Thrum: An Irish Medical Romance Drama

THRUM is a propulsive, emotionally intelligent medical drama set in Dublin—alive with sirens, theatre lights, and the quiet thrum of a heart learning its rhythm again.Ailbhe Keane returns to the hospital that almost killed her—as a surgical intern, as a single mother to a fox-bright three-year-old, and as the woman who once made a promise to herself she isn’t sure she can keep. The city is on edge after a night that should have been ordinary explodes into blood and blue lights. Triage floods. Phones won’t stop. And the one person Ailbhe never planned to see again is suddenly beside her at the scrub sink: Ronan Hayes, the consultant with the spotless record, the wrecked past, and the scar that mirrors hers.
What follows is a story of bodies and boundaries. Consent is spoken out loud. Paperwork is done by the book. When the rules grow teeth, they learn how to live inside them—profession first, desire second—until a mass-casualty crash rips the plan apart. Patients need saving, parents are missing, and every decision in theatre has a cost. The pages move fast—trauma calls, theatre doors, corridor whispers—but the novel’s heart is intimate: a mother deciding what future her daughter deserves; a surgeon choosing what kind of doctor to be when nobody is watching; two adults learning how to want each other without breaking the people who rely on them.
THRUM blends clinical detail with big feeling. The medicine is credible without jargon walls; the romance is grown-up—tender where it counts, fierce when it must be, and always mindful of power. The found-family ensemble (registrars, nurses, paramedics, a child with a laugh like a spark) gives the book its warmth and gallows humor. Dublin itself is a character: Temple Bar at 10:44 PM, rain on the Liffey, a city that keeps going even when the monitors are quiet.
For readers who love the urgency of hospital dramas and the intimacy of upmarket fiction, THRUM sits comfortably between the pulse-quick storytelling of TV medical series and the layered interiority of contemporary Irish novels. It’s about the lives we save, the rules we bend, and the family we choose. Standalone with series potential.
Content advisory (transparent but brief): hospital violence, mass-casualty response, paediatric resuscitation, strong language, and on-page consensual sex.