Secret Santa

He sounded pleased as punch that a woman needed him so much she was miserable without him. Honestly, he’d created a monster. Charli shook her head and gave Lainey instructions about Neil Bailey.

Lainey grinned. “Isn’t it sweet?” she asked, nodding toward the phone. “Your dad is so in love with her. Still, after all these years.”

A sour feeling followed by a chaser of guilt swept over Charli. She’d always felt overshadowed by her parents’ mutual admiration for each other—mutual except when they’d battled over her mother’s shopping. It wasn’t that she was jealous of her mother’s ability to wrap her father around her finger. It was that she knew she could never be the sort of sweet little woman her mother pretzeled herself into being for her father. If that was the kind of woman Charli needed to be for her father—or any man—to love her, she was doomed.

But Lainey was waiting expectantly for Charli’s reply. “I’m glad they’ve got each other,” she said. “Let me know when the Toradol has had time to work its magic, okay? I’m off to see—who am I off to see?”

“This one. A dad got his, er, backside stuck in a trash can that he was using for an impromptu toilet.”

“Huh?” Charli flipped open the chart and started reading. “Eww. Scout camping trip. Got a bottle opener?”

“What?” Lainey fished around in her desk drawer and came up with one.

“He’s created a vacuum, and I need to release it.”

“No. Not with my bottle opener.” Lainey held the gadget out of Charli’s reach.

“Come on. I’ll buy you another. We need the bed. The waiting room’s overflowing, right?”

Lainey hesitated. “A brand-spanking-new one. Tomorrow. In the package. So I know beyond a shadow of a doubt you didn’t wash this one.”

“And the receipt. That clinch the deal?” Charli yawned again, tired to the marrow of her bones.

“That’ll do it.”

Bottle opener in hand, Charli sailed off to uncork the scout leader.

* * *

A STARRY SKY. A beautiful, clear November night. Charli soaked in the silence of her car. No more hearing her name paged on the overhead. No more screaming patients. No more Knife Guy singing “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” No more telephone calls from her mother, begging her to send her father home.

No more father telling her she didn’t know anything because she didn’t know the “real world of rural medicine.”

I want to sleep forever. I don’t care if it’s just 8:00 p.m. I don’t care if I have office hours tomorrow morning. I’m going to bed and sleeping until next week. Thank goodness they finally sent in those wonderful, wonderful E.R. docs.

Charli turned on her street and saw a line of cars almost to the intersection. What? Traffic? On a side street in Brevis? Red taillights glowed in a long series, looking like Morse code as people tapped brakes and inched forward.

Charli rolled down her window and heard...Christmas carols? Yes, it was a way too cheerful “Winter Wonderland” being belted out of speakers.

She wasn’t the only one who had her window down. The car ahead of her had kids hanging out the back window, faces aglow with excitement. What on earth?

Behind her a horn blew. The driver was impatient, a trio of kids bouncing in the backseat. Well, he was no more impatient than she was. What were they looking at up ahead?

She inched around the curve, with her house in sight, and she saw what all the fuss was about. Her neighbor—whom she hadn’t met yet, but it was clearly high time to introduce herself—had enough Christmas lights to outshine an airstrip. And music. Loud music. “Winter Wonderland” had given way to “Frosty the Snowman.”

Good grief! Her bedroom window was on her neighbor’s end of the house. So much for sleep. It’s only the first of November. Why the Christmas lights?

Finally the car in front of her inched up enough that she could squeeze into her driveway. Just as she did, something tumbled off the roof next door—a reindeer whose nose went black as he dived into a somersault and headed straight toward her car. Charli hit the brakes and prepared for the thing to smash into a million pieces.

But instead, it bounced. She blinked. Yes. It bounced. It was an inflatable. A big huge hulking inflatable Rudolph that had landed between her car and her carport.

Charli got out. Rounded the front of the car. Tried to drag the deer, but found that it was way heavier than it appeared. She stood there, nonplussed, as Jimmy Durante sang about a button nose and two eyes made of coal.

“We’re gonna have to deflate it,” a voice came from behind her on the sidewalk, barely audible over Frosty. “With this arm, I’m never gonna be able to move Rudolph without letting the air out first.”

Charli turned around. There, in the glow of his Christmas lights, a sheepish grin on his face, his arm in the sling she’d carefully adjusted for him in the E.R., stood Neil Bailey.

CHAPTER TWO

THE GOOD DOCTOR looked mighty ticked, Neil decided. In fact, he could almost see a few choice words forming on Dr. Charlotte Prescott’s lips.

Gone was the tolerant, somewhat amused professional expression on her face from earlier in the evening. Now her mouth turned sharply down at the corners, her forehead furrowed, and her hands were at her hips.

He could tell the moment she recognized him from the hospital. Her lips parted, but no words came out. Her head, with that silky honey-colored hair that had mostly fallen from a straggly ponytail, shook a little, like a boxer dazed from one too many rounds.

She said something that Neil couldn’t understand over the strains of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which he thought was apropos to the situation at hand. Maybe he did have the music turned up a little too loud. He stepped closer to her.

“What?” he asked.

“I said, you’re my neighbor? These were the Christmas lights you were talking about?” She swept a hand over the boxwood hedge, in the direction of his lights.

He couldn’t help but take in his efforts with pride. Even with the now-blank spot on his roof from Rudolph’s untimely high dive, the display looked good—still some tinkering to be done for the final polish, but he was proud of himself. “Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?”

Her expression shifted rapidly from bemusement to ire again. His response hadn’t been the right one, obviously. He held up his good hand and rushed to forestall whatever blistering comment she was about to deliver. “Look, the music goes off at eighty-thirty. I keep it on for the kids. And before you think this is all about me, I use the display to take up donations for Toys for Tots.”

On the street, a horn blasted, cutting through the cool night air. It encouraged a volley of horns to join in.

Charli’s frown deepened, maybe because of the added sound effects. She was visibly shivering now, as she stood without a coat, her arms wrapping around herself to keep her warm. “Let me get this straight. Every night, from now to Christmas, I can expect an electric dawn outside my bedroom window?” she asked. “And canned Christmas Muzak until eight-thirty? Not to mention a traffic jam? Every night? Tell me, am I your only neighbor who has a problem with this?”

He thought for moment, considering. Nah, Jill didn’t count, really. She was mainly ticked because Neil had monopolized Brinson’s available “honey-do” time the past few nights. “Pretty much, yeah. You’re the only one. I did this last year, and the guy who lived in your house, well, he tried to outdo me. That’s where I got Rudolph, by the way.” Neil jabbed a thumb toward the inflatable. “He had it on his—I mean, your—roof. When he moved to a condo on Tybee Island, he didn’t have a roost for Rudolph anymore.”

“Oh. Awesome.” She put her hand to her forehead as though she had the world’s worst headache. In the glow of the Christmas lights and the streetlights, Neil was surprised to see that the doctor’s nails were polished a nice melon color. He hadn’t noticed that in the E.R.

Another volley of horn blowing interrupted the music, and she winced again.

The move prompted a sudden thought. “Dr. Prescott. You didn’t hit your head or anything when you slammed on your brakes, did you?”

“No. Why do you ask? And you might as well call me Charli. When anybody in Brevis says Dr. Prescott, I think they’re talking to my dad.”

“Well, Charli, then. You look like your head’s hurting.”

“Gee. With all this music and all these lights and all those horns, not to mention no sleep for two weeks, I wonder why.” Her words dripped with sarcasm. She must have reconsidered her tone because she made a visible effort to soften her scowl. “I’m sorry. I’m really tired. Exhausted. I’m beyond exhausted. And all that’s been keeping me going today—tonight—is the idea that I could park my car, stumble inside and go to bed.”

“Sure, sure.” He nodded. “I guess you’re pretty wiped out—those E.R. hours must be killing you. I’m really sorry that Rudolph took a dive. It’s gonna take about an hour to deflate him....”

Charli’s face crumpled. She looked a lot like Neil’s four-year-old niece did when she’d gone without a nap and was late for bed.

“Tell you what,” Neil started. “Why don’t you leave me your keys, and go on inside? I’ll get Brinson over here. We’ll deflate ol’ Rudolph a little and move him at least out of your driveway. Maybe over closer to the hedge?” He pointed to the small stretch of lawn between the concrete drive and the boxwoods. “We’ll pull your car in, and tomorrow when it’s daylight, I’ll retrieve Rudolph.”

Charli appeared to be ready to argue for a moment. Maybe she was debating whether he had an honest face and could be trusted not to abscond with her car.

But then she shrugged her shoulders, went back to the idling car, switched it off, slammed the door and handed him the keys. “Sold. You wouldn’t sweeten the deal with a pair of room-darkening blinds, would you?”

From her weak smile, he saw it was an attempt at humor. “Sure, anything to keep a neighbor happy.”

But Charli wasn’t lingering. She skirted around Rudolph, who was swaying back and forth in the night’s cool breeze, and stumbled up the steps to her back door. In the blink of an eye, the doctor was out of sight.

With a sigh, Neil looked from the keys in his hand to Rudolph. Time was a-wasting, and Jill was only going to get madder the later he called Brinson to help him out of this jam. With that, Neil fumbled for the phone in his pocket to call in the cavalry.

* * *

CHARLI KEPT RUNNING out of wrap, and Neil Bailey wouldn’t hold still. Every time she’d get his arm splinted, he’d move or the spool of bandage would be inexplicably empty. Finally, she snapped at him, “Just what is your problem?”

And he grinned at her. “I’m taking up money for Toys for Tots, and I’ll ride Rudolph to deliver the cash.”

And there was Rudolph, nosing in behind her, his red nose blinking and buzzing—

No. She shook herself awake. It wasn’t Rudolph. It was her cell phone. What now? She pushed herself up out of her warm snuggly covers and saw—very clearly in the bright-as-daylight glow of her neighbor’s Christmas extravaganza—her phone buzzing away on her nightstand.

Caller ID registered the hospital’s number as she hit the answer button. “This better be good,” she griped into the speaker. The bedside clock told her she’d been asleep only a couple of hours.

“Charli.”

Lainey’s voice sounded all wrong. Somber.

“What is it?” Charli asked, already reaching for the slacks she’d dumped on the bench at the end of the bed. “I’m on my way, whatever it is. Knife Guy?”

“No...Charli, your dad...”

An icy chill shot through her. She froze on the bed. “What’s wrong?” She was surprised she could even verbalize the question, as scared as she was.

“He’s had an MI. At home. Your mom called 9-1-1, and the EMTs responded. They’re inbound. She’s with them and, well, Charli—from the way it sounds from the EMTs, you’d better come right away.”

* * *

NEIL WAS BUSILY rigging up a plastic bread bag over his bad arm in order to take a shower when first his front doorbell rang, long and loud, followed by someone doing a good impression of the Gestapo on the heavy oak.

He dropped the bread bag on the kitchen counter and made his way through the living room to the foyer. When he threw open the door, Charli Prescott nearly beaned him on the head, apparently ready to pound on the door again.

He caught her fist in his good hand. “Whoa! I’m here.” He released the pink-tipped fingers. For a long moment, all she could do was gulp in air. Maybe she was still ticked about his Christmas lights? He tried a smile to defuse the situation. “Can’t sleep?”

“My keys... I gave you my keys!” she got out.

“Yeah. I put them under the flower pot by your back door.”

“Oh! Sorry! I didn’t look there!” She whirled around, purse flying, no coat on despite temps hovering around a chilly forty degrees, and her hair even worse for wear than it had been earlier.

“Wait! What’s wrong?” Neil followed her as she stumbled down his steps and down the walkway.

“My dad! He’s had an MI—I’ve got to get to the hospital.” She wobbled unsteadily as she shouted this over her shoulder and backed past his Christmas lights.

“A what?”

“An MI... A heart attack.” As she turned to head for her own driveway, her purse got caught in Neil’s trio of wired angels by the front walk. She snatched at the strap, making the whole chorus of angels rock back and forth.

“Let me drive you. I have my keys, right here in my pocket.” Neil held them up and was gratified to see her extricate the strap from the offending angel’s halo without doing any damage and without falling herself. “My car’s here.”

Charli stopped again. Her expression revealed indecision. Neil could literally see her body jerking first one way and then the other.

So he didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he dipped back into the little foyer, grabbed two jackets and shut the door behind him. He loped over the short distance between him and Charli and took her arm gently in his.

“Come on. Let’s get you to the hospital.” He steered her to his car and assisted her in with a fumbling one-handed approach, though she didn’t seem to notice. He wrapped the spare coat around her slim frame. She didn’t protest, just folded her long legs into his little Corolla and seemed to withdraw into herself.

Once he’d negotiated closing the door with his right hand, he started the car and backed carefully out of his drive. It seemed to trigger something in her. “I’m never like this,” she said. “I’m always cool in a crisis.”

“Hey. It’s your dad. You’re thinking like a daughter, not a doctor.” Gravel that had collected in the dip between the street and the drive crunched under his tires as he backed out onto the street and started for the hospital. “What happened? Do you know?”

She jerked her head in the negative. “Lainey—a nurse—”

“I know Lainey. She called?”

“After they got a call in from the EMTs. It’s bad.”

She would know. She’d probably handled lots of these in her work, Neil figured. At the stop sign, he hung a left and made the subsequent turns to the main road in town.

“Do you want to call your mother?” Neil asked her as they stopped for the last red light between their neighborhood and the hospital. “I didn’t think to ask if your mom needed a lift.”

In the crimson glow of the light, he could see Charli’s swallow. “Should I go back?” he asked.

“No. Lainey—Lainey said Mom was riding with the ambulance.”

The light turned green and he took his foot off the brake, trying not to gun it, but still going a little faster than the speed limit.

Charli seemed calmer now, but he could tell from her drawn face in the glow of the streetlights she was anxious.

“You said it was bad. How bad?”

“I don’t— What if he dies?” She put her hand to her face. “Listen to me. I don’t have any information. I’m just freaking out, and I tell my patients’ families to wait, to see, that we’re doing all we can. They’re doing all they can. They are. I know.”

Neil understood why she’d blurted out her what-if. Did he ever know that desperate thought. He’d never forget the night they’d taken his mother to the hospital. A terrified six-year-old, all he could think was, What if she dies? And she had died.

Now wasn’t the time to tell Charli that life was survivable, if far poorer, after the death of a parent. Honestly, there was never a time when anybody should say that, but Neil knew it for the truth it was. Instead, he reached over, squeezed her hand and said gently, “You are a doctor. You know way too much about, well, about everything medical. But I think you’ve just given yourself some excellent advice.”

The reminder of who she was seemed to fortify her. She straightened up and leaned against the gray fabric of the car seat. “Well, we don’t have enough information. We have to wait and see.”

“And we will. We will wait and see.” Now they were in the parking lot of the emergency room. The small, low 1960s building seemed perfectly preserved in the lights of the vapor lamps, but Neil knew that the morning sun would not be kind to it. It would reveal the overdue paint job, the scraggly bushes that the understaffed and overtaxed maintenance guys never got around to hedging. But for a town this size and this poor, simply keeping the doors open on a twenty-five-bed county-run hospital was an achievement. Across the street lay the town’s doctors’ offices—the offices where Dr. Chuck Prescott had spent much of his professional career.

Beyond Neil’s car, bathed in vapor lights and the Corolla’s headlight beams, lay the big circle with the H in it, ready for the helicopter that would certainly come for Chuck Prescott, to take him to a larger trauma hospital. If, that is, the E.R. could stabilize him.

Charli didn’t budge. For a moment, Neil let her sit there, collect herself. He saw the last vestiges of her earlier emotion hidden behind a mask that covered all the pain and fear and confusion.

“Okay. Let’s do this.” She flung herself out of the car and strode toward the hospital, back straight, head high. Even without the lab coat and the stethoscope, Charli looked every inch the doctor he’d seen earlier that evening.

Neil shook off his amazement. Scrambling to follow her, he caught up with her halfway to the entry. The doors whisked open in front of them, a belch of hospital air their greeting.

Lainey dashed toward them and wrapped Charli in a quick, tight embrace. “Charli, I am so sorry. He’s here, they’re working on him....”

For a moment, Neil saw Charli’s mask slip. “Who’s working on him?”

“Shafer—well, everybody, except me. They’re running the full code. Your dad...he didn’t have a DNR in place.”

Neil noticed Charli’s face blanch. “Where’s Mom?” she asked.

“Around here.... Come on.” Lainey guided her around the corner toward a private family room.

As soon as she saw the door, Charli balked. “Why...why there? That’s where we do notifications.”

“I had to. She needed some...space. You’ve got to be strong, Charli. She’s in a complete meltdown.”

Those pink-tipped fingers were by her sides, and Neil saw her try to stuff her fists into lab-coat pockets that weren’t there. She looked long and hard at Lainey and brushed past the nurse.

The door shut behind her with a soft thud. Neil stood there, unsure what to do.

“You didn’t want to go with her?” Lainey asked.

“Uh, no.” How could Neil explain that their acquaintance, such as it was, had existed for only a few hours.

“She might—”

Neil shook his head. “I’m her neighbor. I don’t really know her that well—and, see, she needs the time with her mom.”

“Oh. I thought you two knew each other.” Lainey shook her head. “It’s hard to remember that you haven’t always been here. I’ve known Charli all my life—we went to school together. We were best friends. I guess I thought you’d already talked to her. You know, to do an article on her for the paper.”

“I’d called, but her dad said to give her a bit—”

He shook his head. Any minute now, he expected Dr. Chuck Prescott to come blasting out of the double doors and tell them the patient was fine.

But the patient was Dr. Prescott. Who would fight to save the town’s hospital now? Who would keep the doors open on the little community clinic?

Lainey cast an anxious glance at the closed door. “Violet wouldn’t let go of him when they brought him in. We had to peel her off him. She kept saying that if he’d come home, he wouldn’t have gotten sick.”

Neil fiddled with the coat in his hands. “Maybe I should have gone in with her,” he murmured. “But I figured they needed their space.”

“You could peek in, see if Charli needs some help? You know how high-strung her mother is.” A noise behind them attracted Lainey’s attention to some people coming in the E.R.’s main doors. “I’ve got to—”

Neil waved her away. “Don’t worry. I’ll wait for her.” And as Lainey shot him a grateful look, for the second time that night, he dropped down into one of the E.R.’s uncomfortable chairs to wait. Despite Lainey’s suggestion, he didn’t think Charli would appreciate him intruding on her private moment.

* * *

CHARLI MARVELED AT the fragile quality her mom exuded. A petite woman who’d never come to more than midchest to Charli’s dad, Violet felt tiny and almost birdlike in Charli’s embrace.

There was nothing petite about Violet’s outflow of emotion, though. Sobs racked her mother’s slender shoulders, and Violet seemed mindless about the stained carpet as she knelt against an equally stained love seat. Charli understood all too well why Lainey had tucked her mom in the notification room.

“Mom, Mom...” Charli stroked her mother’s golden hair, the only thing she’d inherited from Violet. She was tall and gangly where her mother was petite. She had her father’s big hands, where her mother’s hands were barely big enough to wrap around a liter of soft drink. She was pragmatic and strived for a cool facade...and her mother?

“You have to save him, Charli! You have to!”

“They’re doing everything—” She halted before she tried that path again. “Tell me,” she said, trying her best to distract her mother and get her to focus on something besides her own emotions. “What happened?”

Her mother hiccupped, ignored the tissue Charli had extended her and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her turquoise blue cashmere cardigan. “He was tired....” Here her mother shot her an accusatory glare. Charli chose to overlook it.

“So he came home tired?”

“Yes, and I asked him what he wanted to eat. I’d made him some supper, but of course he was late. And...he didn’t touch the coconut cake.” Violet drew her brows together. A spasm of guilt coursed through her features. “I don’t care if he’s late every night if he’ll just be okay!”

I’ll send him home early every day if he’ll just be okay. Charli’s mental bargain echoed not only her mother’s but every patient’s distraught family member she’d ever talked with. This is what they feel like. I thought I knew what they felt like, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue.

“He didn’t eat a thing...said his stomach felt iffy, some indigestion.” Violet blinked. “Oh, no. Indigestion. It was his heart all the time. Why didn’t I—” But she got nothing more out beyond a torrent of tears.

Charli gave up on soothing her mother. She dropped down on the floor and twisted to lean against the love seat. Beside her, her mother shook with grief and recrimination.

Thankfully, though, her mother ran out of steam a few moments later. She sniffled loudly. “They’re not telling us anything!”

“I could go and find out....” Charli hesitated. Should she leave her mother alone in the state she was in? “Why don’t we see if Lainey—”

Her mother was on her feet in an instant and headed for the door. “You go! They said I couldn’t see him, but they have to let you because you’re a doctor!”