Keith (Hathaway House #11) - Dale Mayer Page 0,11

will you do with that?” Gerard asked, standing at her side. He was boiling fresh pasta noodles and making a bacon and cream sauce beside her. Leftover bacon from breakfast had him tweaking his original cream sauce idea for the pasta, so he used all the bacon for that.

She rolled out the dough quickly, then made up a brown sugar, walnut, and raisin mixture, placing a thick, heavy bead of it down the center. She then braided over the top slices that she had cut, closing it up on either end, leaving her with a great big soft buttery braid. She put it on the baking sheet, let it rise for twenty minutes, and, when that was done, popped it into one of the ovens that was about the right temperature.

“Why is it you never seem to worry about temperatures?” Sandy asked thoughtfully. “Everybody is really specific about being so long at a certain temperature.”

“There’s optimum, yes,” she said, not really paying attention. “The trouble is, not every oven is the same. You have to understand what your oven can do, and then you have to figure out what your leeway is on each item.”

She waited twenty minutes. When she pulled it out, everybody walked over to take a look. It had risen and flaked, so now the walnut brown sugar center was gooey, inside this very buttery dough. Everybody just looked at her, and she laughed. “It’s for lunch.”

“I thought you’d make something for dinner,” he said.

“I was, and then I decided to do this.” She cut it into thin strips and carefully laid it on two separate plates so that it could be taken out for dessert at lunchtime. She left several slices in the pan and said, “But now it’s coffee time.” Everybody immediately grabbed one.

Gerard pushed his over toward her. “Don’t you want a bite?”

She looked at it, hesitated, “Maybe a bite,” she said. With her second cup of coffee, she took a bite of his, then headed to her office. She got to play in the kitchen a lot, but that didn’t change or take away from the fact that she had a ton of paperwork to do as well.

As soon as she sat down, she realized she probably should have taken a little piece of that to Keith. She walked back out, saw one piece still left there, and asked, “Is this mine?”

Nearly in unison they all said, “Yes.”

She immediately put it on a small plate and walked out. She heard Gerard say, “So much for her eating it. You want to take bets on where she’s going?”

She sighed, knowing that just being friendly to a patient was causing her to be the butt of the gossip. She knew they meant it only in the best of ways, but it was still kind of irritating. She walked down the hallway to see one of the doctors stepping out of Keith’s room. He smiled at her, turned, and went the opposite direction. She stepped inside his room. “I know that you’ve got nothing but traffic coming and going here,” she said, “but I thought I’d bring you this.” She placed it on the small tray next to his bed.

He looked at it in surprise. “Wow, I don’t even know what that is.”

“I’m not sure I have a name for it either,” she said. “It’s one of my grandmother’s favorites.”

Picking it up, he took a bite and sank back onto his bed. “My God,” he said, barely able to speak. “This is delicious.”

“Good,” she said. “I did one huge loaf, which is cooling now, in order to go out for lunch.”

“Man, I’ll get so fat while I’m here,” he muttered.

“You could stand to put on some pounds,” she said, laughing. “You’re skin and bones.”

He nodded. “The surgeries haven’t been too easy on me.”

“No, but that’s done and gone. It’s a new day.” She looked at her watch and said, “I better get back. Lunch service will start here soon.”

“I don’t even know if I’m supposed to go to the lunchroom,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. “You’ve got a tablet there. Call Dani and ask her.”

He looked at it in surprise and asked, “Can I do that?”

“Send her a message.” She walked back over, brought the tablet out of Sleep mode, and said, “Here. Dani’s right there, so you can send her a message.” She tapped the icon, brought up the text box, and said, “Go for it.”

While she watched, he quickly typed in a