The medical centre was down the road from the town’s tiny eight-bed hospital which mostly functioned as a respite place for elderly people and a first aid/transfer point to city hospitals for people injured in car crashes on the highway. Because it was winter now, there were few tourists around to swell the patient numbers.

The general practice was run by an old-fashioned but competent bloke, close to retirement, and a young guy in his first GP placement. Paula was employed to fill in for the other regular senior GP, Tanya, who was on an Alaskan cruise. Paula had quickly got the impression Tanya was a trusted and beloved doctor in the district.

Saturday was Paula’s last day in the place. The doctoring required of her during the afternoon session was pretty straightforward stuff—three vaccinations, two medical certificates for days off work and one small laceration to be sutured.

Patients with anything complicated or delicate were unlikely to confide in the locum. They would hang on to their problem until Tanya returned to work and that suited Paula just fine. The last thing she wanted right now was to be drawn into the personal dramas of people in crisis.

There had been days when Paula couldn’t avoid seeing the bruises on a woman’s body or wondering how a woman’s arm had been broken or noticing that a woman flinched at a sudden noise. Paula would feel the rage flare inside her, as if the pilot light was always on and any small sign would spark it up. When that happened, she worked hard to stay calm, regulate her breathing, to run through the standard guidelines in her mind and ask the patient the appropriate questions. Some of those women were most likely being abused at home but they were unlikely to trust a temporary doctor. And Paula wasn’t going to push. She didn’t trust herself.

She couldn’t rely on her own perception anymore. When one woman sat up on the examination table and took off her shirt, Paula saw bruising on her ribcage. Bruises shaped like handprints from a large man. It turned out to be the blotchy shadows cast by the tree outside the window. When a woman made a few cracks about her husband being ‘a difficult customer’, Paula couldn’t stop herself wondering if the jokes were covering real fear of the man. But maybe it was only a joke. Another female patient had a rasping voice, and Paula immediately pictured a man’s hands around this woman’s neck, crushing her vocal cords. But in this case, it was just laryngitis.