An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

hat from its box, lined them up on the floor—and stamped every one of them flat.
    Helen had quit, and the eczema that had been plaguing her for months had cleared up. Miss Moloney, rather than face the derision of the villagers, had made a diplomatic and prolonged visit to her sister, who lived in the village of Millisle on the Belfast Lough side of the Ards Peninsula. Now, Barry thought, she’s come back.
    He followed her into the familiar, thinly carpeted room with its examining couch, folding screens, and instrument cabinet along one green-painted wall. At least the Snellen eye-testing chart above a wall-mounted sphygmomanometer no longer hung crookedly. He’d straightened it a couple of months ago. If O’Reilly had noticed, he hadn’t commented.
    Above the old rolltop desk, Barry’s year-old 1963 diploma from Queen’s University, Belfast, signed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, its script clean and fresh, kept company with O’Reilly’s 1936 degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
    “Please have a seat.” He indicated one of the hard wooden chairs.
    Miss Moloney sat on the edge of the chair, back erect, hands primly clasped in her lap. Barry moved past her to take the swivel chair on casters. “Welcome back,” he said. “How was Millisle?”
    She sniffed. “Cold, damp, windy, and desolate.”
    “Well, it is winter, you know.”
    “How astute of you to notice, Doctor.”
    He cleared his throat. It would seem that the milk of human kindness was still curdled in Miss Moloney. The sooner he got this conversation on a professional level, the better. “So what seems to be the trouble?”
    “I’m very tired.”
    “I see. And anything else?”
    She shook her head.
    Not a lot to go on. Tiredness could simply be a reflection of not enough sleep, or overwork, unlikely in her case, or it could be a clue to almost any disorder in the entire medical textbook. Barry sat back. He steepled his fingers, just as he’d seen O’Reilly do a thousand times, and looked at her face.
    She was extraordinarily pale. “Hmm,” he said to himself, as he leant forward and took her hand in his. It felt cold and clammy. He held it palm down and looked at her neatly trimmed fingernails. They were a most peculiar shape. Each was concave, like the bowl of a shallow teaspoon; the technical term for this was
koilonychia
, and it was usually associated with iron-deficiency anaemia. Interesting.
    “Just look into the distance, please.” He used one thumb beneath each of her eyes to pull the lower lids down. The membrane that lined them, the conjunctiva, was transparent and allowed for inspection of the fine blood vessels beneath. There should be a healthy red colour, but in Miss Moloney’s case Barry saw a very pallid area. He now was sure she was anaemic. Simple laboratory tests would confirm it.
    He sat back. “I’m pretty sure, Miss Moloney, that you are suffering from thin blood.”
    “Oh, dear. Is that bad?” Her narrow eyebrows arched upward. Her lower lip trembled.
    The truth was that indeed it could be, if, for example, the anaemiawas a reflection of blood loss. Some of its causes could be very serious, although in women the most common cause was heavy periods. “How old are you, Miss Moloney?”
    She bridled. He knew that in some circles it was considered impolite for a gentleman to ask a lady her age, but heavens above, he was her doctor. “Miss Moloney?”
    “Fifty-one.”
    “I see. Thank you.” He pursed his lips. Time enough at the next visit to ask if she had experienced “the change of life.” He swivelled to the desk, made a note on her record, filled in a laboratory requisition form, and then spun back to face her. “Now, Miss Moloney. I don’t think you need worry about this,” he said, because he, her doctor, was quite able to be concerned for her. “The first thing we have to do is make sure that you
are
anaemic.”
    “But you said you
were
sure.” She frowned and tightened her thin lips.
    “Pretty sure, but I