Heart and Soul

FICTION

Light a Penny Candle

Echoes

London Transports

The Lilac Bus

Firefly Summer

Silver Wedding

Circle of Friends

The Copper Beech

The Glass Lake

This Year It Will Be Different

Evening Class

The Return Journey

Tara Road

Scarlet Feather

Quentins

Nights of Rain and Stars

Whitethorn Woods

NONFICTION

Aches and Pains

In memory of my dear younger sister Renie.
And with great love and thanks to Gordon, who makes
the bad times bearable and the good times magical.

Some projects take forever to get off the ground.

One of these was the disused storage depot that was owned by St. Brigid's Hospital. It was an unattractive cluster of warehouses around a yard. Once it had held supplies for the hospital, but it was in an awkward place, and new traffic regulations meant that it was a long and cumbersome journey through the Dublin streets to get from one place to the other.

It was a part of Dublin that still had its old workers’ cottages, and factories that had been transformed into apartment blocks. This part of the city was “going up,” as the property people described it; soon speculators would look at the storage depot and make St. Brigid's an offer for it, the kind of offer they could not refuse.

That's what Frank Ennis wanted. He thought of himself as the financial brains behind St. Brigid's, and an offer was exactly what they needed. A large lump sum, a huge financial injection on his watch.

Frank Ennis could see it happening.

Of course, every year when the board of the hospital met, there was always some problem and distraction or other. Something that stopped Frank from getting this white elephant sold and investing the money in the hospital. One year there was the rheumatology lobby; they wanted a rheumatism clinic. There was a pulmonary
wing too, which wanted to set up a day center for chest patients. And the increasingly vocal heart faction, which claimed that there was sufficient evidence to prove that patients could be kept out of hospital, thus freeing up hospital beds, if they had someone to provide backup support. The cardiologists were like a dog with a bone: they wouldn't let it go.

Frank sighed as they faced yet another afternoon in the close, stuffy boardroom. The members were sitting around the table. Frank looked at them without great pleasure. There was the usual collection of people who might have sat on any hospital board. There was what he would describe as a plainclothes nun. St. Brigid's had once been run entirely by nuns; now there were only four of the sisters left. No new vocations. There were senior officials from the health authority; there were important businesspeople who had proved themselves in other walks of life. There was that good-tempered American philanthropist Chester Kovac, who had set up a private health center miles away down in the country.

The plainclothes nun would always open the window, and then the papers would fly around the table and someone would close it again. Frank had been through this many times. But on this occasion he felt that victory was in his corner. He had a written offer of a huge sum from a property developer for instant possession of the much-discussed and wasted land around the storage depot. This was money that would make everyone sit up and take notice.

Then would come the argument about how the money should be spent. Would it go to new state-of-the-art CAT scan machines? Or to making radical changes at the front of the hospital? Like many buildings of its time, which was the early twentieth century, the hospital had entirely unsuitable stone steps leading to the entrance hall. A ramp would be appropriate, or some more satisfactory way of getting into the hospital for the lame and frail.

There was always a need for more beds in women's surgical; there was always a call for isolation units. A lot of pressure had come from one section that wanted to be raised from high dependency to intensive care, and this would need money being spent.

Well, at least they would be able to reply to the property developer today accept his offer and stop wasting time on the various special interests who all wanted to enlarge their empires.

Coffee and biscuits were served, the agenda was distributed and the meeting began. But from the outset Frank knew that something was wrong.

The board members had been foolishly influenced by some statistic recently published that seemed to prove the Irish had more than their fair share of heart failure. Possibly connected with lifestyle and diet, with drinking and smoking undoubtedly playing their part in it. They were all discussing methods of giving heart patients more confidence. How great to be at the forefront of a battle against heart disease. A day clinic that would help patients to manage their own lives. Frank Ennis could have cursed the organization that had published these figures just days before his board meeting. For all he knew, it could even have been done deliberately—there was something very arrogant about those cardiologists at St. Brigid's. They thought they were omnipotent.

He looked for support to Chester Kovac, usually a voice of sanity in such situations. But he had read it wrong. Chester said that this was an imaginative idea and he would be happy if St. Brigid's were at the forefront of such a move. After all, the alternative was only money.

Frank fumed at this. It was easy for Chester to say something was
only
money; he had plenty of money himself. Certainly he was generous, but what did he know? He was a Polish American with an Irish grandfather—he was swayed by the last person he had spoken to.

Frank seethed with rage.

“It's not
only
money, Chester. It's
huge
money, going into St. Brigid's to improve it.”

“Last year you wanted to sell that land for it to be a car park,” Chester said.

“But this is a far better offer.” Frank was red in the face with the effort of it all.

“Well, we would have been foolish to accept your suggestion last year, Frank, seeing the way things turned out.” Chester was mild but firm.

“But I spent weeks raising this guy's offer—”

“And last year we all agreed that we didn't want a car park.”

“So this is
not
a car park. It's superior housing—of the highest specifications …” Frank said.

“Not what a hospital is necessarily about,” Chester Kovac said.

“If we're sitting on this piece of land we should use it,” said one of the captains of industry.

“We
are
using it! We are going to get a small fortune for it and invest that in the hospital!” Frank felt that he was talking to very slow learners.

The plainclothes nun spoke primly. “We
would
like something within the spirit of the original order who once ran the hospital.”

“Housing is hardly against the spirit of the order, is it?” Frank asked.

“Expensive housing of the highest specifications might not be what the good sisters wanted.” Chester spoke gently.

“The good sisters are all dead and gone! They died out!” Frank exploded.

Chester looked at the face of the plainclothes nun. She was very hurt by those words. He needed to be a peacemaker.

“What Mr. Ennis means is that the nuns’ work is completed here, their work is done. But they have left their legacy. This is a community that needs more health care and fewer expensive apartments which will each be host to two cars, thus clogging up the roads still further. What it needs is a good positive system set up, something that will go on helping people to make the most of their lives after the initial setback of cardiac failure. And to be very frank, when it comes to the vote, that's what I would most like to see and that's where I will place my choice.”

There was something dignified about the way he spoke.

Frank Ennis was crestfallen. The place would not be off their hands, as he had so confidently hoped this morning. Now it was back on the table. The cardiologists had won. There would be months and months of agreeing to costs and building work and furnishings and equipment. They would have to appoint a director and a staff. Frank sighed heavily. Why did these people not have any sense at all? They could have had so many of the items on their wish list if they had any understanding of how the world worked. Instead they were complicating everything.

He sat through the meeting, moving on automatically from item to item. Then it came to the vote for the change of use of the premises owned by St. Brigid's and known as the former storage depot. As he expected, it was unanimously agreed that a heart care clinic should be built there.

Frank suggested a feasibility study.

He was voted down immediately. They were not in favor of this—they would be another six years debating the issue. If they had agreed to do it, then they had agreed. It was feasible.

It would, however, need an Extraordinary General Meeting, once costs had been agreed upon, tenders received from builders, numbers of staff settled with cardiology.

They consulted their diaries and fixed the date.

Frank had wanted it in six months’ time. Chester Kovac said that surely a matter of a few weeks would be enough to get the submissions in. Builders must be so anxious to get work. The representative heart specialist said that cardiology in St. Brigid's would be so grateful, they would set out their requirements speedily.

“Requirements!” Frank Ennis snorted.

“And of course the post of director will have to be advertised,” the plainclothes nun said.

“Oh, yes, indeed. I suppose he's out there waiting in the wings for a nice easy number,” Frank muttered, still bitter in defeat.

“He or
she,”
the nun said firmly.

“God—I'd forgotten the women,” Frank said under his breath. He was a man who had often forgotten women. At the golf club he
was always outraged when there was a Ladies’ Day delaying his round. He had even forgotten to get married along the way. But that had all probably been for the best. “He or
she.
Of course,” he said aloud. “I am stuck in the old days, Sister.”

“Bad way to be, Mr. Ennis,” said the plainclothes nun as she opened the windows and let some fresh air into the room once more.