Janelle nodded and sat down again, her hands over her face. ‘I don’t think I can do this any more.’
‘You can and I’ll help you,’ Melinda promised.
She took Maddie, still crying, out into the kitchen and mixed up some of the formula they kept on hand. All the while she jiggled and talked to the baby, trying to settle her. Patti came in to see what the noise was.
‘Och, you’ve got an upset one there,’ she said and took over making the formula.
‘Yeah, she’s lost two hundred grams,’ Melinda said. ‘Like I said earlier, mum says she’s not sucking well.’
Patti screwed the lid on and handed her the bottle. Maddie pounced on the teat and started to suck. Within a couple of minutes the bottle was empty and Melinda was staring at it in surprise.
‘What?’ Patti asked as she started to mix up some more.
‘Janelle said she couldn’t get her to suck. Not a dummy or a bottle. Looks like she knows how to do it to me.’
‘Sometimes babies won’t take a bottle if they can smell milk on the mother. Take this back in and get mum to try to feed and see what happens.’
Back in the consultation room, Melinda handed Maddie to Janelle and explained what had happened. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘try with this bottle and see how you go.’
Janelle tapped the teat on Maddie’s lips and again the baby grabbed hold of it with her lips and sucked hard.
‘There you go. Maybe you’re not producing enough milk for her. That happens, milk dries up and sometimes it takes us a while to realise. Sometimes the only reason we work it out is because they’re unsettled and crying all the time.’
‘But how come she wouldn’t take a dummy or a bottle at home?’
‘I wish these little cutie-pies could tell us what they wanted! Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can answer that and Maddie can’t tell you either. But she’s drinking now. I tell you what, why don’t you take this bottle home because you know she’ll suck using this teat and I’ll give you half a tin of the formula we use here. That way you can go and get the exact same from the supermarket. This is a proven formula!’ she quipped.
‘Thank you,’ Janelle said softly.
Melinda saw Maddie’s eyelids start to shut and the teat popped out of her mouth as she fell asleep.
‘Look what you’ve just done,’ Melinda whispered delightedly to Janelle. ‘You’ve fed her a bottle and put her to sleep. Aren’t you a clever thing?’ She smiled at the young mum who, for the first time since they’d met, smiled back at her.
Melinda left the office with a sense of satisfaction. She knew she’d made a big difference to Janelle’s world, which was why she’d become a nurse in the first place—to help people.
Walking to her car, she wanted to skip, but restrained herself. That wasn’t becoming of a professional!
‘Melinda! Hey, Mel!’
She turned and saw Kathy walking towards her.
‘Hi, Melinda! How’s the new job?’
‘Kathy, hello! I’m loving it—I can’t thank you enough for encouraging me to apply for this role. And now I’m busy during the day, I’m not as sad as I was. In fact, I’d almost say I’m beginning to settle!’ She saw the delighted look on Kathy’s face and rushed on. ‘I mean, I still have to meet people outside of work, but I’m doing it gradually, and I love working with Patti.’
‘Oh, isn’t she just lovely? Heart of gold. Have you got time for a coffee now?’
Melinda hesitated, about to say no. Normally she would go straight home from work and call her parents, then her sister. They weren’t the sad phone calls from before, but she liked to hear their voices every day. Still, she could call them tomorrow.
‘I’d love to,’ she said.
‘Great. How about I meet you at the Mug? I just have to put these in the car.’ She indicated to the shopping bags she had on her arm.
‘Great, see you there.’ She started to unlock the car but had a thought and called across the parking lot, ‘Hey, Kathy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You can call me Mel!’
Chapter 20
‘We’ve got a match,’ Dave said, adrenalin pumping through his body. ‘Glen Bartlett and our John Doe are one and the same! I knew it!’ He waved the report that had matched the fingerprints lifted from Bartlett’s Avis forms with those taken from the body and felt the familiar thrill of energy rush through him. They were getting somewhere.
‘No sign of his car yet. I bet it’s in a mine somewhere and that’s why we haven’t found it. I would’ve thought if it was hidden in the bush, the vehicle would have been reported by now, or we would’ve found it. But you know what I don’t understand?’ Spencer said.
‘What’s that?’ Dave was standing at the whiteboard, where he’d just pinned up the photo of Bartlett and written his name and birth date underneath it.
‘What was he doing here? And why was he camping out rather than staying at the pub?’ He pushed his chair back and swung his feet up onto the desk. ‘More importantly, why was he murdered?’
‘All very good questions. I’m going to ring the police station in Ballarat and find out if he has any family we need to notify.’
‘Okay, you do that first and then we’ll pull in Ross Pollard and have another chat with him.’
‘Bartlett’s mum is still alive, but there’s no wife,’ Dave told Spencer when they got into the car ten minutes later. ‘Or children. Looks like he was on his own. The boys over there are going to do the inform. I wonder if she’ll want to come over and collect the body.’
‘Probably not, being elderly. God, I hate doing the informs. One time I had a lady hit me in the face and tell me I was lying. I’d had
