“I could. But unlike you, I’m actually a McGregor. Which means I have a reputation to defend.”
We continue walking in silence.
A reputation to defend.
That’s the difference between us.
She belongs to this family. She grew up surrounded by their traditions, their expectations, their suffocatingly warm kind of love.
I’m just an outsider playing a role.
Later that afternoon,while I’m at the medical clinic in the village, someone knocks on my office door.
“Come in.”
Nate sticks his head through the doorway.
“You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
He walks inside and closes the door behind him, glancing curiously around the clinic before looking back at me.
“If you ever want to renovate this place, you know I’m your guy.”
Despite myself, I glance around the room.
Nothing here is remotely modern.
The Glenfield medical clinic looks like a time capsule abandoned somewhere in the late nineties.
The faded floral wallpaper is peeling at the corners. The cracked beige linoleum creaks under every step. Heavy burgundy velvet curtains hang beside the windows like relics from another century.
The waiting room is no better.
Aggressively optimistic orange plastic chairs line the walls. Magazines so old they could qualify as historical archives are stacked crookedly on a wobbling coffee table. The anti-smoking poster hanging beside the reception desk clearly predates my birth.
My desk—McKinnon’s desk before me—is solid oak that would probably be beautiful without the chipped varnish. The office chair squeaks every time I move. The filing cabinet in the corner hasn’t closed properly since the day I arrived. The bookshelf is crammed with medical textbooks whose newest editions date back to 2005.
And then there are the photographs.
McKinnon is everywhere.
On the wall behind my desk, half a dozen framed photos show him smiling beside villagers, babies he delivered, grateful patients.
McKinnon at the village festival.
McKinnon receiving a medal.
McKinnon cutting a ribbon for the opening of... something.
I never looked closely enough to figure out what.
His name is still on the plaque outside.
Dr. William McKinnon, General Practitioner.
Someone added a smaller label beneath it:
