A Seaside Practice by Tom Smith

Author:Tom Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Practice, Scotland, Southern Uplands, Stinchar Valley, Collintrae, Ailsa Craig, Fishing, Forestry, Birmingham Medical School, doctor, drama, highlands, scottish, shore, tragedy, death, disease, humour, gp, illness, medical
ISBN: 9781849894425
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
Published: 2011-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Next morning, I saw Donald again. He was still on his seat, looking out to sea. I said ‘Good morning’, he gave one of his little grunts, and we looked at the sea together for a few moments before I drove off.

I didn’t think I would hear more about the body on the shore, but he was identified a few weeks later. A real pathologist had performed a full Fiscal’s autopsy. He confirmed that he had drowned in fresh water. Examination of scrapings from the soil under the fingernails and the plants in his hands had defined the area of entry into the water as near a bridge in the Upper Clyde. A man local to that area had been missing for a month, after finding his wife with someone else.

Believe it or not, it was the job of the police to launder the dead man’s clothes and offer them to the not-so-grieving widow. After all, they were his possessions, and they rightly belonged to his next of kin. Although they ‘brushed up well’, not surprisingly she refused them. So they were disposed of in a bin. A few days later on my usual coastal drive to Girvan I passed Donald, who was wearing a very fine pair of leather boots.

Though words were not for Donald Gray, I did once manage to get a dozen from him. Our second child, Alasdair, had arrived when Catriona was two years old. After that, to give Mairi a rest from time to time, I would take Catriona along with me in the car when going on short visits to patients I knew. They loved to see ‘the wee lass’ and made a fuss of her. She was a friendly girl, who smiled at everyone, including Donald when we stopped to greet him on the road or by the Bennane. Whenever I was accompanied by Catriona, a flicker of warmth appeared on Donald’s face that I had never seen before when I had greeted him alone.

From time to time, however, Catriona would have a recurrent illness that, thankfully, eventually passed. There was a period when she was around three years old when she had a long stay in bed and even a few days in hospital. The word got around the village that ‘the Doctor’s wee lassie wasn’t well’. For a few days she was not in the car. When next I was driving past the Bennane, I saw Donald in the distance, waiting by the side of the road. As I drove up, he waved me down, the first time he had ever done so. I stopped beside him and leaned across the passenger seat to wind down the window next to him.

He stuck his weather-ravaged face through the space. He looked anxious and was obviously trying to speak – it was almost as if he had forgotten how to do so. Then the words came out in a torrent.

‘I hear the wee lassie’s ill,’ he said, almost in tears. ‘It’s no serious,

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