If Alec was Stirling’s recognized wunderkind and visionary, then Pete was the hospital’s meticulous and steady workhorse; even if they hadn’t been best friends who had cemented their medical school bond through years of toiling in Stirling’s surgical apprenticeship program, everyone agreed they complemented each other perfectly as surgical partners.
Co-protagonist of the novel, Pete is Alec’s best friend and surgical partner. A good doctor and a bona fide war hero who suffers from chronic illness related to wounds suffered during the battle of El Alamein, he serves as both a foil and a friend throughout the novel.
Pete’s Backstory.
Born on 14 October 1923, in Belfast, Ireland, Pete was the last of eight children and immigrated with his family to Western Australia in early 1929, shortly before the Great Depression. It is implied that the family may have had to more or less flee, Pete’s father having mixed himself up with the Irish Republican Army.
Pete’s family settled in Varley, a dusty crossroads at the edge of the Wheatbelt, and he grew up somewhat poor on a cattle and wheat farm. He attended school via correspondence. When he was a teenager, his mother was diagnosed with leukemia; his experience with the Royal Flying Doctor Service led him to become interested in being a doctor, and he was attending school in Victoria with the goal of admittance to the University of Melbourne’s medical school when World War II began.
Pete’s reasons for wanting to serve in World War II were common ones for young Australians – a sense of adventure and wanting to serve. However, Pete’s father, a World War I veteran who had been wounded at the Somme, refused to allow his son to enlist in the AIF, leading Pete to lie about his age and forge his father’s signature in July 1940. This led to a seemingly unhealable rift between them. Pete served with the 2/24th Battalion, an infantry unit, as a stretcher-bearer and saw service first at Tobruk, then at El Alamein, where he was severely wounded in the left side, lower back, and pelvis by machine-gun fire during the fighting at and around Tel el Eisa Hill in July 1942. For risking his life to rescue three comrades and a German officer, Pete received the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valor in the British military honor system.
(In reality, Pete would never have been awarded the VC because Australia’s military authorities refused to recommend medical personnel for the VC for performing “mere” life-saving actions in World War II, preferring to recommend extreme acts of valor that involved killing the enemy. That being said, stretcher-bearers were officially eligible for the VC, and I’d like to think Pete is a good representative for all the Australian stretcher-bearers who wholly deserved to receive the VC but did not receive one because of this bizarre policy.)
Pete was invalided out of the army due to the severity of his injuries and began medical school in Melbourne in 1944. Unlike Alec, Pete always wanted to return home to Western Australia, and he chose Stirling over other more prestigious hospitals that also offered him a position.
In the Novel.
Two years older than Alec, Pete is thirty-two and the father of six children, all girls; his wife is pregnant at the beginning of the novel with what ends up being their seventh daughter. He is estranged from his family in Varley, his father never having forgiven Pete for deciding to serve in World War II.
Pete is much more cautious than Alec, espousing a medical philosophy of “Do No Harm.” He is intended to be a mostly likable character. He has a nasty temper, but his main flaw is he is a workaholic and stubborn, unwilling to rest when he should. Nevertheless, his loyalty is unquestionable, and he is the catalyst for Alec’s decision to continue as a surgeon.
Pete suffers from chronic pain and kidney and bone infections related to the wounds he suffered at El Alamein. Although some people have asked whether I based Pete on the titular character in the TV drama, House, really, the only thing the two characters have in common is walking with a cane and being good doctors.
Like Alec, Pete is an animal lover. He owns a deaf white Persian cat named Fluffy – ostensibly bought for his daughters, but as Alec puts it, Fluffy is “100% Pete’s cat.” He likes horses and had a pony named Butterscotch as a little boy in Ireland. Pete has a good sense of humor and enjoys teasing Alec.
Pete is an excellent surgeon and a good doctor, and despite possessing a quick temper, he never loses his cool with children. He has a good relationship with his wife, Kate. Unlike Alec, who loves sleek and fast cars, Pete drives an ancient and poorly maintained utility vehicle that is constantly breaking down. Pete loves history and is extremely proud of his Irish heritage, displaying a green Irish battle flag from the American Civil War in his office.
Physically, Pete is very tall and thin. He has pale skin, freckles, red hair, and icy blue eyes and is somewhat lackadaisical about his appearance, often wearing mismatched socks. He walks with a blackthorn cane and has a very noticeable limp. He carries a green tom bowler marble in his pocket for good luck.
Five Fun Facts About Pete.
- Pete’s full name is Peter John O’Neill. Pete’s name is the only one in the novel intended to be symbolic – Peter means “rock,” and for Alec, Pete fulfills that role. Pete claims his name derives from the fact that his father knew Pete would be a doctor and thus named him after Saints Peter and John, who together performed the miracle of healing the lame man.
- Pete is a Roman Catholic, just like Alec’s wife.
- Pete had a pet ewe as a boy – she was abandoned by her mother (a “bummer”), and he raised her on the bottle, ultimately deciding to keep her as a pet versus selling her at the market as required for his Junior Farmers project. Not surprisingly, he becomes incredibly fond of the Border Leicester lambs that Alec purchases for the heart-lung machine project.
- I based some of Pete’s mannerisms in his speech on Mr. Kane, an elderly man from Belfast who lived in my neighborhood when I was a child.
- As with Alec, Pete is not based on anyone specific, though Richard Varco is known to have often volunteered to be first assistant on Walt Lillehei’s open-heart surgeries despite being a great surgeon in his own right.
Who would I cast as Pete?
I would have cast Gary Cooper as Pete. Cooper had a quiet, understated screen presence and could play a wide variety of characters very well. He had a genuineness to him that I think fits Pete’s personality.