Free An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

wonder if there's an old lad wearing a long gown and a beard running round the Ballybucklebo Hills looking for gopher wood and trying to keep all the animals together two by two?" 
    "He'd not be doing that. He'd have Shem, Ham, and Japheth to do all the running around for him," Barry muttered. 
    "Sensible man, Noah," said O'Reilly with a grin. "Trot along and see who's next." 
    Barry shook his head and went to the waiting room to discover that only one patient remained, a young woman with long auburn hair that had a sheen like a freshly shelled horse chestnut, and green eyes set in a freckled face. "Good morning," he said. "Will you come through, please, Mrs. er . . . ?"
    "Galvin," she said, standing with some difficulty, one hand supporting the small of her back, the other holding her swollen belly.
    "I'm a bit slow getting about," she said, giving him a weak smile. "That's all right; take your time." Barry stepped aside as she waddled past.
    "Doesn't look as though it'll be long now."
    "Just a week more." She went into the surgery. "Morning, Doctor O'Reilly."
    "How are you, Maureen?" O'Reilly asked.
    "Grand." She rummaged in her handbag and gave him a small plastic urine-sample bottle.
    O'Reilly took it and handed it to Barry. "Pop a dipstick into that, would you?"
    Barry took the specimen over to the sink and tested the urine. He found nothing wrong. As he worked, he heard O'Reilly say, "Can you get up on the couch, Maureen?"
    She turned her back to the table and sat. "Are you sure there's only the one in here, Doctor O'Reilly? I feel like the sidewall of a house." 
    "It was only a week ago when I examined you," he said, "but if it'll make you happier, we'll get Doctor Laverty to lay on a hand." 
    "I heard you'd a new assistant," she said.
    O'Reilly bent and put one arm under her legs. "There you go," he said as he lifted her legs onto the couch. He reached past her. "Stick that pillow under your head."
    She lay down, and Barry watched and listened as O'Reilly asked the routine late antenatal questions, took her blood pressure, and palpated her ankles to make sure there was no swelling. "Right, let's see your bump."
    She lifted the skirt of her maternity dress. The blue of the material was bleached, and a small patch was neatly sewn on one side. O'Reilly pulled the top of her underwear down until Barry could just see a wisp of pubic hair at the bottom of her distended abdomen. He noted the silver snail tracks of stretch marks on her flank, her umbilicus turned inside out from the pressure of the uterus that filled the abdominal cavity. He stepped back and waited while O'Reilly examined her. Maureen's green eyes never left O'Reilly's face. Barry saw her concern, watched as O'Reilly's face betrayed no expression. "Doctor Laverty?"
    Barry moved to the table. As he did so, he rubbed his palms rapidly together trying to warm them. "This won't take long."
    "Take your time, Doctor." She flinched as he began his examination. "Sorry."
    "Cold hands is the sign of a warm heart." She smiled at him.
    He examined the belly, felt a single baby's back on her right side, the hardness of the head just above the pubic symphysis. He grasped the head between the outstretched thumb and finger of his right hand. It refused to budge when he tried to move it from side to side. "Here," said O'Reilly, handing Barry a fetal stethoscope.
    He laid the wide end of the aluminium trumpet over the abdominal wall and bent to put his ear to the flattened earpiece. Tup-tup-tup-tup. . . . Barry listened, counted, and looked at his watch. "A hundred and forty." He saw the narrowing of Maureen's eyes and the questioning lines appear in her forehead. "Absolutely normal," he said, pleased to see the little furrows disappear. 
    "So?" said O'Reilly.
    Barry trotted out the formula he had been taught. "There's a singleton, longitudinal lie, vertex presentation, right occipito-anterior, head's engaged, heart rate . . ." 
    "A hundred and forty," said O'Reilly.