I first noticed her because she was always there before the kettle boiled. I was working as a healthcare assistant in a ward near the old side of the Mater, doing the early shift that starts in darkness and ends when the city has already decided what kind of day it’s going to have. Outside, buses sighed along Dorset Street and the rain made mirrors of the footpaths. Inside, there was the small thunder of trolleys, curtains being pulled, names being called, people trying to be brave in paper gowns.
She was called Eileen, though everyone on the ward knew her as Mrs. Byrne for the first few weeks because she carried herself with that old Dublin formality, handbag clasped in both hands, lipstick on even at seven in the morning. She was in her late seventies, small as a folded umbrella, with a navy coat that smelled faintly of lavender and cigarette smoke from some other decade. She wasn’t staff, and she wasn’t visiting anyone in particular. She came in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, signed the volunteer book, and asked the nurses quietly, “Who has nobody today?”
At first, I thought it was a nice gesture, the kind of thing people did for a few weeks after retirement before the weather got bad or the buses became too much. But Eileen never missed a day. She came from Stoneybatter, walking part of the way if the traffic was heavy, and she would sit beside patients who had no flowers on their lockers, no phone lighting up with messages, no family asking if they needed clean pyjamas. She didn’t do anything dramatic. She read the paper aloud. She held cups with straws. She fixed pillows. Sometimes she sat in silence, one hand resting on the blanket, as if she were minding a candle flame.
There was one man I’ll never forget. His name was Patrick, though he asked us to call him Paddy because “Patrick sounds like I owe money.” He was eighty-four, from Ringsend originally, and he had the kind of humour that came out sideways, sharp because the soft parts were too painful. He had no next of kin listed. When I asked once if there was anyone we could ring for him, he looked past me at the window and said, “Anyone I’d ring is already underground or not answering for good reasons.”
Paddy had been admitted after a fall, but it turned out his heart was failing badly. He knew it before the doctor said it. Some patients fight the truth; he almost welcomed it, but not because he wanted to die. I think he was tired of pretending he wasn’t afraid. He told jokes all morning and stared at the ceiling all afternoon. At night he called out in his sleep, not loudly, just enough that whoever passed his bed would hear a name: Maureen.
Eileen started sitting with him after lunch. The first day, he told her he didn’t need “a babysitter with a bus pass.” She nodded, opened the Irish Times, and said, “Grand. I’ll sit here for myself so.” He snorted, which was the nearest he got to laughter then. By the end of the week, he was asking her to read the death notices because he liked to know “who beat me to it.” She told him that was a morbid hobby. He told her bingo was worse.
One wet Friday in November, the ward was short-staffed and restless. There had been a crash on the North Circular Road, and the emergency department was overflowing. I remember the sound of rain on the windows and the smell of toast from the staff room. Paddy was worse that day. His breathing had changed, becoming uneven, like a door catching in the wind. The nurse rang the number of an old neighbour from his chart, but nobody answered. There was no family to call, no one rushing across Dublin with a coat half-buttoned, no son buying grapes in a Spar, no daughter crying in the corridor.
Eileen arrived just after two, soaked
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
