A Dublin Student Doctor Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I have a suggestion—”
    “If it’s to do what Father wants, don’t bother,” Fingal snapped, and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Go on, Lars, I’m listening.”
    Lars looked at Ma. “Once Fingal has—and I hesitate to use the term—but once he has ‘declared war’ with Father, he won’t be able to live here. He’ll have to find a job and move into lodgings.”
    “I might be able to manage a little money,” said Ma, “but—”
    “Thanks, Ma. I understand. Go on, Lars. I’m listening.” Fingal felt a lump in his throat. Ma simply could not have the resources to support him for the five-year medical course.
    “It seems to me that you’d be able to save fastest if you had a job that gave you free board and lodge and no opportunity to spend.”
    After the interview with Father, the rising temper, and the disappointment, Fingal was in no mood for pie-in-the-sky suggestions. “I’d get that in the Mountjoy Gaol. But the wages are poor.”
    Lars lowered his head and regarded Fingal from under a set of bushy eyebrows. “Don’t be facetious, Fingal, I’m trying to help.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “How would you fancy going to sea?”
    “Going to—?”
    O’Reilly felt a hand on his shoulder that pulled him back to the present. “Excuse me, Doc. Could youse move back a wee ways?”
    “Sorry, Alfie.” O’Reilly stood aside to let the driver open the back doors, but his thoughts were soon back to 1927.
    That suggestion by Lars and the twenty pounds Ma had given him from her own private nest egg had certainly opened the door for the young Fingal O’Reilly. He had enjoyed his three years at sea in the merchant navy.
    When he’d joined the Royal Naval Reserve in 1930, he’d spent another year at sea, this time on the British battlecruiser HMS Tiger as part of his training. He had made money in the peacetime auxillary branch of the British Navy and he’d made a good friend. A young sub-lieutenant named Tom Laverty. The Lord does move in a mysterious way, thought Fingal as the traffic noises rose to a crescendo on the Grosvenor Road outside the Royal Victoria Hospital. That Tom Laverty was the father of the young Barry who was now O’Reilly’s assistant.
    It had been a condition of RNR service that members would be called up for active duty in the event of hostilities, but it was only eleven years after the end of the Great War and he’d thought the risk small. The great powers had not seemed belligerent in 1930. The United States was following a policy of isolationism. The Fascist Mussolini in Italy seemed like a peaceful chap whose intention was to get the trains to run on time. Adolf Hitler couldn’t even take his seat in the German Riechstag because he was an Austrian national. And Ramsay MacDonald, the British prime minister, was too busy trying to deal with the aftereffects of the Great Depression of 1929.
    And Fingal O’Reilly had a lot more pressing business in mind. The sea had made him grow up, but he’d never wavered from his determination to be a doctor. As soon as he had saved enough he’d, in the naval parlance of the day, swallowed the anchor in ’31 and enrolled at Trinity College Dublin. He might not have been as polished as some of his classmates—the sea could do that. Dealing with seamen didn’t call for drawing room etiquette.
    But at least he knew enough now to say, “Thanks, lads,” to the ambulance crew as they handed Donal over to the hospital staff and prepared to depart. “Safe home.”
    Kitty climbed out. “No change for the worse, Fingal,” she said. “Pulse, blood pressure fine. He’s still asleep, but he’ll wake up if you call his name.”
    He took her arm and followed the orderlies as they wheeled Donal to the ambulance room, a part of casualty where patients were seen and assessed. The lights were bright, the floor tiled. The room was divided into cubicles that could be screened by closing curtains, and each contained an