A Dublin Student Doctor by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

way to decide how Donal was doing was still the old analysis of symptoms and signs. That way of assessing a head injury had not changed since Fingal had been a student at Sir Patrick Dun’s. “Any change in Donal’s clinical state?”
    “I’ve his chart here,” she said, and handed it to O’Reilly. The pulse rate was slower, the blood pressure stable, and the respiratory rate much slower. That was good. Patients who had suffered cerebral bruising, which was what Mister Gupta suspected, usually had a period of reaction when all those changes happened. O’Reilly sure as hell hoped that this was what was going on and that the next phase would be resolution with Donal regaining consciousness. He read on. Level of consciousness, unchanged, but the patient had spontaneously turned on his side. That too was a sign of the reaction period. Pupils equal and reacting to light. Good. Reflexes normal. Better. “When do we expect them back, Sister?” he asked.
    “Twenty minutes—half an hour. We have our own X-ray department here in Quin House and the new Procomat automated film developer is a lot quicker than doing it by hand.”
    He chuckled. “When I was a lad we used to hold glass film plates over the patient.”
    She smiled and, he thought, tactfully refrained from comment.
    “May I wait here?” he asked.
    She beckoned to him. “Come round and have a pew. Can I make you a cup of tea?”
    He smiled. Tea. Ulster’s answer to anything from a laddered stocking to nuclear war. “Please,” he said.
    “I’ll be right back.” She rose. “Mister Gupta’s really very good. Try not to worry too much.” She left, heading for the ward kitchen. He had to smile. Usually it was him telling someone else not to worry. And, damn it, she was right. He should bide patiently. He looked at his watch. Ten past ten. It didn’t seem like more than four hours since Donal had come a cropper.
    It would be dark outside now and the curtains of the four-bedded wards were all closed. These rooms against the wall of the hexagonal Quin House abutted a corridor that separated them from the single-bed isolation wards forming the inner hub. All rooms were glass-fronted. The building had been regarded as revolutionary when it was opened in 1953.
    Charlie had invited Fingal to the occasion. A much more serious Charles Greer than the young man who’d suggested going dancing at a floating ballroom back in ’34. That had been a good night and yet Fingal had had no difficulty waking up the next morning. Youth, he thought wryly. He’d have more trouble nowadays getting his fifty-six-year-old bones out of bed at eight in the morning after a night of dancing.
    O’Reilly crossed his legs at the ankles, locked his hands behind his head, and leant back in his chair. He could so clearly picture himself coming to in his digs, the sparsely furnished, linoleum-floored, ground-floor bed-sit at 23a Westland Row and remembering the night before. Charlie had been right about having fun. She’d been a pretty lass, that Finnoula—he had to struggle to remember her last name—Branagh. That was it. Branagh. Third-year botany student.
    He’d taken her home by tram, kissed her goodnight, and had been pleased when she’d said she’d be delighted to go to the pictures with him on Saturday night. The Savoy Theatre on O’Connell Street had opened in 1929 and could seat three thousand. That was where they’d seen The Barretts of Wimpole Street with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Sullivan. Now there was an Irish lass who’d done well for herself.
    *   *   *
    The springs of the single bed creaked as Fingal threw back the blanket. He felt the chill in the air. His stomach grumbled, but not in anticipation of the usual gruel accompanied by a pot of weak tea and a rationed two slices of bread and margarine that his landlady referred to as breakfast. No, once he’d showered and dressed he’d walk from here to his family home. Ma wasn’t expecting him, but he