It was evening in the Greater Dublin Infirmary for General Surgery, Obstetrics, Ear, Nose, Throat and Protestants, and a silence of exhaustion lay over that handful of crowded wards which were open. Elsewhere, outside the sparkling new wards which remained locked, patients lay in corridors, in linen cupboards and on trestles placed over baths. Some post-operational patients even lay recumbent on the kitchen tables whilst around them the cooks were preparing the evening meal.
One of these post-operational convalescents recognised the patient beside him.
"How's the hernia?" he enquired in jolly, pre-Christmas tones.
"Bloody killing me," came the reply.
"Still? I thought that was what the operation was for."
"So did I. They didn't operate on the hernia. That's as intact as ever. I've just been looking at my chart. I got an operation on my knee instead, for torn cruciate ligaments."
"You had torn cruciate ligaments as well as a hernia?"
"Nope. I hadn't even got a knee. I'm a double amputee since Normandy. Didn't stop the hoors removing cruciate ligaments though. What does worry me is what else they've removed. And I've been waiting for the hernia operation for three years."
"Three years? Begob that's nothing," came another and deeply nasal voice. "I've been waiting for my operation for piles for four years, two months, three days and two hours. They finally took me in last week."
"And the piles are gone?"
"The piles are NOT gone. I can show them to you if you like."
"I'll take your word on that."
"Are you sure? Half the bleeding world's had a good look at my piles, and they're still here to admire."
"Believe me, I don't want to see your piles."
"Pity. As piles go they're rather admirable, but the point is, as piles go, they haven't. Still there, a full rosary of them. However, my tonsils are gone. And somebody appears to have given me a new nose. And I can't feel my feet the way I used to. No movement in my toes. Probably no toes."
"I've got toes all right," mused another patient, "with toenails intact. My doctor booked me for an operation for my ingrowing toenails last year. Came in last week and was given a quadruple by-pass over the weekend. My heart sounds like a blacksmith's forge, and my bloody toes are still killing me."
"You probably got the bypass I should have got," a gloomy voice intoned. "I've had four coronaries while just waiting for my operation, and when I finally got done, they appear to have removed my bowels. No sign of a heart op, though."
"I'm a Protestant," said a voice. "New Reformed Church of Jesus Christ of Zion, Halleluiah! Jesus Saves! The Pope is the Anti-Christ. Et cetera. Came here for the Protestant ethos. So far I've said the Angelus five times, the rosary seven, and woken up being given communion twice. And that was just yesterday. I haven't had my vasectomy yet, but I have had my frontal lobe removed."
"I'm a Jew," said another voice. "Deeply Orthodox. I've been given pork for breakfast every day since I arrived. I came in initially for my bad heart, and I had my operation yesterday. I've still got my bad heart, but now they've given me a foreskin to go with it."
"That's mine," cried another voice excitedly. "I broke my ankle playing football. Since I arrived here I've three teeth extracted, they've broken my arm in order to reset it, my skull has been trepanned, and the other day, they circumcised me. Give me my prepuce back. It's mine. I miss it."
"I came in for a kidney transplant," another voice chimed in. "I've been given a new set of spectacles, a wheelchair, a hearing aid, and a nice new heart from England. But I still haven't got my kidneys."
"Anyone else here have a vaginal examination?" asked another voice.
There was a chorus of affirmatives. "I came in for fallen arches, and got three internals in the first five hours," said one woman. "Then they gave me a hysterectomy, and now I'm on chemotherapy. But my fallen arches are where they always were, somewhere outside Auckland."
"I'm the cook around here, and I wandered into women's surgical with an omelette for a patient with special dietary needs. I'd hardly delivered the omelette when I was given a full internal and then I was told I had a touch of rheumatism in my shoulder. Then they put me under and I was given a liver transplant, even though I won the Gold Medal in the Liver Olympics in Seoul last year."
"I've got chronic dandruff," said another woman. "Nobody's looked at my head yet. But I've had two internals, a kidney transplant and at the moment I've got my foot in plaster. I expect to have the odd amputation for gangrene quite soon now."
"You think that's bad," said another voice. "They gave me an internal when I arrived, and then they gave me a radical hysterectomy."
"What's so bad about that?"
"What's so bad about that? I came in for a prostate operation. I'm a bloke."
There was a pause. "Was". "Still, it's great to be living in the fastest growing economy in the world, in which someone like Charles Haughey can have a two million tax bill waived, isn't it?"
A long silence filled the greasy spaces between the patients, the pots and the pans.