Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit by Meredith Webber

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?’
    ‘Later,’ she said. ‘Just let me finish here and I’ll come down and explain.’
    Angus found himself wanting to order her down right away—wanting to tell her he’d do whatever it was she was doing—but having no notion of possums’ habits, nor of what she could be arranging for them, he knew he’d be making a fool of himself if he said anything at all. So he stood and held the ladder steady, and not, he told himself, so he could watch her as she climbed down it. In fact, he turned resolutely away, determined not to have his resolve weakened by long pale legs in short shorts.
    Kate told herself that of course she could climb down a ladder that Angus was holding; after all, hadn’t she been successful in avoiding him these past few days, limiting their encounters to purely work contact? But her legs trembled as she came closer to where he stoodand it took an effort of supreme will not to climb back up the ladder and perch on the roof until he grew tired of standing there.
    ‘What exactly were you doing?’ he asked as she passed him, very close—close enough to see a beard shadow on his cheeks and lines of tiredness around his eyes.
    Wasn’t he sleeping well?
    She wasn’t exactly enjoying night-times herself, finding it hard to sleep when images of him kept flitting through her mind.
    He was so close …
    ‘There’s a hole,’ she said, reaching the ground and backing away from him, lifting a hand to stop him moving the ladder. ‘That’s how they’re getting in and out. I had to measure it.’
    ‘So you could make a door for them?’ Hamish asked, dancing around with excitement at the thought of a possum door.
    ‘Not exactly,’ Kate admitted, ‘although I suppose you could call it a door, but