My American guest went down with a cough he could not shift and, after a week of protesting that he couldn’t be ill because he was fully vaccinated for everything, he asked me to take him to a doctor.
This was an even more complicated request than his desire to call Ubers, and so we set off in my car to drive around the wilds of West Cork in search of medical assistance.
I began by driving to the nearest town, and I led him into the A&E department of a hospital where I laid it on thick to the receptionist about him being an American tourist visiting the land of his ancestors, and I gave his Irish surname.
She made a face and said perhaps they could see him, and she invited us to take a seat beneath some posters about measles and strokes and one about a mystery virus that was going to make you very ill, but no name was given.
A few minutes later a nurse in a mask pulled up almost over her eyes stood in front of us and demanded to know what was wrong with my badly coughing American.
As he coughed and spluttered and struggled to speak, I explained he had a cough. ‘We can’t see someone just because they’ve got a cough,’ she said. And she walked us back to the hospital doors and pointed us in the direction of ‘the primary care centre’.
He was too weak to walk so I drove round the side of the building, and we walked into this pristine, newly decorated wing. Left and right were two doors both signed with fancily logoed names. One was ‘Nua’ and the other was something equally brand orientated. ‘Marino’, I think it was called, as in the wool, but misspelled.
We walked into ‘Nua’ and a polished-looking young girl sitting behind a desk in a pristine, empty reception area that did indeed look nua, said absolutely not, there were no appointments. We needed to try ‘Marino’.
So we walked into that one and the same thing happened. In an immaculate, newly decorated reception area, totally devoid of customers, a lady with a name tag approached us to shoo us away and said we absolutely could not come in, because there were no doctors there today.
In an immaculate reception area, totally devoid of customers, a lady approached us to shoo us away
When I protested, she walked off, then came back and handed me a Post-it note with the number of an out-of-hours GP I could call after 6 p.m. ‘But it’s 10 a.m. He’s not ill out of hours. He’s ill now,’ I said, to no avail.
The American stood there wheezing, white as a sheet, and, as I led him back to the car, I explained that Irish healthcare was a bit like American healthcare, in that you had to pay, only there was very often nothing to pay for.
He slumped into the car seat looking exhausted. ‘Back to the village,’ I said, for I knew there was an old doctor operating out of a dilapidated house on the high street.
When I pulled up outside a tiny, rundown cottage, the American said: ‘Is this it?’ I led him inside and a lady behind a counter told us the doctor wasn’t there. He was doing a clinic in an outlying village, but we could drive there.
We got back in the car and I warned the American that we were now going to trek into the boondocks. Following the satnav, we turned off the main road on to a lane that looked like a farm track, and began driving up hill and down dale, over stone bridges, through farms, beside lakes, along the foothills of mountains.
It was a beautiful drive, but it wound on and on and the American coughed and coughed, and I tried to keep his spirits up, though I had no idea what was going to be at the end of this journey.
‘They could do with a flying doctor,’ I laughed. The American groaned. His lungs sounded like they were about to give way.
After half an hour, we arrived at a dusty crossroads and the satnav announced we were there. But all we could see was a vast animal feed depot on the left and where the arrow on the screen showed a health centre on the right, nothing.
I drove further. I turned around and went back. I pulled up where the arrow said. I decided to park outside a derelict house, set back from the road, and I led the American down a broken pathway and inside a flapping open door, like something in a horror movie.
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Inside, we stood in a deserted, leaf-strewn hallway with four closed doors. So I pushed a door, and an old man was standing behind it. He had longish silver hair, was bent in stature, and his trousers were tied up with something, possibly string.
‘Doctor!’ I said, and he nodded. The American went inside and after 15 minutes and €60 out he came with a piece of notepaper upon which was written a list of medications, which he could apparently take to a pharmacy.
The American got in the car elated: ‘That doctor was a great guy. He said I had the 100-day cough. It’s a thing that’s going round.’
I’ll bet it is, I thought. And thank goodness we had found the poor old tired-out doctor who was treating it.
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