‘For the moment, he does,’ she replied. ‘I’m Jess Arden, by the way, the local GP.’
‘Ah,’ the young man said as though that somehow explained everything. ‘How is he?’
‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ Jess smiled. ‘He’s just collecting some groceries from the shop but he won’t be more than a couple of minutes.’
‘I wouldn’t want to impose…’
‘You’d hardly be doing that if you’re a friend of his,’ Jess pointed out. ‘In fact, I’m sure he’d be delighted to see you.’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call us friends,’ the young man admitted, ‘but I worked for him at the Royal in London, and I always wondered—well, we all did—what happened to him—where he’d gone to—after he left the hospital.’ He shook his head in apparent disbelief. ‘Wait until I tell everyone—they’ll never believe it. Talk about coincidence—’
‘You said Dr Dunbar worked at the Royal in London?’ Jess interrupted, all thoughts of tuberculin tests temporarily forgotten.
‘He was one of its major stars. Youngest ever heart surgeon at twenty-seven, head of his own unit at thirty-three. The man was a living legend.’
Jess could believe it. His suturing of Simon Ralston’s hand hadn’t simply been good, it had been brilliant.
‘And then a year ago…’ The young man sighed. ‘Well, as you can imagine, we were all thunderstruck when he resigned. It was tragic, really—all that talent and ability—to end like that. Mind you, he really couldn’t have done anything else under the circumstances.’
Jess’s ears pricked up. ‘The circumstances?’ she prompted.
‘Mind you, I have to say there weren’t a lot of tears shed when he went,’ the young man continued. ‘He didn’t exactly endear himself to the staff at the Royal, you see. Too abrasive by half.’
Jess could well believe that, but she wasn’t interested in hearing how abrasive Ezra had been. ‘You said Ezra left the Royal a year ago…’
‘I think that’s everything, Jess,’ Ezra said, appearing by her side without warning.
Not yet it wasn’t, she thought determinedly. Not when she was so close to finally getting an answer to the one question Ezra would never answer.
‘Ezra, this gentleman—’
‘I’m sorry, I never did introduce myself, did I?’ The young man laughed. ‘Trevor Taylor—Dr Trevor Taylor. It’s good to see you again, sir,’ he continued, turning to Ezra.
Ezra didn’t look as though he shared Trevor Taylor’s pleasure. In fact, he looked furious and Jess wasn’t surprised when the young doctor eventually made a very hasty retreat after a few tortuous and decidedly uncomfortable pleasantries.
‘You weren’t very polite,’ she observed as Ezra yanked open the boot of his car with quite unnecessary force.
‘Wasn’t I?’ he replied tersely.
‘Dr Taylor said he was a colleague of yours, that he’d worked with you at the Royal in London.’
Their groceries were stowed with scant regard to any of the breakable items and the boot lid was slammed shut. ‘I can’t say I remember him.’
‘Well, he remembers you,’ Jess said, refusing to give up. ‘A living legend, he said. So talented, and gifted, he said, and how tragic it was when you resigned, but you couldn’t really have done anything else in the circumstances.’
He stared back at her silently, then yanked open the passenger door. ‘Our vegetables and meat are defrosting. Unless you want to eat the lot tonight, or risk salmonella by re-freezing them, I suggest we go home, don’t you?’
And that was obviously the end of the matter as far as he was concerned, but it wasn’t finished for her. Not by a long shot, she decided as he drove them home. She had no intention of leaving it, not after what Trevor Taylor had said.
Tragic was the word he’d used to describe Ezra’s resignation. Did he mean he’d had an affair with a colleague’s wife, and had been forced to resign because of it? Unconsciously she shook her head. People didn’t resign over affairs nowadays, and Ezra didn’t seem to her to be the kind of man who’d throw in a job because he was nursing a broken heart.
Not that she actually knew him, of course, she realised, glancing surreptitiously across at him. Lord, but he still looked furious. Furious, white-lipped, and…and ill.
He definitely looked ill, she thought with concern, seeing the way his hands were clenched on the steering-wheel, the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. He’d looked like this the night he’d taken her to the Sinclair Memorial. And when the tray of coffee-cups had suddenly slipped through his fingers for no apparent reason.
Oh, dear God, was that why Trevor Taylor had said Ezra’s resignation had been tragic—because he was ill? So ill he couldn’t work any more? So ill he might…might…even be dying?
It made sense—horrible, awful sense—and Jess waited only until he’d carried their groceries into her cottage before she grasped him urgently by the arm. ‘Ezra, what Dr Taylor said—’
‘You just can’t leave it alone, can you?’ he exclaimed furiously. ‘You have to keep on picking and picking at it like a scab! OK, I’ll tell you why I resigned. I resigned because I almost killed the last person I operated on!’
‘You mean you had unexpected complications—’
‘No, I don’t mean I had unexpected complications!’ he retorted. ‘They say pride comes before a fall, and they’re right. I was demonstrating a new surgical technique I’d perfected to a group of students,’ he continued as she stared at him in confusion, ‘and I got so caught up in their admiration and awe that I missed something even a third-year med student would have noticed, and if one of my colleagues hadn’t realised it in time my patient would have died.’
She couldn’t disguise her relief. ‘Is that all?’
‘All—all!’ he spat out, and she coloured.
‘I thought you were ill, Ezra. I thought maybe you had a tumour. I thought…I thought you might be dying.’
‘Sometimes I wish I was,’ he muttered so quietly she hardly heard him, but she did.
‘Ezra, there’s not a doctor living who hasn’t made a mistake,’ she said quickly, hating to see him like this, so drawn and stricken. ‘We’re not gods, remember, and at least someone noticed your mistake—’
‘But I can’t operate any more, Jess,’ he flared. ‘My nerve’s gone. The minute I hit an operating theatre I get the shakes, feel sick. Damn it, I can’t even lift a scalpel without my hands trembling!’
‘But—’
‘Jess, there is no Ezra Dunbar without my skill!’ He thrust his hands in front of her face. ‘These are—were—my tools. With them I could transform people’s lives. With them I could make people whole again. Without them…’ his face twisted bitterly ‘…I’m nothing.’
‘You’re wrong—so wrong,’ she cried. ‘Yes, your skill was a part of you—OK, so it was a large part,’ she continued quickly as he turned from her in exasperation, ‘but there’s more to you than that.’
He didn’t believe her. She could see it in his eyes as he began dragging their shopping out of the carrier bags and slamming it on the kitchen table, and she hopped awkwardly round the table towards him.
‘Ezra, listen to me. Scientists are already making machines which can do minor operations. In twenty—maybe thirty—years they’ll probably be able to build machines which can perform major heart and brain surgery, but do you think people will ever praise these machines—raise statues to them? Do you think anyone will ever grieve, feel their life is over, when that machine breaks down and can’t be mended?’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand—’
‘It’s you who doesn’t understand,’ she insisted. ‘Ezra, you’re not a machine, you’re a person, and it’s that person, what you were like—how much joy, or peace, or happiness you brought into other people’s lives—that people will remember.’
His lip curled. ‘And what little book of feel-good quotations did that come out of?’
A deep
wash of colour spread across her cheeks. ‘Look, if you honestly don’t think you’ll ever be able to operate again, you could teach. Teach the skills you have to others. Or…or, if you don’t want to do that,’ she continued, seeing the look of derision he threw her, ‘I think you could make a very good GP. I’ve seen you with my patients. OK, so maybe at first you were a little formal—a little jargon-obsessed—but that’s only because you weren’t used to talking to patients. If you can’t operate any more, you could be a GP.’
‘And spend the rest of my life dishing out pills and advice to people with piles and verrucas?’ He shook his head with distaste. ‘No way!’
Jess stared at him silently, her sympathy giving way to anger. He’d said it had been his pride which had caused his downfall, but he hadn’t learned anything from the experience. He was still proud—proud and arrogant—and how she’d ever been attracted to him she couldn’t imagine. Right now, she didn’t even like him.
‘So, it’s your ego that’s hurt more than anything else, is it?’ she said, ice-cold. ‘Now you can’t be the big cheese, the high-flying general, you don’t want to slum it with the common foot soldiers.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘Too damn right I don’t,’ she retorted. ‘But, then, I’m only an ordinary, run-of-the-mill GP. There’s nothing special about me, nothing unique. I’m not a big-shot surgeon with an ego to match.’
‘Jess—’
‘You’ve still got two arms, two legs and a brain that functions, Ezra. There’s a hell of a lot of people out there who are considerably worse off than you, so stop wallowing in self-pity and get a life!’
‘Now, just a minute—’
‘And as for your offer to stay on after my locum arrives to help me with the tuberculosis screening—don’t bother!’ she continued for good measure. ‘I wouldn’t want you to demean yourself by working with the common herd!’
And before he could reply she’d grasped her crutches and hopped out of the kitchen, leaving him staring, open-mouthed, after her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WELL, of course I was deeply shocked when I heard about Mairi Morrison,’ Wattie Hope declared, looking anything but. ‘Tuberculosis is something I never expected to hear about again in my lifetime and, knowing how infectious it is, I thought I’d better come down pretty smart and get this test thing done.’
You and half the island, Jess thought wearily as she reached for her box of tuberculin.
Quite how the news of Mairi’s TB had spread so fast was beyond her. Two days—that was all it had taken for her condition to become common knowledge—and, as Ezra had predicted, immediate panic had been the result.
Nobody was prepared to wait for a screening appointment. Everyone wanted a test, and they wanted one now. Cath and Tracy were doing their level best to ensure surgeries were kept solely for people requiring consultations, but they were fighting a losing battle and people who really needed to see a doctor were constantly being sidelined.
‘Right or left arm, Mr Hope?’ she asked tightly.
‘Left, seeing as how I’m right-handed,’ he replied, taking off his jacket and beginning to roll up his sleeve. ‘You know, I never would have said Mairi Morrison kept a dirty house, but, then, nobody knows what goes on behind other folk’s closed doors, do they, and—?’
‘TB is not caused by dirt, Mr Hope,’ Jess declared irritably as she struggled to her feet. ‘It’s caused by a fungus-like bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis—’
‘Homeless people and alcoholics get it, too, don’t they?’ he said. ‘I suppose, living alone all these years, she probably started drinking a little in the evening, then it progressed to drinking during the day—’
‘Mr Hope, Mairi Morrison is not an alcoholic!’ Jess exclaimed, her green eyes flashing, ‘and if I hear anyone suggesting she might be, I’m going to know exactly who started the rumour!’
He didn’t look the least bit ashamed, but she wasn’t surprised. Nothing short of a sledgehammer—and she had grave reservations about the efficacy of even that—was ever going to halt Wattie Hope in his relentless pursuit of gossip.
‘I…um…this test—I thought it was given by injection, Doctor?’ he said, nervously eyeing the metal spring-loaded instrument she had taken out of the cupboard.
He could have had an injection. They’d been injecting the tuberculin into the island children because it was less frightening for them, but Jess was damned if she was going to make this any easier for Wattie.
‘Oh, come along now, Mr Hope,’ she said bracingly. ‘I’m sure a man of your age and experience won’t mind a little discomfort.’
He shrank back in his seat, looking even more weasel-like than usual. ‘And…ah…exactly how much discomfort are we talking about here?’
‘Hardly any at all, really.’ She smiled. A small, false smile which had Wattie swallowing convulsively. ‘Well, not too much at any rate. Once I’ve placed a tiny drop of tuberculin—that’s a purified protein extracted from the bacteria which causes tuberculosis—onto your forearm, I’m going to use this…’ Deliberately she waved the spring-loaded device under his nose. ‘It has a circle of very sharp prongs at the end of it to force the tuberculin into your skin through a mass of tiny puncture holes.’
He looked at her, then at the spring-loaded instrument, then quickly pulled down his sleeve and reached for his jacket. ‘I think I might wait until you send me out a screening invitation, Doctor. Surgeries are supposed to be for consultations, aren’t they? I really shouldn’t be taking up your time like this.’
‘No, you shouldn’t, but as you’re here—’
She didn’t get a chance to finish. Wattie shot out the door with a speed that suggested his bad back had been miraculously cured.
A bubble of laughter sprang from her lips, laughter which quickly died when she placed his folder in her already full out-box. OK, so terrifying Wattie witless by wildly exaggerating how painful the test was might have given her temporary satisfaction, but if she’d simply administered it at least it would have been one less. One less amongst so many.
It was all taking so long, that was the trouble. She and Cath had been running screening clinics every afternoon for the past four days while Ezra did the home visits, and then in the evenings Cath and Ezra supervised a further clinic while she took the surgery, but they’d still only managed to see one hundred and sixty-five islanders. And even those one hundred and sixty-five tests were incomplete. The tuberculin took three to four days to take effect. Three to four days before they knew who had tested positive to it and who had tested negative.
‘Jess, could you come through to Reception for a minute, please?’
Wearily Jess leant forward and pressed the answering button on her intercom. ‘I’ll be right along, Cath.’
‘Fine.’
Cath didn’t sound fine. In fact, Cath didn’t look well either. Very white and drawn, as though she was sleeping badly. She was doing too much—they all were—but the last thing Jess wanted was Cath going off sick. Not now, and not when their new locum was due in a week. A new locum who would know neither the area nor any patients.
Ezra offered to stay on to help, her little voice pointed out as she made her way down the corridor towards the waiting room, but you told him you didn’t want him. That you’d rather manage alone.
And she would, she told herself. OK, so three doctors would have completed the tests faster, but…
‘I don’t need him,’ she muttered out loud. ‘He’s arrogant. He’s insufferable and…’
Yet you’re still attracted to him, her heart whispered when she reached the waiting room and saw him deep in conversation with Cath.
She was, and she despised herself for it. How could she still be attracted to a man who clearly considered general practice the bottom rung of the medical profession? How could her heart continue to skip a beat over a man who would far rather abandon medicine altogether than become a GP?
Because I�
��m an idiot, she thought as she hopped towards Cath, and knew it was true.
‘Right, Cath, about this problem of yours—’
‘You promised!’ the receptionist exclaimed, her eyes flying immediately to Ezra. ‘You said you wouldn’t—’
‘And I haven’t,’ he murmured. ‘Not a word yet, believe me.’
Jess glanced from Cath to Ezra, then back again in confusion. ‘Maybe I should go out and come back in again because I sure as heck don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘It’s just a misunderstanding, that’s all,’ Ezra said smoothly. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘I was under the impression it was the other way round,’ Jess said, still bewildered. “‘Could you come through to Reception for a minute?” Cath said, and so I have.’
‘Oh! Right, yes,’ her receptionist replied, her cheeks darkening. ‘It’s…’ Quickly she hunted through the phone messages on her desk. ‘Hildy Wells. She wants to know if she can have a repeat prescription for her hormone replacement therapy.’
And maybe Hildy did, but Jess still wanted to know what she’d said to cause such consternation. ‘Cath—’
‘Inverlairg Health Centre,’ the receptionist intoned as she answered the phone. ‘Oh, good morning, Miss Brunton…Dr Arden?’ Jess shook her head frantically at her, and Cath grinned. ‘I’m sorry, but she’s busy right now. Yes, by all means send her another catalogue, but I think we’re pretty well stocked for pharmaceutical supplies at the moment.’
‘That woman is making me feel like a prisoner in my own surgery,’ Jess protested when Cath replaced the receiver. ‘Doesn’t she ever give up?’
‘I read somewhere that pharmaceutical reps have to pass a series of aptitude tests before they’re hired,’ Ezra commented. ‘Apparently, possessing a skin like a rhinoceros and the total inability to understand the word “No” are the two top priorities.’
‘I can believe it,’ Jess said with feeling. ‘Cath—’
‘What about Hildy’s prescription? Can I tell her yes, or…?’
The Stranger's Secret Page 11