Free Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor by Patrick Taylor Page B

buggery—”
    O’Reilly glanced at Lenny but Colin’s language didn’t appear to upset the man, probably because Lenny’s own was hardly snow-white.
    “Then she put on a great big Elastoplast. It was a bit sore, but I could hirple about on it right enough until this morning when I was at the Shanks’s. Mrs. Shanks took off the plaster about half an hour ago and the whole thing was beelin’ so she brung me to my daddy and he brung me here.”
    “Let’s have a look.” Indeed it was “beeling.” Pus was coming from a two-inch-long cut in the middle of the sole. It was a nasty sight now, an eighth of an inch wide and showing no signs of healing. Julie Donnelly’s iodine clearly hadn’t been effective as a disinfectant, or perhaps Colin had got more dirt into it. The cut probably should have been sutured, but it was too late now because it was the same rule today as it had been when he was a student: “If there’s pus, drain it.” The wound would have to heal by what was called secondary intention, after the inflammation settled down, but that would be rapid in a healthy youngster like Colin and antibiotics would make short shrift of the infection.
    “All right,” said O’Reilly, “we’ll get that fixed soon enough for you, Colin.”
    In a very short time, O’Reilly had shown Lenny how to clean the wound with hydrogen peroxide and put on a gauze dressing. “Do that twice a day until it stops weeping, and keep a clean dressing on it until you bring him to see me this day week. Don’t let it get dirty or wet and no walking on it until the skin’s grown back. In a young fellah like Colin that should be two or three weeks. I’ll see if I can get crut—”
    “Buggeration. You mean we’ll have to lift and lay him for three whole weeks?” Lenny didn’t wait for O’Reilly to finish.
    “Buggeration’s right, Daddy,” Colin said, eliciting no response from Lenny and making O’Reilly wonder why he’d bothered to moderate his own language earlier. “It’s my summer holidays. All gone. Can youse do nothing, Daddy?”
    Lenny frowned. “If I made him a crutch, could he hop about, Doc? It’d be awful hard for a wee lad to have til sit around all day.”
    “No reason not to, Lenny. You’ll be going round like a bee on a hot brick, Colin, and you’ll be fit in September for—” O’Reilly remembered Colin’s antipathy to school so didn’t finish the sentence.
    It was mandatory for anyone who had cut themselves where there was soil in which the spores of the causative organism might lurk—even if their immunisation schedule was up to date—but Colin wasn’t impressed with the tetanus toxoid jab. He yelled at the top of his voice and was answered by a loud woof then whining from the waiting room.
    “We’ll get you back to your dog in just a minute,” O’Reilly said.
    Colin soon cheered up when O’Reilly gave him half a dozen jelly babies from a bag of sweeties in his jacket pocket. Carrying sweeties for young patients was a trick he’d developed back in his Sir Patrick Dun days.
    “Here you are, Lenny.” O’Reilly handed over a prescription for the cleanser, gauze pads and bandages, and penicillin V. “Give Colin four tablets as soon as you get home from the chemist, then 125 milligrams, that’s one tablet, four times a day for a week,” he said, “and count yourself lucky we’ve got antibiotics these days. They’re the greatest things since Noah ran the Ark aground.” He well remembered another infected foot back in 1936. He’d never ever forget a boy called Dermot Finucane.
    “Thanks, Doc,” Lenny said. “Connie’ll bring him in next week.”
    Colin piped up, “Thank you, Doctor O’Reilly—and don’t you never say nothing about Donal’s dog.”
    “I’ll not,” O’Reilly said, and chuckled. He wondered if Ballybucklebo was big enough for two tricksters.
    *   *   *
     
    Kitty was sitting in her usual chair to the right of his own at the dining room table. He sang