by Doyle, Paddy
My memories of being placed on the trolley and wheeled from the ward are vague. Most of the images are blurs, foggy scenes involving nurses and hospital orderlies. On the way to the theatre I became fully aware of what was happening as the doping effect of the drugs wore off and I became almost fully alert. Whatever potency that remained in the drugs was nullified by the awful sense of terror within me. I tried to sit up but the strong hand of the orderly pressed firmly down on my shoulder making it impossible to move.
I screamed as I was wheeled into the sterile atmosphere of the theatre where doctors and nurses quickly gathered around in an effort to stop me. Within seconds, my arm was strapped to a plastic-covered piece of wood and a doctor stood over me with a needle and syringe in his hand. The overhead bright circular light hurt my eyes and as I struggled to break free from the people restraining me I felt my right forearm being pierced. A nurse asked me to count to ten. By three the room was beginning to spin, by five I was losing consciousness. I don’t remember reaching six.
When I returned from theatre, I was put into one of the small rooms off the main ward. As I came out of the anaesthetic and became more aware I could make out the blurred figure of a nurse sitting beside my bed. I could feel a soreness in my head which I wanted to rub but she prevented me. Every few minutes, her voice reminded me that I was back, and that everything was all right. For the next few hours I drifted from semi-consciousness to unconsciousness, only waking fully when my thirst became unbearable or the pain from the operation overrode the effects of the drugs. I felt the cloth of the sphygmomanometer being wrapped around my upper arm and tightened as my blood pressure was taken, and then the hissing of air as the pressure was slowly released.
‘Water,’ I said.
‘You can’t have water just now, it would make you sick,’ the nurse said.
‘Water,’ I pleaded, through cracked, half-sealed lips.
‘You can have all the water you want in a little while.’
I rolled my tongue around my mouth in search of even the slightest sign of moisture, but there was none. The glycerine applied to my lips was no substitute for the drink I desperately craved.
About two hours after returning from theatre a nurse placed one hand at the back of my head and, raising it gently, held a glass of water to my parched mouth. I wanted to gulp it down but she warned that that would only make me sick. When I snatched at it she whisked it away. The next time I got a drink it was to help me swallow painkilling tablets which were to keep me sedated for the best part of two days.
When I was put back into the main ward I borrowed a small, double-sided shaving mirror from Vincent Flynn’s locker. One side gave a normal mirror image, the other side was magnified. It was the magnified side that I chose to look at myself. What I saw horrified me. I was so ugly I wondered how anyone could even look at me. My head seemed to have a big bump on the top where a dressing had been placed after the operation and my face was almost completely pink from surgical antiseptic. I pulled a towel from my locker rail, dipped a corner of it into a glass of water and began to rub my face furiously, trying to remove the pink streaks, but I couldn’t make the slightest impression. When I asked a nurse how I could get it off, she said it would fade away itself after a while. Margaret Duffy caught me looking at myself and said that I was being vain.
‘I’m not being vain, I just want to see if my hair is growing yet.’
‘You hardly expect it to grow two or three days after it has been shaved,’ she exclaimed.
‘No but I hope I’ll have some hair before my birthday.’
‘Is that a hint?’ she asked, smiling.
‘It’s my birthday on the nineteenth of May,’ I said.
‘I thought you didn’t know when your birthday was. According to your chart it’s not until the nineteenth of June.’
I told her when I was in Kilkenny I’d said it was in February, thinking it might get me out of the room I was in by myself.
‘Did they believe you?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Do you know what age you’ll be?’ she wondered.
‘Ten.’
‘Ten! I suppose we’ll have to have a birthday party for you.’
‘I suppose,’ I answered, unsure what to say. I had never celebrated a birthday before and wondered if a party would be organized for me.
The ward sister asked if I had been to the toilet and when I said I hadn’t, she told me I’d need to drink a lot and eat plenty of fruit or they’d have to give me an enema.
The only liquid I had was water and I looked with envy at the array of soda syphon bottles on the other lockers around the ward.
‘Why can’t I have something like that to drink?’ I asked.
There was a bottle of Lucozade on Vincent Flynn’s locker, still wrapped in its orange cellophane paper. She unwrapped it and loosened the black stopper with its rubber band from the bottle, remarking how useless it was to Vincent. I felt guilty, as though I was stealing something from someone who didn’t even know.
‘Can he hear?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Can he see?’
‘No.’
‘But,’ I exclaimed, ‘his eyes are wide open.’
She told me that Vincent was in a world of his own where everything was dark, just like being in a room where all the curtains were drawn.
‘So he’s sort of asleep with his eyes open?’ I said, and asked her if he would ever wake up. That was in the hands of God she replied. When I asked why he couldn’t have an operation to fix him she just said that we would all have to pray and hope for the best.
‘Will he die?’ I asked finally.
‘I think you’ve had your fair share of questions for one day.’
I asked her why some of the nurses put their finger over the tube sticking out of his throat when they were talking to him. She explained that because of the hole in his windpipe he couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to. The only chance of hearing anything he might want to say was by closing off that tube.
‘Could I put my finger over it?’ I asked.
She looked surprised at first, then lifted me the short distance to his bed. She demonstrated how to cover the tube, warning me never to keep it covered for longer than ten seconds. I was frightened as my finger neared the tube and then touched it. I didn’t like the feel of the rubber tube or its wetness at the rim, and was frightened too by the vacant stare of Vincent’s dark eyes, like two glass discs that gaped from deep caverns in his boney structured face. His arms were down by his sides, completely straight and still. A breathing corpse.
He was extremely good looking and every morning he was given a bed bath, after which he was shaved with a Ronson electric shaver and his jet black hair was combed back from his forehead. During the day, I was allowed to sit on his bed. In my own mind, I had built up a relationship with him, and made every effort to bring him out of his dark, unconscious world. I spent long periods trying to get him to respond to my voice as I repeated his name. Occasionally I would put my finger over the protruding tube, hoping I would be the first to hear him speak. Whenever I spoke to him I kept my mouth as close to his ear as possible, asking him to blink his eyes if he could hear me, but they remained frozen open.
I always protested at being tucked back into my own bed, saying I wasn’t comfortable as my foot was hurting me. By now the bending of one toe had spread to the others and my foot used to cramp so badly I was certain the tendons would snap. Instinctively, I knew that something was going desperately wrong. Whenever the ward sister looked at my foot she reminded me that the neurosurgeon was going to put it right, but it would take time and patience. Gradually the amount of medication I was receiving increased and I didn’t bother to count the number of pills I took in a day.
‘Why can’t I get up?’ I asked.
‘Because . . .’ and she hesitated, ‘that is what the doctor says. What’s the great hurry anyway, won’t it be much better for you to be u
p when you can walk properly?’
‘I don’t know if I can walk properly any more,’ I said. ‘Look at the way my foot is twisted.’
She tried to straighten my toes and turn my foot outwards without causing me pain but she couldn’t. The level of involuntary movement from me was so great that she was forced to give up. The bones in my ankle were protruding till they threatened to come through my skin and my foot was becoming increasingly deformed looking. When she said she would have to bring the matter to the attention of the surgeon, I asked if it would mean another operation.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered, ‘that will be up to the doctor to decide. Anyway you still have the stitches in from the last time, so it’s a bit early to be thinking of more operations.’
My stitches were taken out about ten days after the operation. Margaret Duffy, Sister Catherine and the ward sister drew screens around my bed.
Tiny bristles of hair protruded through the heavy white sticking plaster making its removal difficult and very painful. I cried and tried to stop them pulling it but I was restrained and warned not to touch it because of the risk of infection. With the use of ether, the adhesion of the plaster was broken and it was gradually withdrawn exposing the wound to the cold air. Bloodstained cotton wool pads from my head were tossed into a steel pedal bin.
With their faces masked and rubber gloves on their hands, they began to remove the stitches, assuring me that I would feel no pain. I felt a tweezers pinch and lift the first stitch then with great caution the cold blade of a scissors barely touched my head as it slid under the loop. A snip and it was gently withdrawn and left in a kidney dish on the trolley. There was an air of tension while the procedure was carried out with hardly a word spoken. When it was finished the sense of relaxation among the staff was almost palpable. A small strip of Elastoplast was put over the area where the stitches had been removed. I asked if I could look at myself in Vincent Flynn’s mirror, but Margaret Duffy said I should wait until she had removed all the stains made by the antiseptic from my face. Using a piece of cotton wool soaked in ether, she rubbed gently, taking care to avoid my eyes, nose or mouth. It left my face cold, and its strong smell made me feel drowsy.
When she was finished, she took the mirror from Flynn’s locker and held it in front of me.
‘Now are you happy?’ she asked.
I looked at myself.
‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ I said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One day when she was not too busy, Margaret Duffy agreed to play a game of snakes and ladders with me. I set out the board as she momentarily attended to another patient. During the game I said I wanted to ask her a question, but that she had to promise to answer whatever I asked. She protested, saying she would make no promises. I persisted, convincing her that the question I wanted answered wasn’t a hard one. She agreed to answer.
‘Where do babies come from?’ I asked suddenly.
She blushed and wondered why I wanted to know.
‘I just want to know, that’s all.’
‘If I tell you, do you promise not to go shouting it around the ward and get me into trouble?’
I nodded. She shook the dice and scaled a ladder on the board with her plastic playing counter.
‘They come from their mothers’ bellies,’ she said, ‘now will you throw the dice and stop asking questions.’
‘But how do they get in there?’
She reminded me that I’d said ‘one question’.
‘It doesn’t matter anyhow,’ I said, ‘a boy in the hospital in Kilkenny told me.’
‘You tell me then,’ she said.
‘I will not,’ I replied adamantly.
‘Have you a boyfriend?’ I asked.
‘My God, but you are a nosy little demon. What if I have? Is it any of your business?’ she mocked playfully.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Mind your own business and get on with the game.’
‘Will you buy me a money box?’ I asked.
‘A money box!’ she exclaimed. ‘What for?’
‘I want to save up to buy a watch.’
‘And where do you propose to get the money from?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I’ll just leave it on my locker and maybe when the visitors come they might put something in it.’
‘Not only are you nosy, but you’re as cute as a fox.’
She laughed and I showed her an advertisement I had taken from a newspaper showing the watch I wanted. It was thirty-two shillings and sixpence.
‘I hope it keeps fine for you!’ she said, smiling.
I made her promise to get the box the next time she was in town and she agreed.
By visiting time the next Sunday I had my money box placed strategically on my bedside locker and made a point of rattling it to attract attention. There were six pennies in it, given to me by Margaret with the box. ‘That’s the sixpence,’ she said. ‘Now all you need is the thirty-two shillings.’
Visitors came over to enquire about what had happened to me. The price of an answer was a contribution towards the cost of the watch. It was a well-worked system. First I told them I was saving for a watch, and when their money dropped into my miniature English postbox, I told them I had polio. If they asked me, as they usually did, if I was getting better I always said no. I would have to have more operations. In most instances this ensured a further donation and a speedy departure of the inquisitor.
It was only a short time before the box was filled and I was confident that I had sufficient money to make my purchase. Getting the money out was a slow, noisy business. I had to insert a knife into the slot and allow the coins to slide out along its blade. The noise irritated the other patients, more than one of whom shouted for a nurse to ‘take that blasted box and the child out of here’. The more hatred the men expressed towards me, the more I delighted in annoying them.
When they were reminded that I was only a child they responded by saying that I shouldn’t be in the ward. One man suggested that they ‘find a ward full of noisy little bastards and put him in there!’
I was anxious to get the watch and nothing would persuade me to wait until my birthday. After much pressure, Margaret Duffy promised to get it on her next day off. I gave her the money and the advertisement and asked her to bring it to me as soon as she got back from town.
‘I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘The nurses are not allowed on to the wards in civvies.’
Her day off was one of the longest of my life. I convinced myself that she would forget or lose the money or there might be no watches left when she got to the shop. When she came on duty Margaret Duffy handed me a neatly wrapped parcel. I tore through the wrapping paper and broke open the cardboard box containing the watch. In sheer delight I looked at the dial, the golden figures, the large second hand that moved jerkily around the face. I listened to the ticking before eventually putting it on my wrist. At first the brown leather strap was too loose and it was only with the aid of the pointed blade of a scissors that additional holes were made to allow the strap to be buckled. I couldn’t resist fiddling with the winder, turning it gently to make sure it was wound.
‘Once a day is enough to wind the watch,’ Margaret said. ‘More often than that and you’ll wreck it.’
For the first few hours, I kept an almost constant eye on the watch and checked with every nurse that passed by to see if their watches corresponded to my own.
That evening, when the ward was quiet, I took the back off the watch to see what was inside. As I was putting it on again, the second hand fell off. I tried desperately to fix it but couldn’t. In exasperation, I left the hand inside the dial and decided to pretend that it fell off while I was asleep.
‘Wake up, sleepy head. What time is it?’ I recognized Margaret Duffy’s voice next morning.
I sat up and looked innocently at my watch.
‘I don’t know what time it is,’ I said, ‘I forgot to wind it last night and now it’s stopped.’<
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My voice trembled as I handed it to her and I knew I wasn’t going to convince her by my story. I started crying.
‘Did you open the watch?’ she asked.
‘I just wanted to have a look inside. I didn’t mean to break it.’
When she saw how upset I was she agreed to take the watch back and try to have it changed, provided I promised to say nothing about having opened it. During her break she took it back, carefully wrapped in paper from a present brought to another patient, warning me before leaving not to expect miracles.
Later in the day she returned to the ward smiling broadly. She took a new watch from the large square pocket of her uniform and helped me to put it on, remarking that they wouldn’t replace the strap because it had been tampered with.
That night the ward sister examined the wound on my head by gently lifting the sticking plaster that had covered it since my stitches had been removed. There was no need for a replacement plaster and I could touch my head if I wanted to. By now my hair had started to grow and looked just like a tight crew cut. The self-consciousness of being bald was gone and I was looking forward to having a full head of hair again.
But it wouldn’t be that way. The ward sister informed me I would be going to the theatre again. I was shocked and kept repeating that I didn’t want to go. It hadn’t been long since I was there last.
‘Well now,’ she said, ‘if you want to get better . . .’
‘I don’t,’ I said sharply.
‘And I suppose you don’t want to go to the Zoo either?’ I looked at her.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Nurse Duffy and her boyfriend want to take you out for a day soon, but you can only go if you’re good and if Matron agrees.’
‘When have I to go to the theatre?’ I asked nervously.
‘In the morning.’
‘How could I have to go? The doctor hasn’t even been around and the dressing from the last is just gone.’
She said this operation was the second part of the first one and was only a very minor ‘job’ not to be worried about. The priest would be around later. The routine was familiar. Notification of an operation. Fear of death while undergoing surgery. Then confession. The cleaning of the soul, just in case.
