Prologue

Some projects take forever to get off the ground.

One of these was the disused storage depot that was

owned by St Brigid’s Hospital. It was an unattractive

cluster of warehouses around a yard. Once it had held supplies for the hospital but it was in an awkward place; new traffic regulations meant that it was a long and cumbersome journey through the Dublin streets to get from one place to the other.

It was a part of Dublin that still had its old workers’

cottages, and factories which had been transformed into apartment blocks. This part of the city was ‘going up’ as the

property people described it; soon speculators would look at the storage depot and make St Brigid’s an offer for it, the kind of offer they could not refuse.

That’s what Frank Ennis wanted. He thought of himself as the financial brains behind St Brigid’s, and this was exactly what they needed. A large lump sum, a huge financial injection on his watch.

Frank Ennis could see it happening.

Of course every year when the planning committee met

at the AGM there was always some problem and distraction or other. Something that stopped Frank getting this white elephant sold and investing the money in the hospital. One

year there was the rheumatology lobby; they wanted a rheumatism clinic. There was a pulmonary wing too which wanted

to set up a day centre for chest patients. And the increasingly vocal heart faction which claimed that there was sufficient evidence to prove that patients could be kept out of hospital, thus freeing up hospital beds, if they had someone to provide back-up support. The cardiologists were like a dog with a bone: they wouldn’t let it go.

Frank sighed as they faced in to yet another afternoon in the close, stuffy boardroom. The members were sitting around the table. Frank looked at them without great pleasure. There was the usual collection of people who might have sat on any hospital board. There was what he would describe as a plainclothes nun. St Brigid’s had once been run entirely by nuns;

now there were only four of the sisters left. No new vocations.

There were senior officials from the health authority; there were important business people who had proved themselves in other walks of life. There was that good-tempered American philanthropist, Chester Kovac, who had set up a private health centre miles away down in the country.

The plainclothes nun would always open the window, then the papers would fly around the table and someone would

close it again. Frank had been through this many times. But on this occasion he felt that victory was in his corner. He had a written offer of a huge sum from a property developer for instant possession of the much discussed and wasted land around the storage depot. This was money that would make everyone sit up and take notice.

Then would come the argument about how the money

should be spent: would it go to new state-of-the-art CAT scan machines? Or to changing radically the front of the hospital?

Like many buildings of its time, which was the early twentieth century, the hospital had entirely unsuitable stone steps leading to the entrance hall. A ramp would be appropriate or some

more satisfactory way of getting into the hospital for the lame and frail.

There was always a need for more beds in women’s surgical, there was always a call for isolation units. A lot of pressure had come from the HDU section. They wanted to be raised from high dependency to intensive care and this would need money being spent.

Well, at least they would be able to reply to the property developer today, accept his offer and stop wasting time on the various special interests who all wanted to enlarge their empires.

Coffee and biscuits were served, the agenda was distributed and the meeting began. But from the outset, Frank knew that something was wrong.

The board members had been foolishly influenced by some

statistic recently published that seemed to prove the Irish had more than their fair share of heart failure. Possibly connected with lifestyle and diet, with drinking and smoking undoubtedly playing their part in it all. They were all discussing

methods of giving heart failure patients more confidence.

How great to be at the forefront of a battle against heart disease. A day clinic that would help patients to manage.

Frank Ennis could have cursed the organisation which had published these figures just days before his board meeting. For all he knew it could even have been done deliberately - there was something very arrogant about those cardiologists in St Brigid’s. They thought they were omnipotent.

He looked for support to Chester Kovac, usually a voice of sanity in such situations. But he had read it wrong. Chester said that this was an imaginative idea and he would be happy if St Brigid’s were at the forefront of such a move. After all, the alternative was only money.

Frank fumed at this. It was easy for Chester to say

something was only money; he had plenty of money himself.

Certainly he was generous, but what did he know? He was a Polish-American with an Irish grandfather - he was the victim of the last person he had spoken to.

Frank seethed with rage.

‘It’s not only money, Chester. It’s huge money, going into St Brigid’s to improve it.’

‘Last year you wanted to sell that land for it to be a car park,’ Chester said.

‘But this is a far better offer.’ Frank was red in the face with the effort of it all.

‘Well, we would have been foolish to accept your suggestion last year, Frank, seeing the way things turned out.’ Chester was mild but firm.

‘But I spent weeks raising this guy’s offer …’

‘And last year we all agreed that we didn’t want a car park.’

‘So this is not a car park. It’s superior housing — of the highest specifications …’ Frank said.

‘Not what a hospital is necessarily about,’ Chester Kovac said.

‘If we’re sitting on this piece of land we should use it,’ said one of the captains of industry.

‘We are using it, we are going to get a small fortune for it and invest that in the hospital!’ Frank felt that he was talking to very slow learners.

The plainclothes nun spoke primly. ‘We would like something within the spirit of the original order who once ran the hospital.’

‘Housing is hardly against the spirit of the order is it?’

Frank asked.

‘Expensive housing of the highest specification might not be what the good sisters wanted.’ Chester spoke gently.

‘The good sisters are all dead and gone, they died out!’

Frank exploded.

Chester looked at the face of the plainclothes nun. She was very hurt by this. He needed to be a peacemaker.

‘What Mr Ennis means is that the nuns’ work is completed here, their work is done. But they have left their legacy. This is a community that needs more health care and fewer expensive apartments which will each be host to two cars, thus clogging up the roads still further. What it needs is a good positive system set up, something that will go on helping people to make the most of their lives after the initial set-back of cardiac failure. And to be very frank, when it comes to the vote, that’s what I would most like to see and that’s where I will place my choice.’

There was something dignified about the way he spoke.

Frank Ennis was crestfallen. The place would not be off

their hands as he had so confidently hoped this morning. Now it was back on the table. The cardiologists had won. There were going to be months and months of agreeing costs and building work and furnishing and equipment. They would have to appoint a director and staff. Frank sighed heavily.

Why did these people not have any sense at all? They could have had so many of the items on their wish list if they had any understanding of how the world worked. Instead they

were complicating everything.

He sat through the meeting, moving on automatically from item to item. Then it came to the vote for the change of use of the premises owned by St Brigid’s and known as the former storage depot. As he expected it was unanimously agreed that a heart care clinic should be built there.

Frank suggested a feasibility study.

He was voted down immediately. They were not in favour

of this - they would be another six years debating the issue.

If they had agreed to do it then they had agreed. It was feasible.

It would however need an Extraordinary General Meeting,