The Stranger's Secret

by Maggie Kingsley

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 to me.’

  She wished she was more convinced, and then she remembered something else she still didn’t know the answer to. ‘Which of my patients did you think had gout?’

  ‘Brian Guthrie.’

  ‘Oh, the poor man,’ she exclaimed with concern. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘He has all the classic symptoms. A swollen toe, which is very red and tender to the touch, and the veins on the rest of his foot were quite extensively enlarged, too.’

  She shook her head. ‘Brian’s had a really rough time lately. His wife died two years ago, and he misses her a lot.’

  ‘So he told me. He also seemed a little bit disappointed to discover it wasn’t you who would be treating him.’

  Actually, more than a little disappointed, Ezra remembered, whereas his jaw had dropped when Greensay’s reputedly wealthiest man had limped into his consulting room.

  Brian Guthrie had to be fifty-five if he was a day, not to mention being red-cheeked, portly and balding. OK, so he knew that looks weren’t everything, but if this was Mairi Morrison’s idea of eligible manhood for Jess, he dreaded to think what Fraser Kennedy must look like.

  Not that it was any of his business, of course, and neither did he care, but he’d have thought Jess deserved something better than a fifty-five-year-old with gout, or a wizened sailor.

  ‘Jess—’

  ‘The trouble is, people still tend to regard gout as a bit of a joke,’ she observed, sipping her coffee pensively, ‘and it’s anything but for the poor sufferer. In fact, I believe it can lead to serious bone and kidney damage if it’s not treated.’

  ‘So the book you gave me said.’ Ezra nodded. ‘Thanks for the loan of it, by the way. Gout wasn’t something I tended to come across when I—before I stopped practising medicine.’

  Damn, but she wished he wouldn’t do that, she thought with frustration. Almost reveal what branch of medicine he’d been in, then suddenly clam up. It was so tantalising. And there was no point in asking him. She’d already tried it and had got nowhere.

  Anyway, he was a good doctor, and that was all she really needed to know, but she couldn’t deny she was curious—OK, more than curious—about what he’d done before and why he didn’t practise any more.

  ‘I had another case of head lice in this morning,’ she said, determinedly dragging her mind away from Ezra’s past.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Snap. Looks like it’s going to go through the whole school. You’d better drop into the shop before you start on your home visits this afternoon and warn Nazir to stock up on antiseptic shampoo.’

  She nodded and turned as Tracy popped her head round the staff room door.

  ‘Morning mail’s arrived, Doctors. Do you want it in here, or…?’

  ‘In here’s fine,’ Jess answered, only to immediately regret her decision the minute when Tracy came in.

  Heavens, but her skirt was short. Short and tight, revealing a pair of long, perfectly shaped slender thighs which tapered down into even more slender ankles. The kind of ankles any woman would have envied. The kind of legs to die for, Jess thought wistfully as the girl left the staffroom. Her legs had never been great even before she’d broken one. In fact, if she’d worn a skirt like that it wouldn’t have been admiring glances she’d have drawn but laughter.

  ‘Personally I prefer long skirts.’

  Her head snapped round to Ezra in surprise. ‘Do you?’ she said before she could stop herself.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m a firm believer in the old adage that grownup women shouldn’t need to advertise their wares. Just as grown-up men prefer discovering them for themselves.’

  He was smiling at her—a warm, understanding, half-quizzical smile—and to Jess’s acute dismay she found herself blushing. Good grief, just because he’d paid her a compliment—at least, she thought he had—it was no reason for her to blush like a tomato.

  It wasn’t as though she was inexperienced. She’d had relationships with men in the past—well, all right, so she’d had precisely two boyfriends but surely that qualified her as being experienced? And other men had paid her compliments and never before had she blushed like a teenager. Or felt so unsettled, and edgy, and odd.

  Ezra saw her confusion and cursed himself inwardly. What on earth had possessed him to say what he had? OK, so he’d meant it, but he’d already made up his mind to keep things on a strictly professional footing with Jess. And making personal comments about her appearance definitely wasn’t keeping things on a professional level.

  ‘Did I—?’

  ‘Have you—?’

  They’d spoken together, and to her chagrin Jess blushed even more. ‘You first.’

  ‘I was only going to say I’ve arranged for Colin McPhail to see the orthopaedic consultant on the mainland,’ Ezra said quickly. ‘He badly needs a hip replacement.’

  That was more like it, she told herself, crushing down her quite irrational sense of disappointment at his abrupt change of conversation. Work. She should be concentrating on work, not on…Well, not on how somebody could look so completely different if they smiled in a particular way, or the strange and unsettling sensations that a simple smile could create.

  ‘I agree with you,’ she said quickly, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time, making an appointment for Colin. He won’t have the operation.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ he protested.

  ‘You mean, you’ve actually managed to convince him that his dogs will be OK?’ she said, unable to conceal her amazement.

  ‘His dogs?’ he repeated in confusion, and she sighed.

  ‘Ezra, Colin has three dogs and he’s terrified they’ll pine if he goes into hospital. And it’s no good suggesting that a neighbour can look after them while he’s away,’ she added as he tried to interrupt. ‘I’ve tried that, and it didn’t work. He said he’d rather put up with the pain than abandon his friends.’

  ‘Then why the hell didn’t he tell me so when I suggested the operation to him?’ he fumed. ‘I’ve already rung the hospital, spoken to the consultant.’

  She stared down at the dregs of her coffee, remembering Wattie’s jibe and the comments of some of her other patients. ‘Did you actually suggest it, Ezra, or did you simply tell him?’

  ‘Of course I discussed it with him!’ he exclaimed. ‘I explained the operation in full, discussed all the pros and the cons, the success rate and the likely prognosis for long-term recovery, and he never once said anything about dogs.’

  She doubted if she would have said very much when faced with Ezra in full professional mode. In fact, she doubted if she would have said anything at all.

  ‘Ezra…’ Oh, heavens, how to say this tactfully without offending him. ‘Perhaps you didn’t give him time to say anything. Perhaps you got a bit carried away with explaining the procedure…’

  ‘Are you say
ing I bamboozled him with data?’ he demanded, and she groaned inwardly.

  Lord, this conversation was going from bad to worse, but she had to make him see, understand.

  ‘Of course I’m not, but…Look, you were a hospital doctor before, weren’t you?’ she said, and saw his shoulders stiffen. Bingo! Well, that was one thing she now knew about him for sure. ‘Sometimes—and I’m not saying you ever did this—but sometimes hospital doctors forget that people have minds of their own—agendas, wishes of their own—and aren’t simply the sum total of their ailments or disease.’

  He banged both their empty coffee-cups down onto the tray and angrily got to his feet. ‘Now you’re accusing me of not listening!’

  ‘I’m not—truly, I’m not!’ she replied. ‘All I’m saying is it’s very easy to get carried away with the technology of our profession, the wonderful things our skills can achieve, and if we’re not careful we can start thinking we’re gods, and—’

  She didn’t get the chance to finish. Ezra picked up the tray and began walking to the door when suddenly—and completely without warning—it slipped through his fingers, sending the cups crashing to the floor.

  ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry!’ he gasped, staring down at the shattered remnants of their coffee-break. ‘I’ll pay for a new set…’

  ‘Don’t be silly. There’s no need—’

  ‘Of course there is!’ he snapped, bending down and beginning to pick up the broken pieces of crockery. ‘I broke them so I should replace them!’

  ‘Ezra, it’s two measly cups and saucers, not an entire set of Sèvres china!’ she exclaimed, but he didn’t reply, merely continued with his task, and he might well have collected every piece if she hadn’t suddenly noticed with horror that drops of blood were staining the carpet. ‘You’ve cut yourself!’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘But you’re bleeding!’ she protested, getting awkwardly to her feet and hopping towards him. ‘Let me see…’

  ‘I told you, it’s nothing,’ he repeated, and when she tried to take his hand to see for herself, he swung round on her furiously. ‘For God’s sake, leave me be!’

  Never had Jess heard him quite so angry, but what worried her more were the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead, the way his hands were shaking.

  ‘Ezra…Ezra, are you OK?’ she said with concern.

  ‘Of course I’m OK!’ he thundered, then bit his lip when she flinched. ‘I’m fine…fine,’ he repeated more calmly. ‘Look, I’ll just put a couple of Steri-Strips on this, and then we’d better make a start on your home visits or your patients will think we’re lost.’

  At the moment Jess didn’t give a damn what her patients thought. ‘Ezra—’

  ‘Your phone’s ringing,’ he pointed out unnecessarily. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in the car when you’re ready to go.’

  And he was. A little edgy, a little uncomfortable, but he was there.

  Leave it, Jess, she told herself as she got into his car. OK, so you’re eaten up with curiosity, wondering why he reacted the way he did, but if you push too hard he might up and leave, and then how are you going to manage?

  So she kept her tongue between her teeth and to her relief by the time they’d called in on Jeff Turner to change the dressing on his ulcerated leg, then checked on Tess MacPherson’s new baby, some of Ezra’s tension had eased. And when they stopped at the pharmacy to warn Nazir about stocking up on antiseptic shampoo, Ezra was actually able to laugh when Nazir dragged him across to admire his new internet equipment.

  ‘He is a nice man, your Dr Dunbar,’ Nazir’s wife observed when Jess joined her at the counter, the joys of the internet holding no appeal for either woman. ‘But not, I think, a very happy one.’

  Jess stared at her, startled. ‘What on earth makes you say that?’

  Indira bent down to pick up her son Aziz who was holding up his chubby arms to her. ‘When Nazir and I lived on the mainland I was not happy. Sometimes there was name-calling in the street—occasionally even stones thrown. Your Dr Dunbar—he has not the same reason to be unhappy, but he is unhappy. And I think, for him, no matter how far he runs, or how fast, the pain will remain.’

  ‘Indira—’

  ‘Jess, are you ready to go?’ Ezra called from the shop door.

  She wasn’t—not by a long country mile. She wanted to ask Indira to explain, to tell her more, but Nazir’s wife was already walking away, her colourful sari glinting in the winter sunshine.

  Was Ezra unhappy? she wondered as he drove her out of Inverlairg. Sometimes she thought she saw shadows lurking in his deep grey eyes, as though he had memories which weren’t very pleasant, but he didn’t speak much about himself at all.

  Taciturn, her father would have said. Brusque was how some of her patients described him, but she thought he was simply a man who kept his emotions on a tight rein. A man who couldn’t open up to anyone, and yet who probably should.

  And now she was psychoanalysing him, she realised with an inward groan, which was pretty rich considering she knew nothing about him.

  But you’d like to know, wouldn’t you? a little voice whispered at the back of her mind.

  Well, of course she would, she retorted. Considering he was virtually her partner at the moment, it would have been more surprising if she hadn’t been interested in his past.

  And is it only his past you’re interested in? the annoying little voice asked with a chuckle, and she crushed it down with irritation.

  She had more important things to think about anyway, she told herself firmly. Mairi Morrison, for one. Mairi, whose X-rays results had come back from the Sinclair Memorial three days ago and yet, despite Jess leaving repeated messages on her answering machine, still hadn’t come down to the surgery to discuss them.

  ‘I see you’ve brought the big guns with you this time,’ Mairi said with resignation when she opened her front door and saw them standing there. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better come in.’

  ‘Mairi, if you’d rather Dr Dunbar waited in the car…’

  ‘I don’t much care one way or the other,’ the woman sighed. ‘Let’s just get it over with.’

  Ezra glanced across at Jess, his eyebrows raised, and she shook her head. Something told her this visit was going to be a difficult one, and she might need him.

  She was right.

  ‘It’s cancer, isn’t it?’ Mairi said, after Jess had told her the X-rays had revealed a shadow on her lung. ‘My father died of lung cancer when he was fifty-six. That’s why I’ve never smoked—never even tried one.’

  ‘Mairi, it could be anything,’ Jess said gently. ‘You could have a chest infection. You could simply have moved slightly when Bev took the X-ray. I’ll ask her to take some more, and I’d like you to supply a sputum sample—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Jess, my father had exactly the same symptoms as I have—the bad cough, feeling tired all the time, being breathless, losing weight. Your father sent him for more X-rays, took samples, did tests. Then he went through months of agonising treatment, and it was all for nothing. He still died.’

  ‘But you’ve got to at least let me find out if you do have lung cancer!’ Jess protested. ‘You can’t simply refuse to have more X-rays or to give me a sputum sample. It’s ridiculous—crazy—burying your head in the sand like this!’

  ‘Jess.’

  Ezra was shaking his head warningly at her, and she knew what he was thinking—that only a few hours earlier she’d taken him to task about patient rights—but this was Mairi, and she couldn’t give in without a fight.

  She had to. No matter what she or Ezra said, Mairi was adamant. There would be no more X-rays, and no sputum sample.

  ‘How can she be so stupid?’ Jess said vehemently when Ezra finally drove her away. ‘OK, so there’s a shadow on her lung, but even if it is cancer it may well be in the early stages when we can do something about it, and if it isn’t cancer she’s going to suffer years of uncertainty and f
ear for nothing!’

  ‘Jess—’

  ‘What am I going to do? She can be so stubborn at times, so pigheaded, and—’

  ‘You’re very fond of her,’ he said softly, drawing his car to a halt and switching off the ignition.

  She gazed out of the car at the dark fields beyond. ‘Fond’ didn’t even come close to how she felt about Mairi.

  ‘Mairi…She was my mother’s best friend, and when my mother died shortly after my fifteenth birthday everybody on the island was wonderful, so sympathetic, but Mairi…’ Jess swallowed the lump in her throat as she remembered. ‘She was special. She took care of the day-to-day things that nobody else thought of. Made sense out of something that had no sense. Without her…’

  He reached out and clasped her hand in his. His touch was warm, and solid, and infinitely comforting. ‘I’m sure, when she’s had time to think about it, she’ll see sense.’

  She wanted to believe him—she really wanted to—but she knew he didn’t believe it any more than she did.

  And her depression hadn’t lifted even by the time they got back to her cottage.

  Normally she looked forward to Thursdays. With no evening surgery it was her time to relax, but tonight she just couldn’t settle. There was nothing she wanted to watch on television, her leg was aching quite badly and she felt edgy and sticky and uncomfortable.

  ‘A long, hot bath might make you feel better,’ Ezra observed, his eyes following her as she hobbled awkwardly back from the bookcase, empty-handed. ‘I could wrap a plastic bag round your cast and if you stuck your leg out over the side of the bath, it shouldn’t get wet.’

  A bath sounded wonderful. A real, proper bath instead of the cursory sponge job she’d been making do with, but… ‘I’m afraid I don’t think I could even get in the bath, Ezra, far less out again.’

  ‘You could if I helped you.’

  Was he serious? Good grief, he appeared to be, and Jess shook her head quickly. ‘Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ he protested. ‘What’s the problem?’

  Apart from the fact that he was a man, she was a woman and the thought of him seeing her in all her too imperfect glory was making her toes curl with embarrassment?