An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor Read Free Book Online

the car park, he hasn't forgotten about the game, nor have I forgotten about what I watched back in the farmhouse. Admittedly, despite his sloppy practices, O'Reilly had been right about Jeannie Kennedy's appendix, and it had been above and beyond the call of duty to drive the Kennedys to Belfast, but that did not alter how Barry felt.
    As O'Reilly drove from the hospital grounds onto Falls Road, Barry said, "Doctor O'Reilly, I think you were very lucky to make the right diagnosis." 
    "Oh?" said O'Reilly mildly, "and why would you think that?"
     "You didn't examine the child properly because you were in a hurry."
     "Was I?"
    "That's what it looked like to me."
    O'Reilly swerved to avoid a cyclist. "Daft bugger," he muttered. 
    "Are you calling me daft?"
    "No," said O'Reilly, "but I will if you want me to." He stopped at a red light and turned to Barry. "Son, the diagnosis was as clear as the nose on your face from the minute we walked into the room. You could smell her halitosis." Barry looked at O'Reilly's nose expecting to see the telltale pallor. There was none.
    "Did you want me to prod her belly and stick a finger up her backside just because that's what the book says?" 
    "Well, I-"
    "Well, nothing," said O'Reilly, driving on. "That wee girl was terrified; there was no need to hurt her anymore."
     "I suppose . . ." Barry could see O'Reilly's logic. He also knew that there had been no real need for O'Reilly to take the family to Belfast. 
    "You just suppose away," said O'Reilly, "and stick with me, son. You'll learn a thing or two the books don't teach you."

Forty Shades of Green
    Barry sat quietly in the passenger seat. Neither he nor O'Reilly had spoken during the drive through Belfast since their brief discussion about why O'Reilly had decided not to complete the examination of Jeannie Kennedy. And damn it, the more Barry thought of O'Reilly's explanation, the more he recognized that the older man, the experienced man, was probably right not to have inflicted unnecessary pain. Perhaps under his rough facade O'Reilly had a softer side. Barry's ruminations were interrupted as the car moved past the redbrick wall of Campbell College, his old school. It didn't seem like seven years had passed since he'd left there to go to medical school. He'd been a boarder for four years at Campbell, the school that the inmates used to say was run on the lines of Nelson's navy: rum, sodomy, and the lash--without the solace of the rum. Not altogether true, of course, although there had been times when he had been beaten by a prefect for some infringement of the rules. And he had made one good friend there, Jack Mills--he was training as a surgeon in the Royal Victoria Hospital. Jack and Barry had shared a study at Campbell in their senior year, stuck together as medical students, been housemen together. Barry decided he'd give Jack a call and see if they could get together when he had his first Saturday off. He'd be interested to hear his friend's opinion of O'Reilly. 
    The car left the city traffic. O'Reilly slammed his foot onto the accelerator and hurled the Rover at the twisting Craigantlet Hill Road. Barry stared ahead as the hedgerows ripped past the window, and he tensed as the car lurched when a wheel bounced off the verge. O'Reilly was saying something.
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "I said, 'We'll be home in no time.'"
    Or upside down in the ditch, Barry thought.
    "Goes like a bird," said O'Reilly. "We're coming up to The Straight. I can really let her out there." 
    I wish to God you'd let me out here, Barry thought. He glanced at O'Reilly, who had one hand on the wheel and with the other held a match over the bowl of his pipe. "Aren't we going a bit fast, Doctor O'Reilly?"
    "Nonsense, my boy." O'Reilly puffed smoke like a labouring, coal-fired tank engine and threw the car into a turn.
    Barry ducked as they scraped past a hay wagon coming from the opposite direction. When he slid back up in his seat he could see that the road