An Irish Country Wedding Read Free Page A

“Let’s get you sitting down, Kinky Kincaid.” He turned his head away as her shoulders shook and she threw up. “Sorry, sir,” she said, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
    He felt her sag and with his hands under her armpits lowered her to the tile floor. He looked around. Laundry was piled nearby. He grabbed an armful and a plastic basin. Barry made a heap of the clothes, including, he noticed, a pair of his own trousers. “Lie back, Kinky. Put your head there.” He set the bowl beside her.
    “Thank you, sir.” Her pinafore was splotched, her lips caked.
    Barry dampened a tea towel, squatted beside her, and mopped her face. “Can you tell me what happened?”
    She took a shallow breath, then said, “I was grand all together until about twelve thirty. I’d nearly finished getting lunch ready when I got a sharp pain. Mary, Mother of — ” She clutched her lower belly and moaned. “There it is again.”
    “Tell me about the pain,” he said. He took her pulse. The skin was clammy and her pulse rapid.
    “It came on like a terrier pouncing on a rat, so, and it gnawed at me and kept on grinding, then it went away. That — ” She inhaled. “ — that was a blessèd relief for I was able to serve your luncheon on time, so.”
    Kinky, you’re one brave woman, he thought, but asked professionally, “Can you show me where it hurts?”
    She pointed to her left groin. “There, sir, and it does be back there now. And it’s coming in spasms.”
    Barry glanced at his watch. One thirty-five. He frowned. Her vomiting had suggested the relatively innocuous acute gastroenteritis, often called stomach flu, or “the abdabs” by the locals. But while the disease might cause vomiting, clammy skin, and a fast pulse, it would not cause pain in the place Kinky was describing nor pain that came on so suddenly. “Have you ever had trouble there before?” he asked.
    “Not like this. Once in a while if I’ve been lifting things or hoovering I’ll get a bit of a grumbling there, but, och, sure don’t I usually sit a while and then work it off?” She managed a weak smile. “My ma taught us that you should always try to work pain off, so. Not give in to it.”
    “And you’ve never mentioned it to Doctor O’Reilly?” He knew Kinky would not voluntarily consult him, Barry. She’d consider Doctor O’Reilly’s assistant much too young.
    “Och, Doctor Laverty, dear,” she said, shaking her head. “Sure wasn’t it only a shmall-little ache, and didn’t it always go away, and amn’t I at an age when you must expect such things? Another fourteen years won’t I be seventy and if I’m spared I’ll be playing in overtime then if you believe what the Good Book says about us being given three score years and ten?”
    “Go on,” he said, “tell me more about what’s happening now.” Her description of the pain and its situation had given a hint.
    “Just a bit before you came, sir, I had another fierce one, a spasm like a hot knife in exactly the same place. I dropped a pan of potatoes. A few minutes later another one came and then — ” A tear fell. “ — I embarrassed meself. I threw up, so.” She struggled to sit. “But I’m nearly better now — ” She coughed. “ — and soon I’ll clean up.”
    Barry couldn’t keep an edge out of his voice. “Kinky Kincaid, you’ll do no such thing.” She gasped and clutched her belly. He heard her stomach give an enormous gurgle. The exact words from A Short Textbook of Surgery sprang to mind. Borborygmi are sometimes loud enough to be heard by the unaided ear. The sound of turbulent peristalsis coinciding with an attack of colic is valuable evidence of intestinal obstruction. The causes   … which may be acute, chronic, or acute-on-chronic, are very numerous . The site of Kinky’s pain and her previous history of a chronic ache brought on by exertion pointed to a hernia, a weakness in the abdominal muscles containing a sac of peritoneum. Spasms