Chapter 3
Alistair
Mal: Can April drink coffee?
Alistair: Decaff to be on the safe side.
Mal: What about eggs?
Alistair: You know all this stuff is googleable, right?
Mal: Why would I google it when I have you?
The list of things I hated about Kinleith was long, thorough and, yeah, a little petty:
It was too green.
People said “Good morning” and expected me to reciprocate.
There was no supermarket, so I had to get my wheatgrass supplements posted to me.
Too many sheep. They looked at me like they knew all my secrets.
Conversations usually opened with “You’re Jim Macabe’s boy.”
Worst of all: the tourists.
On a good day during the summer months, it still took me a full thirty minutes to drive the five miles from Kestral Cove on the outskirts of Kinleith to the medical practice.
It was located along the main road to the ferry port in Armadale, and there were days, like today, where the traffic backed up with rented four-wheel drives and camper vans as far as the eye could see.
I passed countless families content to park up their vehicles and eat breakfast right there on the roadside. “Don’t mind me,” I said with a grunt, narrowly avoiding a people carrier an idiot had parked half on a cattle grate.
By the time I pulled into the surgery’s small car park, I was stressed, nearly late and a little sweaty.
“You’re early today!” I called as my colleague, Dr Amy Redford, climbed out of her own car. “Miss the traffic or just trying to get ahead for once?”
Pulling a chunky set of keys from her bag, she marched straight past me, a Brown’s coffee cup clasped in her free hand.
Her blonde, poker-straight hair bobbing in some kind of oversized bun thing.
“Good morning to you too, Dr Macabe. Just thought I’d arrive before your patients start complaining about your bedside manner again.
” Keys jangling, she unlocked the door, pushing it open with her hip.
The smell of antiseptic filled my nose, and I breathed it in.
Despite my desperation to escape this hellhole, it scratched my brain in a way nothing else did.
I imagined it was to me what warm bread was to others, the smell of home.
“I’d rather a brisk bedside manner than your five-minute monologues about vitamins. You’re creeping dangerously close to alternative medicines.”
“Some of us believe in preventative care, rather than tossing out antibiotics like Tic Tacs.” She flipped on several light switches in the waiting room where I’d spent countless hours as a kid.
It looked pretty much the same. Worn brown carpet and yellow strip lights, faded white walls lined with corkboards displaying medical pamphlets.
It even had the same ancient computer that started whirring behind the desk as Amy powered it to life.
When I was seven years old, I’d broken my arm while perfecting a wrestling move from the top rope, AKA our garden wall.
Thirty years later, I could still picture the pure dread on Callum’s face as I was airborne.
A horrified mix of What the hell have I talked him into?
and Somehow, I’m going to get the blame for this.
He did get the blame.
My dad managed to make everything Callum’s fault back then.
You’re the oldest, Callum. The responsible one.
The man of the family when I’m not around.
He’d lectured him from behind his surgery desk, stethoscope still draped around his neck, while I was laid out on the examination bed, freshly set arm in a sling, a strawberry lollipop poking from between my lips.
That was the exact moment I decided to become a doctor. I’d get a little plaque with my name on it, one of those cool stethoscopes. And maybe then, my dad would start paying attention to me for once.
I wasn’t a competitive child, but I was ambitious. Seeking approval at every turn. All I’d ever wanted was to make my dad proud, and that hadn’t changed. If anything, now he was gone, I felt it more aggressively than I ever had before.
Desperately trying to prove to a ghost that I didn’t need him or his job.
“I heard about Mr Ackley.”
Amy spun on me, hair almost flicking me in the face.
She stared at me distrustfully. Lips thin.
Expression shrewd. Like I was about to pull a lighter from my pocket and start a bin fire with the sterilising agents.
For the first time, I noticed her eyes were a little puffy.
“I wondered when the gloating would start. Try not to look so happy, Mr Ackley is a wonderful man.”
“I’m not happy.” Mr Ackley was a regular patient of Amy’s, a little lonely, liked to talk.
Came in weekly to diagnose every ailment under the sun – other than the one that nearly killed him.
“But I can’t say I’m surprised; the man is on high cholesterol meds and eats a full fry-up every morning, his heart was a ticking time bomb. ”
“That empathetic erosion really got to you, huh?”
You can be a cold bastard, Callum said to me the day after I skipped out on Dad’s funeral.
I straightened my shoulders, the back of my neck crawling.
“It isn’t lack of empathy; it’s self-care.
Too much empathy is the quickest route to burnout.
” I knew all about burnout. Been there and bought the T-shirt.
“You can’t save everyone. Now–” I ran a shaky hand down the length of my tie – “if you’ll excuse me—”
“Woah, woah, woah.” She held up her hands. “Did you make a decision about my offer?”
“About selling you the surgery?”
She nodded, wide-eyed and hopeful.
“I thought about it; answer’s no.”
“What? Why?”
“There’s no way you can afford it, for a start.”
She crossed her arms. “Are you my accountant as well as my boss now? When did you become an expert on what I can afford?”
Fair enough. She had me there.
Trying to think of a way to word it that wouldn’t earn me a syringe in my eyeball, my gaze dropped to her feet. She wore a pair of lavender Crocs. A Barbie Jibbitz pinned on one and a lavender plaster on the other that read “ouchie”.
They looked utterly ridiculous.
I’d never dressed that casually in my entire life.
At school, the other kids used to bully me for wearing shirts and ties on the weekend. But I’d always felt more comfortable when I was put together. In control. As a doctor should be.
Not dressed for a beach holiday.
I scrubbed a hand over my tight jaw. It wasn’t the way she dressed that was the problem here. “Because you aren’t the right fit.”
I’d be a bastard to say yes. I still cared about this place, even if I couldn’t stay. I wanted it in safe hands.
Not in the hands of a salaried GP barely out of medical school.
If looks could burn, I’d already be ash on the wind. “I didn’t realise a cock came in handy when running a medical practice.”
“It’s not because you’re a woman.”
Yeah, Dr Amy Redford wasn’t exactly my biggest fan.
I couldn’t blame her. Back in the autumn, not long after I’d returned to Kinleith, my dad had taken a pretty bad fall and Amy had been the on-call doctor to treat him.
I’d behaved like a complete arsehole. Undermining her authority, acting like those peacocking pricks I’d gone to medical school with who thought women were too emotional to succeed in the medical field.
I didn’t believe that.
In my opinion, the female doctors I’d worked with were far superior to the men. Compassionate and whip-smart, without the ego.
“You’re what? Twenty-seven? You have plenty of time.”
“I’m thirty.” She glowered. “After your dad got sick, I worked with a revolving door of locum doctors. I practically ran this place until you came along—”
My phone rang in my pocket and I hurried to pull it out, pausing when I noted the Glasgow number. “I need to take this; we’ll talk about this later.”
I felt every one of the mental daggers she threw at my back as I walked toward my office – my dad’s office, technically. It was still his name hanging on the door, Dr J Macabe. I didn’t look at it as the door clicked shut behind me. “Alistair Macabe.”
“Dr Macabe, it’s Sarah calling from MedSearch. We’re handling your recruitment search for a new senior partner for Kinleith Surgery.”
“That’s right.” Shoving my phone between my ear and my shoulder, I slung my briefcase onto the desk and switched on my computer. “Do you have an update for me?”
I’d started working with them a few weeks ago. After I’d finally made the decision to sell, I’d posted the opening on the NHS website. When the ad didn’t receive a single hit, I’d quickly realised that no one wanted to own a pokey little surgery on a rural Scottish island.
Except Dr Redford, it seemed.
“An honest update, I’m afraid. I’ve spoken to a few potential candidates about the vacancy and while the role itself is competitive in terms of flexibility and potential income, I’m finding people are still hesitant to proceed.”
I frowned, watching the log-in screen take its usual five minutes to load. “What are their concerns?”
“Several things. The most common complaint is your recent bout of poor patient feedback.”
“Really?” I paused. This was the first I’d heard of it. “What kind of feedback?”
“Well, that brings me to my second point of hesitation.”
“Which is?”
“I think it’s better if I’m candid.”
“I’d prefer it,” I clipped. I hated fake niceties.
She cleared her throat pointedly before speaking. “It’s you, Dr Macabe. The situation in Glasgow specifically.”
My entire skeleton calcified. The office walls, painted a calming shade of duck-egg blue, suddenly closing in on me.
Glasgow. The succinct name for the incident made it sound overly dramatic. That single word held transportation powers to a specific point in my history. Like the Battle of Culloden. Or . . . Barbenheimer. “That was almost three years ago,” I said.
“And still relevant,” she replied. “I’ve read the complaint report and your counter-complaint. You and Dr Mercer were both very thorough.”
“How did you get that?” My complaint had been confidential. Only accessible by medical regulatory bodies.
“A potential candidate raised the concern and I did my research; that’s my job. It isn’t a very well-kept secret, I’m afraid. Medical circles are rife with gossip.”
“Saying?”
“That you have an attitude problem.”
Fucking lies. “Ah, and here I thought they were admiring my lock-stitch technique.”
“Maybe at the next conference.” Her tone was a little too sarcastic for someone I was paying.
“If you read the report, then you know I’m not the issue here.”
Peter fucking Mercer, my old boss, was the problem.
He was the lazy piece of shit who’d misdiagnosed a patient. A mother. It had caused so much unnecessary pain for her, and he couldn’t have cared less.
I’d been so stressed, fighting to keep my own head above water, and I’d just fucking snapped. I could still hear the shouts of my co-worker, “Macabe, let him go right now.”
I didn’t even realise I’d grabbed him until I saw the fear in his ruddy complexion. I’d barely laid a hand on him, besides creasing his shirt collar, but it had been enough for an immediate suspension.
What I hadn’t counted on was his desire to save himself. At the first whiff of the word investigation, he’d agreed to work the next year into early retirement, if I agreed to six months’ paid suspension and to “never darken his doorstep again”.
“I already completed my suspension,” I told Sarah. “And filled a host of locum positions since then. I wouldn’t be working here if I hadn’t.” With my dream job handed to me on a fucking platter and I didn’t want it because I hadn’t earned it myself.
Wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in medicine at all, if I was being really honest.
The past few years had wrung me dry.
Sarah sighed on the other end of the phone.
“Look, I’m not here to play judge and jury.
To be frank, I don’t really care about your personal circumstances, but I do have a job to do, so here’s my advice to you.
” I had to hand it to her, she was a straight shooter.
“If you’re dead set on finding a replacement, try and get people to like you, starting with your patients.
Bring your feedback scores up and some of the more desperate candidates might be willing to overlook your involvement. ”
“My patients? That can’t be the issue here. I was born and raised in Kinleith, these people have known me all my life.”
She tsked, and I knew I wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “Try googling your name and Kinleith Spring Festival.”