“You can stay here this once.” He couldn’t believe he was saying it. “Tomorrow I’m taking advice from Harriet on how to get you to sleep in your own bed. You should know I don’t often have overnight guests, so this is not going to become a habit. Are we clear?”
Madi lay with her head on her paws, comfortable and settled.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Ethan pushed her across to make room, slid into bed. “I hope you don’t snore. I need my sleep. I need to be awake to do my job well.”
He was talking to himself.
Madi was already asleep.
Ethan finally drifted off too.
When the alarm finally cut the threads on sleep, he didn’t feel as if he’d had any rest at all.
Madi was still asleep next to him.
Unbelievable, he thought as he dragged on his clothes.
Outside it was still dark, which wasn’t unusual. He spent most of the winter going forward and backward to work in the dark. The only light he saw was artificial. What was unusual was starting the day feeling worse than he’d felt when it had ended.
He took the dog outside as instructed and almost froze on the sidewalk as a frigid arctic blast of icy air wrapped itself round him.
Harriet was going to walk dogs in this all day? How did she do it?
She was obviously a lot tougher than she looked.
He went back to his apartment, gave Madi a cursory rub with an old towel and then got ready for work.
As he was about to leave the apartment, he took a final look at the dog.
“You’re going to sit there and be a good girl. Harriet will be here soon.”
Madi followed him to the door, staying close to his side.
“No, you are staying here and I am going to work. Do you understand?”
Madi wagged her tail.
“I’m taking that to be a yes.”
Hopeful that now that she’d had a comfortable night, she’d behave herself during the day, he left for work.
He arrived at the hospital to find the place in chaos.
There had been a fire in a warehouse close by and the department was crammed with patients suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Ethan dived into the deep end and forgot about Madi. He forgot about Harriet, his sister and even his niece.
His entire focus was his patients, which made it all the more surprising when he arrived home ten hours later to find Harriet still in his apartment.
The place looked exactly the way he’d left it. There was no pasta explosion, no flour avalanche, no visible signs that anything was amiss. Madi was lying on the floor, chewing her toy bone. The only clue that everything was not as smooth as it seemed, was Harriet’s presence and the expression on her face.
“What?” He removed his coat, showering the floor with snowflakes. He knew she’d planned to leave well before he arrived home, so presumably things weren’t as smooth as they appeared on the surface. “I take my bad news like a shot of tequila—fast and undiluted, so don’t hold back.”
“Madi wasn’t altogether happy today.”
“Given your ability to smooth rough edges, I’m translating that to mean things were
really bad. How bad?”