the annals of history. I’d seen those shots—one of him midspeech, his arms raised in passion, and one in his commander’s uniform the day the British relinquished control of the castle, a symbol of British control in Dublin for the last hundred years.
I stared at the picture a moment longer, marveling, before I set it aside and reached for the book. It was a journal, an old one, the writing neatly slanted, the cursive beautiful in the way old handwriting often was. I thumbed through it without reading, simply checking the dates. The entries ranged from 1916 to 1922 and were often sporadic, with months between them and sometimes years before the record picked up again. The handwriting was the same throughout the entire book. Nothing scribbled or crossed out; no ink stains or torn pages. Each entry had T. S. at the bottom of the page and nothing more.
“Thomas Smith?” I said to myself. It was the only thing that fit, but it surprised me that Eoin would have the man’s journal. I read the first entry, a date marked May 2, 1916. My horror and amazement grew as I read about the Easter Rising and the death of Declan Gallagher. I thumbed through several more entries and read about Thomas’s efforts to find Anne and to come to terms with the loss of his friends. An entry the day Seán Mac Diarmada was executed at Kilmainham Gaol simply said, Seán died this morning. I thought he might be spared when the executions were halted for several days. But he’s been taken too. My only comfort is that I know he welcomed it. He died for the cause of Irish freedom. That’s the way he would have seen it. But selfishly, I can only consider it a dreadful shame. I will miss him terribly.
He wrote of his return to Dromahair after attending medical school at the University College, Dublin, and of trying to set up a practice in Sligo and County Leitrim.
The people are so poor, I can’t imagine I will make much of a living from the effort, but I have more than sufficient for my needs. It is what I’ve always planned to do. And here I am, driving from one end of the county to the other, from the north to the south, east to Sligo and west again. I feel like a peddler half the time, and the people can’t pay for what I’m offering. I made a house call in Ballinamore yesterday and collected no payment but a sweet song from the oldest daughter. A family of seven in a two-room cottage. The youngest, a girl of six or seven, had been unable to get out of her bed for several days. I discovered she wasn’t sick. She was hungry—hungry enough to have no energy to move. The entire family was skin and bones. I have thirty acres at Garvagh Glebe that are not being cultivated and an overseer’s house sitting empty on the property. I told the father—a man named O’Toole—that I needed someone to farm it and the position was his, if he thought he could do it. It was an impulsive offer. I have no interest in farming or in taking on the responsibility of providing for an entire family. But the man wept and asked if he could start in the morning. I gave him twenty pounds, and we shook hands on it. I left the supper Brigid had packed for me that morning—more food than I needed—and made the little girl eat a piece of bread and butter before I left. Bread and butter. Years of medical training and study, and the child simply needed bread and butter. From now on, I’ll bring eggs and flour along with my medical bag on my travels. I think the food is needed more than a doctor. I’m not sure what I’ll do when I come across the next family starving in their beds.
I stopped reading, a lump in my throat, and turned the page only to find another sad account of doctoring in Dromahair. He wrote, “One mother seemed more interested in me marrying her daughter than healing her. She pointed out her fine features, rosy cheeks, and bright eyes, which were all due to an advanced case of consumption. She won’t live much longer, I’m afraid. But I promised to come back with medicine to ease her cough. The mother was ecstatic. I don’t think she understands that I’m not