Mistletoe Proposal on the Children's Ward

by Kate Hardy

  Once Willow’s casts had been sorted out and they’d seen their patients on the rest of the list for the morning’s clinic, they popped in to see Lily Brown before she went home—and Jamie was as thrilled by her progress as Lily herself was—and then grabbed sandwiches in the hospital canteen.

  ‘So how did you get on at the weekend?’ she asked.

  ‘Really well,’ Jamie said. ‘I’m seeing my other sister and my parents next weekend. And it feels good to be properly back in touch with them—all thanks to you.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not the one who actually did something,’ she said with a smile. ‘That’s all you.’

  But she’d given him the confidence to make that move.

  He took a deep breath. ‘You know you asked me to the Christmas concert with your nieces and nephews tomorrow—I was wondering, is the offer still open, or is it too late to change my mind?’

  ‘Absolutely the offer’s still open,’ she said, looking pleased. ‘I can get one of my sisters-in-law to organise a seat.’

  ‘Then thank you, I’d like to take you up on that.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, looking slightly worried.

  No, he wasn’t. But he wanted to make the effort. ‘Sure,’ he fibbed. And he’d fake it until he made it, if it meant that she’d smile at him like that.

  ‘We’re all going back to my parents’ afterwards,’ she said, ‘so I hope you’ll come with us. Mum will have jacket potatoes baking in the oven, salad prepared in the fridge and chilli in the slow-cooker, and she’ll grill chipolatas and vegetarian nuggets for the kids.’

  ‘That sounds lovely,’ he said, meaning it. ‘Can I bring anything?’

  ‘No, just yourself,’ she said. ‘We can go straight from work.’

  ‘OK. That’s fine.’

  * * *

  Jamie spent Wednesday in Theatre. His final operation of the day was sorting out Michael Jeffries’s knee—and thankfully it was Michael’s mum who was waiting for him, rather than his dad.

  ‘I’m pleased to say the operation was a success,’ he said, when Michael was in the recovery room, ‘and he’s coming round now.’

  ‘That’s great. Thank you so much. What can I do to make things easier for him now he’s had the operation?’ she asked.

  ‘Keep him topped up with pain medication and get him to be sensible about physio—enough to get him mobile, but not so much that he sets himself back,’ Jamie said.

  She nodded. ‘Football’s his life. Sometimes I think it’s because my ex—’ She paused. ‘Sorry. You don’t need to know about that.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Jamie said. ‘Relationships can be tricky. We did wonder if Michael was pushing himself because he loves football or for another reason.’

  ‘He loves football, but mainly because he thinks it’ll make his father love him. Whereas my ex just likes to be in control and he changes the goalposts all the time.’ She sighed. ‘He insisted on taking Michael to that appointment—I was called into work on an emergency and I was hoping Michael’s gran would go with him, but unfortunately his father chose to go. I’m sorry if he wasn’t very nice to your colleague.’

  ‘Michael told you?’

  She shook her head. ‘My ex made a few comments about uppity women when he dropped Michael home.’

  ‘Anna’s very professional,’ Jamie said with a smile, ‘but outside the hospital I really wouldn’t fancy his chances in a battle of wits against her.’

  Michael’s mum grimaced. ‘Please apologise to her for me.’

  ‘No apology needed,’ Jamie said. ‘I’m going to be completely unprofessional now. She’ll be very glad to learn that Michael’s with you and that you put his needs first.’

  ‘I get what you’re not saying,’ Michael’s mum said. ‘And you’re right. Thank God Michael lives with me and not his dad.’

  ‘With you on his side,’ Jamie said, ‘he’s going to be just fine. Give it another ten minutes, and you should be able to see him and then we’ll settle him onto the ward.’

  At the end of his shift, he went in search of Anna. ‘I’m ready when you are,’ he said.

  ‘Great. How did your ACL repair go?’

  ‘Fine.’ He paused. ‘Michael’s mum is really nice. The first thing she asked me was how she could make things easier for him post-op.’

  ‘Stick gaffer tape over his father’s mouth before he says something obnoxious?’ Anna suggested.

  Jamie laughed. ‘And there was me telling her how professional you are.’

  She gave him a speaking look. ‘I just hope that man doesn’t push Michael into undoing all the good work you put into his knee.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Jamie said. ‘Something tells me Michael’s mother will be very careful about his visitors.’

  ‘Ah,’ Anna said, clearly picking up the subtext.

  ‘She asked me to apologise to you. For Michael’s dad.’

  ‘No apology needed. But that’s nice of her.’ Anna rolled her eyes. ‘Right. Let’s go and do something really Christmassy.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Jamie said.

  She glanced at him when she’d collected her stuff from the staffroom. ‘What’s in that bag?’

  ‘That’s for me to know, and you to find out later,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Just so you know,’ she said on the way to the concert, ‘I haven’t told my family much about you. Just that you’re my colleague and my friend.’

  Not a widower they needed to pity and tiptoe round; that was good. But did that mean he wasn’t going to get to hold her hand?

  Maybe he’d accidentally said it aloud, because she slipped her fingers into his. ‘They’re all nice, and they won’t be nosy,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Her phone pinged on the way there. ‘Everyone else is already there and they’ve saved us two seats,’ she said when she checked the message.

  ‘That’s kind of them,’ he said. ‘So how long does the concert last?’

  ‘Maybe an hour. Each class does one piece, and it’s just lovely. You always get children singing out of key, forgetting their lines or going off at a tangent, but that’s all part of the charm. They all work so hard. What I like is going back year after year and seeing them grow up and change. I’ve been to all of the school Christmas concerts since Will was in the Reception year and was an angel in the nativity—and his halo fell off.’ She grinned. ‘We’ve all learned a lot more about tinsel and sticky tape since then.’

  When they walked into the school hall, Anna scanned the rows. ‘There they are. Second row on the left. We’re right at the end.’

  She quickly introduced him to everyone: her parents Tony and Alison; her brothers Mark, Luke and Philip and their wives Susan, Barb and Gemma; her sister Jojo and her wife Becky; and the children who weren’t performing that evening, eight-year-old Will, two-year-old Noah, and six-month-old Ivy.

  ‘Nice to meet you all,’ he said politely.

  ‘And you, Jamie.’ Alison passed him a folded A4 sheet. ‘This is the running order,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Aria’s up first,’ Anna said, glancing over the sheet with him.

  The headmistress began by welcoming them all to the First School’s Christmas concert and praising the children for working so hard as a team. ‘And now, presenting the Nativity, is our Reception year group,’ she said.

  ‘Aria’s the third shepherd on the left,’ Anna whispered as the children filed onto the stage, slipping her hand into Jamie’s.

  And it was charming, the story of the nativity told from the donkey’s point of view. Jamie couldn’t help smiling as the children sang ‘Little Donkey’ and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’; he glanced at Anna and saw she had tears in her eyes. Was she thinking about what might have been, the same way he was?

 
‘OK?’ he whispered.

  She nodded. ‘This is just so lovely. I’m so proud of her.’

  Tears of joy rather than tears of pain, then. Reassured, he sat back to enjoy the show.

  Two of the Reception children came to the front of the stage while the others filed off.

  ‘I say, I say, I say,’ the little girl said. ‘What do Santa’s helpers learn at school?’

  The little boy looked at her. ‘I don’t know. What do Santa’s helpers learn at school?’

  ‘The Elf-a-bet!’ she said, and they both giggled.

  Jamie couldn’t help laughing, too, because their giggles were so infectious.

  ‘And now we have class 1C, singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”,’ the headmistress said.

  ‘Megan’s class,’ Anna whispered. ‘She’s the partridge.’

  Twelve children sat cross-legged on the front of the stage; one little girl stood in the centre of the stage; and the rest stood at the back. The girl in the centre sang the first line about her true love sending her a gift on the first day. Then, as the rest of the children sang what the gift was, Megan lifted a large card showing a hand-drawn partridge in a pear tree.

  As the song continued, each child held up their card in turn and lowered it again as the rest of the class sang their way through the gifts, in a kind of Mexican wave. There was a moment of confusion when the geese and swans went up at the same time, but the children recovered themselves quickly and kept singing.

  There was another joke during the class changeover—where Jamie learned that lions sang ‘Jungle Bells’ at Christmas, and then the next class sang ‘Jingle Bells’, complete with jingling bells; Jamie found his foot tapping along in time. Anna clearly noticed, because she squeezed his hand and grinned at him.

  Just as with the previous class, while most of the children filed off the stage two came forward to tell a joke. Jamie stored it away for future reference on the ward: Who says Oh-oh-oh? Father Christmas, walking backwards!

  ‘That’s so going to be you,’ Anna whispered.

  Yes. He rather thought it might be heading that way.

  The next class sang ‘When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney,’ complete with exaggerated sneezes, and there was another joke before Charlie’s class came onto the stage. Most of the class were standing at the back and the sides of the stage, but six of the children were dressed in brown leggings with red tops; they each sported home-made brown cardboard wings, with orange cardboard ‘feet’ stuck to their plimsolls, and were wearing an orange beak held on with thin elastic.

  ‘Charlie’s the one on the far right,’ Anna whispered.

  While most of the class sang the song about robins, the six ‘robins’ did a dance in the centre of the stage.

  Disaster struck halfway through, when the elastic on the beak of the robin next to Charlie snapped and the beak fell to the floor. The little girl burst into tears, but Charlie was quick to take his beak off and put it on her, then held his hand up to his face to make it look like a beak and improvised.

  The little girl stopped crying, everyone cheered, and the dance and song continued.

  And that was when Jamie could see exactly where Anna fitted into her family: they were clearly all the same, people who cared about others and helped and made the world of everyone around them a better place.

  ‘Your nephew is amazing,’ he whispered.

  ‘I know,’ she whispered back.

  And Charlie’s parents looked so proud of him; Jamie, who didn’t even know him, felt proud of him, too.

  Jamie learned that Frosty the Snowman went to school on an icicle. And he didn’t even need to look at the programme to guess what the next performance was: a rendition of ‘Frosty the Snowman’.

  The last performance from the Year Two classes was ‘The Little Drummer Boy’; the first class from Year Three recited a number of poems about snow, with some of them using triangles and jingle bells as sound effects.

  Hestia, Jamie thought, would probably have suggested some snowflakes dancing on the stage, and given up her free time to coach them.

  ‘That’s my new favourite joke,’ he whispered to Anna after the next one. ‘Why is it so cold at Christmas? Because it’s in Decem-brrr!’ He grinned. ‘That’s genius.’

  The second Year Three class sang ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, and followed it up with a joke: ‘What do reindeers hang on their tree? Horn-aments!’

  ‘I’m so telling that one in the staffroom tomorrow,’ Anna whispered. ‘Don’t you dare steal the punch line.’

  The final class in Year Three sang ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, and Jamie was surprised and impressed to see that the class used sign language as they sang.

  The headmistress brought the evening to a close and the whole school sang ‘Away in a Manger’; when he glanced round, Jamie could see that most of the parents were close to tears. He had a lump in his throat, too.

  Would Giselle’s first Christmas concert have been like this?

  He could imagine how proud Hestia would have been, how his parents and hers would both have had tears in their eyes for that final carol. And, even though it hadn’t turned out that way for him, he was glad he’d shared tonight with Anna and her family. This was something special.

  Anna was special, too.

  Though he didn’t quite know how to tell her.

  Once the children had all joined their parents and they’d worked out who was going in whose car, Anna pointed out that there wasn’t actually enough room for her and Jamie to squeeze in. ‘We’ll walk,’ she said. ‘And, with all this traffic, I bet we beat you home.’ She smiled at Jamie. ‘It’s not raining, so it’s actually quite a nice walk from here.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said, and let her lead him away from the school.

  ‘So what did you think of the concert?’ she asked.

  ‘It was lovely,’ he said. ‘And your nephew—what an amazingly big-hearted boy he is.’

  ‘Yeah. Charlie’s pretty special,’ she said. ‘But I guarantee you all of them would’ve done the same in his shoes.’

  ‘Because that’s who your family is,’ he said softly. ‘You’re all fixers. Which is just lovely.’

  ‘I did tell you that my family’s nice.’

  He noticed she’d gone pink with pleasure, and he couldn’t resist stealing a kiss.

  ‘It was lovely how inclusive the concert was, too,’ he said. ‘I was amazed by them using sign language for that last song.’

  ‘One of the girls in that class is deaf,’ she said. ‘Her sister is in Megan’s class. And it’s really nice because all the others look out for her and they make sure she hasn’t missed anything.’ She smiled. ‘The school’s got a really positive attitude when it comes to inclusion and diversity. Although all the children have the option not to take part in something that isn’t to do with their particular religion, everyone ends up doing everything because they all want to share. Everyone’s included. So as well as the Christmas concert, they learn about Hanukkah, Eid, Diwali and the Chinese New Year, and there are all kinds of activities everyone can take part in.’

  ‘Tolerance, kindness and understanding are all good things. They stop fear and hatred building,’ he said.

  ‘Agreed,’ she said fervently.

  They reached Anna’s parents’ house almost at the same time as her brother’s car pulled outside and her dad hopped out to open the front door.

  ‘Told you it’d be as quick to walk home,’ Anna teased.

  ‘Indeed, Anna-Banana.’ Her father gave her a hug.

  What seemed like only seconds later, the house was full of people chattering and children laughing, and Jamie was swept right into the middle of it.

  ‘For us?’ Alison said when he handed her the large bag he’d been carrying.

  ‘My contribution to tonight,’ Jamie said.
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br />   She opened it, drew out the enormous tub of chocolates and gave him a hug. ‘Thank you, sweetheart. These will go down really well later.’

  And, just like that, he realised that they’d accepted him as Anna’s friend and he was more than welcome to be part of them. He felt another crack open in the mortar of the wall he’d spent years building around him; and he was shocked to realise that, rather than making him want to build that wall higher, it made him want to start dismantling it.

  Just as Anna had told him, there was an assortment of jacket potatoes, chilli, chipolatas, vegetarian nuggets and salad for dinner, followed by fruit, trifle, mince pies and chocolate cake for pudding.

  And then the children annexed him. ‘We need to teach you the robin dance,’ Charlie said, and Jamie found himself hopping about like a robin, flapping his wings and dancing with them all as they sang the song.

  After that, the games began in earnest.

  ‘Can we play Simon Says next?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Except at this time of year we call it Santa Says,’ Will added. ‘Will you be Santa, Jamie? Please?’

  ‘I’ll pretend to be Santa,’ Jamie said, ‘because the real Santa’s obviously really busy right now, getting everything ready to be loaded onto his sleigh.’ He glanced at Anna and saw that her eyes were bright with approval. ‘Though Santa always needs helpers,’ he added, giving her a pointed look.

  ‘Auntie Anna-Banana!’ the children chorused.

  ‘Come and help, Auntie Anna,’ Will said. ‘Please.’

  ‘All right. Santa’s helper, that’s me,’ she said, and came to stand beside him.

  ‘Santa says,’ Jamie announced, ‘hop like a robin.’

  The children all hopped delightedly, whooping and giggling, while all the adults perched on chairs and sofas, watching them.

  Anna coughed. ‘Oi, you lot. The only ones who get a free pass on this are Mum and Dad. The rest of you—on your feet, right now,’ she demanded.

  With much mock-grumbling, Anna’s brothers and sisters joined the children, and everything got rowdier and funnier. Anna joined Jamie with suggestions of things that Santa would do: delivering a present, sliding down the chimney, feeding a carrot to the reindeer, eating a mince pie. The adults were caught out, one by one; in the end, Megan won the game, and Anna presented her with a sparkly reindeer headband.