The Stranger's Secret. Maggie Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ like a crow contemplating a worm. Well, she’d had quite enough, she decided, snapping his folder shut.

      ‘As you’ve only been taking the indomethacin for a week, I think we’ll give it a little longer to see if it will help,’ she declared, reaching for her crutches. ‘If you still don’t find any improvement in a fortnight, come back and we’ll try something else.’

      That Wattie did not take kindly to this abrupt conclusion to his consultation was plain. He got to his feet, rammed his cloth cap back on his head and fixed her with a baleful glare.

      ‘Just as long as it’s you I see, Doctor. Some of us have got better things to do than be turned inside out by a man who would make the rocks on the seashore look talkative.’

      Anger surged within her as she accompanied him back to the waiting room, but much as she longed to deny his criticisms she knew she couldn’t. Ezra did take a long time examining his patients, and it wasn’t because he was chatting to them.

      ‘Doesn’t say much, your new chap,’ her regulars had commented. ‘In fact, he can be a bit brusque at times but, my word, is he thorough.’

      So thorough that the number of blood samples they’d been sending off to the mainland had doubled since he’d joined the practice a week ago. So thorough that Bev Grant had jokingly said she’d soon be a full-time radiographer instead of a part-time one.

      If it had been anyone else Jess would have wondered if Ezra’s thoroughness masked a massive case of insecurity, but he was the least insecure man she’d ever met.

      ‘Wattie doesn’t look very happy,’ Cath observed as he strode out of the surgery, frustration on his face.

      ‘Wattie Hope is a pain in the butt,’ Jess replied. She glanced out at the waiting room. It was empty, apart from Miss Tweedie. ‘Has Robb MacGregor cancelled his twelve o’clock appointment with me?’

      ‘Not as far as I know,’ Cath replied, reaching to answer the phone. ‘Good morning. Inverlairg Health Centre. Oh, hello, Fraser.’ Quickly, she transferred the telephone receiver to her other ear and picked up a pencil. ‘I can give you an appointment with Dr Arden—Oh, you’d rather see Dr Dunbar? It would have to be Monday, then. OK, we’ll see you Monday at 9.30.’

      ‘Looks like you’ve got yourself a fan.’ Jess smiled, seeing Ezra come out of his consulting room.

      He didn’t look particularly thrilled by the information. In fact, he looked downright puzzled.

      ‘Jess, what do you know about gout?’

      ‘Gout?’ she repeated in surprise as the surgery phone rang again. ‘Not a lot, except it was previously thought to be caused by too much rich food and alcohol, but we now know it occurs when the kidneys aren’t excreting enough uric acid.’ She ran her finger along the selection of medical books they kept in the office and pulled one out. ‘Who do you think has—?’

      ‘Sorry, Jess, but it’s Virginia—the Dawson’s Pharmaceuticals rep,’ Cath declared, cradling the telephone against her chest. ‘She wants to know if you’ve had a chance to look through her catalogue yet?’ Jess drew a finger across her throat expressively, and Cath smothered a chuckle as she put the phone back to her ear. ‘So sorry, Miss Brunton, but Dr Arden’s decided not to buy anything this time. Yes, I’ll be sure to tell her you called.’

      ‘That woman is driving me nuts,’ Jess groaned when Cath replaced the receiver. ‘One order—that’s all I’ve ever given her—and now she haunts me.’

      ‘Told you it was a mistake, didn’t I?’ the receptionist said. ‘Give these reps an inch, and they’ll take a mile.’

      Tracy could have done with quite a few more inches, Jess thought, blinking slightly, as the girl joined them wearing a skirt that could have doubled for a pelmet.

      ‘We’ve plenty of the MMR vaccine, but we’re getting low on the diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus triple vaccine,’ she declared, beaming up at Ezra as she passed him.

      ‘Um, right. I’ll order some more,’ Jess replied, involuntarily glancing down at her own very sensible, calf-length skirt, before suddenly remembering Ezra’s patient. ‘Who do you think has—?’

      She was too late. He had already disappeared back into his room.

      Tracy sighed as she gazed after him. ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’

      Cath nodded in agreement and Jess stared at the two women in bemused disbelief. Lovely? For sure, Ezra could be very kind. Indeed, his offer to help with her practice had been downright amazing, but lovely as in drop-dead gorgeous? She must need her eyes tested because she sure as heck couldn’t see it.

      ‘Sorry to be so late, Doctor,’ Robb MacGregor said, coming through the health centre door at a rush, ‘but I’ve been waiting on an order from the mainland and it’s finally arrived, and it’s wrong. Heaven knows how it can be. Twelve tons of bricks is twelve bloody tons of bricks in anybody’s language!’

      And Miss Tweedie, for one, clearly didn’t appreciate his, judging from the way she pointedly slammed her magazine down in the waiting room.

      ‘Would you like to come through to my consulting room, Robb?’ Jess suggested, and the builder bit his lip as he followed her.

      ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but if it’s not one damn thing at the moment, it’s another. Perhaps if I had more energy I’d be able to cope, but…’ He shook his head unhappily. ‘I’m so tired all the time, you see—that’s one of the reasons I’ve come to see you—and as for being short-tempered…!’

      ‘Are you having trouble sleeping?’ Jess asked, propping her crutches by the side of her desk and sitting down.

      Robb thrust a large hand through his already tousled brown hair and smiled ruefully. ‘Doctor, if you were a self-employed man with a wife and two kids to support, and idiots on the mainland kept sending you the wrong goods, would you be sleeping?’

      She chuckled. ‘I guess not. Could you slip your shirt off for me?’

      He did, but after Jess had given him a thorough checkup she was no wiser.

      ‘You’ve lost weight since your last physical, haven’t you?’ she asked when Robb had put his shirt back on.

      ‘Still need to lose a bit more, I reckon,’ he replied, patting his stomach ruefully.

      ‘Any diarrhoea or stomach pains?’

      He shook his head, and she leant back in her seat with a frown. He looked at the end of his tether. He also looked tired and pale and drawn, but his heart rate had been normal, his BP the same, and apart from his stomach being a little distended she could find nothing to suggest anything worrying.

      ‘I’ve taken a blood sample, and started him on a course of iron tablets in case he’s slightly anaemic,’ she told Ezra when he joined her in her consulting room for coffee at the end of morning surgery, ‘but I keep wondering if I’ve missed something.’

      ‘If he’d been suffering from stomach pain or diarrhoea I’d have said possible stomach ulcer,’ Ezra said, handing her one of the cups of coffee Cath had brought in. ‘But without that it certainly looks like anaemia СКАЧАТЬ