It’s difficult to think of many silver linings to the current ED overcrowding crisis, but Dr Garrett FitzGerald retells the tale of one elderly couple who contracted a multi-drug resistant love bug during their regular ‘dates’ in the local casualty department.
Julia’s story is by no means unusual these days, yet possibly a window into the essence of modern Irish life. Widowed for 12 years following the overdue dispatch of her partner’s well-pickled yellow body to the cold clay in Glasnevin, she had settled into a life of undying optimism of regaining her long-lost freedom.
Behind her now stretched the endless years of the trials, sufferings, weepings, gnashings and torments of the marital and maternal states. Gone at last from the family home out into this world of wonders were her five fine sturdy illiterate and useless sons, most of them now serving sentences for anger-related episodes.
One of her boyos had been hanged on a builder’s crane in Mesopotamia for western behaviour, following which she was persuaded to co-believe along with her neighbours that no great harm had been done.
Her daughter, she estimated, had to date given birth to six children by nine fathers. Some of the children sported treble-barrel surnames and all shared their first name — Miley.
Love studies
True love, the peer-reviewed amatory literature asserts, is hard to find, but Julia was not to be thwarted in her efforts. Her motto, often nocturnally expressed sotto voce to her two-bar electric fire, was taken from a formerly glorious sporting team; “to the brave and the faithful nothing is impossible”.
Possessed of a Free Travel Pass, she regularly frequented Sunday afternoon tea dances in hotels in dowdy towns in Kildare and Meath, making sure to avoid potential partners who gave off the smell of drink, were farmers, ex-priests or wore bicycle clips.
She was very close, she felt, to a good match on one occasion only, during her fourth year of searching. Her potential beau had a twinkle in the eye, a mannerly demeanour and a great but respectful sense of humour. He boasted that he could tell not just the temperature of the water but the depth of the River Liffey while standing naked on Butt’s Bridge with his eyes closed. He then spoiled the romance for her by pulling from his Sunday wellingtons two flat half bottles of Smirnoff.
Trolley nights
Thus almost ended her love crusade. She withdrew from the social scene as her health problems escalated in parallel with her consumption of Major cigarettes. On many occasions she was whisked by ambulance to various emergency departments in the capital city.
She hated Beaumont where, on the latest count, she had accumulated 234 trolley nights. The medical treatment, she felt, was reasonably good but the clientele was generally transient, with the result that she got to meet very few regulars.
The Mater was somewhat better in that regard and she spent many a night on trolleys contagious to those of men who were frequent over-weekers.
In a year or two she was on good terms with a lot of the Tallaght constituency and had many the good night on gurneys head-to-toe with the local acute and sub-acute clientage. Occasional dates emanated from these two- and three-night co-habitations but there were flaws, ranging from leakage to barking at every turn. Sometimes a blossoming of an ED hope was interrupted by the sudden demise or cruel admission of her prospect. One real louser for whom she had initial high hopes fecked her pillow during a mutual hypoxaemic episode.
Lourdes ED miracle
Yet, she stuck it out. The silver lining, which adorns fewer clouds than the experts would have one believe, manifested itself at last in Drogheda. On a will-writing trip to her sister in Duleek, she was caught for breath, anointed, and conveyed unknowingly to the Lourdes ED. Coming-to about two days later in a corridor, her eyes met his in the head-to-head opisthotonic position.
It was love at first bloodshot gander. The hiss from the oxygen was to her like the sixth symphony, encompassing, ethereal and eternal. The vibrations between them exceeded all the legendary competencies of the dorsolateral funiculi.
As the unexpected sometimes arrives at the least welcome moment, she was admitted after the next full moon and Tom made it to a different ward at the same time. Before they left the ED, they pledged that they would meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.
Some sunny day soon afterwards, their paths crossed again in the same corridor and coincidentally on the same trolleys. They had a few wild days and nights before being cruelly separated again. But, true love’s path was not to be denied — they met over and over again in ‘blue heaven’, as Julia liked to think of it, making light of Tom’s — and her own — cyanosis.
Unfortunately, they were torn apart by her early discharge after only three days. They held on to Tom. The couple parted reluctantly.
“Don’t worry, my love. I’ll always be here for you,” said Tom.
Most of the time, he was. They were anointed and married in the corridor on the third day of their sixth next visit.
A tandem trolley was commissioned by the HSE only last month.