Medical Attention – #MFRWHooks

Welcome to Book Hooks!  You’ll note at the bottom of this post, you can see all the other great books and authors who are participating and click straight to them (once you’ve looked at mine, of course!).

Today we’re back one more time to book 2 of the Jane Barnaby Adventures, Losers Weepers. Last week, we saw Jane and Mark navigate some complicated emotional territory.  This excerpt is later in the book; they’ve (mostly) resolved their romantic problems, and Jane has dragged Mark off to Scotland to help her search for a college friend before said friend can marry her con artist fiancé.  This turns out to be more dangerous than Jane imagined, as you’ll see…

Jane tried to argue that she was fine, the bleeding had stopped, she didn’t need medical attention.  But it was two against one.  The man from the service station had taken Mark’s side, and neither of them would listen to her.

“Old Doc Kottle is still up, that man never sleeps,” the service man had said.  “He’ll sort you out.  It’s not far, but I’ll not be having you walk there in your state, Miss.”

Five minutes later, she was sitting on the examination table in the cluttered little surgery that comprised most of the first floor of the doctor’s home.  Dr. Kottle did not inspire confidence; he wore a wrinkled white coat over striped pajamas.  She could have dealt with that, but the bunny slippers were simply too much.

“I’m fine!  It’s just a little cut!”

Mark shook his head.  She supposed she couldn’t blame him for overreacting.  His shirt was soaked through with her blood nearly as badly as hers was.  If she’d come upon the scene the way the service man had, she probably would have demanded they go to the doctor, too.  “Let the man work, Barnaby.  It’s not like we’re going anywhere else tonight.”

“Thank you, young man,” the doctor said.  “Now out with you.  I’m not taking this young lady’s shirt off with another man in the room to stare at her.”  Jane was about to protest that, first, she wouldn’t be taking her bra off, and, second, there was nothing Mark hadn’t seen before anyway.  But Dr. Kottle’s expression silenced her.  “You Americans.  Almost as bad as the French.  No sense of propriety at all.”

(a few minutes later…)

“All finished.  You can sit up now, Miss.”  Dr. Kottle’s voice broke her out of her thoughts, which was probably for the best.  But how had he finished so quickly?  She’d only been lying there for a minute.  Or fifteen, according to the clock on the wall.

Jane did as she was instructed, first sitting up, then swinging her legs off the table and standing, with a helping hand from the doctor.  He handed her a mirror to examine his work. There was an ugly, uneven line of stitches for probably four inches right in the middle of her belly.  She laughed; what else was there to do?  “I guess I won’t be wearing a bikini anytime soon.”

It wouldn’t have made any difference if she were still living in Oxfordshire.  Bikini-appropriate days were few and far between, even in the summer.  But back in New York, there would be plenty of opportunities.  And there was a sun deck on the roof of her building.  That was out now.

“Better for you if you don’t.  Skin cancer, you know.  And you don’t want to give all the lads the wrong idea.”  He shook his head sadly.  “It was different in my day.”  Now he sighed, a little bit theatrically in Jane’s opinion.  “At any rate, one more thing to do.  Pull your pants down a bit, if you please.”

“What?”

He sighed again, even more deeply.  “Your pants, Miss.  How do you expect me to give you your tetanus shot through your blue jeans?”

Tetanus shot?  Why did she need that?  And even if she did, why in her butt?  They didn’t do that anymore, did they?  Getting a shot there and not being able to sit down comfortably for a few hours wasn’t reality, it was a like a punchline from an episode of Three’s Company. “No!”

“You need the shot, Miss.  And I was trained to give it in one place, so that’s where you’re getting it.”

Jane Barnaby had everything going her way: a prestigious internship at the Museum of Natural History, a fantastic Upper West Side sublet apartment, and helping plan her newly-engaged college friend’s wedding.

Until a casual lunch with her friend’s fiancé set off alarm bells, and sent her digging into the rabbit hole that is his past.

When that rabbit hole leads Jane and her on-again, off-again boyfriend to the English countryside, uncovering secrets dating back to World War 2, searching for priceless art treasures looted by the Nazis, and fighting off the thieves who will kill to get those treasures for themselves, will they discover the truth, or lose their lives?

You can find “Losers Weepers” on Amazon, at a list of other ebook retailers, and on Audible!