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, and 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 that 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 an offer 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 board of the hospital met, there was always some problem and distraction or other. Something that stopped Frank from 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 center 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 backup support. The cardiologists were like a dog with a bone: they wouldn't let it go. Frank sighed as they faced 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 businesspeople who had proved themselves in other walks of life. There was that goodtempered American philanthropist Chester Kovac, who had set up a private health center miles away down in the country. The plainclothes nun would always open the window, and 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 making radical changes at 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 one section that 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 memb Excerpted from Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
