An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea

by Patrick Taylor

  It was on the ground floor near the office of the officer commanding, where Fingal had had his first interview with Admiral Creaser. Fingal was greeted by a junior sister. “Thanks for coming, sir. I’ve got the patient on the examining couch. He’s in a fair bit of pain. It’s his hand. I’ve put an instrument trolley beside the table.”

  “Let’s have a look.” Fingal crossed the linoleum floor, past a desk and chair and a wash-hand basin secured to the grey wall. A man in a two-piece blue work overall sat, bent over, on an examining table. The patient was clutching his bandaged left hand in his right and alternating a low moaning with a string of profanity delivered in a thick Yorkshire accent. He looked up as Fingal approached.

  “Good God,” O’Reilly said. “Henson. Whatever’s happened to you?”

  “Lieutenant O’Reilly?” Henson said. The man’s face crumpled and he screwed his eyes tightly shut before opening them and saying, “You’ve got to help me. Please, sir. If you don’t, they’ll invalid me out. Please, sir.”

  “I’ll do my best.” As Fingal spoke, he was taking Henson’s pulse. One hundred and ten. Either due to anxiety and pain, or blood loss, or both. Fingal remembered how passionately Henson had told Fingal of his desire to make the navy his life, how proudly he’d told Fingal and Deirdre of his progress on his gunnery course. And he recalled the CPO with the ulcer who’d never go to sea again. Was Henson’s dream going to go up in smoke because of his injury? Fingal looked at Henson’s damaged hand. The dressing was blood-soaked and oozing. “Can you take his blood pressure, please, Sister?”

  She didn’t waste words but rolled up Henson’s sleeve on his good arm, strapped on a blood pressure cuff, and got on with her job.

  “What happened?” Fingal asked, partly out of medical need to know and also to distract Henson from the dressing being removed.

  “It’s one ten over seventy, sir,” the sister said.

  So there was a degree of shock. Fingal ignored what Henson was trying to tell him. “Bring me a tourniquet and then get plasma ready.” There were now two imperatives. Stop the bleeding and replace the fluid loss with plasma.

  She handed him a length of rubber tubing and said, “I’ll get the plasma drip ready.”

  “This’ll be tight,” Fingal said as he looped the tubing round the middle of Henson’s forearm and tied it tightly with a half hitch. “I’ll get a look at your hand now,” Fingal said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m sorry I had to interrupt you. Tell me again what happened.”

  Henson shook his head. “I did something so fucking stupid I could cry.”

  Fingal glanced up from unwrapping the bandage that held the dressing in place. The curse seemed to have run off Sister like water off a duck’s back. Naval lower-deck patients were not renowned for purity of speech.

  “I were showing a clumsy bloke ’ow to close a breech block on a four point seven dual-purpose gun when I got distracted—”

  Fingal dropped the soiled bandage into a pedal bin under the instrument trolley.

  “And like the daft bugger I am, I slammed it on me own hand.”

  Fingal flinched. He could imagine the shock, the searing pain of several pounds of steel milled to fit so snugly into the breech that not even smoke would escape when the weapon was fired. Henson might as well have stuck his hand under the blade of a guillotine.

  “I couldn’t bear to look. The gunnery CPO got stuff and put a dressing on it. There was blood everywhere. The clumsy bloke fainted. Daft duck.”

  Fingal was working his way through layers of blood-caked Gamgee—cotton wool between two layers of gauze. The last layer was stuck to the wound by clotted blood. He had a choice: rip it off or soak it off.

  “The plasma’s ready, sir,” Sister said. She approached the table pushing a smaller trolley, above which a bottle of plasma hung from a stainless steel gallows. On the tabletop he saw red rubber tubing with a needle at one end for pushing through the rubber cap of the plasma bottle, and a needle for insertion into a vein. One kidney basin held saline, and brown antiseptic was in a small gallipot. There was a sponge holder, swabs, tourniquet tubing, and a splint accompanied by a roll of two-inch bandage. Several strips of surgical adhesive tape hung from a low railing that surrounded three sides of the trolley’s top.

  “Right,” said Fingal. “Henson. I’m going to give you some plasma while Sister gets some saline in a bowl, where I want you to put your hurt paw. It’ll make it easier to get the dressing off.”

  He moved to the sink, washed his hands, and returned.

  The sister already had Henson’s injured hand in the saline.

  “Help Leading Seaman Henson off with his top on his good side, please, Sister.” It would be the very devil to get him undressed once the intravenous drip had been set up.

  Off came the top of the boiler suit and a white T-shirt. Fingal smiled when he saw a heart pierced by an arrow and containing the word “Elsie” tattooed on Henson’s upper arm. Fingal remembered the petite blonde in the Trafalgar Pub. Enough. Time to get on.

  In very short order, Fingal had inserted a wide-bore needle into a vein in the hollow at the front of Henson’s elbow, the antecubital fossa, and connected it to the tubing from the plasma bottle. The tubing was strapped to Henson’s forearm with adhesive strips and the elbow joint immobilised by the splint held on with the bandage. Bending the joint could force the needle from the vein.

  “Right,” he said. “Sister, hold Henson’s left forearm steady.”

  “I’m afraid this may hurt a bit,” he said as he began as gently as possible to remove the last strip of Gamgee.

  Henson whimpered but made no attempt to pull his arm away. The Gamgee hit the pedal bin’s bottom and Fingal scrutinised the wreckage. Clotted blood obscured his view. He reloaded the sponge holder, soaked the swab in saline, and cleaned away as much of the clot as possible. As best as he could tell, the breech block had mangled the tip of the ring finger to just below the nail and had sliced through the lower middle joint of the middle finger. Only a shred of skin held it on. “Sister, undo the tourniquet for a couple of minutes.” He held Henson’s hand over the kidney dish, which was now practically empty. “Got to get a bit of blood flow into your hand, Henson, for a minute or two.” The cutting off of the blood flow had stopped the man bleeding to death, but depriving the healthy tissues of oxygenated blood for too long would cause gangrene.

  “Bloody ’ell … sorry, Sister,” Henson said, “but talk about pins and bleeding needles?”

  “It’s your nerves waking up,” Fingal said as his nostrils were filled with the coppery smell of the fresh blood now dripping into the kidney dish. “Henson, I’m sorry, but you’ve lost a bit of one finger, and the top of the middle one is just hanging on. It’ll have to go, but it could have been much worse. The most important thing is that your thumb’s fine and so are your index and little fingers. You’ll have a working hand.”

  Henson managed a cross between a grimace and a smile. “That’s not so bad, sir. The Andrew kept Lord Nelson on and he’d only got his left arm and one eye. At least it’s my left hand what’s hurt and I’m right-handed.”

  O’Reilly nodded his support, but inwardly he wondered. King George VI’s regulation-bound navy of today was a very different one from the less restrictive wooden-walled world of King George III’s ships. Henson’s fate might hinge on a report from his surgeon or some kind of fitness board. But there was no point worrying the man about that now. “Soon have you right as rain,” Fingal said, and looked at his watch. “Sorry, Henson, it’s time for Sister to tighten up your tourniquet, but I’ll make it easier for you. We’re going to give you morphine as soon as she’s stopped the bleeding. Quarter of a grain, please, Sister.”

  Henson gasped as the tubing was tightened.

  Fingal was gratified to see the bleeding stop.

  “I’ll get the morphine and then I’ll put a dressing on, sir,” Sister said. “Then we’ll get him up to the ward.”

  “Thank you, and
thanks for all your help,” Fingal said. He walked to the desk to fill in an admission slip so the ward staff would know the extent of the man’s injuries, that he was being given one unit of plasma, and that he had received one quarter of a grain of morphine. As Fingal sat, he heard through the open window the sweet liquid notes of a lone bugle sounding the “Last Post.” He stood to attention, sorry to have missed the service of remembrance, thinking of the words often said after the lines, “At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.” He said aloud, “‘Lest we forget.’” He pictured the World War I memorial to the left of the main arcade door. Among Haslar’s fallen—140 surgeons, 9 QARNNSs, and 6 VADs—were the names of 13 Irish naval surgeons who had made the supreme sacrifice. He thought of Deirdre and how vain had been his promise that he’d “do his best” to return to her. And he marvelled at the waste, the suffering, the lunacy that was war.

  27

  The Ear of Jealousy Heareth All Things

  “Morning, Barry,” O’Reilly said. “Making yourself a cuppa? Bite to eat?”

  “Not very hungry. Just tea,” Barry mumbled, sitting hunched over at the kitchen table. His fair hair was tousled, he was blinking sleep from his eyes, and his shoulders were slumped beneath a plaid dressing gown over pyjamas. If O’Reilly didn’t know better, he’d have guessed the lad had a hangover. But he’d been on call last night. He must be just recently risen. And why shouldn’t he have a lie-in? It was Saturday and they’d all been working hard keeping up with Ronald’s practice as well as their own.

  “It’s absolutely true that a watched kettle never boils.” Barry scowled and inclined his head to where one sat on top of the range. “Going shooting?”

  A reasonable question. O’Reilly was wearing his Paddy hat, Barbour waterproof jacket over an Aran sweater Kinky had knitted for him years ago, corduroy trousers, and thigh waders. His slung gamebag held his sandwiches, his binoculars, and a couple of bottles of Harp lager. He shook his head and pulled out a chair, sitting opposite Barry. “I’m on my way to meet Lars in Lisbane. He takes part in the annual bird count on Strangford Lough. I’m no expert at that but I’m going down to keep him company, give Arthur a run.”

  “At least,” said Barry, staring out the window, “it looks like you’re getting a half-decent day for it.” He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

  “Bad night?”

  Barry nodded. “And I can forget trying to get an early night tonight. I promised to go up to Belfast to see Jack Mills. He’s taking Helen Hewitt to a party in the junior doctors’ mess, can’t get away until eight, so he asked me to run her up.”

  It wasn’t like Barry to complain about doing a favour for his best friend. “Were you called out last night? I didn’t hear the phone.”

  “Nah. I got a letter from Sue yesterday.” As if that explained his mood.

  “And?”

  He sighed and said, “I miss her, Fingal. I really, really do. I never thought I could miss someone so much.”

  O’Reilly would have expected a letter to have cheered Barry up, but the lad was clearly down in the mouth. “Aye,” said O’Reilly, thinking of the interminable months that he and Deirdre had been apart while he was on Warspite in the Med before she had been able to join him in Gosport. “I know what you mean, but take comfort, lad. The time will pass.”

  Barry fished an aerogram out of his dressing gown pocket. The pregummed piece of lightweight, eggshell blue paper allowed the sender to write then fold the thing up to become its own envelope, thus saving weight. The idea, introduced in the ’30s by the Iraqi postal service, had been developed by the British army into the first aerograms or “blueys” in 1941.

  “Listen to this,” Barry said, his voice taking on a tinge of resentment. “‘Even though it was late October, the sea was flat calm and azure when we went out in an open tourist boat to the Chateau d’If. It’s an amazing building, Barry. I can just imagine Dumas’s Edmond Dantès tunnelling out of his cell. I’d love to take you here someday and then go to one of the cafés on the Canebière, the High Street of le Vieux Port, the old part of town.’”

  “Sounds like she’s having fun to me,” O’Reilly said.

  “Yeah, well, perhaps a little too much fun,” Barry said, but whatever else he was going to say was interrupted by the kettle’s piercing whistle. He rose, grabbed it, poured boiling water into a teapot, and replaced the kettle on the range top away from the heat.

  “Then I got to this bit.” He read: “‘I really do want to make the most of my stay here. It’s my first trip abroad and there’s so much to see. The sixteenth-century fort Saint-Jean was well worth the visit. I wished I had a car because I’d love to go to Aix en Provence. I’ve missed the outdoor summer music festival, but there are at least five museums there and you know I’m potty about archaeology and old things. I’m told I must see Les Calanques. They’re a bit east of the city, a set of mini-fjords, supposed to be very scenic. There’s some palaeolithic cave art in an underwater cave in one called Morgiou and there are great spots for lunch in a place called Cassis, it means blackcurrant, and farther east in La Ciotat.’” He inhaled deeply and started to make his tea. O’Reilly would have liked a cup, but it seemed Barry was not offering. And he was scowling again.

  “It certainly doesn’t surprise me, Barry. Your Sue is not a girl to let the grass grow under her feet. She’d grab every opportunity to expand her horizons. Travel broadens the mind, I’m told.”

  “Expand her horizons. That’s one way to put it, I suppose.” Barry brought his teacup to the table, sat, ignored the tea, and laid his forearms on the tabletop. “Sorry, Fingal, would you like a cup?”

  O’Reilly shook his head and hid a smile behind his hand.

  “Just listen to this. ‘Then the answer to a maiden’s prayer appeared in the shape of,’” Barry stopped and inhaled through his nose, “‘Jean-Claude Hamou. He’s another teacher. I met him on the Chateau d’If trip. He has a Citröen deux chevaux…’”

  “Two horsepower. France’s answer to your German Volkswagen Beetle.”

  “Thank you, Fingal. I’m familiar with the vehicle.” Barry had said it politely enough but when O’Reilly studied his young friend as he bent once more to the letter, O’Reilly could see the concern and frustration in the man’s eyes.

  “‘And he’s going to take me to Les Calanques next Saturday.’ That’s today.” Barry’s sigh was deeper than the earlier one and the fire had gone out of his voice. “‘Jean-Claude’s an interesting man. A year older than me. Funny as all get out, happy to correct my French—which is improving—and very political. Very’—and that’s underlined—‘socialiste.’” Barry looked up and straight into O’Reilly’s eyes. “I know it’s unreasonable. I know I should trust Sue implicitly, Fingal, but damn it all, I can’t stop worrying. A funny young Frenchman, shared politics, exotic surroundings, bottle of wine with lunch, and voilà.”

  O’Reilly immediately recalled his own temptation back in 1940. Alexandrine cooking, smells of the Orient, wine taken, an attractive young woman. He cleared his throat and sought for words of comfort. “I—” He frowned, wrestling with how to phrase them. “I’m sure it’s all perfectly innocent and aboveboard.” At least I hope to hell it is, he thought. Barry took an awful tousling when Patricia Spence went off to Cambridge, found another man, and came back to tell Barry their romance was finished. He’d hurt main sore. O’Reilly decided to confront that probable fear of Barry’s head on. “Thinking of Patricia?”

  Barry nodded. “There’d be something bloody well wrong with me if I wasn’t.” He pursed his lips, blew out his breath. “It couldn’t happen again,” yet his voice lacked confidence, “could it?”

  “I’d be extremely surprised,” O’Reilly said. “Extremely. Your Sue Nolan’s a fine lass. Fine.”

  “Yes, she is fine, Fingal. She’s pretty and outgoing and intelligent. And I’m sure this fellow—Jean-Claude Hamou—is aware of those fine qualities.”

  O’Reilly leaned ac
ross the table and put a hand on Barry’s arm. “Sue Nolan is no starry-eyed teenager, Barry. She’s a mature woman who happens to be engaged to a very sound man of my acquaintance. And she knows all about his fine qualities.”

  “Thanks, Fingal,” Barry said, and took the first sip of his tea. “Thanks. I need to hear that. Any suggestions about what I should do?”

  “Aye. Pro tempore, for the time being, I’d let the hare sit. Don’t comment on him when you write back, but be enthusiastic about her sightseeing, her improving French. Don’t sound jealous. No leading questions. And you told me she’s coming home for Christmas. It’ll be here in seven weeks. Try to bide patiently, talk to me or Kitty if you’re fretting, and when at last you see Sue when she gets off the plane at Aldergrove, you’ll know it’s all right.”

  Barry’s smile started slowly.

  O’Reilly said, “And if you weren’t already going to lose a pound to me when Donal sells his pups, I’d happily wager another fiver on this: that the minute you see her you’ll know you’ve been worried for nothing.”

  Barry’s smile widened.

  “But I’m so sure of it, it would be daylight robbery taking another five pound from you, son, so I’m making no bets.”

  Barry laughed out loud and offered a hand, which O’Reilly shook. “Thank you for listening, giving me lots to hope for. I’m pretty sure you’re right, that if we’d bet I would have lost a fiver. Sue is a remarkable woman.”

  “She is that. And I know she loves you,” O’Reilly said. “Soooooo, instead of taking your fiver, I’ll meet you in the Duck at five thirty and let you buy me and Arthur a pint.” He rose and said, “Now I’d better get my skates on, collect Arthur, and take the shortcut over the Ballybucklebo Hills. These bird count things have to be carried out at the same time all over the lough and I don’t want to mess things up for Lars. He’s on the organizing committee.”

  “And his brother is none other than Reverend Father Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly,” Barry said. “I don’t remember who said ‘confession is good for the soul’—”