Fintan Brady sits groomed and formal in the conservative clothes of his profession, waiting for the patient charts. He glances at the heading on the top sheet of his colleague’s pile of papers, “47% of those who disclosed sexual violence to researchers had never told anyone else before.” Mary Flaherty, the new partner, is training in Forensic Examination to assess rape victims. A noble cause, but not for him. He moves the stack of papers to the window so his desk is clear as the charts arrive.
Fintan has just turned forty. He has an athletic build, and a boyish face with sombre brown eyes that lend him a certain gravitas. The bar of his new glasses runs horizontally covering the line of his eyebrows and giving him a blank expression. As he flicks through the charts he wonders what the nature of these interactions will be. Many consultations are purely about the body part. Others have little or nothing to do with it. People use many levers to control each other. Sometimes they like to recruit a professional in that game. Husband and wife or parent and child, sometimes bring in their illness or injury as a toy to share, for you to witness, as they coyly play out their like or dislike of each other.
A movement in the car park catches his eye. A woman in a nurse’s uniform gets out of her car slowly. His uncle used to swear that he could diagnose patients by observing them walk to the surgery door. Fintan sees the first two patients. Next up is Chris Lyons, with her son Peadar’s chart attached. He pictures her, a sprightly no-nonsense paediatric nurse, married to an army man. He presses the green button to indicate that he is free and looks at the wet sycamore leaves pressing against the window like children’s faces peering in. It’s so strange to share a bed with Aoife and not touch. The woman he married has become a stranger. When did that happen?
A soft knock on the door and Chris walks in. She has put on weight since he last saw her.
‘Hello, Dr Fintan,’
‘Hello, Chris, take a seat. So what can I do for you?’
‘I saw Caroline for my well-woman check and she asked me to see you about my blood pressure.’
Fintan flicks through her chart.
‘I see. It’s up despite the medication. Let me just check it again.’
Chris rolls up her sleeve and he wraps the cuff around her arm. She reads the result before he does.
‘150 over 100. That’s higher than with the practice nurse.’
Fintan makes a note and reads the previous entries then sits back in his chair and looks at her.
‘How are things at home?’
Chris smiles the uncomfortable smile of those who hate to show weakness.
‘Not great really. But that’s the nature of it.’
Fintan resists the urge to speak. He knows his eyes show more compassion than any words. He waits.
‘Well, you know Cathal and I split up last June. He moved back to the barracks and Peadar is with me. It’s for the best but it’s still awful. Awful no matter what way you manage it.’
Fintan lets the silence sit again and then speaks when it is clear she isn’t going to.
‘How are you sleeping?’
‘Oh, not bad really. I’m grand until a few minutes after waking up when I realise the kind of day I have ahead of me.’
‘You’re working?’
‘Yes, thank God, work is therapy. I can lose myself in it, distract myself with the sick babies and their families. It should make me feel lucky. But it doesn’t.’
‘Are you getting any time to yourself?’
‘Yeah, I decided to take Fridays off. I’m back painting in the tech every week, so that’s good.’
‘How is Peader coping?’
Chris’s eyes fill with tears and she looks at the ceiling and out the window waiting to collect herself before she speaks.
‘He’s so angry it breaks my heart. I can’t win with him.’
‘What year is he in now?’
‘Transition year. I can’t get him out of bed in the mornings. Can’t get him to do anything for me.’
‘How is he with Cathal?’
Chris’s face hardens.
‘Worse,’ she says.
Silence resumes again.
‘Is he seeing the school counsellor or anyone else?’
‘No. He refuses.’
Something has been lost. He doesn’t know what. He back-peddles.
‘How about sports? What’s he into? Is he hurling?’
Chris flushes and her eyes scan the walls as if for an escape. She stares at him with an inscrutable look then speaks in a deadpan voice.
‘Peadar’s problem isn’t just the separation. Would that it were, we could find a way through it. You’ve heard the rumours I’m sure about Packy, the hurling coach?’
Fintan feels the hair lift on the back of his neck. He wants to throw up. He says nothing and concentrates on not changing his facial expression.
‘Well, they’re true, it seems. God help us all, they’re true. He was only nine. I trusted him. You don’t expect anything like this will ever happen to you or anyone belonging to you. That slime ball brother-in-law. He dropped him home after training. No big deal. I can’t describe the things he did to him and what he had him do. I can’t.’ Chris puts her hands over her mouth and starts crying.
Fintan sits rigid in his seat, staring. He smells that mixture of earth and sweat and remembers the raindrops coalescing on the steamed up windscreen.
‘How long?’ he says.
‘What?’ she says looking surprised.
‘How long did he abuse him?’
‘All that summer. Peadar wouldn’t go back hurling after that. Remember his back pain?’
Fintan opens Peadar’s chart and reads “2001, non-specific back pain, normal examination, normal x-rays, mother anxious, boy being bullied at school? Note given to stay off sports.”
‘How did you find out?’
‘Cathal brought Peadar camping last year. Part of cubs, with a group of lads. They had a fight. Something about undressing in front of others. Cathal, tough guy, teased Peadar in front of the others about being shy about his body. Peadar lost the head. “At least I’m not a fucking pervert like your sick bastard brother!” he said. They wouldn’t speak to each other afterwards, haven’t since. Peadar told me the whole thing. It just poured out of him like pus from an abscess. He cried and cried. How could anyone do such things to a child? And he kept it in for 6 years, festering away. I’ll never forgive myself for letting this happen.’
Fintan needs to wrap this up. The feeling of wet polyester cold against his chest. The callused hand on the back of his neck.
‘Cathal didn’t believe him.’
‘That’s right,’ says Chris, looking surprised. ‘Imagine. He sided with his brother over his own child. Can you believe that? Well, that was it for me. I could put up with a lot I shouldn’t have but not that. The shutters came down. But of course just our luck, Packy is two years dead now. So no confrontation or admission of guilt is possible.’
The telephone rings, the receptionist reminds him that the next three patients are waiting. Fintan’s chest remembers the feel of the held-back hug Aoife gave him that morning as she left with the baby.
‘Dr Fintan, I’ve taken up too much of your time. I’m sorry. You’ve been so understanding.’
‘Come back next month Chris, take this script for your medication and we’ll see how you’re doing then. Mind yourself.’
At lunchtime Fintan leaves the surgery, buys a sandwich and a coffee and sits on a bench at the docks. A crane is loading a mountain of rusting metal from the dockside onto a ship. A few milliseconds of time delay occurs between the release of the scrap metal onto the pile by the giant claw and the clunking sound it makes as it lands and settles. His hand shakes as he brings the Styrofoam cup to his lips.
He puts his 9-year-old self in the patient seat to quiz him. Why didn’t he, an intelligent boy with educated parents, tell anyone? Because grown-ups are strange people. They say one thing and mean another . Packy was nice in his words and encouraging on the pitch. He was a famous hurler and popular with the grown-ups. There was no match between his words, his hands and his thing. He got cross if you moved or didn’t do what his hands showed you. He got mean and scary. Who would believe a small boy if he tried to describe those things? He had tried to talk about it once with his mother when he was fifteen.
‘Ah, Packy’d never do anything like that. Sure you never saw him doing anything out of the way now, did you?’
Just 47% of the anonymous responders who disclosed being victims of sexual violence to researchers by telephone had never told anyone before. That was low. He would have expected 90% to have kept their secret safe.
Fintan finishes his coffee and throws his uneaten sandwich to a bunch of seagulls. The largest gull, the size of a cat, beats away the others and rips the sandwich apart, shaking its head from side to side, spilling ham, coleslaw and beetroot all over the limestone pier.
