breath. ‘Um…do you deliver babies?’
There was a lengthy pause. Maybe she should have gone and got dressed and talked about this on the way out, she thought, but there were a lot of decisions to be made here, and she suspected that many would be made in the next half-hour.
Would Angus keep his oxygen tube in place? Would he still be transported to the nursing home? If not, who would stay to take care of him? Maybe it could be her. But if so…that would mean that Susie stayed, too, and if she stayed then the baby would be born here and this man would have to deliver her. And-
‘We’re going too fast,’ Jake said, and she blinked.
‘Pardon?’
‘Has Angus met Susie yet?’
‘No. I thought-’
‘Let’s take this one step at a time, shall we?’ he said, his smile a little wry. ‘First things first. I’ve learned my triage, Dr McMahon, and I’m figuring out priorities. You know what I suggest you do first?’
‘What?’
‘Get yourself decent,’ he told her. ‘You have a very nice cleavage, and it’s still just a cleavage but only just. That towel is way too skimpy. You’re messing with my triage and making my priorities all wrong. So go cover priority number one with a T-shirt or similar while I find our patients. Then we can figure out what may or may not be more important than one scant inch of towelling.’
Dressed in record time, but still flushing bright crimson, Kirsty remerged from her gorgeous bedroom. There were voices coming from the room next to hers. Susie’s room.
To her astonishment they were all in there. Susie was sitting up in bed, looking interested. Angus was seated in the armchair beside the bed. He was obviously still having breathing difficulties, but his colour was better than the night before. His nasal tube was taped in place and there was a small wheeled oxygen cylinder beside him. Like a tame pup.
The not-so-tame pup-Boris-was draped over the bed, looking adoringly up at Susie, and Susie was scratching his ears. Jake was beside the window.
They were all staring out the window to the garden beyond.
‘He’s not thriving,’ Angus was saying in a voice that said the end of the world was nigh. ‘I may as well go to that nursing home. If Spike dies…’
‘Do we have another patient?’ Kirsty asked, mystified, and they all turned to look at her.
‘That’s better,’ Jake said, his eyes twinkling a little as he examined her demurely clad figure-but then he shook his head. ‘Or maybe I just mean safer.’
She ignored him. Almost. ‘Who’s Spike?’
‘Angus’s pumpkin,’ Susie said, and Kirsty blinked.
‘Pardon?’
‘He’s a Queensland Blue,’ Susie told her, as if that should explain all. ‘Look at that veggie patch out there. Have you ever seen such a veggie patch?’
Kirsty crossed cautiously to the window and peered out, worrying that she had three demented patients on her hands. And a demented dog.
But it was indeed a veggie garden-and a veggie patch to take the breath away. It stretched over maybe a quarter of an acre, row upon row of vegetables and fruit trees of every imaginable variety with what looked like a conservatory on the side.
‘Wow,’ she said faintly.
‘Wow’s right.’ Susie was pushing back her bedcovers-and pushing back Boris. ‘I have to get out there.’
‘You really think you can help?’ Angus asked, and Susie gave him the sort of look Kirsty reserved for relatives of a patient who might well die. Huge sympathy and not wanting to encourage false hope.
‘I’ll do my best. We’ll run soil tests. Maybe it’s too damp. I’d imagine this rainfall’s unseasonal for early in autumn. Is it?’
‘Yes,’ Angus said, with doubt. ‘It’s normally much drier.’
‘Then maybe we can lift the whole vine-just enough to get it off the surface dirt and maybe get a bit of sunlight underneath. It can be done by thinning out the leaves. That should help the plant a lot. We need to be so careful. Dampness can cause rot this late in the growing season.’
‘Rot,’ Angus said in the voice of a parent hearing the word
‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you. But we need to get out there and see.’
‘But you’re pregnant, lass,’ Angus said, looking at her with real concern. His old eyes misted with emotion. ‘Pregnant with Rory’s child.’
‘And Rory wouldn’t thank me if I just lay here while his Uncle Angus’s pumpkin rotted,’ she retorted. ‘Kirsty, you have to help.’
‘And you,’ Angus said, turning and poking Jake in the midriff. ‘You helped me come down to meet my new niece without so much as a jacket and Wellingtons. They’re packed away in the back of my wardrobe. Get them for me, there’s a good chap.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jake said-and grinned.
Ten minutes later Jake and Kirsty were standing at the back door, onlookers to the main medical question of the day. Which was why Spike wasn’t at his best.
The patient in question was a vast grey-green pumpkin. Susie was balancing on her crutches, trying not to wobble as she examined him from every angle, and Angus had pushed his oxygen cylinder onto its side so he could use it as a seat.
‘Um…do we or do we not have a miracle happening here?’ Jake asked, and Kirsty glared at him, as if by saying it he could jinx it.
‘Don’t even think it. Just hold your breath, hold your tongue and cross everything you possess.’
‘Susie’s weight-bearing is better than I thought.’
‘I told you yesterday. She’s weight-bearing but unsteady and she won’t practise. The ground here’s so soft and squishy, though, she’s being forced to use her legs.’
‘Praise be,’ he said softly. ‘And…you said Susie’s a landscape gardener?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So Angus has a niece by marriage, pregnant with Rory’s child, who shares his passion for gardening. A niece who needs accommodation for a few weeks.’
‘You’re going too fast,’ she told him, and he raised his brows.
‘Am I? Tell me you’re not looking out at your sister and thinking this might work.’
‘It’s too soon to tell.’
‘Yesterday you had a sister who was non-responsive and I had a patient who wanted to die. I don’t see him refusing oxygen now.’
‘He needs the tank for a garden seat,’ she said, but grinned. ‘OK, Dr Cameron, I concede you’ve done very well so far.’
‘Most Australian doctors know enough to prescribe pumpkins for advanced pulmonary failure and severe depression,’ he said, smiling in return. ‘Hasn’t that reached the States as standard practice yet?’
She choked on a bubble of laughter, and then looked out at Susie balancing precariously over the pumpkin but not even thinking about how wobbly her legs were, and thought, This is great. This could just work.
‘Hey, Angus, I’d arranged to take you to the nursing home this morning,’ Jake called, and the two pumpkin inspectors turned with identical expressions of confusion.
‘Nursing home?’ Angus said-and then he remembered and his face fell. ‘Oh, aye. That’s right.’ He turned to Susie as if explaining. ‘I agreed to go.’
‘Why are you going to a nursing home?’ Susie asked in astonishment, and he shook his head, defeat written all over him.
‘It’s time, lass. I can’t keep on here. The doc is calling on me twice a day as it is, and he can’t keep doing that indefinitely.’
‘Angus has advanced pulmonary fibrosis,’ Jake said gravely. ‘He can’t manage here alone any more.’
