The God Squad (21 page)

The fears I held were numbed by drugs, and when the trolley arrived to take me from the ward, I was too doped to be frightened. Two men dressed in light green cotton suits, wearing white cotton caps, and masks over their mouths, lifted me onto the trolley and pushed it to the lift. I heard the gates open and felt the wheels roll across the gap between the floor and the lift. I kept my eyes fixed on the ceiling as I was being wheeled to the operating room.

By the time I reached the theatre, the numbing effect of the drugs had given way to fear. I was alert, frightened and acutely aware of what was happening and being said. By contrast with the corridors outside, the theatre was brightly lit and smelt heavily of disinfectant and ether.

The consultant who was to perform the biopsy came to the side of the trolley and checked my pulse.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘All right,’ I said, my voice trembling.

‘There is nothing to worry about. We’ll be finished before we get started.’ He laughed.

The intensity of the bright circular light overhead caused me to squint. Doctors and nurses gathered, one indistinguishable from the other, except by their voices, caps
covering their heads and masks hiding their faces. A green cloth was draped over my face, reducing the blinding light to a dull shadow.

‘Are you all right under there?’ the cheerful voice of Professor Casey asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘You’re just going to feel a small injection on your thigh and that will be all. You can sing a song if you like.’

I cried as the injection was given and when I tried to reach my thigh with my hand it was pushed away.

‘That’s it now,’ Professor Casey said, ‘no more needles, and just another few minutes then we’re finished.’

There was a pause while they waited for the local anaesthetic to take effect before a voice asked if I could feel my thigh being pinched.

‘No,’ I answered.

Someone gripped my hand firmly as I perspired beneath the cloths that covered my body. I winced as the scalpel made its incision and though I couldn’t feel the actual cut being made, I felt a dull pain as my skin was opened.

‘That hurts,’ I said.

The consultant asked that another injection be given immediately. Nurses and some of the students were encouraging me to sing.

‘A person can hardly be expected to sing with a towel over his face,’ Professor Casey said.

The cloth was moved just enough to enable me to see directly over my head, it still covered my nose and mouth. I wonder how many people have actually sung ‘Kelly the Boy from Killane’ while undergoing surgery to the great amusement of all present?

When he was finished Professor Casey held up a glass tube containing my skin steeped in a liquid. ‘That’s what all the fuss was about,’ he said, ‘and you’re still alive.’

I felt greatly relieved as covers were taken away and I was allowed to sit up and look at my leg. It was covered with a strip of plaster about four inches long and two wide. The skin around the plaster was daubed in a pink disinfectant.

‘Will I have to come down here again?’ I asked.

‘Do you want to?’

‘No,’ I laughed nervously.

‘In that case I won’t ask you to,’ the consultant said.

On the way back to the ward, I was happy that the doctors and nurses had kept their word. I had not been put to sleep as I feared and began to feel that I could trust them. When I was put back into my own bed I noticed the one beside it was empty.

Being in a ward with a lot of old men had its advantages especially when it came to disposing of fruit or sweets they had been given but didn’t want. My bedside locker was a depository for all sorts of things, much of which I never ate. Once a week when the nurses cleaned out the lockers there was always rotting fruit in mine which had to be dumped. I’d remember the times I had prayed for an apple or an orange. Now I had more than I could manage to eat. The only time I refused it was when it was offered to me by the relatives of someone who had died. I was afraid to eat that.

In the evenings I was allowed out of bed for an hour. I had pyjamas that were far too big for me and wore a dressing gown more suited to a small man than a young child. One man I particularly liked was in his early thirties, dark haired, quiet, and an avid reader. He kept a chess board, with pieces in place on top of his locker. I was often amused as he played games against himself, moving the white and black pieces in turn. To me, he was a curious figure who never went to communion or confession, even before he was being taken to the theatre. When I got to
know him better and he was teaching me how to play chess I asked him why.

‘I’m a left footer,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

He laughed and at first seemed reluctant to tell me, but I persisted.

‘I’m a Protestant,’ he said casually.

I was shocked and the harder I tried to conceal it the more obvious it became. I remembered everything I had been told about Protestants not getting to heaven and never being able to see God. I even felt it was a sin to be talking to him. Yet I liked him and he was the person in the ward nearest my own age. I told him about the nun who turned off the radio in the Cork hospital because the patients were listening to a Protestant service.

‘You wouldn’t want to take much notice of the nuns,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I asked innocently.

‘Because sometimes they don’t exactly tell the truth.’

I couldn’t imagine a nun telling lies and I told him so.

‘What about a game of chess?’ he suggested to get off the subject.

After just a few moves I asked him if he believed in the Blessed Virgin.

‘What’s the first rule of chess?’ he asked and, when I didn’t reply, told me.

‘Silence. That’s the first rule.’

I remained silent and copied each of the moves he made until the board became congested and he began to pick off my pieces and place them to one side. He suggested that if I really wanted to win, I should start making my own moves. Still utterly obsessed with the fact that this man was a Protestant I asked him if he was going to heaven or hell when he died.

‘Haven’t a clue and I don’t care really.’

‘Why don’t you believe in the Blessed Virgin?’ I asked.

‘Because virgins can’t have babies.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a long story,’ he said, ‘and when you get older you’ll understand.’

My curiosity was aroused and I persisted in trying to get him to answer. He refused and, when I asked why, just said, ‘Because it’s time for you to go back to bed.’

I waited for the nurse to come with my medication and when she did, I was given two and a half tablets, instead of the usual two. I recognized the phenobarbitone, but not the white half-tablet.

‘I usually only get two,’ I said.

‘Well you’re getting two and a half now,’ she replied.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because the doctor said so.’

‘What’s the half one?’ I asked curiously and she replied that patients were not supposed to know the names of the drugs they were being given. She was becoming agitated by my constant questioning but eventually told me, before warning me to keep my mouth shut or she would get into trouble.

‘What are they for?’ I asked.

‘What are they for? They’re to make you better of course. Now will you for God’s sake stop asking questions. Just lie down and go to sleep before I get mad.’ As I was going to sleep, I repeated the name of my new drug to myself. I never forgot it.

The first time I actually remember celebrating Christmas was in St Patrick’s Ward. I was nine years of age. In the days leading up to it many of the patients were allowed home – some for good, others for a few days. The nurses who were artistic painted seasonal pictures on the large windows of
the ward and, in one corner, erected a tree which they spent hours adorning with tinsel and crepe paper streamers. For a few nights before Christmas groups of them, in uniform and capes, visited the wards singing Christmas carols.

The expected arrival of Santa Claus during the night was a new experience to me which I found difficult to believe. It was not that I had ever questioned his existence – I simply hadn’t heard of him, or if I had, I couldn’t remember. The patients and nurses kept reminding me to get to sleep early or otherwise I would get nothing. Every time I was asked what I hoped Santa Claus would leave for me, I answered, ‘An electric train’.

There was little doubt that I was the main focus of attention. No visitor came to see any of the patients without calling to my bed and giving me a bag full of fruit or sweets.

On Christmas Eve I hung a pair of socks on the end of my bed. One of the men gave them to me because they were big and ‘Santie would fit a lot more stuff into them’. I was told to clean out my locker, ‘just in case he might want to put a few things in there too’. In the night, I heard the sound of shuffling and whispers. Opening my eyelids slightly I saw five or six men and a couple of nurses filling my socks. I pretended to be asleep and, all the time they were there, I never moved.

I woke early next morning and went to the end of my bed to see what had been left there. I tore open a parcel wrapped in colourful paper as patients and staff watched, revelling in my excitement, and pretending the whole business was a mystery to them. Inside I discovered a variety of things: jigsaw puzzles, dinky cars, a train engine with a key sticking out of its side and some lengths of track which, when joined together, formed a circle. I delighted in watching the train go round and round.

‘Try the locker,’ one of the patients said.

I opened its metal door and an avalanche tumbled onto the floor. Apples, oranges, rolls of sweets and boxes of Smarties. There were boxes wrapped in cellophane paper containing cakes sprinkled with fine white sugar. Someone picked up the items that fell and put them on my bed, which by now was taking on the appearance of a shop counter.

On Christmas Day there was no restriction on visiting. Children were brought to see the parent or uncle they had not seen for months. There were great scenes of emotion and joy as a father clasped his sons and daughters to him and wept. They all brought presents and some even had things for me, colouring books and paints, packets of plastic soldiers and books. I noticed a number of patients sharing a bottle of whiskey between them and as they drank they became more and more high-spirited, singing Christmas songs and pursuing fleeing good-humoured nurses who passed. One man who managed to get his arm around a nurse’s waist sang at the top of his voice, ‘Give us a kiss for Christmas’, and attempted to place his lips on hers, but she turned her head and offered her cheek instead. He protested that it was a ‘mean round’.

‘Make the best of it,’ she said. ‘It’s all you’re going to get.’

As he continued to drink, he became more daring in his approaches to the nurses.

‘What about you?’ he asked another. ‘Any chance of a feel?’

She became angry and reminded him of my presence, and when he said I would have to learn sometime she stormed out of the ward.

‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ he shouted after her, ‘and anyway, it’s Christmas.’ But she ignored him. For a time there was an uneasy silence and I heard some of the men say he had
‘gone a bit too far’. He blamed the whiskey. Later in the morning when the nurse returned to the ward, he called her over, saying that he wanted to apologize but she ignored him again. He sat on his bed in misery, the Christmas presents from his family unopened around him.

At about half past twelve that afternoon, after I had been given my midday dose of tablets, a nurse appeared carrying a bundle of new clothes and told me I was being taken out for the day.

‘Where am I going?’ I asked.

‘Professor Casey wants you to go to his house for Christmas dinner and to play with his children,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Well you’re going anyway, you wouldn’t want to insult him after he buying you all these new clothes.’

Realizing I didn’t have any choice I allowed her to dress me in a new pair of short trousers, a white shirt and blue jumper. There was also a pair of white socks and a new pair of black shoes.

When she was putting on the socks the nurse noticed that my big toe was bent, cramped down towards the sole of the foot.

She asked me to straighten it but I couldn’t, and I told her so. Because of its position it was extremely difficult to get
the shoe on. I used to wait until it released and then quickly get the nurse to push it on.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, admiring my clothes and savouring their smell of newness. I walked across the ward amazed at how light my feet felt, having been so used to walking with heavy boots. Suddenly, my back arched and I couldn’t move – then, after perhaps thirty seconds or so, it released like a spring uncoiling. I was frightened by this involuntary movement, and as I began to worry about it, it happened a second time. I didn’t want the nurses to see but one did and rushed towards me. She tried to push me upright but that made matters worse, and eventually she had to carry me back to bed, where she told me to lie down and take it easy for a few minutes. Another nurse joined her as my back relaxed.