Ruth

“The doctor drummed the fingers of his left hand on the edge of the table, a strange gesture which suggested, Isabel thought, an impatient temperment. Perhaps he had been obliged to listen too long to those whom he did not consider his intellectual equal, exhausted patients with long-running complaints, unable to put their views succinctly. Some doctors could become like that, she thought, just as some lawyers could; prolonged exposure to flawed humanity could create a sense of superiority if one was not careful--and perhaps he was not.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday