The Nightshift Before Christmas

by Annie O'Neil

  The past few days working alongside Katie had been good. Really good. But she had shied away from any heart-to-heart business. Which was fair enough, but he was beginning to feel the strain. Two more days and he needed to call the hospital in Paris with an answer.

  “Can I fill you up there, hon?” The waitress reappeared with a jug of water and Josh guiltily stuffed the papers into the inner pocket of his coat. No need to make her complicit in his need to experience everything firsthand.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Katie!” Josh’s eyes near enough popped out of his head as his wife appeared behind the comfortably proportioned waitress.

  “I see you’ve found the best grilled cheese in town.” She slipped into the booth after making a may I? gesture and receiving a mute nod of assent.

  “There are other places that serve them?”

  “Not with pickles.” She smiled, then conceded. “Not really. I can’t imagine a Korean grilled cheese sandwich.”

  “Kimchi and Swiss on rye?”

  They laughed, then fell silent. Josh linked his eyes with his wife’s, wishing he could dive into them and find all the answers he needed.

  “Are you stalking me?”

  Katie screwed up her face in consternation. “No...this just happens to be the only place to get a good sandwich at—” She glanced at her watch. “At seven-thirty at night on the thirtieth of December.”

  “So you weren’t worried I’d left town without signing your papers?” The words came out bitterly. He took another deep swig of ice water, feeling a shot of iceberg zap straight to his temples as he did.

  “Oh, Josh.” Katie’s voice grew heavy with sorrow. “Do we really have to do this?”

  He suddenly felt fatigue fill him like cement.

  Yeah. We really do.

  “What?” He maintained eye contact. She wasn’t going to dodge him now. “You mean talk about why you walked out on me two years ago and why the only contact I’ve had from you is through a lawyer. Hell, yeah, we’ve got to talk about it, Katie! That’s what adults who love each other do.”

  Her breath caught, as if she were going to contest him, and a moment passed before a sad smile hinged her lips downward. “Not in my family.”

  “Well, I’m not your parents. I’m your husband. And the second you ran off to marry me in Niagara Falls I became your family. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “Of course it does—did—Josh. It’s just...” She shook her head at him, her eyes pleading for him to stop pressing.

  “Just what?” He stopped himself just short of pounding the table with his fist. If he was going to hand over those papers, he had to know why.

  “I just thought it would be easier if I went back to the way things were before I met you.” Her shoulders slumped and she looked away.

  Josh’s body straightened with a lightning bolt of undiluted indignation. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that before I met you I was used to having no one to rely on. I didn’t need anyone to get by.”

  “Is this because your parents weren’t around?” he asked, already knowing the answer as dawn began to break in his thick-as-a-coconut husk of a head.

  “Weren’t. Aren’t. Never will be,” she droned, her fingers methodically folding a napkin into an ever-diminishing square.

  “Why on earth would you have thought that about me?”

  “Because you weren’t there!”

  “Of course I was.”

  “‘I’m going up to the slopes with the guys, Katiebird.’” She mimicked him. “‘Off to the track for a few rounds of speed cycling.’ ‘Heading up to Maine for the switchbacks.’ ‘Want to jump on the back of my motorcy—?’”

  “Okay, okay.” He held up his hands. “I get it.” And did he ever? Especially when she got to the motorcycle part.

  “And I guess...” She trailed off, her eyes filling with tears as she began micro-squaring another napkin.

  “Hey...” He reached across the booth and stroked her cheek with his fingers. “What did you guess?”

  “I guess I was scared that if—”

  Her voice faltered and Josh took hold of her hand, rubbing the back of it with his thumb. Seeing her like this was torture.

  “What were you scared of?”

  “Josh!” She tugged her fingers through her hair in despair. “For a doctor, you really are thick as two planks, sometimes. Didn’t you see it? I was terrified to get pregnant again because if losing one child had pushed you that far away, what would happen if I lost another? Or lost you to one of your crazy escapades? I just couldn’t bear the thought of losing you, so I made the decision that I thought was best for both of us.”

  The words flew out as if they were all attached to the other in a long string.

  Josh couldn’t even speak. It hadn’t occurred to him for a New York second that Katie had let him down. If anything, he’d felt he’d let her down. He was the one person who had been able to draw her out of her shell, make her laugh like a hyena, smile so broadly movie stars would have envied her...

  “You know what, Katiebird?” He drew his finger along her jawline and kept it there when their eyes met. “If brains were leather I wouldn’t have enough to saddle a June bug.”

  He felt her chin quiver. Tears...or a snigger?

  “I have no idea what that means.” She lifted her tear-beaded lashes to meet his gaze.

  “I’m saying I don’t have the sense Mother Nature gave a goose!”

  “Cute Southern colloquialisms aren’t helping to make what you’re trying to say any clearer, Joshua West.” But Katie giggled as she spoke.

  “So you think I’m cute, do you?” He jostled her knee with his under the table.

  “Maybe a little bit,” she eventually conceded.

  “Oh, really? And just how big is this little bit of cuteness you are affording me?”

  “Maybe this much?” She allowed a pinch of air to pass between her fingers before closing them tight.

  “That’s pretty cute, if you ask me. My mama said I grew up on the far end of the ugly stick. Never said which end was which, though...” He picked up Katie’s hand and put her fingers in a slightly wider pose. “Now, I don’t want to go tootin’ my own horn, but wouldn’t you say this much is a bit more accurate?”

  Katie gave him a sidelong glance, then burst into hysterics. His laughter was soon intermingling with hers, and it was only when their guffaws began to die out that she realized the handful of other patrons in the restaurant had been caught up in their chortle-fest as well.

  “What are we doing here, Katiebird?”

  “Apart from ordering grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  “Yes, Katie,” he replied good-naturedly. “Apart from that.”

  “Tying up loose ends?”

  He shook his head at the same moment as she made a face at her own suggestion. It didn’t sit right.

  “Clearing the air?” he offered.

  “Getting our facts straight,” she said with a definitive nod, as if the matter were settled.

  “Hi, hon—the usual?” The waitress appeared by their table.

  “Yes, please, Eileen.” Katie smiled up at her.

  “You know—we do have a Brie and cranberry special on for the holidays.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Katie and Josh recoiled and responded as one, much to Eileen’s obvious amusement.

  “Funny how the only two people I’ve ever met who like dill pickles in their cheese sandwiches are sitting together.” She gave the pair a go figure shrug and turned back to the kitchen without waiting for an explanation.

  Josh looked over at his wife, saw her cheeks a bit flushed with emotion. It wasn’t peculiar at all... They were the only thing she’d known
how to cook when they’d met, so they’d eaten them. A lot.

  “Have you already eaten?”

  He nodded that he had, but didn’t move. “Have you ever known me to turn down a chance to steal some of your dinner?”

  She grinned and shook her head. He would stick around. Show his wife he was a changed man.

  “Well, then. Prepare to defend your pickles!”

  * * *

  “Dr. West—” Michael ran to the door to catch Josh before he went to warm up the pickup. “Are you still good to meet up for that coffee?”

  “Absolutely.” Josh nodded, yanking up the zip on his snowboarding jacket before he hit the automatic doors. “Is it something we can chat about here at the hospital?”

  “Uh, well...” Michael sent an anxious look over his shoulder back to the main reception desk, where Jorja and a couple of the shift nurses were laughing at who knew what. “Maybe not?”

  Ding! Girl trouble.

  “Got it.” Josh put out a hand to fist-bump but Michael just looked confused. He lowered his hand. “I’m out tonight—but maybe sometime tomorrow?”

  “Yeah!” Michael’s grin widened. “That’d be great. Thanks, Doc.” Michael raised his hand, then turned it into a fist, making a sort of weird revolution-style gesture.

  “Tomorrow,” Josh said with a grin, taking a hit of cold as the double doors parted to let in a blast of icy air.

  He’d need a few minutes to get the truck ready in this weather. Beautiful to look at. A monumental challenge if you weren’t where you were supposed to be.

  * * *

  “Are you ready for this?” Katie hauled herself into the truck and slammed the door against the cold wind.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Katie gave Josh a sidelong glance as he turned down Ol’ Bessie’s radio.

  “It was a whole lot busier today than I thought.”

  “New Year’s Eve!” Josh singsonged. “All the ailments people didn’t want to pay heed to on the big day and the day after—and the day after that—building into a mother lode of excess straight up to the point of no return.”

  “I know,” Katie agreed rigorously. “No amount of ‘all things in moderation’ speeches seem to stop everyone from going overboard on the holidays, and this year was no different!” she finished indignantly. Then she thought a moment.

  Except on one front.

  It was the first time she’d worked her way through patient after patient, case after case, and come out the other end feeling a sense of being whole again. Complete. She didn’t need to visit Neurology to know what was going on. The wounds she’d thought she’d stitched together hadn’t been ripped open when her husband had arrived in Copper Canyon. They had never been fixed in the first place—just hidden away and stuffed in a faraway corner that was too hard to reach. Leaving Josh behind was never going to bring Elizabeth back. Or her old life.

  Who knew having Josh here would be more healing than she ever could have imagined it to be?

  She couldn’t help running her hands along the dashboard. “Check out this old jalopy! Still keeping her pristine, I see.”

  “Yup. I keep waiting for some movie producer to pull me over and offer me a million dollars to put her in a film, but it still hasn’t happened.”

  She gave a barely contained snort. Ol’ Bessie was the one thing in Josh’s life he took care of, keeping her immaculate. She shook her head. That wasn’t fair. He’d always taken care of her. But after Elizabeth...?

  Her rigid belief that he’d gone off the deep end had shifted in the past few days. Maybe pushing life to the extreme had been his way of grieving. His way of trying to help her see the light at the end of the tunnel. She swallowed away the sting of tears and ran her finger along the trim of the red leather bench seats.

  “Remember what you said to me on our first date?”

  “You can sit here, right next to me.” His hand patted the bench seat. Josh needed no time to remember.

  “We hadn’t even shared a soda or anything together.”

  “A soda?” Josh guffawed. “We weren’t twelve, Katiebird.”

  She’d felt twelve. All nerves and jittering expectations of the unknown. But when he’d looked at her...

  Mmm...things had started pinging inside of her that she’d never known existed. Sparks, tingles, heated shivers—the whole bag of clichéd responses—each and every one of them feeling utterly fresh and new.

  So when they’d discovered they both had some time off, and he’d asked her if she wanted a day out in the countryside, she’d pulled together all her courage and said yes.

  Josh had been everything she’d admired in a man and in a doctor. He’d been a year into his residency, having just blasted through his junior residency, and she’d been on the first stint of her rotational internship. He’d had confidence, an infectious laugh, a genuine connection with his patients...and a drawl from somewhere down South that had lit her up like a—she smiled—like the big ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

  Josh barked a laugh into the cab—with a puff of breath that disappeared shortly after.

  “What?”

  “You barely even acknowledged me when I held open Ol’ Bessie’s cherry-red passenger door for you. Me being all gallant and gentlemanly, and your big brown eyes were fixed on the dash, the road, the crazy bright scarlet, orange and yellow blur of the leaves we were flashing past as we left Boston. I thought I might’ve woken up with the chicken pox or something and not noticed.”

  He glanced over to see Katie smile at the memory and he patted her leg.

  “But three days later you didn’t stop talking, did you?”

  She shook her head no. It was true. And he was the only thing she’d had eyes for.

  She looked across at his hands—one loosely resting on top of the steering wheel, the other holding on at three o’clock. He looked relaxed enough, but she could see his thoughts were about as busy as hers were. On her parents? On the rings she still hadn’t managed to take off her finger?

  She kept her eyes on his hands, wondering how much the past couple of years had truly changed him. She still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask him about those scars. What if what he had been through made him someone she could no longer truly access? That was what it had felt like in that awful dark year. Why would he risk his own life again and again when they’d just lost their tiny precious baby?

  Josh would argue that no one changed—they just became more of who they had always been, just a bit smarter about things.

  She’d changed. She was sure of it.

  Her head tipped against the cool of the window. If she was brave enough to ask, Josh would probably say she hadn’t changed—she’d just reverted back to the introvert he’d pulled out of her cocoon that magical first year in Boston. Her butterfly year.

  “Are you having an entire conversation in your head again?”

  Katie couldn’t help but give him a congratulatory laugh. “Got it in one!” Then she surprised herself by chasing it up with a wistful sigh. She’d forgotten the comforting side of having someone know her inside and out.

  “Something like that. Remember when—” she started, then hesitated. Memory lane could be a rough road to travel. Especially this time of year.

  “The apples?” He shot her a quick look, before refocusing on the road.

  How did he do that?

  “Yes...the apples. What was it—three or four bushels we took down to your grandmother’s for canning?”

  “I think it was more like five. You were on a high-speed race—dodging all of my clumsy attempts to catch you up in a sexy clinch—so I did the only thing I could!”

  “Oh, yeah? And what was that?”

  “I had to win you over with my apple-picking prowess!” He dropped her a quick
wink, his eyes barely leaving the road as he did.

  “Ha!” Katie barked out. “Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t know you were trying to kiss me.”

  “Course you did, Katiebird.” His voice was soft now. Gentle. “You were just scared of what would happen once I caught you.”

  She had been terrified. Her whole life she had always been in control. Of everything. It had been easier that way. Easier to understand why her parents had never been around. Easier to zone in on a high-stakes medical career, knowing she could harness her mind and shape her ability to learn into an aptitude to heal. If she let herself fall for Josh, it would be a whole different ball game. Whole different park. She’d known then that she would never be able to control her heart once she gave it to him. And from the increased hammering she was feeling in her chest, it still held true.

  She narrowed her eyes and slid them over to the driver’s side of the cab to take in Josh’s profile. Her tummy did its usual trip to the acrobatics department. Gold medalists had nothing on her!

  All of a sudden she hurt inside. Hurt so much she could actually put a name to it. Regret. She regretted making Josh decide between adrenaline fixes or her. Regretted packing her bags and hightailing it without even scribbling a note to explain. Leaving him to grieve on his own.

  She twisted the rings on her finger. She still hadn’t quite managed to put them back in their box. The rings she had accepted with a vow to love Josh until her very last breath.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gramma Jam-Jam look more surprised than when we pulled into the drive.” Josh’s quiet voice and soft laughter broke into the silence filling the cab.

  “What?” Katie exclaimed, tucking a foot under her leg on the bench seat as she turned to face him. “You told me she was expecting us.”

  “You believed me?”

  “Of course I did!” Katie insisted. “People don’t just spontaneously drive down the Eastern Seaboard to their grandmother’s to can and preserve and...”

  “Uh-huh?” Josh started nodding, the smile on his face growing. “It’s coming to you now, isn’t it?”