Anyhow. Vera Mooney should have been in bed, but was in fact still in the staff room along with the rest of the night shift who had given up their sleep to fight the cause. The cause, of course, had been irretrievably lost a year ago, but Vera Mooney wasn’t the type to go quietly.
She took a sheaf of application forms from her satchel and slapped them on the table, which rocked violently due to its missing leg.
“Ennis General. Limerick. Athlone.” She looked around at them all. “And there’s always Dublin, of course, but if people are interested then maybe they would contact those hospitals themselves.”
Karen and Suzanne reached for Limerick. Vera nodded approvingly. She was going there herself, even though it would entail her changing her car. Her 93 Clio had a hundred and twenty thousand miles on the clock and the weekly journeys to Limerick and back would add three hundred and fifty more.
Darren took a form for Ennis General. “My girlfriend’s going there,” he mumbled.
“Aw. So sweet.”
“Ooooooh, lurve.”
“Thank you, girls,” Vera said crisply. “Now. Christine. How about you?”
Nurse Christine Clarke looked up, her blonde curls bouncing. She had already changed out of her uniform and put on fresh make-up.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Vera looked at her. Christine had been one of her very worst cases and had taken a lot of counselling in the canteen. “But on the telly all that blood is never real,” she had cried, traumatised. “I know,” Vera had soothed. “But maybe you could pretend here that it’s just ketchup. How about that?” It had worked miracles. Christine now enjoyed blood so much that she was thinking of training to work in theatre.
“Why don’t you take application forms for them all and think about it?” Vera said.
“Okay,” Christine said.
Karen shot her a filthy glance. “Don’t waste the paper.”
“Sorry?”
“You heard her, you two-faced little cow,” Suzanne muttered.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t bounce your curls at me!”
“What’s going on here?” Vera enquired politely.
“She’s after applying for a transfer to Cork,” Darren chimed in, disgusted.
“I have not!” Christine said indignantly.
“How come you’ve got an appointment down there next Tuesday?” Karen shot triumphantly.
“Were you eavesdropping on my telephone conversations?” Christine demanded, her curls about to take off.
“Yes!”
“I don’t want to move to the back of beyond just because this place is closing! Why should I?”
“Solidarity, you thick eejit.”
Christine looked like she was going to cry. “But they have Top Shop in Cork.”
“Forget it.”
“And Wallis. And Principles.”
“Big swing.”
“Wallis?” Suzanne said with a slight catch in her voice. She was five-foot nothing and Wallis did a lovely little line in petite wear.
“What the hell is going on here!” Karen said viciously. “I thought we all agreed to boycott Cork! I thought we all said that they could offer us a million pounds a year and we still wouldn’t take a transfer down there!”
“Half a million. We said half a million,” Christine pointed out quickly.
“What difference does it make? Nobody is going to Cork! That’s what we agreed!”
Vera cleared her throat. As always, it had the effect of shutting everybody up. Vera had once cleared her throat during a delivery, entirely accidentally, and even the newborn baby had screeched to a silence and looked at her.
“What we agreed at that meeting was that if people felt strongly enough, then they should boycott Cork. But it wasn’t an order. People can go where they want. Of course they can.” She looked at Christine without any judgement or malice. “It’s absolutely your prerogative to go to Cork. And nobody here will say another word about it. Isn’t that right, girls?”
Karen and Suzanne shifted indignantly, but kept their mouths shut. Christine found herself unable to look Vera in the eye. Vera, who had brought her through her first difficult months as a trainee nurse, Vera who had subtly warned her off Doctor Keating with just one word, ‘married’.
“Okay! I won’t bloody go!” she shouted.
“Go if you want,” Vera encouraged her. “You might like it in Cork.”
“I wouldn’t! How could I spend a single pay cheque in Wallis knowing that I was a turncoat!” Christine was raging now at being forced by her own hand to do the right thing.
“Well, if that’s how you feel, then we’re all delighted,” Vera soothed, resolving to take her for a cup of tea in the canteen that night and point up the benefits of Limerick. They had Wallis there too, silly girl, and all kinds of wonderful places to spend pay cheques. She must also mention that some of the more attractive doctors from the general wards had already gone to Limerick.
“Okay, well, everyone should start applying immediately. Time is running out.”
St Martha’s would close in exactly five weeks’ time. Most of the general wards had already been closed. Martha’s was really only open for business in Casualty and Maternity.
“I can’t bear it,” Karen suddenly said, her lip quivering. “I know this place is an awful kip, but I don’t want to go.”
“I know,” Vera said. “But we must be brave, girls.” She nodded at Darren. “And boys.”
Vera herself was very unsentimental about the whole thing. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Martha’s; she loved Martha’s with a passion. She had worked there for fifteen years, she’d had her own two girls there; she personally knew nearly every patient who came through the door.
But what use was it to anybody to get all emotional and upset about it? Vera had taken the practical approach of making submissions to the Board of Management. She’d solicited meetings with the Health Board. Then there were the local TDs and Councillors, all of whom she had personally canvassed. She had even written to the Minister for Health and had all the staff do so too.
It had all been in vain. Martha’s was caught up in the unstoppable forces of rationalisation and modernisation and, more crucially, staff shortages of crisis proportions. Martha’s could no longer attract specialised theatre staff to carry out operations. What junior doctors were still coming into the system went to Dublin or Cork or Limerick or Galway. Nurses couldn’t be found for love nor money.
They could have thrown resources and financial support at the place. They could have paid people better to come and work in it. But they didn’t, of course. They decided to close it. Their main reason was that it was servicing a decreasing rural population that could be better facilitated by Cork.
Hogwash, Vera often thought. Still. She didn’t get involved in the politics of it all. She was just angry for the sake of her job, and everybody else who worked in the hospital. But there are plenty of jobs, they had told her – God knows, aren’t they crying out for nurses! Yes, if they relocated or else drove their cars and themselves into the ground.
Vera would commute for as long as she could. But she would no longer be home after a night shift to see the girls before they went to school. She would have to leave every evening before they’d even had dinner together, for God’s sake. And what about driving them to ballet lessons and taking them to parties? She would be stuck in her car – albeit a new car – in a bloody traffic jam. For two pins now she would strangle Chapman and O’Reilly and every other goddamn consultant who had sunk this ship, either intentionally or by their silence.
“There’s a petition going around again,” Karen said. “I saw it in one of the wards earlier.”
“Is there?” Vera said, with no interest. There had been many such petitions over the past year.
“With plenty of signatures.”
“Karen, let the patients fight for themselves.”
This sounded a b
it harsher than Vera Mooney actually felt. She was not unsympathetic to the cause of the locals, who now had to travel to Cork sick or in labour. People were very angry and upset about it, but it hadn’t really translated into action. True, some of them had turned up at the meetings Vera had organised. But the problem was that most healthy people never thought that they would end up in hospital. Cancer, heart attacks and long-term illnesses always happened to someone else. They were emotionally removed from the fight, and that was no good at all. In fact, the people most upset about it were the pregnant women, the ones who knew that in three or four or six months’ time they would definitely need the services of a hospital. Those, and elderly people to whom hospital was a future reality rather than an unlikely possibility.
Vera felt very tired and disillusioned now. It was difficult leading a revolt when the revolutionaries weren’t that pushed in the first place. But then she saw the faces of Karen, Darren, Suzanne. They had come this far with her and she owed it to them to finish this thing.
“Right. Will we go pound the pavements?”
Today was the start of the next phase: marching up and down outside with placards. The day shift would take it in turns to join them for an hour.
“Can we have a cup of tea first?” Christine begged. She wanted to touch up her lipstick too.
“Of course we can,” Vera said. “And a nice salad or something.”
They always had salads in the canteen. It was all the blasted Roses. They tried to give them away to porters, ambulance drivers, the cleaning staff. But those sly cows in Delivery always got there before them, and you couldn’t even off-load the smallest box. Once someone had given them Quality Street because the shop next door had run out of Roses, and there had been great excitement for a week.
They all traipsed out, faces pasty from lack of sleep. Emily Collins drifted past them in the corridor, eyes very far away. With her huge belly, massive bunny slippers and thin little legs, she looked like a cartoon figure. The woman never seemed to be where she was supposed to be, which was in bed.
Vera was going to say something, then stopped herself. She was not on duty. If she said something, she felt like she would be getting involved. And one of the first things she had learned as a nurse fifteen years ago was never to get personally involved with the patients.
Emily couldn’t bear the waiting game any longer. She had already brought up her lunch, what little she’d eaten. She rang Conor and told him that Mr Chapman was coming in in an hour.
“I’ll be there,” he said, sounding glad that something was finally happening.
“Come in early,” she said.
“I’ll set off now.”
She wanted to ask him to bring in her deodorant which she’d forgotten but the request seemed too cosy and domestic. But she needed it; she was sweating. When Maggie went to the loo, Emily helped herself to two quick blasts of the Sure on her locker, but felt no surer. Guiltily, she checked the contents on the canister. She had read a frightening article once on how breast milk can be poisoned with more than two hundred different chemicals from the products that mothers used, anything from hairspray to the can of Coke you treated yourself to. You might as well be feeding your baby a bottle of Domestos.
Then other articles rubbished this, maintaining that breast milk was the best food for your child until they were well into their teens. But who were you to believe any more? Sometimes Emily thought that there was a conspiracy out there to confuse, addle and bewilder those who simply tried to do their best. Those who didn’t bother reading this stuff were able to enjoy guilt-free spraying and a much drier lifestyle. It made Emily feel gullible and annoyed.
“Anybody for a game of bridge?” Trish enquired across the way. She was now fifteen days in Martha’s and had started an inter-ward bridge league. Elizabeth’s Ward was currently winning and Trish was taking it all very badly.
“Count me in,” Maggie said happily, back in from the loo.
Trish wasn’t a bit pleased. Maggie had only learned how to play bridge in the past week and was worse than useless. But she always wanted to play, damn her.
“Emily, will you be my partner?” Maggie pleaded.
Emily pretended not to hear. She slipped out of the ward and wandered until she found herself outside the main doors of the hospital. As with every other health institution in the country, hordes of people were standing on the front steps smoking. Emily watched them as they collectively inhaled and exhaled fiercely and wondered who was in the hospital belonging to them. A wife? Sister? Father? Martina, even? Who knew what stories they all had? Who was to say that her own was any more interesting or tragic than theirs?
The elderly man with rheumy eyes and a stooped, beaten back particularly touched Emily. He held his cigarette as though it were the only thing keeping him going right now. He reminded Emily of her own father.
“They’re very good in there,” she said, trying to give him some solace, “the doctors and nurses.”
The man looked up, surprised. “I’m sure they are.”
“Just, you know, if you were worried.”
He looked at her and put out his cigarette. “You’re a very kind girl.”
“No problem,” she said, embarrassed.
He pulled open the front door and poked his head in. “Taxi for Tynan?”
She dived into the band of smokers, mortified. She never seemed to learn. Time and again she went right on in there, investing herself in situations and people that never gave her back a thing. Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly. Liz. Her mother. Martina, a woman she’d never even met, for heaven’s sake! But she never, ever thought she’d be adding Conor to that list.
His red Peugeot drove into the car park. He didn’t go and park in the empty spaces at the back, of course, but came right up towards the hospital. Lo and behold, another car conveniently vacated a position just thirty yards from the front doors, and Conor eased in.
Emily found that her heart was beating fast, and she was thrown back to those days when Conor used to come and pick her up for their dates. She’d hear his car crunching on the gravel outside and she would feel her cheeks reddening and her heart banging away and she would rush to the front door to open it. With previous boyfriends, she would pretend that she hadn’t heard the car, and she would make them get out and ring the doorbell. Sometimes twice. She had never tried that with Conor – it simply hadn’t occurred to her. He would have seen right through it anyway, and he would have thought less of her. He was always so straight, Conor. That was one of the biggest shocks of this whole thing. She felt that he had irredeemably diminished himself in her eyes.
“Excuse me . . . excuse me . . . oh, get out of my way.”
Emily elbowed her way through the smokers and went fast down the hospital steps. Conor was just taking off his seat belt when she slid into the passenger seat of his car.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Getting in.”
“It’s cold out here. Are you mad?”
“No. Just sick of the hospital.”
He didn’t kiss her. The look on her face didn’t invite him to.
“They’re walking up and down on the road with placards,” he said eventually. “I nearly knocked one of them down.”
She felt very sad as she turned to him. “Conor. I know about Germany.”
His whole body seemed to sag a little. Emily had a funny feeling inside, like something was breaking.
“It’s over,” he said.
This was no great news or consolation to Emily. She guessed that her pregnancy announcement had probably put paid to it.
“Did you love her?” she asked.
“No.”
It was hard to know whether this was more insulting.
“It was Mary, right? Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Expecting Emily Page 12