By Patrick Taylor 

"Old men forget." For the life of me, I cannot remember the originator of that quotation, but I can recall my first meeting with Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly — classical scholar, bagpiper, poacher, souse and foul-mouthed country GP — as if it had been yesterday.

Parenthetically, I also do know that loss of short-term memory and clarity of long-term recall characterize dementia, but with regards to dumuntia — I reckon if I can still spell, it I ain’t got it. 

Nor had Dr. Fingal Flahertie ‘O’. When I met him, and in subsequent years when I returned to Ulster to visit him, his cortical processes would have made the workings of a Pentium chip look like the slow grinding of an unwound grandfather clock.

He coupled his mental acuity with an unshakable belief that actions spoke louder than words — which was often just as well. While his actions could be precipitate his words, when riled, could be as cutting as the obsidian knives so beloved by the ancient Aztecs for slicing the hearts out of living victims. Add to that his propensity for salting his vituperations with a lexicon of blasphemy that would have made a sailor blush and you can understand why Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly was as much a force to be reckoned with as a supercharged bulldozer. 

And yet, his patients loved him, and I suppose in time, so did I — although, when I first met him, love at first sight seemed about as likely as the survival of a woodlouse under the front cylinder of a steamroller.

I had just graduated from the Queen’s University of Belfast. The ink on my diploma where the dean, one Hippocrates of Cos, had made his mark had barely had time to dry. 

I was young, idealistic, determined to carry healing to darkest Ulster, wet behind the ears, sanctimonious — in short an inexperienced, opinionated pain in the arse. I had more rough edges than a piece of pre-Cambrian rock. O’Reilly was responsible for smoothing the more jagged bits to something that more closely resembled a piece of emery paper. 

I will forever be in his debt — but had I followed my instincts when we first met I would have fled from his village of Ballybucklebo with the single mindedness of the Israelites on their package trip out of Egypt. 

I had driven down from Belfast, parked my elderly Volkswagen and walked along a gravel path flanked by rose bushes to the front door of an imposing three-story, granite block house. I stood on the front door step, brand new black bag clutched in one hand and read the brass plate affixed to the doorframe.

"Doctor F.F. O’Reilly. MB. BCh., BAO., Physician and Surgeon". Two bell pushes resided in their recesses in the plate. One was labeled, "Day Bell," the other, "Night Bell." Above the plate, the mouthpiece of a speaking tube glistened dully in the summer sunlight. As I later learned, O’Reilly had been in practice since before the telephone had reached Ballybucklebo. Patients needing to consult the great man were expected to whisper their complaints along the tube as Pyramis and Thisbe spoke to each other through the crack in the wall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

I was wondering whether to apply my own mouth to the orifice when the front door opened, much as I imagine the jaws of hell gape for an unregenerate sinner. I took a step backwards. 

A large man, a man who stood about six foot thirteen and had the shoulders of Atlas, stood on the front steps. His face was as wrinkled as a dried out chamois leather, his cheeks florid and his nose tip an alabaster white. His right hand grasped the coat collar and his left the seat of a pair of moleskin trousers on a much smaller man. 

I noticed that the grabee’s left foot was bare and not altogether clean. The victim wriggled and whimpered, "Ah, Jesus, no, Dr.…" 

Whatever the rest of his sentiments might have been were cut off by a high-pitched keening as he was hurled bodily into one of the rose bushes.

The ogre bent, picked up a shoe and a sock and hurled the footwear after the now crash-landed chap. I will never forget Dr. O’Reilly’s words, delivered in a voice that would have made old Stentor sound like a sufferer from laryngitis.

"Next time, Donal Donnelly, next time you want me to look at a sore ankle…wash your bloody feet."

He spun on me. "Who are you and what the hell do you want?"

Immediate transportation to a place of sanctuary seemed like a good idea but I was so numbed all I could think of was to hold my black bag in front of me. I suppose I thought it might have offered some protection. The captain of HMS Hood probably felt the same way about his ship’s armor plating—before the Bismark let go.

"I said," he roared, "what the hell do you want?" As he spoke he advanced towards me.

"Doctor O’Reilly?"

"No. John—bloody--Wayne."

I wondered why I didn’t simply mutter, "My mistake," and make tracks. Instead I swallowed, took my black bag and my courage in both hands and said, "I’m Taylor. Your locum."

He guffawed. "Then why didn’t you say so?"

Because I had been feeling like a rabbit confronted by a boa constrictor. Because it wasn’t the cat that had got my tongue it was a pride of rabid lions. Because…

"Never mind," he said, "come on in."

He handshake would have done justice to a gravel crusher. Before turning to go into the house, he pointed an admonitory finger at the heap of human wreckage that still struggled to disentangle itself from a mass of Floribunda.

"Go on home now, Donal, do what I said." Dr. O’Reilly consulted his watch. "Surgery hours are over but if you’re back within an hour I’ll wait for you and Dr…what did you say your name was?"

"Taylor."

"Dr. Taylor and I’ll have a look at your hind leg."

He did not wait for a reply but turned and went in. I followed, closing the door behind me.

He stood in a spacious hall, beaming from ear to ear, the tip of his nose now the color of the rest of his face.

"Let that be your first lesson, Taylor. If you want to succeed in practice, never…never, never, never let the customers get the upper hand." 
 
 
 

Now Canadian-once-Ulsterman Patrick Taylor can be reached at editere@shaw.ca. For years a physician, Taylor has been also writing for more than two decades.