Christmas or Bust

by A. M Burke

  “What?” Nora sputtered after him as the doors slid open in front of them.

  “Six A.M,” Elliot repeated, “if not earlier.” Nora took a deep breath and said nothing. Elliot slowed his steps and let Nora catch up to him and studied her profile. “You’re ok with that?” he asked.

  “Hmmm,” Nora said as she approached the desk to check in. “Never better.”

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  Elliot made a major mistake that night. Well, if he had to be honest the mistake was make few weeks prior when he’d told Nora to save some time and money and they could share their hotel rooms. He’d honestly thought there wouldn’t be an issue sharing rooms along the way. He could sleep just about anywhere and in any conditions. He wasn’t a heavy sleeper by any means but he could get a restful sleep nonetheless. What he hadn’t accounted for was the shared bathroom. He didn’t know why it didn’t occur to him that this could and would be a problem. He’d stepped out of the room when Nora walked into the bathroom to take a shower. He wanted a little time to himself and thought a quick drink at the bar next to the lobby would be a good idea. It would also give Nora some privacy which would benefit them both. He’d only made it to the elevator before realizing he’d taken along the extra room key with him. Elliot didn’t think Nora would be going anywhere but didn’t want to risk hearing about it if she somehow did get locked out.

  Elliot had every intention of slipping in and slipping out quickly except for the fact that the bathroom door had cracked open. Steam poured out as Elliot passed by to lay the keycard back on the dresser next to Nora’s purse and Elliot considered pulling it shut but didn’t want to risk startling her. The shower turned off a moment later and Elliot froze for a second before hurrying back to the door. The problem came when he saw, through the crack in the door, Nora push the shower curtain aside, her head down and wet hair spilling across her shoulder. He shouldn’t have even looked, he should have just kept walking but he did pause, and he did look. And damn was that a mistake. The image of her naked was going to be burned in his retinas for the rest of his life. Elliot had seen plenty of beautiful naked women in his life and it could just be because of their recent close vicinity but the vision of her struck him hard.

  Sucker punched. He’d been sucker punched before and it was oddly reminiscent of the feeling in his stomach right now. Two instincts warred within him but he went with the safer one and took off for the bar.

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  When the alarm went off on her phone the next morning Nora was in a horrible mood. Not so much because of the lack of sleep, she’d actually slept well, but because Elliot was already up and dressed and apparently a morning person. He hadn’t even been in the room when she’d fallen asleep the night before which meant he’d gotten less sleep than her which put her in an even more irritable mood to begin with. The fact that he’d also told her to ‘rise and shine’ put her in a worse mood. The only forgivable offense was that he’d started coffee in the small pot provided by the hotel.

  “You’re a morning person?” Nora asked after she freshened up and dressed for the day. Elliot shot her an odd look she couldn’t decipher and then nodded in answer.

  “Not so much a morning person as a person resigned to getting up early in the morning,” he explained. “Force of habit more than anything.”

  “Understood,” Nora agreed. She lived on odd hours and although she’d conditioned herself to rise early, she’d never be happy about it. They left the hotel and quickly got on the road. Early morning traffic was minimal but obviously growing steadily and even though Nora had offered to drive she was once again riding shotgun. Pulling out a book with several post-it notes already flagged on the pages Nora dug out additional post-its, a highlighter, and two different colored pens.

  “What are you doing?” Elliot asked.

  “Research,” Nora answered flipping through the pages until she found the section she wanted.

  “For?” he pressed.

  “An article,” Nora said tampering down a smile.

  “For?” Elliot pressed again.

  “A medical journal,” Nora told him not wanting to expand the game any longer. “I promised the chief of surgery at the hospital that I’d submit an article on a case from a few months back.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Can’t say,” Nora told him. “Hippocratic oath and all of that.”

  “Hmmm,” Elliot commented as they sped along in silence.

  “You can put on music if you want,” Nora said after a few minutes of silence.

  “Even without having a theme song picked out?” Elliot teased.

  “I’ve given up on that,” Nora admitted.

  “Really?” Elliot said surprised.

  “Did you really want me to keep naming off random songs for you? I haven’t gone over boy bands yet if you’re really interested,” Nora offered.

  “You don’t seem the boy band sort.”

  “Despite appearances I was fifteen once,” Nora promised.

  “Just how old are you anyway?” Elliot asked out of the blue.

  “Huh?” Nora looked up confused.

  “Claire is twenty-eight,” Elliot told her and Nora nodded in agreement.

  “I am aware of that.”

  “But you’re a doctor.”

  “Technically speaking,” Nora told him.

  “But doesn’t that take, like seven additional years of schooling?” Elliot asked not clear on the timeline for becoming a doctor, especially a specialty like Nora had. “And you’ve got a specialty,” he went on “That takes longer right?”

  “It does,” Nora agreed. “I’m a pediatric surgeon. I was going into neonatal but I decided I couldn’t handle patients that young. I need some level of communication. I’d like to stay with pediatric surgery but sometimes I even think that’s too much for me. I thought about general practice because it’s never the same thing twice, but I still don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t you know?” Elliot asked.

  “I could be in training for the rest of my life,” Nora told him. “If I could keep getting loans and grants that is.”

  “So you still didn’t answer my original question,” Elliot pointed out.

  “Which was?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven last month,” Nora answered.

  “How is that possible?”

  “Well, twenty-six years and ten months ago my mother and father gave each other a special hug that mommies and daddies gave each other when they want a baby,” Nora started to say but Elliot cut her off.

  “Anyone ever told you that you’re very antagonistic?” Elliot asked and saw Nora make a face out of the corner of his eyes. “I know where babies come from,” he told her to lighten the mood. “A stork right?” he asked with a wink.

  “All medical books agree,” Nora told him fighting to keep a straight face.

  “Well ok then, my question was that how are you a doctor with a specialty at such a young age?” Elliot asked.

  “Welcome to Indiana,” Nora said reading off the sign as they flew by. “But if you must know,” she said shifting uncomfortably, “I was a bit advanced for my age.”

  “How advanced?” Elliot asked genuinely curious.

  “I was done with college by age sixteen,” Nora sighed. She hated admitting it. Her peers often treated her differently because of it.

  Elliot let out a low whistle. “Impressive.” Nora waited for further but Elliot didn’t say anything else. Nora fidgeted in her seat. “What is it?” Elliot asked after a minute. “There aren’t any trucks around so why are you fidgeting? You can’t possibly need to use the bathroom; we just got on the road.”

  “No I don’t need to use the bathroom thank you very much,” Nora told him. “I was just waiting for you to react.”

  “React to what?” Elliot asked confused.

  “React to me being a prodigy.”

 
“Would you call yourself a prodigy?” Elliot asked and Nora jerked her head back in shock. She’d never liked the term herself but it had been bounced so much in her childhood and early teen years that she’d started to block it out and finally to accept it more as a nickname or a middle name.

  “No,” she admitted, “I wouldn’t use the term.”

  “Then why’d you expect me to?” Elliot asked glancing at her. She was staring off into space. “Nora?”

  “Hmm?” she turned her blank stare at him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes and wondered what was going on behind those thick lashes. Elliot turned his own eyes back to the road.

  “Why do you expect me to call you a prodigy?” Elliot asked again and in his peripheral version he saw her turn her blank stare ahead again.

  “I have no idea.”

  Chapter Five

  She supposed it was all Doogie Howser’s fault.

  When the word ‘prodigy’ had started had started being tossed amongst her teachers and parents and various adults who poked and prodded and pushed Nora had only ever heard it in practical use once- on an episode of Doogie Howser. She knew what the word was but had only associated with the teenage doctor who many of her friends giggled over as they watched reruns after school. When Nora had told her friend’s shyly that she too was a prodigy she’d been met with disdain. It wasn’t the last time she encountered such attitudes. For the rest of her childhood she was constantly on the outs.

  She had been too smart for her peers and too young for her academic peers. It had been an awkward and lonely place to be.

  Her parents had insisted she stayed in the same grade. She needed to be with children her own age and be as normal as possible. That hadn’t last too long. Bored out of her mind in classes and still longing to be accepted Nora had become the class clown, acting out and causing trouble while maintaining perfect grades until that became redundant for her and she’d stopped doing the work all together. If it hadn’t been for a Mrs. Dawson, Nora wasn’t sure where she would be.

  Mrs. Dawson had been the sister of Nora’s frustrated grade school principal. It was Mrs. Dawson, who worked at a school for gifted children of all ages and backgrounds who’d recruited Nora and organized a scholarship for her parents and arranged for Nora to have the best of both worlds; spending the mornings at Weatherwood working on a curriculum designed specifically for her and her interests and then returning to the public school for lunch, gym class, and working on her studies from Weatherwood while her classmates did their own work.

  “What do you want to do?” Mrs. Dawson had asked during one of their first meetings.

  “What do you mean?” Nora had asked. She was eight years old and frustrated and bored; a dangerous combination.

  “If you could do anything at all in school,” Mrs. Dawson clarified, “what would you want to do?”

  Nora’s first reaction was to say ‘not be a prodigy’ but she knew that wasn’t the sort of answer adults wanted. She was stuck being a prodigy whether she liked it or not. Her mind drifted back to Doogie Howser then and that he was happy, for the most part, as a teenage doctor. Maybe things got better as you got older. So Nora had said she wanted to be a doctor had left off the bit about Doogie Howser. With the specialized lesson plans and the ability to simply be a kid with her friends Nora had flourished but the honeymoon had only lasted so long. Her other schoolmates at Weatherwood stayed all day and now that Nora was actually enjoying learning she was a bit jealous of the projects and activities waiting for them in the afternoon hours. She’d finally admitted to Mrs. Dawson one day she didn’t really want to go to public school anymore and with a knowing smile Mrs. Dawson had told her that was perfectly alright.

  She was too young to make that decision and Nora had often wished her parents had insisted on a bit more normalcy but hindsight was twenty-twenty and she knew she should have spoken up at the time. Just as she should have spoken up about being a doctor after the shine of Doogie Howser had worn off.

  Nora slid her eyes across the width of the car to Elliot who was driving along silently, the soft whine of a classic rock station he’d found giving way to static though it was barely auditable over the low volume Elliot had it set at. Nearly two hours had passed without a word. Nora had pretended to pay attention to the books on her lap and Elliot had indulged her.

  An exit sign advertising a truck stop flew by.

  “Hey Elliot?” Nora asked as the radio station gave completely away to static.

  “Hmm?” Elliot replied.

  “Can we stop? I’d like to drive.”

  Elliot reached over and turned off the radio station and Nora took the silence to mean he was quietly refusing her request. She closed her book and looked out the window, surprised when as the exit approached Elliot slowed and took the off ramp.

  “A short stop,” Elliot told her pulling off at the first gas station. “Switch seats and that’s it.”

  Nora only nodded, thankful for the change of pace.

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  Elliot didn’t know what was going through Nora’s mind. He’d been observing her silently for the past few hours, watching various emotions play across her face. She was deep in thought and none of it had to do with the books and notebooks laid open but untouched on her lap. Something serious was being processed behind her dark eyes and he was wondering what role he’d played in it. He had the feeling he’d said something that had tipped off something else in her head. He shouldn’t be curious but he was.

  They were driving along at a good clip and Nora was handling the unfamiliar car well. She’d warned him, when they’d been emailing me back and forth; setting some ground rules for the trip, that she hadn’t driven in a few years but insisted she was good driver. He saw now that she was a good driver, taking the darkening skies and increasing wind without batting an eye. There was a warning for winter weather on his phone. Elliot had thought by taking the more southern route they might avoid some of the worst chances for winter storms but apparently he’d been mistaken and a length of storm was stretched from the Dakotas to the Gulf. Elliot quietly told her that he could take over whenever she wanted but Nora mumbled she was fine and resumed humming along to the songs of the Paul Simon playlist she’d selected after hooking up her iPod.

  The car rolled on in silence except for the voice of Paul Simon singing about African skies and Graceland. Elliot considered a nap but the idea of leaving Nora unattended behind the wheel didn’t settle too well with him. He had a feeling that if it wasn’t for the almost frantic look behind her eyes he might have dozed off and enjoyed letting her shoulder some responsibility of the trip. Just sitting was a hard for him. Elliot didn’t like an idle mind. Keeping himself engaged was the only way to keep his thoughts from wandering to uncomfortable places. He’d loved being a Marine more than anything in his life; with the exception of perhaps Claire and no longer being in the Corps had left a hole in life. If left to his own devices he’d think of those still in the Corps who were still considered fit to serve or had at least lied well enough about it. Elliot had never considered anything else but then he hadn’t been given much a choice about starting or finishing for that matter.

  Rain began to fall against the windshield but Nora managed to find the windshield wipers without his help. Elliot pulled up the weather app on his smartphone and saw the radar was a mixture of shades of green, pink, and white. They were driving into a mess of winter weather and Elliot’s fingers itched to have the wheel under is control again but he held his tongue. Traffic was slowing as the rain increased but Nora held her own, not slamming on the brakes as he half expected or to start complaining about the weather but she was silent, only asking him to point out the defroster when the windows started to fog. For about a half an hour the weather maintained, not getting any worse but not getting any better.

  Elliot finally asked if she was alright to keep going.

  “I’d rather it be dry and sunshine,” she admitted, “b
ut I’ll be alright for a while longer, maybe I’ll let you take back over after dinner.”

  Their next hotel room was still a ways away. The traffic and weather was slowing them down but Elliot was still happy with the distance they’d travelled, or were supposed to travel. As the weather got worse he was having less and less faith they’d be going anywhere. Nora seemed undisturbed by the weather but had to slow to a crawl as the rain switched to slush and then to snow and the cars around them lit up red with brake lights.

  “You think they’d never driven in snow before,” Nora muttered with a tone of disgust earned from years of driving in inclement weather. Even if she hadn’t driven consistently since she was twenty-one she still thought she’d earned the right.

  “More than likely they haven’t,” Elliot shrugged.

  “Whose side are you on?” Nora asked but she was smiling when she asked it.

  “If you’re that upset this thing has four wheel drive, go off-roading,” Elliot suggested and Nora had to glance at him to see if he was kidding. Catching his smile nearly caused her to rear-end the Audi in front of her. Swearing under her breath Nora crawled forward with the rest of the traffic around her, increasing the speed of the wiper blades and adAlexg the heat down a few notches but it didn’t seem to have much effect on the temperature. Nora pulled the zipper down on the sweatshirt she wore, conscious of the thin white tank top she had on underneath. Sweat beaded under her bra and Nora shifted uncomfortably. She glanced at Elliot who had also stripped down to the black t-shirt she’d watched him pull on earlier this morning when she’d heard him moving around and had peeked out from under the covers.

  “You hot?” she asked him.

  “The heater is a bit wonky,” he explained. “Thought I had it fixed but it seems to get cranky after a lot of use. After a night of rest it’ll be back to normal.”