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‘Not to mention having also acquired a very nasty bump on your forehead.’ Fiona’s eyes drifted towards Ezra. ‘And you are…?’
‘The drug dealer,’ he replied blandly. ‘Or the axe murderer—take your pick.’
‘Ezra Dunbar!’ she exclaimed triumphantly. ‘You’ve taken Sorley McBain’s holiday cottage—’
‘For the next three months.’ He nodded with resignation. ‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘Well, thank goodness you did,’ Fiona declared, lowering Jess carefully into a wheelchair, then pushing her through a door marked X-RAYS. ‘We islanders don’t tend to go out much in the evening in winter and heaven knows how long Jess might have been stuck in her car if you hadn’t happened along.’
‘I didn’t exactly happen—’
‘Would you mind staying with Jess until I get Bev and Will?’ Fiona continued. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
And before either of them could reply she was gone in a flurry of starched green cotton.
‘Bev is our part-time radiographer,’ Jess explained as a frown creased Ezra’s forehead. ‘Will’s her husband, and a first-rate anaesthetist, though how long we’ll be able to keep him is anybody’s guess. Our resident surgeon retired last year, you see, and we haven’t been able to replace him. I can do some surgery, but—’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Do what?’ she asked in confusion.
‘Tell her the accident was your fault?’
Jess eased herself gingerly round in her wheelchair. ‘I don’t think you’d have a very happy three months here if word got round that you’re the man who trashed the doctor’s car and landed her in hospital.’
The frown deepened. ‘But why should you care? Like you said, you don’t know me from Adam.’
She was hurting more and more by the second, and was in no mood to try to explain what she didn’t quite understand herself, but she managed to dredge up a smile. ‘Maybe I’m an old softy at heart. Maybe I’m just too sore to be able to think straight.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Didn’t I tell you to buy a decent car—well, didn’t I?’ Will Grant declared as he breezed into the X-ray department. ‘Buy a Volvo or a Range Rover, I said—’
‘Yes, we all know what you said, dear,’ his wife Bev interrupted, pushing past him, ‘and right now I don’t suppose Jess wants to hear you repeat it. Fractured right tibia and patella, you reckon?’ she continued, eyeing Jess critically, and when she nodded the radiographer frowned. ‘I’m not too happy about that bruise on your forehead. I think we’ll X-ray it as well.’
‘If you’re hoping to find any brains, I wouldn’t hold your breath,’ Ezra murmured, and Will laughed.
‘Too damned right. I’ve been telling this girl she’s an idiot for the past three years. Taking on her father’s practice—’
‘Look, could we just get on with this?’ Jess protested, scowling across at Ezra who, to her acute annoyance, merely smiled back.
It didn’t take long for Fiona to check her blood pressure and temperature, and it only took a few minutes more for Bev to process the X-rays.
‘Well, the bad news is you’ve definitely fractured your tibia and patella,’ the radiographer declared. ‘The good news is they’re both nice clean breaks, and I can’t see any indication of internal damage.’
Jess let out the breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. OK, so she’d broken her calf bone and kneecap, which would mean eight to ten weeks in plaster, but clean breaks meant she wouldn’t have to go to the mainland. Clean breaks and no internal injuries meant she could still take care of her patients.
‘My turn now.’ Will beamed, leading the way out of the X-ray department into the next room. ‘Time for a spot of good old reduction and plastering.’
‘But…but this is an operating theatre,’ Ezra declared, coming to a halt on the threshold.
‘We don’t have a plastering department,’ the anaesthetist explained. ‘Frankly, we’re lucky to have a hospital at all, considering the authorities would like nothing better than to shut us down. Centralisation of resources, they call it. In my opinion—’
‘Yes, dear, we all know your opinion,’ his wife sighed. ‘But right now Jess’s leg needs attending to.’
And Ezra Dunbar badly needed some fresh air, Jess thought as she glanced up at him and saw how white he had become. Delayed shock, her professional instincts diagnosed. OK, so he hadn’t been hurt in the accident, but he had been involved and the knowledge of what could have happened had obviously just hit him.
‘Don’t you think it might be better if you waited outside?’ she said gently.
He thrust his hands through his hair and she saw they were shaking. Delayed shock, indeed. And delayed shock in a very big way.
‘I—Right…Fine,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll…I’ll see you later, then.’
And before she could say anything else, he was gone.
Will stared after him for a second, then chuckled as he loaded a syringe with short-acting anaesthetic. ‘Well, who’d have thought it? A big, strapping chap like that coming over all queasy and not even a drop of blood in sight!’
‘Not everybody’s as cold-blooded as you are, Will,’ Jess retorted, only to flush slightly when they all stared at her in amazement. And it was hardly surprising. What on earth was she doing, leaping to a virtual stranger’s defence? And not simply a stranger but the man who had landed her here in the first place. Not that any of them knew that, of course, but… ‘Look, could we just get on with getting this leg of mine aligned and plastered?’ she continued vexedly. ‘I don’t want to be here all evening!’
Ezra didn’t want to be there at all as he leant his head against the waiting-room window and tried to calm his fast-beating heart.
Hell, they must all think he was an idiot. One minute he’d been fine, and the next…
It had been the smell. He’d never realised that all operating theatres probably smelt the same, but they did, and when he’d seen the table…
‘Oh, hell.’
He clenched his hands tightly together and whirled round on his heel. Think of something else. Think of anything else, his mind urged, before you make an ever bigger fool of yourself than you already have done.
If only he hadn’t been driving so fast. If only he’d been paying attention. But he hadn’t, and now…
Restlessly he paced the waiting room. What the hell were they doing in there? Aligning and plastering a leg shouldn’t take very long. Unless, of course, they’d found some complication.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and he turned quickly as a door opened behind him. Fiona. And to his relief, Jess was with her.
‘She’s thrown up twice, and fainted once,’ the staff nurse stated, holding out a bottle of pills. ‘She can take two of these for the pain, but no more than eight in twenty-four hours.’
‘B-but surely you’re going to keep her in?’ Ezra stammered, and Fiona sighed with resignation.
‘She won’t stay. Maybe you can make her see sense but I doubt it.’
‘Jess, of course you’ve got to stay!’ Ezra exclaimed as Fiona walked away. ‘You could be suffering from shock—’
‘I’m not,’ she said smoothly. ‘Will’s plastered my leg, and given me some painkillers, so could we, please, leave now?’
‘But—’
‘Could you drive me down to my practice? It’s not far, but…’ she gazed wryly at the crutches Fiona had given her ‘…I don’t think I could manage it on these.’
‘You want to collect something?’ he murmured, still stunned by the knowledge that she’d actually discharged herself.
‘Not collect, no. My surgery started half an hour ago, and I don’t want to keep my patients waiting any longer than necessary.’
Ezra stared at her in disbelief, then anger flooded through him. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘I happen to believe I have a duty to my patients,’ Jess replied crisply. ‘Now, if you could—’
‘Duty be damned!’ he flared. ‘You’re just being pig-headed, that’s all, and if you think I’m going to encourage you in this stupidity, you can think again!’
‘Then I’ll phone the garage and ask them to send a taxi,’ she retorted, only to suddenly remember to her chagrin that, though she’d insisted on him retrieving her medical bag from her car, she’d forgotten all about her handbag. ‘Could…could you lend me twenty pence for the pay-phone, please?’
‘No, I will not lend you twenty pence!’ he thundered. ‘For God’s sake, woman, were you born with a vacant space between your ears? You’ve been in a car crash. You’ve fractured your leg in two places, and badly bruised your forehead. OK, so maybe you don’t feel too awful at the moment, but that’s only because of the anaesthetic and the fact that your body’s producing its own endorphins. Believe me, in a little while you’re going to feel hellish—’
‘Endorphins?’ A frown pleated Jess’s forehead. ‘What do you know about endorphins?’
‘Only what everybody knows,’ he replied with irritation. ‘That they’re peptides produced in the brain which give pain-relieving effects.’
‘Everybody doesn’t know that,’ she said, her eyes fixed on him. ‘What are you—a nurse, a vet?’
‘I used to be a doctor. Jess, listen to me. You can’t possibly do this—’
‘What kind of a doctor?’
‘Does it matter?’ he retorted, exasperation plain in his voice. ‘The most important thing right now—’
‘You can’t have retired,’ she continued thoughtfully. ‘You’re much too young to have retired.’
‘I…I just don’t practise any more, OK?’ he muttered, his eyes not meeting hers. ‘People change careers, want to do something else.’
‘I can’t ever imagine not wanting to be a doctor,’ she observed. ‘It was something I wanted even when I was a little girl.’
‘Everybody’s different.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Look, if you insist on going to your surgery, let’s go,’ he interrupted grimly. ‘And I only hope to heaven that when we get there we’ll find somebody who can convince you that you’re out of your tiny mind!’
Tracy Maxwell tried. Ezra had to give the teenager credit for that. She might look a bit weird, with her heavily gelled, spiky black hair and the diamond stud in her nose, but the minute the receptionist saw Jess, she tried her level best.
‘It’s only the usual bunch of hypochondriacs anyway, Jess,’ she protested. ‘And you look shattered.’
‘My thoughts exactly.’ Ezra nodded. ‘So why don’t I go out to the waiting room, explain what’s happened—?’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Jess ordered. ‘OK, so I’ve fractured my leg but my brain’s still working.’
‘I’d say that was highly debatable,’ Ezra observed, and Tracy giggled.
‘His name is Dr Dunbar,’ Jess said acidly in answer to the girl’s raised eyebrows. ‘He has a big mouth, and even bigger opinions.’
‘You’re a doctor,’ the receptionist exclaimed. ‘We all thought—’
‘Yes, I know what you all thought.’ Ezra’s lips curved ruefully. ‘Sorry to be such a disappointment.’
‘Oh, not a disappointment at all,’ Tracy replied, batting her heavily mascara’d eyelashes at him. ‘In fact, it’s terrific, being able to finally put a face to a name.’
‘Is it?’ he said in surprise.
‘Oh, yes.’ Tracy beamed. ‘You know, you really ought to get out more. Living all alone at Selkie Cottage—a man could start getting weird doing that, and we’re quite a sociable crowd on Greensay, so there’s no need for you to ever feel lonely or isolated.’
‘I’m not—’
‘In fact, there’s a dance in the village hall this weekend—’
‘Look, I’m sorry to interrupt this cosy chat,’ Jess said caustically, ‘but some of us have work to do. Goodbye, Dr Dunbar.’ She didn’t extend a hand to him but kept both fixed firmly on her crutches. ‘I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure meeting you, but in the circumstances I don’t think that would be appropriate, do you?’
‘Goodbye?’ he echoed. ‘But—’
‘Goodbye, Dr Dunbar,’ she repeated, and before he could stop her she’d turned and hopped with as much dignity as she could along to her consulting room.
The nerve of the man—the sheer unmitigated gall! Laughing and joking with Tracy—discussing the dance which was going to be held in the village hall on Saturday. Well, to be fair, Tracy had done most of the laughing and joking, but that didn’t alter the fact that she wouldn’t be able to do any dancing for the next three months. And whose fault was that? Ezra’s!
Just as it was also his fault that by the end of her surgery she felt like a washed-out rag. Ten patients—that’s all she’d seen. Ten patients who’d been suffering from nothing more challenging than the usual collection of winter coughs and colds, and yet by the time they’d all gone her head was throbbing quite as badly as her leg.
So the last person she wanted to see in the waiting room was Ezra Dunbar.
‘Now, before you chew my head off,’ he began, getting quickly to his feet as he saw the martial glint in her eye. ‘I’m here solely because I thought you might appreciate a lift home, rather than having to wait for a taxi.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘No, I know you don’t,’ he interrupted. ‘But just humour me this once, please, Jess, hmm?’
And because she felt so wretched she feebly allowed him to drive her home, and made only a token protest when he insisted on helping her inside.
But the minute he’d flicked on the sitting-room light and ushered her towards a chair, she turned to him firmly. ‘I’ll say goodnight, then.’
To her surprise, he didn’t go. Instead, he stared round the room, then back at her with a frown. ‘Isn’t there anybody I can call to come over and stay with you?’
‘I don’t need anybody,’ she insisted. ‘You can see for yourself that my house has no stairs, and as all I want to do is go to bed—’
‘Your clothes—what about your clothes?’ he demanded, his eyes taking in her green sweater and the remnants of her trousers. ‘How are you going to get them off?’
‘The same way I put them on,’ she replied dismissively, only to see his frown increase. ‘Look, I’ll be all right.’
‘You won’t. Oh, I don’t mean simply tonight,’ he continued as she tried to interrupt. ‘I mean tomorrow, and the day after that. Jess, you’re going to be in plaster for a minimum of eight weeks. You might just be able to do your surgeries, but how are you going to do any home visits or night calls when you can’t drive?’
‘I’ll get a locum to cover the nights and home visits.’
‘And until he or she arrives, how are you planning on getting to your patients—by hopping or crawling?’
