the way, he thought, Arthur Guinness could, and said, “When the wean comes in another three months I’ll be going dead easy on the booze.”
“You’re looking forward to being a daddy, aren’t you, Donal?”
“It’s going to be the best thing since sliced pan, so it is. Dead wheeker. And that’s another thing about the house. Julie can get the bus for to go to the shops, do her messages, like, and there’s a lovely kindergarten just up the road. For later, like, when the nipper’s starting to grow up.”
“You’ve it all planned, haven’t you?”
“Aye,” said Donal, “and there’s one more thing. It’s got a great wee garden behind a hedge where I can put in a kennel and a dog run for Bluebird.”
“Still racing her?” O’Reilly asked. He had a soft spot for Donal’s racing greyhound.
Donal shook his head. “I can’t get decent odds no more, she’s so bloody fast. All the tracks know the dog, but,” he dropped a slow wink, “I’ve a half-notion how to—”
“Uh-uh, Donal. I don’t want to know.” O’Reilly had been involved in a few of Donal’s harebrained schemes. Not this time.
“Fair enough, sir,” Donal said. “What the ear doesn’t hear, the heart doesn’t grieve over.”
“Finish telling me about the house,” O’Reilly said. “I will have to be trotting soon.”
“It’s lovely and private, so it is. Quiet, like, you know? At the end of a wee lane. The hairpin bend’s like a big ‘U’ and we’re in the middle, between the arms, but you can’t even hear the lorries and motorcars going round the bend on the main road.”
“Bejasus, I know the place,” O’Reilly said. He did. It had been vacant for a year, since its owner, Myrtle Siggins, had died at 101. “It’s a lovely cottage.”
“You know the curve too, Doctor O’Reilly. Talking about me being a menace? You put me off my bike into the ditch there once, so you did, charging along in your big motorcar like your man Stirling Moss, the race car driver.”
O’Reilly harrumphed and said, “I must have been on my way to an emergency.”
“Aye. Or to the Duck,” Donal said.
O’Reilly was so taken aback by Donal’s newfound confidence he said nothing as the little man continued, “Least said, soonest mended. What was I saying about the house?”
For a second O’Reilly worried about short-term memory loss in a patient with a recent head injury, but his concern was allayed when Donal said, “I remember. I was
on about the bend. There’s a lane comes out at the top of the bend and it’s only a wee doddle to the bus stop from there, so it is.” He lowered his voice. “And here’s the best bit. It’s not dear. Them new wee bungalows down on Seymour Avenue in Carnalea are going for three thousand five hundred pounds. The estate agent says the one Julie and me likes is going for only two thousand pounds, and that’s five hundred less than it’s valued at, but it’s been empty for a year and it needs a bit of fixing up, but sure amn’t I good at that?”
“Five hundred less than appraised value? It sounds interesting,” O’Reilly said. “How do you want me to help?”
“We don’t know nothing about buying houses, Doctor. We thought maybe one day soon, when I’m allowed to go out of my house, like, you and maybe Doctor Laverty’d come with Julie and me and take a wee gander at it and see if you think it would be good for us.”
“It’s a promise, Donal.”
“’At’s dead on,” said Donal, “and we don’t want til leave it too long.” He inclined his head and whispered, “I heard tell somebody else may have an eye on it.”
“Oh?” O’Reilly wasn’t unduly concerned. “I’d not worry too much,” he said. “As you say, it’s been on the market for quite a while. We can probably wait a bit before we move. See if we can get the price down.”
Donal smiled, but said, “I hope youse is right, sir. Julie has her heart set on it. If it’s not too dear, like.”
“Let’s get you home first.”
“I can’t hardly wait,” Donal said.
“And I’ll sniff around a bit about the house.”
Donal’s toothy grin was from ear to ear. “That’s wheeker, so it is. Thanks, sir. Away off now, Doc, and remember: if I don’t see youse through the window, I’ll see youse through the week.”
O’Reilly was chuckling as he left, but it didn’t prevent him overhearing Donal saying to the two card players, “Hey Hughie, Alfie, would youse quit that stupid beggar my neighbour? ’At’s for kiddies, so it is. How’s about a few hands of pontoon? Just for pennies, like?”
O’Reilly feared for the fortunes of the two when Donal involved them in what the French call vingt-et-un and the Americans, blackjack. Donal Donnelly was probably a card counter.
8
A Warmth Hidden in My Veins
“Have a pew, Aggie.” Barry followed a limping Aggie Arbuthnot into the surgery. She was the fourth patient of the morning, Cissie Sloan’s cousin, and famous throughout the village as the possessor of twelve toes. “Haven’t had you in for a while,” Barry said. “What’s up? I’ve not seen you limping before either.” He took his seat in the chair on casters in front of the rolltop desk.
Aggie Arbuthnot was short and skinny with a head of straw-coloured hair done up in a head-scarf knotted at the front. A couple of shocking-pink plastic curlers called Spoolies peeped from under the scarf.
“Never mind me,” she said, sitting in the patient’s seat. “What about Kinky? I near took the rickets when I seen her being put in thon ambulance yesterday. Here.” She leant forward and gave Barry a cylindrical tin bearing a picture of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. “Seeing Kinky’s not here to look after you, and all, I brung youse and himself some of my Yellow Man toffee.”
“That’s very kind, Aggie,” Barry said, placing the tin on the desktop. “Doctor O’Reilly’s seeing her this morning in the Royal. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“I hope so,” Aggie said. “She’s a heart of corn that one.”
“She’s a very kind woman all right.”
“If youse and himself needs anything?”
“Thank you, Aggie. I’ll remember, but I don’t think you came in today just to chat about Kinky?” He pointed at her leg.
She sniffed. “I’ve took an awful pain in my left leg, so I have. I think it’s my very close veins playing up.” She pointed to an elastic support stocking that O’Reilly had prescribed last year before her condition had deteriorated and she had been put on a waiting list for surgery.
Very close veins. Barry hid a smile. Nothing would persuade Aggie, and indeed many Ulsterfolk, to call varicose veins anything else. And it wasn’t the only renamed condition he’d come across during his ten months of working in rural Ireland. He’d once overheard a woman with uterine fibroids tell her friends that Doctor O’Reilly said she had “fireballs.”
“When did the pain start?” he asked. Barry knew Aggie was single and worked as a folder in a Belfast shirt factory. He wasn’t exactly clear about what a folder did.
“I was at my job on Tuesday and a fellah hit the back of my leg a ferocious dunt with a trolley. Since then it’s been hurting something fierce, so it has. I tholed it, but now it’s burning up so I come til see youse, so I did.” She bent to rub her leg.
“It sounds like you may have a bit of inflammation. Come on over to the couch.”
He took her arm to help her limp across the familiar room with its Snellen’s eye testing chart on one wall, and examining couch against another, where a mercury-column sphygmomanometer was mounted. “Now,” he said, “off with your stockings and climb up.”
She started to hoist her skirt.
“Just a minute,” Barry said, and pulled the screens across. Ulsterwomen were generally modest about such things. “Give me a shout when you’re ready.”
“You can come in now, Doctor.”
Aggie lay propped on the pillows. Her skirt hem covered her to her knees. He noticed her extra little toe on each foot.
“See them?” she said. “Them there’s special, so they are. My mammy when I was wee told me not to be bothered because I was different. Not to take any ould guff from anyone who tried to tease me, she told me, and she was right.” Aggie chuckled. “When them two wee puppet pigs first come on TV in the ’50s I give my spare toes their names. Pinky and Perky.”
Barry laughed. “Good for you.”
Aggie said, “Sure they’ve never been any bother, but this here calf?” She pointed, bent her knee, and rolled her leg sideways. “See that there? It hurts like the living bejizzis.”
Barry could see the tortuous blue tracks of distended veins crawling under the patchily discoloured skin of her calf. An area half the size of a saucer was clearly inflamed. He laid the back of his hand there. It was hot. “That where it got bumped?”
“Aye.”
Barry palpated the vein. He had no difficulty feeling the hard clot. The diagnosis wasn’t difficult. “You’ve got superficial thrombophlebitis.”
“Boys-a-boys, that’s a quare mouthful,” she said, and frowned. “If you put an air to it you could sing it.”
“It means that the thump caused a clot to form in the vein and there is inflammation round the damaged area.”
“Clot? It was a right clot what done it til me. Thon ‘Sticky’ Maguire’s got two left feet, so he has. If there was a ten-acre field with one tree in it that great glipe would walk into the trunk.”
Barry smiled. He’d no idea why people with the surname Maguire were always nicknamed “Sticky” in Ireland, just as Murphys were called “Spud.”
Her frown deepened. “Is it serious, like?”
“Not really, as long as it’s in the veins under the skin, and I’m pretty sure it is.” Superficial disease was relatively innocuous. A clot in a deep calf vein posed risks that a piece might break off, be carried to the lungs, and cause a pulmonary embolism, a potentially lethal condition. That could happen any time in the first three postoperative weeks, he thought, wondering for the umpteenth time this morning about Kinky, lying in a hospital bed in Belfast. Stop worrying and concentrate, he told himself. “I want to be certain, though, Aggie, so could you straighten your leg for me?”
“Aye, surely.”
He inspected the ankle. No oedema. Good. “I want you to tell me if this hurts,” Barry said. He grasped Aggie’s left heel in his left hand and with his right sharply pushed her toes and foot toward the ankle. If there was a clot in a deep vein this action could str
etch the vein and cause pain.
Aggie shook her head. “Nah,” she said, “that’s no worser nor the pain that’s there already.”
The test wasn’t foolproof, but it reassured Barry. For completeness, he examined her right calf. Other than the skin discolouration and the obvious varicosities, he could find nothing ominous. “I’ll give you peace to get dressed,” he said, “then come on through and we’ll talk about treatment.”
He returned to the desk and before he took out a sheet of practice letterhead and a sickness benefit form, he opened the tin of toffee. He picked an irregular, pale yellow lump and popped it into his mouth. The honeycomb sweetie crunched deliciously when he bit down. Back to work. Aggie would need a letter to her employer and a “sick line,” as it was called, so she could draw benefits. He’d finished the Yellow Man and the form by the time she’d returned and taken her seat. “You’ll need to rest with that leg propped up on pillows and wrapped in hot, damp towels and with hot water bottles. I’ll get Colleen Brennan, the district nurse, to pop in.”
“Thanks very much, Doctor.” She leant forward and sniffed like a retriever searching for a downed bird. “You like my Yellow Man?”
Barry grinned. “It’s lovely.”
“Aye,” she said. “I cook it by the great gross every August for the Lamass Fair. It’s a traditional treat, like dulse, you know. Our fair here’s not as famous as the one in Ballycastle, but the craic’s powerful.”
“I’m sure it is,” Barry said. “Now, Aggie, you really need to stay off that leg. Could anybody help you with cooking your meals?”
“Cissie. I’ll phone her when I get home.” Aggie smiled. “Talking of legs, she’d talk one of them off a three-leggèd stool—”
Barry smiled, and remembered her coming last night, blethering away like a spring tide rushing in. The Melton Mowbray pies she’d brought them had been delicious.
“—but sure aren’t we family?”
He nodded. The whole village was one big family. His new family. “Have you aspirin at home?” he asked.
“I have, sir.”