road for the past four years, driving a bus for the Public Transportation Board.

But by night, his hands have been on the Principles of Internal Medicine (Ninth Edition), and his mind focused on one day being a doctor in the emergency room at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

Now, he is off to Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, and his dream is one stop closer to the end of the line.

He wants to complete the Bachelor of Science degree he abandoned at Louisiana State University in the early 1980s and gain admission to the prestigious Harvard Medical School.

"I'm nervous; I'm scared,'' he said yesterday as he prepared to leave the Island on Wednesday. But at the same time, "I feel very confident.'' His confidence comes from his long-time certainty that medicine should be his career. It is bolstered by his background -- as an ambulance driver in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and as a supply technician at Doctors Hospital in Lakewood, California.

"That's where I learned the most, driving an ambulance,'' said Mr. Eli, who is in his early 30s.

In fact, on one of his first ambulance calls, the Southampton Glebe Primary School graduate entered a man's bedroom just in time to see him blow his head off with a gun. "Coming from Bermuda, you really don't experience things of that nature, and I asked myself, `Do you really want to do this?' Later, at Doctors Hospital, he worked in intensive care, chronic care, even surgery. Having to set up surgical trays just right, "you get familiar with a lot of instruments. That will be valuable experience.'' Most of Mr. Eli's colleagues and virtually all of his passengers would be surprised to learn he spent his nights and weekends reading medical books and taking additional courses through the US Naval Air Station.

But the tall, quiet Southampton man said driving a bus "helped me out a lot,'' and not only because he was able to bank money for his education.

"You come into contact with the public as a whole,'' he said. But "you're just driving them around and letting them off, whereas in medicine you have a more in-depth relationship with them -- you see them at their worst.'' Once he completes his undergraduate degree in about two years, he will be hit with medical school tuition of about $19,000. Mr. Eli hopes his experience will allow him to shave a year off the four-year programme.

JUST THE TICKET -- While driving a bus in Bermuda for the past four years, Mr.

Mitchell Eli has been saving and studying. Now he's off to Harvard and hopes to return to the Island as a doctor.