The Stranger's Secret

‘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.

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