Check It Out: Country nurse shares more adventures

What I’m working my way around to saying, dear reader, is that “Nurse, Come You Here!” — the second book by nurse Mary J. MacLeod — couldn’t get into my hands fast enough. At the beginning of 2015, I stumbled across Mary J. MacLeod’s memoir entitled “Call the Nurse” and instantly found myself, well, smitten with her stories about working as a district nurse in the very remote Hebrides islands of Scotland. MacLeod’s descriptions of life among the hard-working crofters, stubborn sheep, and cantankerous vehicles in 1970s rural Scotland opened a world to me I had never encountered, and I was completely charmed.

Now her second book is out, and it’s just as engaging as the first.

Harshness, community

Continuing her story about Papavray, where she and her family resided, MacLeod manages to convey the harshness of their surroundings, making one wonder how anyone could survive in such a far-flung, rugged locale, while also imparting the deep sense of community felt by the inhabitants.

There are numerous reasons for needing a nurse’s attention, many of which are indeed medical-related. But in such a sparsely populated environment it is only natural that the residents expect a medical professional to be able and willing to assist in a variety of situations.

When Elizabeth, the sole teacher at a small junior school, wants to take her students on a field trip (a bit of a feat for any teacher, but on a remote series of islands? Very challenging!), she needs someone to drive one of two minibuses. Who does she ask? The nurse, of course!

Although there is a veterinarian who attends to the medical needs of the four-legged citizens, a nurse ought to be able — and willing — to jump in when a ewe is about to give birth at night. And if the animal’s owner has nothing but a wee torch (i.e. a small flashlight) with which to aid the nurse’s endeavor, and is unwilling to pay the 3 pounds it would cost to run electricity from his house to the “byre,” she learns to carry her own torch to such events.

Tragic events

As in the first book, tragic events weave in and out of Nurse MacLeod’s story. Such a beautiful yet harsh climate inevitably results in accidents, impassable roads, and emotional lows. But the light far outweighs the dark in MacLeod’s delightful writing, and that is what draws me to her world for a second time. From the neighbor’s “pampered” house cow who decides to pay the nurse’s family a visit by breaking through a back door into the utility room, to the old hermit who has an ulcer on his leg but refuses to have treatment unless the nurse attends to him at a roadside “telephone box” so “all the folk who pass will see that I am having the treatment. It will be grand, just,” readers have the lucky chance to experience Mary J. MacLeod’s adventures through her lively recollections.

I could never be a nurse, and I’d find it pretty hard to get accustomed to the mercurial weather so common to the Hebrides, but I wouldn’t mind being asked to partake in tea — just a “wee cuppa” — with such warm and kind-hearted folk. It almost makes one nostalgic for a time before cellphones and social media, when a short chat and a cup of tea was all that was needed to form a connection.