The God Squad (14 page)

‘I do have to do that,’ he said, ‘in case the nuns might think the car was on fire.’ Then he laughed loudly.

‘Begob and d’ye know what it is, I don’t think the ould hospital would be all that bad all the same, and sure didn’t I hear the nun sayin’ that it would be only a week before I’d be going to collect you to bring you back.’ I looked deep into the jaundiced eyes of the old man and through my own tears could see he didn’t really believe what he was saying. I sobbed and still he tried to comfort me. He looked out the car window to see if Mother Paul was coming.

‘Begob they must be having a party in there, she’s a good while gone now.’

I drew a deep breath in an effort to stop myself crying and asked him how far away Cork was. He thought for a minute before answering.

‘Well I suppose it’ll be around the seventy or eighty mile mark,’ he answered. ‘Sure it could happen that I wouldn’t be able to find the hospital at all and then we’d have to come back.’

‘How long will it take us to get there?’ I asked.

‘Three or four hours,’ he answered as he looked at his watch. It was getting dark and rain began to fall in tiny droplets on the windscreen. I saw the convent door open and the figure of Mother Paul come out into the grey evening light. Tom O’Rourke noticed her too and pressed his thumb into the bowl of his pipe and put it into his breast pocket then waved his hand towards the open window, urging the smoke to go out.

‘Whist,’ he said, ‘I see herself coming and she has company with her for the prayers. You’d think I was going to kill them on the road.’ He got out and opened the door. Mother Paul sat in the back seat beside me while the other nun took the passenger seat. As soon as we moved away, the nun in the front began to say the Rosary. Mother Paul responded and encouraged me to join in. I did make an effort, but the sorrow I felt at being taken away from St Michael’s would not allow me to.

As it got dark the lights of oncoming cars dazzled me, and the heavy rain made it difficult to see out. The wipers swished from side to side, but the rain was so heavy, they were of little use in keeping the windscreen clear. Halfway through a Hail Mary Mother Paul nudged me in the ribs.

‘What are you crying for?’ she asked.

‘I don’t want to go to hospital,’ I answered.

‘Don’t be stupid, thousands of children your age go into hospital every day of the week – most of them much worse off than you are. You should be thanking God that your complaint is just a simple one that will take no time to put right. Now join in the prayers.’

I did my best to join the nuns as they went from one decade of the Rosary to the next and on to the Litany of Saints. Only when the car stopped and they got out to go into a big store did the prayers stop. When they got back in and the engine started they resumed praying.

Coming into Cork city I was amazed by the different colours of lights flashing on advertising boards, particularly by an advertisement for Donnelly’s Sausages, a neon Don tossing a neon sausage to a neon Nelly. Reading the advertisements and listening to the lilting voices of newspaper sellers distracted me from what was happening and I stopped crying. I had never been outside the Industrial School after dark except to go to the local church to serve at Benediction when the missionary priests were conducting their annual retreat for the local people. Now I was in a city, buses, cars and people. Brightly lit streets and illuminated shop windows with shop models dressed in the latest fashions. Despite the noise of traffic, the voices of the newspaper sellers could be heard through the streets urging people to buy an evening paper.

‘Would ye mind if I stopped for a minute, Mother?’ Tom O’Rourke asked. ‘I just want to go into one of the shops to get something.’

‘You won’t be too long, Tom, will you?’ Mother Paul said.

He pulled the car in to the edge of the pavement and limped into a shop that had its window and interior brightly lit. I could see him talking to the shop assistant, indicating with his finger that he wanted something from one of the high shelves behind the counter. The girl stood on a small step-ladder and took down a large box which she handed to him. He looked at it for a few seconds before handing it back to her to be wrapped. When he came out of the shop he was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper which he
put into the car behind his seat and in front of me. He got in and remarked that ‘the next problem would be to find the hospital.’ He laughed, the nuns didn’t.

The Morris Minor stopped outside a red-bricked building with tall Georgian type windows. Light was shining from each of them. A light over the front door shone onto a large brass plate with the words ‘Mercy Hospital’ etched onto it. Mother Paul stepped from the car and coaxed me out. I hesitated, but eventually followed her.

Going up the rain-soaked steps to the entrance of the hospital, I stopped and pleaded with her not to allow them to keep me in but to bring me back to the other boys. Embarrassed by the commotion I was causing she grabbed me firmly by the arm and tried to force me up the steps. I stood absolutely still and I would have run but for the tightness of her grip. Her lips puckered as she became annoyed but it didn’t worry me. I knew she couldn’t hit me now.

‘You are only going to have to stay a couple of days,’ she said, stressing each word.

‘I don’t want to go in there,’ I screamed.

‘In one week, maybe even less, you’ll be coming home to us again,’ she promised.

Because I believed that nuns never told lies, I stopped crying and walked slowly up the steps with her holding my arm.

A bespectacled, sharp-featured lady took details from Mother Paul before ringing for a nurse to take me to one of the wards. As she arrived I held onto the nun’s black habit and pleaded with her not to leave me there. My knuckles were white as she tried to prise my fingers loose. The nurse bent down to try and lift me into her arms.

‘No,’ I screamed as loud as I could. ‘I don’t want to stay here, I want to go home. I don’t like this place.’

As the nurse tried to talk to me I shook my head violently
from side to side, screaming at her to ‘go away’, but she persisted and eventually succeeded in lifting me into her arms, telling Mother Paul that I would settle in once she was gone. I watched as the nun opened the main door to walk out. As she did so, Tom O’Rourke walked quickly past her, carrying the parcel he had earlier bought and came towards me. He gave me the present, telling me it would pass the time. I dropped it and put my arms out to him, begging him to take me back to St Michael’s with him. Looking him straight in the face, I realized that I loved this man, like a son would love his father. He held my hand tightly in his, and told me that he would probably be staying in Cork for the night because it was too late to return to Waterford. He would be back first thing in the morning to check with the doctors if I could go back with him.

‘I want you to be a good lad, I’ll be praying for ye and the minute I get the word I will be here to collect ye.’

I was greatly reassured by his words and calmed down considerably. He looked sad as he released my hand, and though I was no longer screaming I still wept uncontrollably. He walked away and stood for a moment at the door with Mother Paul at his side. They waved to me and the nurse tried to get me to wave back, but I couldn’t. The heavy doors closed behind them, I shouted after them a last time not to leave me. They did, and though I couldn’t have known it at the time and, more importantly, though I was still legally in the nuns’ care for the next seven years, I was never to see either of them again nor was I to return to St Michael’s School.

A nurse carried me into a ward of about twenty beds. A nun followed dressed in a white habit of the same design as the black ones I had become so used to at St Michael’s. In the brightly lit ward I noticed a smell of disinfectant and the chesty coughing of old men, most of whom were
watching me curiously. I stood beside my bed waiting for the nurse to get screens so that she could undress me. The castors of the screens made a rattling sound as they were wheeled across the wooden floor. There was a metallic tapping as one section of the tubular steel frame hit against the next. The nun looked crossly at the nurse and said something to her which I could not quite hear. With my view of the ward blocked by the floral-patterned screens I got undressed and, with help from the nurse, got into a new pair of pyjamas Mother Paul had bought specifically because I was going into hospital. Once I was in bed the screens were taken away and the bedcovers tightly tucked in. The coughing of old men surrounded me like a besieging army.

After the nurse left I sat up and looked around the ward. Some of the old men slept with their mouths open and snored heavily, others were busy reading their newspapers and smoking cigarettes or pipes. As they smoked, they coughed and spat into stainless steel mugs on top of their bedside lockers, oblivious to the sickening effect it was having on me.

Meals were being served by three girls in deep pink striped uniforms with white starched caps. They pushed trollies laden with trays each of which had a cup and saucer, a plate and an egg cup. In a rotation system they went around the beds, the first pouring tea, the second bringing milk and sugar and the third carrying buttered bread and a boiled egg. Only by watching the other patients did I know how to manage the egg because I never had one from the shell before.

After the meal one of the nurses went around and asked the patients whether they wanted a bedpan or a bottle. The ones who needed bedpans quickly had their beds screened off while those who wanted a bottle were handed stainless steel receptacles that looked like wine jugs I had seen in a picture bible. I had no idea how to use a bed bottle and
when I was offered one I refused, though I did want to go to the toilet. The air filled with the stench of bowel movements and strong urine and took a long time to clear.

As the patients were beginning to settle down for the night and the ward lights had been switched off, I heard the low murmur of a male voice. A doctor stood at the end of my bed, his white coat open and a stethoscope hanging from his neck.

‘Is this the boy?’ he asked the nurse.

‘Yes, doctor,’ she answered.

He asked that screens be brought to the bed as he held my wrist to take my pulse, glancing occasionally at his watch until he was satisfied that sufficient time had elapsed, before letting go my hand and moving to the end of my bed to write something on a chart that hung there.

Without warning he threw back the bedcovers and, with the assistance of the nurse, removed my pyjamas so that I was completely naked. I was cold, embarrassed and very nervous as his hands probed various parts of my body in search of any area that was sore. He first tapped my chest with his fingers asking me to say ‘ninety-nine’. I felt stupid when he asked me to continue repeating this as he tapped on my back. Through his stethoscope he listened to my chest and back, asking me to take deep breaths, hold them and let them out slowly. Next he checked all my reflex points, never speaking as each of my limbs jumped involuntarily at the very light impact of his triangular rubber hammer. He pressed the glands around my throat and under my arms enquiring if I was feeling any soreness, then checked between my legs for swelling which would indicate the presence of infection. He rotated each of my feet and, asking me to relax, moved them up and down, before holding them firmly and asking me to push against him. After each check, he wrote on my chart.

‘Do you feel sore anywhere?’ he asked.

‘Just a little bit here,’ I said, pointing to my stomach.

As soon as his hand pressed on my abdomen I squirmed in discomfort.

‘Have you been to the toilet lately?’ he asked.

‘Before I left St Michael’s,’ I answered.

He cast his eyes upward and asked the nurse to bring a bottle to me before leaving. I looked down on my nakedness and at the screens surrounding me and wished I could have been polishing boots in the Industrial School.

I was crying when the screen squeaked open and the nurse returned, carrying a stainless steel bottle covered with a cloth.

‘I want you to use this for me,’ she said and handed me the bottle. I looked from her to it and wondered what I was supposed to do.

‘Have you ever used one of these before?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I answered.

‘Put it down between your legs and pass water into it.’

When I did get to put the bottle between my bare legs it was freezing cold. I shivered and though I managed to get my penis into it, I could not relax enough to use it. When she realized nothing was happening, the nurse became impatient and raised her voice slightly.

‘Concentrate hard on what you are supposed to be doing,’ she said.

Eventually I began to urinate, at first only in a trickle but then more forcefully as I relaxed. My penis slipped from the bottle and soaked the bed despite my own best efforts to control it. She grabbed it and stuck it quickly back into the bottle, annoyed that she would have to change the sheets and, as she left to get dry ones, told me to put my pyjamas back on.

She remade the bed and tucked me in tightly suggesting
that I get off to sleep after my long journey. ‘You’ll be feeling much better in the morning,’ she said as she took away the screens. She noticed I was crying and had taken my arms out from under the covers to cross them on my chest.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.