fine, Jack. Just a little bit faster than normal. I need to have a good listen to the back of your chest now. Can you lean forward a little, please?’ Fliss pulled her stethoscope from where it was hanging around her neck. ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ she added. ‘I just got distracted by the weirdest feeling. Like something was wrong.’
‘Something is wrong. Why do you think I called you out when you should be having your dinner? My shoes feel too tight and I’m short of puff as soon as I try doing anything.’
‘Hmm.’ Fliss was happy to concentrate on her consultation again. ‘Take some deep breaths for me, Jack.’ She could hear some crackles at the base of both lungs. ‘Have a good, hard cough for me.’
The fruity sound Jack produced made her shake her head ruefully. ‘You haven’t cut down on the smoking much, have you?’
Jack’s grunt was amused. ‘As you well know, my dear, I’ve been on the fags for more than seventy years. Trying to stop would kill me quicker than anything else is going to.’ There was a distinct twinkle in the gaze that caught hers as Jack twisted his head and the faint Scottish brogue in his voice, which had never quite vanished despite being in a foreign country for a large proportion of those seventy years, grew stronger. ‘And you’re not going to tell me to get lost just because I still have the odd wee puff, are you?’
‘The odd puff?’ Fliss had to laugh. ‘I reckon you manage twenty a day.’ She placed the disk of her stethoscope halfway down Jack’s skinny back. ‘Let me have another listen now that you’ve shifted a bit of that muck.’
The crackles were still there, which wasn’t unexpected. It fitted with the swelling Jack had in his ankles and his breathlessness on exertion or lying flat.
‘I think the chest infection you’ve had could be making your heart failure a bit worse, Jack,’ Fliss told her patient. ‘You’re accumulating fluid and that’s why you’re getting that puffiness in your ankles and feet. When the levels go up, it makes your lungs soggy as well—so that’s why you’re getting short of puff.’
‘It’s all that water I drink, isn’t it?’ The long-retired fisherman scratched thoughtfully at the fluffy white beard covering his chin and glared at the old valve radio that took pride of place on his cluttered kitchen table. ‘I should never have listened to that so called expert on the wireless. Eight glasses a day, they said! Should have just stuck with my beer, shouldn’t I?’
Fliss widened her eyes. ‘You mean to tell me you’ve been drinking water at the pub every night?’
‘Hell’s bells, lassie—are you mad? I’ve been drinking the water before I go down to the Hog. It’s no bloody wonder I’m waterlogged now, is it? It’s going to be the dry dock for me from now on. As far as the water goes, anyway,’ he added hastily.
Fliss wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around a still surprisingly muscular upper arm. ‘It’s got nothing to do with how much water you drink, Jack. If your heart’s working as well as it should, the rest of your body can do its job properly and the only difference eight glasses of water a day will make is in how many times you have to pee.’
Something made Fliss pause again before she pumped up the pressure cuff and put the stethoscope in place. Maybe it was the memory of what she had felt only minutes before. Her senses were still on full alert and the idea of cutting off her ability to hear something important was creating an odd reluctance.
She glanced through the glass doors that made up one side of Jack’s kitchen. The side that looked down the hill towards the sea and the river mouth that bordered the tiny coastal settlement on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island.
‘Quiet, isn’t it?’
A rumble of laughter came from the man sitting beside the scrubbed pine table. ‘You’ve only just noticed?’
Fliss grinned. The peace and quiet were certainly two of the most notable attributes of Morriston. She’d been here for three months now in her position as a locum GP and it would seem laughable if she hadn’t acclimatised to the ambience. Then her smile faded.
‘No, I mean it’s quieter than normal.’
Jack swivelled on the spindle-backed wooden chair to join her in staring through the glass. His unpretentious house, which had once been someone’s holiday bach, was further up the hill than many in the village so the view was one of the best.
They could see one of his closest neighbours, Bernice, across the dusty, unsealed street as she stood in her garden, watering tomato plants. At the bottom of the street, where Fliss would turn right to get to her house that incorporated the small surgery, there were two small boys riding their bicycles in the fading light of a warm, spring evening. A couple was walking near the beach with their dog and right over at the river mouth there was more than one person standing thigh deep in the water, dragging in the big, box-type nets using for catching the local delicacy of whitebait.
‘High tide.’ Jack nodded. ‘Been a bumper season for whitebait so far.’
‘Mmm.’ Fliss wasn’t overly fond of the tiny fish because you could still see their eyes when they had been cooked up in the traditional fritters, but she had to accept the satisfied note in Jack’s voice that suggested there was nothing outwardly amiss in the scene.
It was quiet, yes. Peaceful. Picture perfect, in fact. Just the kind of place where Fliss had spent many happy summer holidays as a child. An advertisement for the quintessential security she had sought in order to get through her current life crisis.
With a slow nod Fliss suppressed that odd feeling of persistent unease and turned back to complete her examination.
‘Your blood pressure’s down a bit but it’s not bad,’ she said a minute later. ‘I’m going to keep you on those antibiotics for a few more days to make sure we’ve knocked that chest infection on the head. And I’ll take a blood sample now so I can check some other things.’
Like whether Jack’s increasing level of heart failure was due to a silent heart attack, but Fliss didn’t want to alarm Jack unnecessarily.
‘I’m going to increase your dose of diuretic as well. Hopefully that will do the trick in getting rid of that excess fluid.’ Fliss took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘I’d really like to refer you to a cardiologist, Jack, for a more expert opinion.’
Jack snorted. ‘You’ll do, lass. Word is that you gave up the offer of a top spot in that emergency department in Christchurch to come over here. Lord knows why, but I reckon I’ve got all the expertise I need right now.’
‘Where on earth did you hear something like that?’
‘Word gets around in these parts.’
‘Obviously.’ The accuracy of the gossip was disconcerting. What else was everybody in Morriston discussing over their jugs of beer? The disaster of her personal life, maybe? The recent, devastating failure in her personal relationships?
The consternation in her tone was enough to make Jack smile reassuringly. ‘We only heard good stuff,’ he said kindly. ‘A mate of mine was in Greymouth hospital for a few days, that’s all. One of the doctors there knew about you. He said we were lucky to get someone with your qualifications who didn’t mind being stuck out in the sticks.’ Jack’s smile was smug. ‘That’s how I know I don’t need to go anywhere else for my medical care.’
‘I
