Meredith Webber - Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit - Bachelor of the Baby Ward / Fairytale on the Children's Ward

‘You should be in bed,’ he told his son, his voice stern enough to make the child slide closer to his nanny.

‘McTavish is sick,’ Hamish whispered, and the woman Angus was ignoring reacted far more quickly than he did. She knelt in front of his child and took him in her arms.

‘It’s probably just the water here in Sydney,’ she assured him. ‘I get sick when I go to different cities and drink different water. But the sickness doesn’t last. It’s always over in a day or two.’

Was this why children needed a mother?

Because women reacted more instantly—instinctively perhaps—to a child’s misery?

His mind had gone to McTavish’s health, to wondering what could be wrong with the dog. And to the other puzzle Hamish’s presence presented. He went with that because it was useless to speculate about the dog’s illness.

‘And just why does that mean you’re sitting in Dr Armstrong’s yard, not at home in our living room?’

‘Because Kate has a car and she said I could call her Kate!’

For a very biddable little boy there was a touch of defiance in the words and Angus found himself frowning, though at Juanita this time.

‘What exactly is going on?’ he demanded.

She shrugged her thick shoulders.

‘It’s as he says. The quarantine office phoned to say McTavish wasn’t eating and there was nothing for it, but Hamish had to visit him, although I told him we couldn’t see him tonight. He insisted he come and wait for his friend, sure she’d take him to see the dog.’

Angus could imagine what had happened, and understood that if Juanita had tried to insist on Hamish going to bed, the little boy would only have grown more upset, and with the move, and missing his dog, he was already emotionally out of balance.

But knowing how this had come about didn’t help him in deciding what to do, although now Kate Armstrong seemed to have taken things into her own hands. She was sitting on the couch beside Juanita, holding Hamish on her lap.

‘Juanita’s right,’ she was telling Hamish, ‘we can’t visit McTavish at this time of night because if we did all the other dogs and cats and birds and horses there would be disturbed and upset and they would want their owners to be visiting them, as well. But your father can phone them and ask them how McTavish is now. Perhaps he can tell them what McTavish’s favourite food is, and the people who are minding him can try to coax him to eat a little of it. They have vets—animal doctors—at the quarantine centre who will be looking after him, just as your Dad looks after the babies at the hospital.’

‘My mother died.’

Angus’s heart stopped beating for an instant and a chill ran through his body. He’d never heard Hamish mention his mother, but it was obvious the little boy assumed Jenna had been ill before she died, and now he was thinking McTavish could also die. He knelt in front of his son and lifted him from Kate’s knee.

‘McTavish won’t die,’ he promised, knowing the assurance was needed, although he also knew he couldn’t guarantee such a thing. ‘Kate’s right, let’s go inside and phone the quarantine centre and tell them that he really likes—’

What did the dog really like?

‘Biscuits,’ Hamish told him, his fears forgotten in this new excitement.

‘Not exactly a dietary imperative,’ Angus muttered, but if biscuits could coax McTavish to eat, then he’d certainly suggest them.

He carried his son towards the house, pausing for Juanita to catch up with them and to nod goodnight to Kate. But the image of her sitting on the old yellow couch, his son in her arms, remained with him long after his conversation with the quarantine office and the reassuring return phone call that, yes, McTavish had eaten some biscuits and even eaten some of the dried dog food the carers had mixed in with the broken biscuits.

The image of her accompanied him to bed, aware of her in the house next door, so close, too close.

Any woman would have comforted Hamish in that situation, he told himself, but some instinct deep inside was telling him she wasn’t just any woman, this Kate Armstrong. She was special—special in a way no woman had been since Jenna.

Which was another reason he had to avoid her…

It proved, as he’d known it would, impossible, for the teams met regularly. He operated with her, and discussion of patients was inevitable. But he managed to avoid her out of work hours until the day he came home early enough to attack the hedge around the garden gate.

Kate had been sensible in suggesting that if Hamish wanted to adventure he do it in her backyard, so freeing the gate had become a necessity. He’d bought a pair of hedge trimmers at the local hardware store and, some three-quarters of an hour of reasonably hard labour later, had cleared his side enough to push the gate open. Now all he had to do was trim her side.

Should he phone her first to ask if it was okay to come in and do it?

Phone her when she lived next door?

Well, he wasn’t going to go over and ask; just seeing her each day at work was enough to tell him the attraction was going to take a long time to die.

He was debating this when Hamish returned from his job of stacking all the cut-off hedge branches in a pile near the back fence.

‘Oh, look, we can get into Kate’s garden.’

He ran through the gate before Angus could stop him, calling back to his father in even greater excitement, ‘And here’s Kate, she’s right up a ladder!’

Right up a ladder?

A child suddenly calling out?

She could be startled!

Fall!

Angus dashed through the open gate to find his son confidently climbing up a very long ladder, at the top of which stood the team anaesthetist, a measuring tape, a pen and a notebook clamped in her hand.

She was peering down uncertainly, no doubt partly because Hamish’s enthusiastic attack on the ladder rungs was making it wobble.

‘No, Hamish dear,’ she said gently. ‘You can’t have two people on a ladder at once. It might tip over.’

Once again the first thought, beyond the anger fear had wrought in his chest, was that this woman would make a wonderful mother. She was always fair. She always explained in a common-sense way that a child would understand.

Although, Angus realised a little belatedly, the child in question hadn’t taken much notice and was still six rungs up the ladder and teetering there a little uncertainly.

Angus rescued him, set him on the ground, then looked up at the woman above him.

‘And just what are you doing up there?’

He’d meant it as a neighbourly question, but it came out as a demand because the ladder seemed old and highly unstable and she was at the roof level of a two-storey house.

‘Possums,’ she replied, apparently not taking exception to his tone. ‘I wouldn’t mind the little beggars living in the roof if they’d just stay in one place, but it seems they live on one side and feed on the other so they’re galloping across my ceiling in what sound like hobnail boots all night.’

‘Possums?’

He realised there’d been a lot of conversation after that, but his mind had stuck on the word.

‘Little furry animals, big eyes and long tails, cute as all get out but not much fun if they’re living in your ceiling.’

‘Oh!’

The word was obviously inadequate but Angus wasn’t certain where to take the conversation next, and the uncertainty was only partly to do with the fact that Kate appeared to be wearing very short shorts, so from where he stood her pale legs went on forever and he found it hard to focus on anything else.

Fortunately Hamish was less inhibited.

‘Possums!’ he shrieked. ‘Can I see them? Can I, Kate, can I?’