Read Chapter 2: The Doctor's Door

The wind had teeth. Freya felt them through her waxed jacket as she followed the island's single tarmac road past a row of whitewashed cottages, their chimneys smoking against a low grey sky. The harbour had been a half-hour walk behind her, and the only sound now was the shriek of gulls and her own boots on wet stone.

A sign, rusted at the edges, read: *Dr. A. Munro. Surgery hours 9–11, Tues & Thurs. Emergencies always.* The arrow pointed to a cottage set back from the road, its door painted a deep sea-green, flaking at the corners. She'd been told at the post office—reluctantly, by a woman who'd sized her up like a stray dog—that the doctor was the man to speak to about the lighthouse.

The door was ajar. Freya pushed it open.

The surgery smelled of antiseptic and peat smoke, an unlikely pairing that somehow worked. A waiting room, small and over-warm, offered three mismatched chairs and a stack of magazines that looked a decade old. But the room beyond, visible through an open doorway, caught her eye: a desk buried under papers, a brass lamp, and a wall of bookshelves crammed not with medical texts but with tide tables, nautical charts, and leather-bound volumes that might have been ships' logs.

"You're early." The voice came from behind her, and Freya turned to find a man filling the doorway to the kitchen. He was tall, perhaps mid-forties, with the kind of weathered face that suggested decades of sea wind rather than indoor practice. Grey threaded through dark hair at his temples. He wiped his hands on a cloth, watching her with pale blue eyes that held no particular welcome.

"Freya MacLeod. I called ahead—"

"Aye, you did. The film woman." He tossed the cloth onto a table. "I said Tuesday. It's Tuesday. But you're still early."

"Ferry got in ahead of schedule." She offered a smile that had worked on harbourmasters and council officials alike. "I thought I'd catch you before the day got going."

The smile bounced off him like rain off slate. "Dr. Alistair Munro. Though you'll have guessed that." He gestured with a thumb toward the back of the cottage. "I was just putting the kettle on. You'll take tea, I expect. Everyone takes tea eventually."

She followed him into a cramped kitchen where the peat stove made the air almost too warm. He moved with an economy that spoke of long practice, pouring boiling water into a brown ceramic pot, setting out two cups without asking how she took it. Milk first, then the dark liquid, then he pushed a cup toward her across the scarred wooden table.

"You want to film the lighthouse," he said. Not a question.

"That's right. A year in the life. The final year, as it stands."

"You say 'as it stands' like the decision isn't made." He sat opposite her, cradling his own cup. "Commissioners voted. The automation contract is signed. It's done."

Freya sipped her tea—strong enough to stand a spoon in. "That's why we're filming. To document what's being lost. Why it mattered."

"Why it mattered." He repeated the words slowly, tasting them. "Past tense already. You haven't even set up your camera yet."

She felt the familiar prickle of defensiveness. This was a conversation she'd had before, in different guises, with farmers facing compulsory purchase and fishermen losing their quotas. "The documentary isn't an obituary. It's a record. Generations from now, people will be able to see what a manned lighthouse was like. What the keepers did."

"Generations from now." Alistair set down his cup. "And what do you think the keepers are doing now? While you're recording them for future generations?"

"Keeping the light." She said it simply. "Which is exactly what I want to capture."

He looked at her for a long moment, and Freya felt the weight of a scrutiny that seemed to reach past her words. "You're from Edinburgh," he said finally. "Born there?"

"Raised there." She didn't add that her mother's family had come from Lewis, four generations back. It wasn't his business.

"You ever live on an island?"

"No."

"Then you won't understand this." He leaned back, and there was something almost like pity in his expression. "You're coming here to something that's still alive, still working, and you're filming it like it's already dead. That changes what you see. You'll miss the thing itself because you're so busy looking for the ending."

The words landed closer than she liked. Her producer's voice echoed in her head—*find the human drama, Freya, the conflict, the soul of the place*—and she'd fed on that directive for weeks. But standing here, tea in hand, being challenged by a man who'd never left his island for more than a week at a time, she felt suddenly exposed.

"The island needs a documentary," she said. "The tourist board will be spinning this within a year. History erased, replaced with a sanitised visitor centre version. At least I'm telling the real story."

"The real story." Alistair almost smiled. "Forty-seven years of my family have kept that light. My grandfather, my father, and then me—though I gave up the roster years ago when the surgery got too busy. I grew up in that tower. Slept in the room beneath the lantern. Learned to read by the light of that lamp."

Freya said nothing. The peat smoke curled toward the ceiling.

"It's not a story to me," he said quietly. "It's a place that's still doing its job. And you want to film it because things that still do their jobs—without drama, without fuss—aren't interesting to you people."

"Not true—"

"Isn't it?" He set down his cup with a soft click. "Tell me, Ms. MacLeod. If the lighthouse were staying open, if the commissioners had decided to keep it manned another fifty years, would you still be here?"

The question hung between them. Freya opened her mouth to answer—to say yes, of course, it would still be a story worth telling—but the words tangled in her throat. Because he wasn't entirely wrong, and she hated that.

The door banged open before she could speak. A woman stood there, breathless, her face pale beneath a woollen scarf. She was perhaps sixty, dressed in waders and a bulky jumper that suggested she'd come straight from the shore.

"Dr. Munro—it's Jamie. On the north rocks. He's fallen—I think his leg's broken, and he's bleeding something awful."

Alistair was already moving. He grabbed a battered black bag from beside the door and shrugged into an oilskin in the same fluid motion. "Mary, get the kettle going again and keep the surgery warm. Freya—"

She was on her feet before she'd consciously decided. "I've got a camera in my pack."

"Leave it." The words were flat, absolute. "This isn't your film." He was out the door before she could argue, following the woman at a pace that belied his long frame.

Freya stood in the sudden quiet of the kitchen. The peat fire crackled. Her tea had gone cold on the table.

The part of her that was a professional whispered that she should follow anyway. Every instinct screamed it—here was drama, human crisis, exactly the texture her producer wanted. *The island in extremis.* She could film from a distance, catch the rescue, edit it later into something that served the story.

But the other part of her—the part that had felt exposed when Dr. Munro had looked at her, the part that had seen the boy's mother try to wipe his nose with a grey, threadbare tissue—that part made her pick up the kettle instead.

She was filling it from the tap when the surgery door opened again. A young man limped in, supporting an older woman who had her arm wrapped tight around his shoulders. The woman's face was grey under a sheen of sweat, and she was breathing in short, shallow gasps.

"Doctor?" The young man's voice cracked. "Is Dr. Munro here? My gran—her chest—"

Freya set down the kettle. "He's gone out. An accident on the rocks." She crossed to them, her filmmaker's eye cataloguing details—the flush on the old woman's neck, the way she clutched at her sternum, the blue tinge at her lips. "But sit her down. I've called for him—" She hadn't. She didn't know who to call. But the young man's relief was immediate, and he guided his grandmother to one of the waiting room chairs.

The woman sank down, her breathing still laboured. Freya crouched in front of her, a useless gesture, but instinct took over. "When did it start?"

"An hour ago," the grandson said. "She said it was just wind. But then she couldn't catch her breath, and her arm went numb—"

Freya's stomach dropped. She'd helped her own mother through a heart scare two winters ago. She knew the signs. She reached for the woman's wrist, felt for a pulse. It was there, thready but present.

"Dr. Munro will be back soon," she said, hating the uncertainty in her own voice. "He'll know what to do."

The old woman's eyes found hers, and there was something in them—belated gratitude, or resignation, or both.

From outside came the sound of running feet. Alistair burst through the door, blood on his shirt-sleeve, his face set in hard lines. He took in the scene in a single sweep, then was at the woman's side, his fingers finding her pulse, his voice low and calm.

"Eileen. Look at me. You're going to be fine. But I need you to tell me—"

Freya stepped back, out of his way. She'd been dismissed, she knew, but watching him work—efficient, focused, utterly present—she felt something shift. He wasn't performing care. He was simply doing what had to be done, the same way his father had kept the light, and his grandfather before him. No drama. No fuss.

She thought of her producer's voice, asking for conflict and soul. And she thought of what Alistair had said: *You'll miss the thing itself because you're so busy looking for the ending.*

She moved to the doorway, half in and half out of the surgery, and pulled her phone from her pocket. The screen showed a message from her producer: *Check-in tomorrow. Send rushes. Need to see the human angle.*

Freya looked from the phone to the scene inside the cottage—the doctor bending over his patient, the grandson gripping his grandmother's hand, the fluorescent light casting everything in stark relief.

She typed a reply: *The human angle's complicated. Will update when I have something.*

She pocketed the phone and stepped fully inside, leaving the door open behind her. The cold wind followed her in, but she didn't close it.

Across the room, Alistair glanced up, caught her eye. He didn't thank her. He didn't wave her away either. He simply returned to his patient, and Freya stood in the threshold, watching the thing itself.