Read A Dublin Student Doctor Online
Authors: Patrick Taylor
A Dublin Student Doctor
To Dorothy
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is book six in the Irish Country series, books that wouldn’t exist but for the unflagging efforts of some very special people.
In North America
Simon Hally, who started it all.
Natalia Aponte, my agent, who acquired the first book for Forge, persuaded Tom Doherty to publish it and its successors, and who is a never failing support when the muse goes on vacation.
Rosie and Jessica Buckman, foreign rights agents. Their successes in placing my works lead me to believe they could persuade the Innu people of Nitassinan in Arctic Canada to buy blocks of ice.
Carolyn Bateman, my personal editor. Together we have been through the rough and smooth of nine books over fifteen years and are now working on book ten. Whenever my bicycle wobbles off course, she gently, but oh so firmly, puts me back on track.
Paul Stevens, my editor at Forge, for whom no question is ever stupid, no request too much trouble, and who likes Mrs. Kincaid’s recipes.
Irene Gallo and the Art Department at Forge, and Gregory Manchess, the artist who renders the jacket art. No author could ask for a more sympathetic group of creative people who will accept authorial intrusion without complaint. Their efforts have made the Irish Country series instantly recognisable because the covers always reflect the contents of the work.
Patty Garcia and Alexis Saarela from Publicity. Much of their work goes unheralded, but without them, no one would know the books are out there.
Christina MacDonald, whose sharp eye in copy edit has rescued this book from its author’s very personal style of touch typing and his persistent belief that George Gershwin wrote “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
“Old men forget.” I wish I could remember who said that. So do old physicians. Once more, Doctors Thomas Baskett and Linda Vickars have freely provided their expertise on matters respectively obstetrical and haematological.
In The Republic of Ireland
Much of
A Dublin Student Doctor
was written while we were living in Ireland. My efforts to strive for authenticity would have been feeble indeed, but for the untiring support of:
The Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland,
The Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland,
The Librarian of the Rotunda Hospital and her staff.
My limitless questions and requests for photocopying were dealt with by all of these experts with the grace of nobles and the patience of Job.
The people of Cootehall, County Roscommon, and Dublin City who allowed an Ulsterman to renew his feel for the life and the speech patterns in the Republic’s rural and metropolitan regions.
To you all, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and I offer our most sincere thanks.
C
ONTENTS
1. It’s a Long, Long Road from Which There Is No Return
2. It Is a Wise Father that Knows His Own Child
3. I Feared It Might Injure the Brain
4. A Memory of Yesterday’s Pleasures
5. The Fleeting Image of a Shade
7. Social Comfort, in a Hospital
9. There Shall Be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth
10. For This Relief Much Thanks
11. Nazi Germany Had Become a Menace
12. Even My Lungs Are Affected
13. We Will Go into a Public House
14. Have Felt My Soul in a Kiss
15. ’Tis the Season to Be Jolly
16. We’ll Keep Our Christmas Merry Still
19. The Heart No Longer Stirred
20. The Feathered Race with Pinions Skims the Air
22. In Poverty, Hunger, and Dirt
23. Eating the Bitter Bread of Banishment
24. And Great Was the Fall of It
26. The Stag at Eve Had Drunk His Fill
29. The Sensation of a Short, Sharp, Shock
31. It Is Never Good to Bring Bad News
32. Examinations Are Formidable, Even to the Best Prepared
33. A Disinclination to Inflict Pain
34. A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven
35. You Can Cut That Right Out
36. Windy Night; a Rainy Morrow
37. Must Often Wipe a Bloody Nose
39. Success Is Counted Sweetest
41. From His Mother’s Womb Untimely Ripp’d
42. Give Crowns and Pounds and Guineas, But Not Your Heart Away
43. To Change What We Can; To Better What We Can
44. Home and Rest on the Couch
46. This Is the Beginning of the End
47. Vaulting Ambition, Which O’erleaps Itself
48. If You Can Meet with Success and Failure
49. The Wheel Is Come Full Circle
1
It’s a Long, Long Road from Which There Is No Return
Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly,
Doctor
Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, edged the long-bonnetted Rover out of the car park. “Lord Jasus,” he remarked, “but this twenty-fourth day of April in the year of our Lord 1965 has been one for the book of lifetime memories.” He smiled at Kitty O’Hallorhan in the passenger’s seat. “For all kinds of reasons,” he said, “and now that the Downpatrick Races are over, it’s home to Ballybucklebo.” He accelerated.
Kitty yelled, “Will you slow down?” then said more gently, “Fingal, there are pedestrians and cyclists. I’d rather not see any in the ditch.” The afternoon sun highlighted the amber flecks in her grey eyes. She put slim fingers on his arm.
“Just for you, Kitty.” He slowed and whistled “Slow Boat to China.” “All right in the back?”
“Fine, Fingal,” said O’Reilly’s assistant, young Doctor Barry Laverty.
“Grand, so.” Mrs. Maureen “Kinky” Kincaid was O’Reilly’s housekeeper, as she had been for Doctor Flanagan. Fingal had met Kinky when he’d come as an assistant to Thómas Flanagan in 1938. She’d stayed on when a thirty-seven-year-old O’Reilly returned in 1946 from his service in the Second World War and bought the general practice from Doctor Flanagan’s estate.
They’d been a good nineteen years, he thought as he put the car into a tight bend between two rows of ancient elms. So had his years as a medical student at Dublin’s Trinity College in the ’30s.
“Jasus thundering Murphy.” O’Reilly stamped on the brake. The Rover shuddered to a halt five yards from a man standing waving his arms.
O’Reilly’s bushy eyebrows met. He could feel his temper rise and the tip of his bent nose blanch. “Everyone all right?” he roared, and was relieved to hear a chorus of reassurance. He hurled his door open and stamped up the road. “What in the blue bloody blazes are you doing standing there waving your arms like an out-of-kilter semaphore? I could have squashed you flatter than a flaming flounder-fish.”
The stranger wore Wellington boots, moleskin trousers, and a hacking jacket. He had a russet beard, a squint, and was no more than five foot two. O’Reilly expected him at least to take a step back, apologise, but he stood his ground.
“There’s no need for youse ’til be losing the bap, so there’s not. There’s been an accident, and I’m here to stop big buggers like youse driving into it, so I am. See for yourself.” He pointed to a knot of people and the slowly rotating rear wheel of a motorbike that lay on its side.
“Accident?” said O’Reilly. He spun on his heel. “Barry. Grab my bag and come here.” He turned back. “I’m Doctor O’Reilly. Doctor Laverty’s coming.”
“Doctor? Thank God for that, sir. A motorcyclist took a purler on an oil slick, you know. Somebody’s gone for the ambulance and police.”
“Here you are.” Barry handed O’Reilly his bag. “What’s up?”
“Motorbike accident.” He spoke to the short man. “You’d be safer back down the road where drivers can see you before they’re on top of you.”
“Right enough. I’ll go, sir.” He started walking.
O’Reilly yelled, “Kitty. Kinky. There’s been an accident. Stay with the car.” Kitty would have the wit to pull the car over to the verge. “Come on, Barry.” O’Reilly marched straight to the little crowd. Time to use the voice that could be heard over a gale when he’d served on the battleship HMS
Warspite.
“We’re doctors. Let us through.”
Ruddy-cheeked country faces turned. Murmuring people shuffled aside and a path opened.
A motorbike lay on the road, an exclamation mark at the end of two long black scrawls of rubber. The engine ticked and the stink of oil and burnt tyre hung over the smell of ploughed earth from a field and the almond scent of whin flowers.
A middle-aged woman knelt beside the rider. The victim’s head was turned away from O’Reilly, but there could only be one owner of that red thatch. A duncher lay a few yards away. It irritated O’Reilly that Ulstermen wouldn’t wear crash helmets but favoured cloth caps, worn with the peak at the back.
He knelt beside the woman and set his bag on the ground. “He’s unconscious, he’s breathing regular, his airway’s clear, his pulse is eighty and regular, and he’s not bleeding. There don’t seem to be any bones broken,” she said, and added, “I’m a first-aider, you know.”
“Thank you, Mrs.?”
“Meehan. Rosie Meehan.”
O’Reilly smiled at her. “Donal? Donal?” he said gently. Fifteen minutes ago he’d seen Ballybucklebo’s arch schemer, Donal Donnelly, riding the motorbike from the car park.