One Night To Wed

‘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 can’t give you the best care when I don’t know exactly what I’m dealing with, Jack. There are tests they can do which would tell me a lot. Simple things like a chest X-ray and an echocardiogram. You don’t have to go all the way to Christchurch or anything. Just down to Greymouth.’

Jack shook his head decisively. ‘I’ve told you, Fliss. Just what I’ve told all the other doctors that have come and gone in these parts. I haven’t crossed the river since I retired and I’ve got no intention of crossing it now. I’m eighty-six. Nobody lives for ever and when I pop my clogs I intend to do it in the privacy of my own home. Or maybe down at the Hog.’

Fliss sighed. ‘Fair enough.’

That the local pub qualified as a second home made her smile. The old stone building near the general store that Mrs McKay ran was far more of a social hub than the pretty church or the memorial hall opposite the doctor’s surgery, but Fliss didn’t mind. She liked being at the end of the quietest street with plenty of time to soak in the peace and quiet in the hope of unravelling the tangled knots in her head and heart.

Pulling a tourniquet and the items she needed to take a blood sample from her bag, Fliss kept a straight face.

‘Which arm today, then?’ she queried.

Jack pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Make it the right one,’ he said finally.

The look they shared acknowledged the joke that had forged the bond Fliss had formed so quickly with the very first patient she had treated in Morriston. The query of which arm the patient preferred to have the sample taken from was automatic and it had popped out on that very first consultation, probably due to Fliss being still unsettled.

The fact that Jack only had one arm, thanks to the fishing mishap that had forced his retirement nearly thirty years ago, had made the question a potential insult, but the old man had given it due consideration to save Fliss’s tongue-tied embarrassment and it was thanks to him that she had suddenly felt at home. Even the disturbing reminder of what she’d left behind that came with the Scottish lilt she could hear in her patient’s voice could be dealt with. She was in exactly the right place at the right time in her life.

As she tightened the tourniquet and smiled at the memory, Fliss finally shook off that sense of unease and felt herself relax. She would finish this home visit in a few minutes and then hurry back to her surgery where she knew Maria was probably waiting—amongst others. Convinced that her fifth child was going to put in an early appearance, Maria was attending the evening surgery a couple of times a week now for reassurance, while her husband and children did the evening chores on their rather isolated farmlet.

It was then, in that moment of relaxation, that they heard it.

A sharp crack. Loud enough to make the loose glass pane in one of Jack’s doors to rattle just a little. Unexpected enough to make Fliss jump and drop the needle she was about to fit to the end of her ten-ml syringe.

‘Just as well you weren’t about to stick that into me,’ Jack muttered.

‘Yeah.’ The agreement was wholehearted. ‘What on earth was that? It sounded like a gun.’ Fliss knew her shudder was probably visible. ‘I hate guns.’

And anything to do with them. Like the danger they represented.

And the way they automatically made her think of Angus.

‘Probably a car backfiring,’ Jack said casually.

‘Hmm.’ Fliss reached into her kit for a fresh needle. An unlikely explanation. Her car might be parked out on the dusty street but that was because she could be needed in a hurry somewhere else. As a rule, people didn’t bother driving cars on this side of the bridge. Once in the village they could easily walk where they needed to go. Or ride bicycles.

‘More likely it’s those Johnston boys.’ Jack was watching Fliss as she ripped open an alcohol swab. ‘Guy Fawkes is only a week or so away. They’re probably having a test run of their crackers.’

Fliss glanced outside again to where the young Johnston twins had been riding their bikes. Sure enough, two bicycles lay abandoned in the middle of the street, one with its front wheel still spinning slowly. Under one end of the long macrocarpa hedge that bordered the Treffers’ property, a pair of short legs could be seen protruding. A small boy hiding, perhaps—avoiding the potential consequences of an illicit act.

The second crack was even louder.

‘Now, that did sound like a gun,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe Darren’s doing something stupid in his back yard.’

It was quite possible. Darren was a local resident who shot possums in the vast tracts of native bush that cut Morriston off from the Southern Alps. As one of New Zealand’s most destructive pests, the culling was commendable but the way Darren left the carcasses piled in his driveway awaiting his taxidermy skills before being sent to the tourist shops was fairly unpopular with his neighbours.