but—’
‘Then there’s dinner,’ she told him as if he were stupid. ‘I ate hours ago but I saved half the casserole for you. It’s apricot chicken. Very basic but it is my first night. We stopped off at the all-nighter on our first furniture run so I could throw this together while the boys heaved sofas.’ And then she grinned. ‘I imagine it’s set the town talking. An ambulance parked outside the minimart with a sofa sticking out the back.’
He imagined it might have. He should be angry. But there was apricot chicken casserole. His nose was giving him all sorts of messages, and every one of them was urgent.
And it was sort of funny…
‘I don’t approve,’ he managed, and Nell nodded.
‘Of course you don’t. You’re a very responsible doctor. I can see that. So you don’t approve of ambulances filled with sofas, buying chicken drumsticks and cans of apricots. But you will still eat my casserole?’
He was trying hard not to laugh. For heaven’s sake, she was ridiculous. ‘I might.’
‘Ernest will if you don’t,’ she said cheerfully, and Blake turned and glowered at the dog. Ernest glowered back.
But this was a dog after all. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Blake told him. ‘Not even the scraps.’
‘He’s already eaten,’ Nell said.
‘Chicken casserole?’
‘Dog food. The ambulance and sofa brought that, too. But he’s not fussy and he’s always up for second helpings.’
‘I imagine he might be. That’s quite some paunch.’
‘Now you really are getting personal.’ She scooped the casserole onto a plate and set it down on her gorgeous table. The whole room came together. The aroma of the delicious casserole. The furniture. The dog. The brilliantly dressed woman, heavily pregnant, ladling out food…
It was the sort of scenario that’d normally make him run a mile.
‘Wrap yourself around that,’ Nell told him, and she smiled.
Who could resist an invitation like that?
‘Wash your dishes afterwards,’ she said blithely. She hauled her dog up into her arms. ‘We’ve done enough. Ernest and I are very, very tired and we’re off to bed. We’ll leave you to it.’
She left, and the room was desolate for her going.
CHAPTER THREE
SOMEONE was trying to smother him.
Blake woke to fur balls. Or fur mats. Something warm and heavy and limp was lying right across his face, threatening to choke him while he slept. He sat up like he’d been shot, and Ernest slid sideways onto the floor.
The stupid dog lay like he was paralysed, four legs in the air, eyes frantic, waiting for someone to set him to rights. Good grief!
‘You dopey dog. Don’t you have any respect?’
Ernest whimpered.
Was the creature injured? Blake flung back the covers, climbed out of bed and stooped to see.
Ernest promptly found his feet, took one agile leap and landed in the warm spot vacated by Blake.
‘You damned dog… You’re out of here.’ Blake put a hand on his collar to haul him away, but it was easier said than done. Ernest lay like a dead dog. His eyes were closed and he snoozed as if he’d been asleep for hours, seemingly totally oblivious of anyone else’s comfort but his own.
‘It’s either you or me, mate,’ Blake muttered, and glanced at the clock. And then glanced again. Hell. That couldn’t be right. The clock said eight-thirty. His alarm was set for six.
The alarm had been turned off.
She’d sneaked in while he’d been sleeping, he thought incredulously, and then wondered how on earth could she have done it. He would have woken. Surely?
The thought of Nell tiptoeing across his bedroom had him as unnerved as…as did her stupid dog sleeping in his bed!
‘OK. I know. I have to get up,’ he told Ernest. ‘Sure, you can use my bed. Any time. Don’t mind me.’
Ernest didn’t.
He’d have to skip breakfast. There was a ward round to do before surgery at nine, and there wasn’t time. At least no one had rung during the night, he thought as he showered and dressed, but that in itself was unusual. Worrying even.
He’d had the best sleep he’d had in months and he felt like a million dollars for it, but he’d have to pay by working doubly hard now. Harriet’s heart problems needed urgent attention. He needed to persuade her to be transferred at least to Blairglen but preferably to one of the major coronary-care units at Sydney or Melbourne. That by itself would take hours.
Damn, damn, damn…
And on the other side of the wall, Nell must still be in bed.
‘She’s been a great help,’ he told Ernest as he hauled a comb through his unruly thatch of hair. ‘Some Christmas present she turns out to be. She turns off my alarm, she lands me with her dog and then she sleeps in…’
She was seven months pregnant. And she had made him apricot chicken the night before.
‘But I don’t need domesticity,’ he told the somnolent Ernest. ‘I’d rather eat baked beans on toast and be on time. How on earth can I fit everything in?’ He slammed the bedroom door on the sleeping dog, walked out through the living room—trying to ignore just how good the newly furnished room looked in the early morning light—and stalked through to the hospital.
‘Some Christmas present,’ he muttered again, anger building at the thought of what lay ahead. ‘Now I’ll be late all day.’
Only he wasn’t. Everything had been done.
Donald, the charge nurse, came to greet him, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘Well, well, if it’s not Captain Snooze. Our Dr McKenzie told us you were having a wee sleep in and we could hardly believe it.’
‘Your Dr McKenzie?’
‘She’s been here for two hours,’ Donald told him. ‘She had breakfast with the staff and we feel we’ve really got to know her. She’s a great kid.’ Donald was fifty. Anyone forty-nine or under was a kid to him—Blake included. Now he beamed like a Scottish patriarch, solving the problems of the world.
‘And she’s very, very competent,’ Donald told him, ignoring the look on Blake’s face and sounding as pleased as Punch. ‘Louise couldn’t get Elmer Jefferson’s drip back in last night and she did it first go. Louise says she has fingers like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘You’ve let her near the patients?’ Blake’s voice rose to incredulous and Donald took a step back—but he wasn’t a nurse to be intimidated by a mere doctor. They worked on equal footing, these two.
‘Now, why wouldn’t I have done that?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t be a fool, man. She’s a registered doctor, she’s approved and paid by our hospital board, and Jonas and Emily from Bay Beach both rang me up personally to vouch for her training. I knew her when she was a kid, so I was tickled pink to hear she was coming back.’
Tickled pink hardly described how he was feeling. Blake stared at his charge nurse through narrowed eyes. ‘You knew she was coming?’
‘We all did,’ Donald said smugly. ‘Happy Christmas, Dr Sutherland.’
Great. The world had gone mad.
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s done a full ward round, sorted out any problems—not that there were any—only Elmer at five