Read Online An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor - Free Book Online

stuck his head out of his doghouse. "I'm not going shooting," O'Reilly said.
    'Umph," said Arthur, eyeing Barry's trouser leg. The dog must have decided that love at this hour was too much trouble. He retreated into his kennel, muttering something in Labradorese.
    Barry climbed into the Rover. "What time is it?"
    "Half one," said O'Reilly, backing into the lane.
    Barry yawned.
    "Mrs. Fotheringham called. Says her husband's sick, but I doubt it." He headed for the road. "Major Basil Fotheringham's had every illness known to man, and a few that only the Martians have dreamed of. He always takes a turn for the worse after midnight, and as far as I can tell, he's fit as a bloody flea. It's all in his mind." He turned left at the traffic light.
    "So why are we going out into the Ballybucklebo Hills at this hour of the morning?"
    "Do you know about the houseman and the surgeon?" O'Reilly asked, turning the car's lights to full beam.
    "No."
    "Surgeon comes in to make rounds in the morning. 'How is every one?' says he. 'Grand,' says the houseman, 'except the one you were certain was neurotic, sir.' 'Oh,' says the great man, 'gone home has he?' 'Not exactly, sir. He died last night.' Once in a while even the worst bloody malingerer does actually get sick." 
    "Point taken."
    "Good. Now be quiet. It's not far, but I've to remember how to get there."
    Barry sat back and watched the yellow headlights probe the blackness ahead. Now that Ballybucklebo lay behind, the dark enveloped them as tightly as a shroud. He peered up and saw the Summer Triangle: Altair, Vega, and Deneb high in the northwest, each star set in a jet sky, backlit by the silver smudge of the Milky Way. His dad had been a keen amateur astronomer, probably because he'd been a navigating officer in the war. He'd taught Barry about the constellations.
    Barry's dad and mum would be seeing different stars now, he thought. The Southern Cross would sparkle over their heads. Their last letter from Melbourne, where his dad was on a two-year contract as a consulting engineer, had been full of their enthusiasm for Australia, and had hinted that there were all kinds of opportunities for doctors there. Barry watched a meteor blaze through Orion, and knew he was quite at home with the northern stars.  The car braked in a driveway, and Barry came back to earth. "When we get in there I want you to agree with everything I say, understand?" said O'Reilly. 
    Barry hesitated. "But doctors don't always agree. Sometimes a second opinion--"
    "Humour me, son."
    "Humour you?" 
    "Just open the gate."
    Barry climbed out and opened a gate, waited for O'Reilly to drive through, closed the gate, and crunched along a gravel driveway to a two-storey house. An imitation coach lamp burned in the  redbrick porch. "Agree with everything I say. Humour me." What if O'Reilly made a mistake? Barry looked ahead. There O'Reilly stood, dark against the light from an open door, talking to a woman wearing a dressing gown.
    "Mrs. Fotheringham, my assistant, Doctor Laverty," he said when Barry arrived.
    "How do you do?" she said, in a poor imitation of the accent of an English landed lady. "So good of you both to come. Poor Basil's not well. Not well at all. Not at all." Barry heard the harsh tones of Ulster beneath her affected gentility. That, he thought, is what I'd call the buttermilk coming through the cream. He followed as she led them through a hall, expensively wallpapered and hung with framed prints of hunting scenes, up a deeply carpeted staircase, and into a large bedroom. Prawn pink velvet curtains covered the window and clashed with the pale orange tulle drapings of a four-poster bed. 'The doctors have come, dear," Mrs. Fotheringham said, as she stepped up to the bed and smoothed the brow of the man who lay there.
    Major Fotheringham sagged against his pillows and made a mewling noise. Barry looked for any obvious evidence of fever or distress, but no sweat was visible on the patient's high forehead;