Secret Santa

by Cynthia Reese

  Charli sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “How’d he get in this situation? Has he been educated on diet? And is he compliant? Does he check his blood sugar at all?”

  Louredes burst into the Spanish Charli wished she’d become fluent in. Spanish 101 and 102 seemed a distant memory and a completely foreign language to what she’d been hearing that afternoon.

  The man rumbled back a response that was accompanied by an accusing look of scorn in Charli’s direction. He folded his arms across his chest and lifted his chin.

  “He does check his blood sugar, but he can’t afford any more test strips. He ran out of the ones we gave him. And it doesn’t do any good, he says, because he can’t afford the insulin, either.”

  Shame coursed through Charli. Of course the man couldn’t afford test strips. Most likely, just like all the other patients she’d seen that evening, he worked for less than minimum wage and had a houseful of children to feed.

  “Does the clinic have any more test strips and insulin? He’s got to have a shot now. But he’ll need some to take home—after the hospital.”

  “You’re still going to send him to the hospital?” Louredes made it sound as though Charli was getting ready to deport him.

  “One night. He can leave in the morning. Tell him to go to the emergency room, that they can’t turn him down there. No, wait. Let me call.”

  She used her cell phone to call the hospital administrator, Walter Campbell, and explained the situation. “He needs help. One night won’t break us, and we’ll discharge him back to the clinic, and they can―”

  Louredes’s alarmed face stopped her from making too many promises, but Walter grabbed hold of the implied assurance. “One night. And don’t make this a habit!” he told her.

  “I’ll donate my care, so the hospital won’t have to bill the E.R. docs. And I’m faxing over a copy of the labs so the hospital won’t have to duplicate. Deal?”

  “Deal. What are you doing there, anyway?”

  She was taken aback by the question. “They were in a jam.”

  “Ha! They’re always in a jam. If you want to donate your time, you can start right here. We’re open to any volunteer hours you can give. You know how Lige is always going on about how tight our budget is.”

  It was delivered in a “just joking” way, but Charli heard the bite in his words.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him.

  “Oh, and, Dr. Prescott? I wouldn’t advertise the fact you’re donating care to the community clinic. Your paying patients wouldn’t cotton to subsidizing other people’s medical care. Folks are real sensitive about that around here these days,” he told her.

  “My goodness. Thanks for the warning.” She hung up before the odious little man could give her any more words of wisdom—or her sarcasm could get her in hotter water.

  Once Louredes had translated the deal Charli had worked out, and that she was personally treating him at no charge while he was in the hospital, the man’s face lit up.

  “¡Madre mia!” he burst out, and he followed it with several sentences of Spanish she couldn’t understand, along with much gripping of hands and many, many repetitions of “¡Gracias!”

  The day done and the patient packed off to the hospital, Charli sagged in her squeaky chair. Louredes beamed at her, as though Charli had sprouted a halo or an S on her chest.

  “You are incredible!” the woman said. “I can’t believe you stayed so long! And you’re such a good doctor!”

  “You buttering me up for another run?” Charli’s stomach rumbled. It surprised her, because, really, she wasn’t in the mood to eat. Maybe she should stop for a pizza on the way home.

  Louredes dipped her head a little. “No. I hate to say it, but this is really like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. A big donation fell through. Unless we get a miracle, we’ll have to close the doors on January 1.”

  “What?” Charli thought about the huge number of people she’d seen that evening, patients who’d had no money, no insurance and nowhere else to go for care. “Closed? What happened to your grant?”

  “It wasn’t a grant, exactly.... The donor who’d said he’d help... He can’t now.” Louredes busied herself with cleaning up the exam room.

  “Who was the donor? Maybe I can talk to him. Or maybe there’s someone else?”

  Louredes closed the cabinet door and stared at the painted wood as if trying to decide what to say. “I don’t think so. I mean, who’s got a cool hundred thousand dollars lying around at this time of the year? We tried to apply for some grants, but most of the application windows are closed and all the funds are exhausted.”

  A tingle went up Charli’s spine. Was it pure coincidence that the clinic needed the amount of money in that safe deposit box? And that suddenly the clinic’s main patron was no longer available?

  “Who was the donor?” she asked again.

  Louredes turned to sag against the counter, then shook her head and shoved her hands in the too-tight pockets of her scrubs. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t help now. A lot of the community will be happy to see us go. Neil Bailey says he could paper his bathroom with all the letters to the editor complaining about what a source of trouble we are to this town. I’m glad he doesn’t publish them all. He publishes enough, that’s for sure. It’s not your problem—and could you please not advertise that we’re closing?”

  Charli nodded. “I won’t breathe a word. If I can help you, I will. You’ve made me a true believer—today has made me a true believer.”

  “You sound like your father. Dr. Prescott was a good man.” Louredes’s voice was husky.

  This new revelation surprised Charli yet again. Who was this man? When she was younger, all she’d ever heard from her dad about migrant workers were complaints.

  “He volunteered here?” she asked.

  Louredes’s gaze slid sideways and her knuckles whitened as she gripped her hands together so tightly the joints made that awful cracking sound that never failed to unnerve Charli. “Some. He was our medical director. And...he saw a lot of the local Hispanic community at his office. After hours.”

  Charli recalled the notebooks with their inked patient notes. Before she’d left the office, she’d flipped through some of the other notebooks and bundled them up to take with her.

  The later notebooks had been filled with entries detailing simple illnesses, cold and flu patients, not TB deaths. What she’d seen today had mirrored her father’s notes. She needed to read them. Tonight.

  Charli was even more convinced that she didn’t know her father at all. Which was sad. Because if this had been the man he was, well, she really would have liked to have been his partner.

  And the hundred thousand dollars? Maybe he’d intended for it to go to save this clinic.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NEIL RAISED HIS FIST to knock on Charli’s door and hesitated. She’d just come in. Maybe she’d been held up at work, and if that were the case, she probably wouldn’t want company.

  He’d looked for her at the cantata rehearsal and hadn’t seen her. Maybe he owed her an apology for siccing Flora on her—even if it had been in the best of intentions.

  If we’re honest here, Bailey, you just want to see her again.

  He banished thoughts of silky blond hair and china-blue eyes that shone with fierce determination. To make sure she’s okay, he amended, and swore he would believe the lie he told himself.

  That bit of housekeeping attended to, he knocked on the door.

  It took Charli a moment to answer. When she did, she opened it a scant two inches, enough to see who it was.

  “Oh! Neil!” The door opened wider, then she closed it back a little. Still, that was definitely a smile—a small one, but still a smile.

  Wow. Not the reaction I was expecting�
�I figured she’d be all “Beat it, Bailey.”

  But she wasn’t. At least part of her seemed pleased to see him. However, he could detect some hesitation in her face.

  “Is this a good time?” Neil asked. “Because I can always, you know, come back another time.”

  “Oh, no, no, come in. Just...give me a minute. I have to...”

  She shut the door before she told him what it was she had to do. Had he caught her in her jammies? It was only eight, but doctors had weird hours, after all.

  He heard a series of bumps and chair squeaks. Didn’t sound as though she was yanking on anything over Hello Kitty pj’s—or whatever she wore to bed.

  Stop that. Right now. She’s your doctor. She sees your naked butt, you don’t see hers.

  Neil’s chiding had rendered his face awash with heat at precisely the moment she flung open the door to let him in.

  “Sorry! I had patient files out.”

  He saw no sign of the files or even a laptop, but he did see a pile of notebooks on a pine dresser beside the kitchen’s eat-in dining table. Otherwise, the kitchen looked Spartan—no personal knickknacks, cabinets bare and empty. He was used to seeing it with his old buddy Owen as an inhabitant. Well, she’s a big improvement over Owen on the slob scale.

  He realized she was waiting for an answer. “Oh, wow. You take patients’ privacy very seriously, don’t you?”

  “Got to.” Charli had clasped her hands behind her back, and her face glowed with an innocence that would make his niece’s efforts after eating the last cookie pale in comparison. The good doctor was definitely up to something, and if he had a reporter’s bone in his body, he’d bet it didn’t have a thing to do with patient files.

  Was it just curiosity, then, that made him want to stay?

  And don’t forget the other possibility, Bailey, his conscience nagged at him. The one where you hang around just because you’re starting to really like her?

  “Are you hungry?” Charli asked him. “I just ordered a pizza, but they said it would take a good thirty minutes.” She leaped to the fridge and flung open the door. The light shone down on a bare refrigerator, save for a few stacks of Tupperware, some tubs of yogurt and a carton of half-and-half. “Oh, wow. I’ve really got to go grocery shopping. How about some Greek yogurt? It’s got blueberries. And lots of protein.” She peered back around the door of the fridge, looking slightly bemused. “Oh, right. You don’t look like a yogurt kind of guy.”

  Neil couldn’t help but chuckle. “And what exactly does a yogurt kind of guy look like?” he asked.

  She blushed and smoothed a hand over her hair. Shutting the door with a shrug, Charli said, “Not somebody like you—you look like you’re a straight-up meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.”

  “I think I’ll wait for the pizza, if you’re offering,” he said. “Because, truth be told, I’ve never been much of a fan of yogurt.”

  “See? My instincts were right.” She tried to push her hands into pockets that weren’t there, then swept one toward the kitchen table. “How about a seat? Are you a seat kind of guy?”

  “I am.” He crossed to the kitchen table and pulled out a captain’s chair. “I—not to press my luck here, but I didn’t see you at the rehearsal. Was my singing that bad?”

  Charli sat down across from him. “No. You’re very good. I didn’t go by for a couple of reasons—one, I called Flora earlier today and told her definitely no.”

  Neil couldn’t help feeling disappointed. He’d hoped from the expression on her face the night before that she’d change her mind. Maybe he was wrong, but what had helped him when he was a kid was the way his dad and his aunt had coaxed him into joining in with activities that involved a lot of people.

  Still, everyone was different, and people worked through their grief in different ways. He’d found himself talking to his dad earlier in the day about Charli, and his dad had advised him not to rush her—to give her space.

  “No chance you’ll change your mind?” It was the wrong thing to ask her. He could tell that from the way her face closed down a little, lost that openness it had.

  “No. I’m really busy, Neil.” Charli said this gently but firmly. “Like tonight—I just got home. I had to admit a patient to the hospital. And before that, I wound up helping out the community clinic.”

  He smiled, reassured by what she’d told him. “Wow, that’s great! How’d that happen?”

  “Louredes was in a jam—they didn’t have a doctor. Hey, have you heard anything about the clinic...?” Charli seemed to change her mind midsentence.

  Neil could bet he knew what she was talking about. “About it closing, you mean?”

  “You know? Louredes asked me to keep it under my hat, and here I go, blabbing about it, and to a reporter, no less.” Charli sprang up from her chair and walked over to the sink. “You thirsty? I can offer you tap water...or tap water.”

  Neil laughed. “Hmm...I think I’ll take the tap water.”

  Charli reached for a couple of glasses and asked in a way-too-casual voice, “So what happened to the clinic? Did they have a grant fall through or something?”

  Again, Neil tried to ignore the red flags that Charli’s tone sent through him. “Or something. They’d been funded with a federal grant, but then budget cuts really hacked into their bottom line, and I don’t think they were funded again—at least at the same level. Louredes had told me some time ago—maybe a couple of months ago—someone had volunteered to donate a sizable sum on the condition of anonymity. But...she came in a week or so ago and asked me what I thought of trying to do a ‘save the clinic’ fund drive leading up to Christmas. Apparently, their Mr. Moneybags had a change of heart or a change of circumstance, and the money wasn’t coming, after all.”

  Charli added ice to two glasses and filled them with water, then set one down in front of Neil. “So it was a man, then? The donor?”

  Neil paused, the glass halfway to his lips. “Huh? Oh, I don’t know.”

  “But you said ‘Mr. Moneybags.’ Like he was a guy.”

  Neil took a sip and considered her comment. “Sorry. I guess it could have been Mrs. Moneybags. To tell you the truth, Louredes was pretty closemouthed about the whole thing.”

  Across from him, Charli ran the tip of her finger around the rim of her glass. Her eyes were unfocused, as though she were concentrating on some memory or imagining being somewhere else. “I hate to see the clinic close,” she said.

  “Me, too. It does a lot of good here. Your dad really worked hard on it. You know, for a while, I thought maybe Mr. Moneybags was your dad, because he was such a strong supporter of the clinic, but Louredes told me no when I tried to guess his identity.”

  “Really?” Charli chewed on her bottom lip. “And you asked her? Straight out?”

  “Yep. She was pretty adamant about it. Why? Are you or your mom in a position to help out the clinic?”

  “Me?” Her eyebrows shot up and she shook her head. “I’m buried in student loans. One reason I came back here—besides the fact that I wanted to practice with my dad—was that it’s a medically underserved area. They’ll forgive part of my loans if I work here for three years. As long as Lige and the hospital staff don’t mind filling out a gajillion papers.”

  She finally took a drink of her water. Putting the glass down, she added, “And my mom... Well, there’s no huge lump sum there. My dad’s life insurance went to pay off their house and buy her a small annuity—he wanted to be sure she had an income stream she could count on.”

  “Funny. People always think doctors are rolling in the dough,” Neil commented.

  A sad smile played across Charli’s lips. “Not small-town docs. And not my father. Keeping his practice going was always an exercise in creativity. He never wanted to increase his fees, and he tried to keep a lid on expenses—you know, just h
iring one nurse and Marvela to run his office and do his billing.”

  “So no slush fund, huh?”

  Charli jumped—or at least Neil thought she did. She looked positively guilty. Then a loud knock came on the door and she did jump. She was so keyed up that she covered the distance to the kitchen door in two bounds.

  It was the pizza guy. Neil got up, dug for his wallet, crossed the kitchen. Reaching over Charli’s shoulder, he handed the delivery guy the cash. “Least I can do,” he told her as she tried to protest. “I did invite myself to supper.”

  The delivery guy gone and pizza slices on their plates, Charli asked, “There’s nothing that can be done about the clinic, then? All those people... I can’t imagine what they’ll do for care. And some of them are pretty sick. What about Louredes’s idea about a fund drive?”

  “Oh, I’ve been putting that in the paper along with my Empty Stocking Fund Drive. But if Louredes told you they were still slated to close, I suppose no white knight’s come to save the clinic. I guess it’s just...gone.”

  Charli slowly chewed on a bite of pizza, then pushed away her plate, the slice almost untouched. “There’s got to be something.”

  “I have to warn you, the clinic’s not a very popular cause around here. A lot of people don’t care very much for immigrants.”

  Charli jutted out her chin. “It wasn’t just Hispanics that I treated there today. But even if it had been, they deserve care, too.”

  “I know, I know.” Neil lifted his hand to ward off her anger. “You’re preaching to the choir. The clinic serves as a lightning rod, that’s all.” He was impressed with the fierce indignation he saw lining her face. “I have to say, you remind me a lot of your dad—he was just as passionate about that clinic. I don’t think he would have let it close—at least not without a fight.”

  He heard Charli’s quick intake of breath and saw her jerk her head, but not before he detected a tear streak down her cheek.