“I was told to let you know you could take one of these after ten, but they’re not to be left near where you’re sleeping.”
“What do they do...explode?”
“No.” Mack smiled. “Hobie says when patients keep their pain meds near the bed, they wake up in the middle of the night and forget if they took one or not, so they take another. You know the rest of the story.”
“Pumping out my stomach would just round this day off nicely, though. I get the picture. The cute redhead doesn’t want me to take a dive, right?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Mack caught the reference to Hobie but let it go.
“Hey, Mack,” BJ called out as he turned to leave. “What did I say to your sister to make her cry?”
“You told her she was ugly.”
“Shit. Kids are so fucking stupid sometimes.”
Mack nodded and turned to go. “You get some sleep—”
Before he finished, he noticed BJ was already sprawled along the couch and snoring lightly.
“Do you ever slow down?” Mack asked Hobie, who was running a mop along the surgery floor.
“I can’t believe you gave me a ticket!” she said without looking up.
“Hey, it’s good to be king.”
Hobie reached out and steadied herself with a hand against the tile wall. Her body swayed and she felt the mop handle slip through her fingers. Before she could say anything, strong arms lifted her up and carried her into the other room.
Mack gently laid her on a worn leather couch in the office. “Hobie, when’s the last time you ate?”
“Um...” She struggled to remember. “Laura’s gone to get something. I’ll be okay, just give me a sec.” She slowly sat up, then moved into her desk chair, reached into the desk drawer, and pulled out a candy bar.
“Hey!” she cried out when Mack plucked the candy from her fingers as she was ready to take a bite. He tossed it into the garbage can before pulling a plastic bottle of milk from the small refrigerator that sat in one corner of the office.
“Mom told you a thousand times not to eat chocolate when your blood sugar bottoms out. Geez, Hob, you’d think a doctor would know better. Drink this.”
Hobie chugged the entire bottle. Five minutes later, she was feeling more like her old self. “Thanks,” she finally said. “Did you get Miss High and Mighty home all right?”
“Yep. She thinks you’re cute.” “Oh, stop that.”
“I’m not kidding. Those were her exact words.”
“She was high on Demerol,” Hobie said. “What?” she added in response to Mack’s amused stare.
“Are you gonna tell me the whole story with you two or what?”
“First, there is no story. Second, there most definitely is no ‘us two’!”
Mack nodded and stretched his legs, crossing them and resting his boots on the corner of Hobie’s desk.
“You’re not going to leave until I tell you about it, are you?” “Nope.” Mack grinned evilly.
“Why have you spent my entire life torturing me?”
“Because you’re my kid sister and that’s just what us big brothers do.” Mack laughed as Hobie lowered her head until her forehead rested against her desk.
“This has been the longest day of my life.” She groaned.
Chapter 4
Hobie peered through the front door window, past the lace curtains, and met a sight that made her smile despite what she’d been thinking about BJ Warren. BJ lay on the couch. Her injured leg took up more room than the old sofa had to offer. It seemed that at some point, she had moved the coffee table closer and rested her casted leg atop it.
Hobie didn’t want to wake the sleeping woman so she crept back down the porch and walked around to the back of the house. She produced a gold key from the front pocket of her blue jeans and let herself into the kitchen. She placed a cloth-covered basket on the kitchen table and said, “You stay here.”
She began to put away the few groceries she had bought at the store, unsure why she continued to go the extra mile for someone who probably wouldn’t appreciate it. She’ll probably wake up and shoot me for trespassing. It was after that thought that Hobie heard the scream.
What Hobie didn’t notice while she was puttering around the kitchen was the snow-white ball of fur in the basket that wriggled free from under the cloth. He appraised his surroundings as his bottom moved back and forth at the sight of hearth and home. He silently hopped out of the basket and looked at the immense distance to the floor. He was small, being the runt of the litter, and it looked like a long way down. The Bichon Frise may not have been known for athletic ability, but he had a first-rate brain. The cotton-ball replica padded to the end of the table, jumped to the chair, and safely moved to the next level. Once on first-floor territory, he was off.
New things were lying on the living room floor. He loved new smells. After inspecting the luggage on the floor, he moved on to his new housemate. He could see that she was very big and knew that she would have some nice soft parts against which he could snuggle. In fact, she liked to sleep just as he did. He noticed with appreciation the way the blanket and sheet were wadded up and tangled around her body. He looked longingly at the fluffy mass of covers. The way he figured, that was his couch, and that blanket was too inviting to resist. He carefully jumped to the coffee table and picked his way across to the couch. From there, it was just a matter of finding the softest spot. He knew he’d made a good decision as he settled on the woman’s belly.
BJ had gotten up in the middle of the night and managed to find the bathroom and the pain pills without killing herself. She ran into one door that she had left ajar earlier in the day, then made her way back to the sofa, convinced that she’d only broken three or so ribs in the process. She slept soundly through the rest of night because of the pills and made a mental note to buy additional pharmaceutical stocks as soon as she got home. “Better living through advanced pharmacology,” she muttered before she fell asleep.
BJ now roused her mind to a semiconscious state and convinced herself that she was having an allergic reaction to the pain medication. She’d never had an allergic reaction to anything before, but the pressure on her chest was making it difficult to breathe. In all the stories she’d ever written, that was the first symptom. Afew minutes later, she was fully awake and wondered why the couch was shaking. It wasn’t so much the couch as it was her body. It was more than shaking. It was a rhythmic movement, as if...
BJ opened one eye and peered down the length of her body. She didn’t get far. About ten inches from her face, she ran into a pair of beady black eyes, midnight black nose, and a tiny pink tongue. The tongue moved in and out of the equally small mouth with the same rhythm BJ felt moving her body. She later blamed it on a residual effect from the pain medication, but she chose that moment to yell. More than just yell. BJ could hear herself scream like a girl.
“Aah!” BJ yelled again when she saw a figure run into the room. She stopped when she realized it was Hobie. “What the hell are you doing here? No, don’t answer that, just get this...thing... off of me!”
Hobie quickly scooped the dog off BJ’s chest. Now that she knew there was no real emergency, she was trying desperately not to laugh at the prone woman. “It’s just Arturo. Did he scare you?” she asked, grinning in amusement.
BJ, realizing that she’d just made a total fool of herself over a dog, tried to cover her own error in identifying the small animal. “I thought it was a rat.”
This time, Hobie did laugh; she couldn’t help it. “You get a lot of five-pound albino rats in Chicago, do you?”
BJ fixed a cold stare in Hobie’s direction. It was quickly becoming her trademark expression. “We’re lousy with ’em,” she said flatly. “Look, what in the hell are you… Whoa!”
BJ had turned to look up at the standing woman and suddenly felt the coffee table sliding away from the couch—with her injured leg still on it. She tried to pull back, but the blanket wrapped around her legs prevented proper movement. It only took five seconds for her to end up face down on the carpeted floor.