The Christmas Hope

by VanLiere, Donna

  I nodded. There. It was settled. Christmas would be at our house this year. Mom contained her excitement but I knew she was about to burst because the bells on her sweater practically rang out a tune as she bounced toward the door. She and Dad left and I tried to imagine the conversation they were having in the car.

  Nathan Andrews leaned down and whispered into the sleeping ear of his tiny patient. “You did great, Mia,” he said, stroking her arm. “What a strong girl you are.” The procedure was over and with the exception of a few cries before it began, everything went as planned. Once Dr. Andrews ran catheters to Mia’s heart he performed an ablation, selecting one of the catheters to deliver a series of short impulses to the tissue of the heart to rid it of the irregular beat. “Thanks for your help,” Dr. Andrews said to the staff assisting him. He ran his finger over Mia’s cheek. “She thanks you, too.”

  We found Sandra in the waiting room. “Has anybody given you an update or anything?” I asked.

  “A nurse came out an hour ago and said they finished. She said it went well and asked me to wait for the doctor.” So that’s what we did. We waited, three people who really didn’t know Mia but would do anything for her. It was several minutes before Dr. Andrews appeared. He smiled and Sandra and I felt relief.

  “She’s doing great,” he said. “Strong heartbeat, great pulse. She’s feisty.”

  “She’s had to be,” I said.

  “Well, hello, Emily,” he said, kneeling in front of her. “Mia will be very happy to see you.”

  Emily smiled and squeezed my hand. “Did you fix her heart?” she asked.

  “I think so. In a little while she’ll be just as big and strong and pretty as you.”

  Emily beamed. I think she was having her first crush.

  “How long will she need to be here?” Sandra asked.

  “A few days. We’ll need to keep an eye on her.”

  “We’ll watch her, too,” Emily said.

  “Well, I’ll make sure that the staff knows to give you anything you need,” Dr. Andrews said. “Lollipops, balloons, you name it.”

  A nurse at the desk called for Dr. Andrews. “It’s your wife,” she said.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “She’s pregnant so I never know! I’ll have one of the nurses show you where Mia is sleeping.” We followed the nurse as Dr. Andrews took his call.

  “Was that Patricia Addison?” a nurse asked when Dr. Andrews hung up the phone.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen her since her son’s funeral.”

  Dr. Andrews put a clipboard on top of the desk. “When did her son die?”

  “Four or five years ago. He was driving home from college for Christmas and fell asleep at the wheel.” A physician interrupted before Dr. Andrews could hear the rest of the story. He picked up his paperwork and walked toward his office. It had been a long day; he was ready to go home.

  We walked into the room where Mia was sleeping. Her tiny body was dwarfed among a tangle of tubes and wires. Emily gasped when she saw her. “She’s all right, Emily,” I said. “All that stuff just makes it look worse than it is.”

  A nurse stood at the side of the bed and smiled. “You can come closer,” she said to Emily.

  Emily stepped toward the bed and looked at Mia. “Can I hold her hand?”

  The nurse nodded. “Just be very gentle so you don’t move her.” It wasn’t a comfortable reach, the bed was slightly taller than Emily, but she slid two fingers into Mia’s palm and stood still, watching her breathe.

  “How long will she sleep?” Sandra said.

  “It wouldn’t be unusual if she slept throughout the night,” the nurse said. “This was a big day for her,” she said, patting Mia’s leg.

  “We should go so Mia can rest,” I said to Emily.

  She nodded and looked at Mia’s face as if she was searching for something. She held her gaze and then squeezed her fingers around Mia’s hand.

  “Okay, we can go now,” she said.

  “I’ll come back first thing in the morning,” Sandra said.

  “We will, too,” Emily said. We said good bye in the parking lot and I helped Emily into the backseat. I buckled her in and moved her hair out of her face.

  “You’ve had a busy day,” I said. “Are you sure you want to go out for pizza tonight?”

  She nodded.

  I kissed her forehead and got behind the wheel of the car. I watched in the mirror as she looked out the window toward the sky. Was she straining to see her mother? Was she hoping she’d catch a glimpse of her through the clouds? I wondered what she was thinking but didn’t ask. I had grown to hate all the questions I was asked after Sean’s death.

  I saw Roy’s car as I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. I parked beside it and laughed to myself. His car hadn’t been clean since he’d become a grandfather. The backseat was littered with coloring books, Legos, toy soldiers, ground Cheerios, and a naked baby doll. I held Emily’s hand and walked through the front door looking for Roy and Barbara. I spotted Roy trying to throw a small red ball into a configuration of rings twenty feet in front of him. The smallest and most difficult ring to throw into was worth fifty points. After four pitches he managed to win a measly forty points, not enough for a prize. Six-year-old Jasmine threw a ball and it fell through the hole of the secondbiggest ring, earning her twenty points. She jumped and squealed and braids all over her head bounced up and down. Roy high-fived her and saw us watching at the door. He waved us over and stretched out his hand toward Emily.

  “You must be Emily,” he said. “I’m Roy and this is my granddaughter, Jasmine, and this is my friend, Barbara.” He took out a handful of gold tokens from his pocket and handed them to Emily. “Would you like to throw the balls, too?”

  She nodded.

  He slid a coin into a slot and four balls rolled toward Emily. “You can keep these tokens and play whatever you want.”

  Emily threw a ball and missed the rings. She threw another one and missed again. Jasmine stepped in to give pointers and when Emily threw again she earned ten points. She turned to look at me and I cheered. Roy and Barbara and I sat at a nearby table.

  “She’s a doll,” Barbara said, watching Emily. Barbara was a tall, striking woman with high cheekbones and gray streaked hair. She and Roy had been dating for so long that his grandkids called her Grandma and she loved it. “So Mark is home this year, Patti?” she asked.

  I swirled a napkin on the table in front of me. “Yes. For the first time in years we’ll be having Christmas at our house.” I put my face in my hands and shook my head.

  Barbara leaned over the table and patted my arm. “Everything will go fine. Trust me, nobody remembers flat dinner rolls or greasy gravy. They just remember being together.”

  I nodded. “Our problem is we’re not so good at being together anymore.”

  “Emily doesn’t know that,” Barbara said.

  Emily came to the table and I smiled. “Can I go play that game over there?” she said, pointing to a small basketball hoop. I told her she could and Jasmine grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the other side of the restaurant.

  “She’s a sweet girl,” Barbara said. “Do you have a foster home for her yet?”

  “After Christmas,” I said. “Mark said that everybody needs a break once in a while.”

  “Mark’s right,” Roy said. It made me feel better knowing that Roy was on my side. “We’ll have Greta over, the lady who watched her quite a bit, and try to let her have a normal Christmas.” Jasmine yelled for Barbara and Barbara ducked as if being struck from behind.

  “Lord, that child has a set of lungs on her,” she said, getting up from the table. Jasmine yelled again and Barbara held onto her head as if it would blow away. “Yell one more time. I don’t think Canada heard you,” she said, walking toward the girls. The waitress came and Roy ordered a large and small pizza and a pitcher of Sprite.

  “Diet Coke,” I said, catching the waitress before she left
. “I can already feel the holiday pounds.”

  Roy leaned on the table and looked at me. “You look terrible, Patti.”

  I threw my arms in the air. “Please, don’t hold anything back. Tell me how I really look.”

  Roy laughed and made room for the pitcher of Sprite. “Did she like the tree?”

  “She loved it.” I swirled the napkin in bigger circles in front of me.

  Roy cleared his throat. “Are you happy that Mark will be home for Christmas?”

  I looked up at him and wadded the napkin into a ball. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  Roy looked at me and nodded. “Did I ever tell you about Margaret’s wind chimes?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I never knew that Margaret loved wind chimes but one year we went to visit my mother and on our way home we stopped at a restaurant that had a great big wraparound porch on it with all these wind chimes hanging from it. She kept me out on that porch for thirty minutes trying to find the perfect wind chimes for our back porch. She found a set that had bright colored birds on it and when we got home she wanted to hang them right away. So I hung them for her but I wasn’t thinking and didn’t realize that our breakfast nook windows are right by the back porch and every morning I’d hear those tinkling chimes, and they drove me crazy. Margaret loved the sound. She’d open the windows wide and just listen as they went pling, pling—pling, pling, but they drove me nuts. I couldn’t read the paper with all that plinging. When she was out of the house one day I moved them to the front porch but when she got home and noticed what I’d done she moved them back. That went on for ages. I’d move them to the front and she’d move them to the back and open the windows so she could hear them. Back and forth they went until she got sick.” His voice was quiet. “I didn’t move them anymore after that. I left the windows open and let that sound filter through the house. When she couldn’t get up anymore I put another set outside our bedroom window and when I’d lay down next to her at night I could hear them going pling, pling—pling, pling, and I’d fall to sleep. I could fall asleep to a noise that at one time drove me crazy.” He took a drink of soda and cleared his throat. “I don’t know why I told you that, Patti, except to say don’t let this happen. If you and Mark get a divorce it’ll be like another death in your family.” He paused for a moment. “If I’m stepping over my boundaries you let me know, Patti, but I’ve known you for a long time and I knew Sean, too. And I know there’s no way he’d ever want to see you and Mark split up or for you to check out the way you have. You’ve been part of the living dead long enough. I know what that society looks like because I was part of it for a long time after Margaret died. But at some point you have to make a decision to join life again.”

  I held my empty glass in my hands and rolled it back and forth. It was time that Roy knew the truth. “His bags are packed.” I could sense Roy looking at me. “I don’t know when he’s leaving but he’s ready. I know he won’t leave till after Christmas. Not now that Emily is with us. We’re both too polite to create any sort of scene with someone in the house.” I paused. “We don’t even cause scenes when it’s just the two of us in the house.”

  “Stop him, Patti.”

  I wouldn’t look at him. “I can’t.” I shifted in my chair, reaching for my purse. I wanted to end this conversation. “We just keep drifting and neither one of us knows how to … I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “We always know what to do but sometimes that means an awful lot of work and opting out is easier. There’s a divorced woman walking around this town with my last name who’s a result of my taking the easy way out.”

  “That’s not true, Roy,” I said. “I ran into Ella the other day and she told me she dropped your name a long time ago.” Roy rolled his eyes and I laughed out loud.

  Emily fell asleep on the way home. It was only eight o’clock but the day had been so long for both of us. I helped her up the stairs and into her pajamas. She slipped into bed and Girl curled up by her feet. “Can you read to me?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. It was the first time she’d wanted me to read before she fell asleep.

  “Aren’t you too tired for a story?” She shook her head. I opened the top drawer of the dresser and found some of the special books I had been saving since Sean’s childhood for my grandchildren. Neither Mark nor I had thrown them out after Sean’s death. I picked up Love You Forever. I had read it so often to Sean that at one time I had it memorized. The pages were worn, some had food stains and were torn, but Emily didn’t notice.

  I read how a mother had a baby boy and rocked him in her arms. Then I got to the part where the mother sings about loving her son forever. I had made up a tune for the song years ago when Sean was a child. Emily glanced up at me; she recognized the story. I read how the little boy turned nine years old and then into a teenager and then into a grown man with children of his own and after each stage of life I would sing again. At the end the mother is aged and she calls her son to tell him she is sick. Emily was quiet as she looked at the picture on the page. When the son came through the door the old woman tried to sing but she was unable to finish the song because she was too ill. I felt tears coming but kept reading. I choked on the words as the son picked the mother up and rocked her back and forth, singing the song she had always sung to him. I tried to sing but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even speak.

  Emily sang out the tune I had been singing throughout the book. Tears trailed down my nose and I wiped my face. “It’s okay, Patricia,” she said, patting my shoulder. “The boy said he’d always love his mommy.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s not sad. It’s happy.”

  I hugged her to me and cried over the loss of Sean and of losing her in a couple of days. It was the first time I’d cried in years.

  “Thank you for helping me finish the book,” I said, wiping my face.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t read it anymore,” she said. I hugged her tight. She held on to my arm and I knew she wanted me to stay with her. I lay down and pulled the blankets up and laid them across her chest. I reached and turned off the light. She moved her hand around in the darkness looking for mine; she wanted to hold it. She pulled it onto her chest and took a deep breath. She was content. I needed to get up so I could let Girl out. I needed to check the messages on the answering machine, I needed to check my e-mail, but felt myself drifting. I was too tired to move.

  At one o’clock in the morning Nathan Andrews awoke with a start. “It’s her,” he said, louder than he realized.

  “What’s wrong?” Meghan asked, lifting her head to see him in the moonlight.

  “I just thought of something,” he said, getting out of bed.

  “What are you doing?” Meghan asked, leaning up on one arm.

  “Nothing. Go back to sleep.” He pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and tiptoed toward the door.

  Meghan turned on the light and shielded her face. “Where in the world are you going?”

  “I need to open that gift.”

  “What gift?”

  “The gift I found during my ER rotation.”

  “You need to open it now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s in my coat pocket.”

  Meghan sat on the edge of the bed. “Why are you getting it now?”

  “I really need to see what’s in that box.”

  Meghan put her feet on the floor and pushed herself off from the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Nathan said.

  “I’m going with you.”

  He tried to help her back into bed. “No. It’s too late. Go back to sleep.”

  “Like I can sleep now! I want to see what’s in the box, too.”

  “You’re going to turn our son into a night owl.”

  “Trust me, this baby’s already a night owl. It’s been kicking me all night.”

  “A football player in the making,” Nathan said, turning the light on in the hall
way.

  Meghan rolled her eyes. It was too early in the morning to argue. She followed Nathan to the front hallway, where he opened the closet door and pulled the gift out of his coat pocket. They walked into the living room and sat down.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what you’re thinking?” Meghan asked.

  “Do you remember how I told you that med students will never forget the first time they have to tell someone that a loved one has died?”

  She nodded. “What’s that got to do with the gift?”

  “Four years ago, on Christmas Eve, paramedics brought in a young guy who had fallen asleep at the wheel. His car went right up under a tractor-trailer. I was part of the team that tried to save him. I saw this gift on the floor and I assumed it had to have been in his pocket so I picked it up and set it aside but there wasn’t an opportunity to ask him about it. He wasn’t making it and we knew it. We tried to save him but we couldn’t, and before I knew it, there was his mother asking about him, wanting to see him, but he was gone. The attending physicians were busy and she was in the hall asking about her son. I was terrified. I couldn’t look at her and tell her that her eighteen-year-old son was dead so I tried to find the attendings, but they had their hands full with two shooting victims so there I was trying to stay out of sight, but the mother was wandering the halls looking for somebody who could tell her something.” He shook his head. “I hated that night.”

  “So this gift was with that boy who died?”

  “I don’t know. I remember seeing it the next day on the admittance desk and I put it in my locker so I’d be sure to track down who it belonged to. It didn’t take long for it to get buried, pushed to the back of my locker, and I forgot all about it.”

  “How’d you remember the boy’s name?”

  “I don’t remember. I can remember that night but I can’t remember his name or his mother’s face.” When he went to med school Nathan had assumed that he would remember the faces of tragedy he dealt with but over time names and faces always blurred. He felt guilty until several doctors told him they found that to be their experience as well. Nathan thought of it as God’s grace that he couldn’t remember every detail like faces or names but could always recall the emotions he felt. “I think I ran into his mother this week,” he said.