Secret Santa

Inexplicably Charli’s feet felt nailed to the ground. Did she want to see her father as sick and weak as she’d seen other patients?

Violet threw open the door to reveal Neil Bailey still in the waiting room. He’d sat down in a chair in front of the door. Now he and Charli stared at each other.

She was embarrassed that he’d caught sight of her on the floor, as though she’d collapsed from emotion. Scrambling to her feet, she joined her mother. “You’ll wait here?”

“I can’t take that room a minute longer,” Violet insisted. “The walls are closing in on me.”

Charli agreed, but still was uncertain what to do with her wreck of a mother. She craned her neck to find Lainey, but didn’t see her.

“Hey, if you like, Mrs. Prescott, you can wait here with me,” Neil offered.

Violet swooped through the door and dropped into the chair beside Neil. A flicker of irritation poked through the welter of Charli’s emotions. Why did her mother insist on latching on to men for support? She’d done it all her life with Charli’s father, and here she was now, already gripping Neil Bailey’s arm with her neat little hands and gazing up into the man’s face as though he were her knight in shining armor.

Honestly, her mother might as well have been a character off Madmen or a 1960s sitcom. Women’s Lib had completely passed her by.

No need to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. At least her mother was calmer with Neil than she had been with either Charli or Lainey. Charli shook off the irritation and murmured a thanks to Neil. Gathering her courage, she walked toward the doors to the E.R. treatment areas.

She heard it before she even got to the nurses’ station. It was a full code, expertly run, and she could predict the orders of the attending as he got feedback from each of his desperate attempts to restart her father’s heart.

“Clear—shock him again!” came the latest order.

“Rhythm still in v-fib!” a nurse called out.

“Come on! Come on, old man!” the doctor shouted. “Don’t you give up on me now! Another push of epi!”

“We’ve lost rhythm!”

Again with the defibrillator. Again with more meds. Again with more compressions. Again with no sustainable rhythm.

And over and over again, until the doctor choked out, “How long without a rhythm?”

Charli couldn’t hear the nurse’s answer.

The attending swore. In a quieter, more resigned voice, he said, “I’m calling it.”

Silence descended in the tiny E.R. Not even an errant beep from a monitor seemed to penetrate the quiet.

In the middle of that quiet came the doctor’s next words. “Time of death, uh, 11:31 p.m.”

Charli put her hand to her mouth and felt her knees give way as she crumpled to the cold tile floor.

CHAPTER THREE

CHARLI DRANK IN the silence of her car’s interior with guilty relief as she sat in her driveway. Nothing but the ticking of the cooling engine disturbed her. No chatter of helpful women, no well-meant condolences of her father’s friends, no bustle of people preparing food, or asking for the hundredth time if they could “fix you some little something, Charli? For heaven’s sake, you’ve got to eat!”

Charli had spent the horrible, horrible week following her father’s death at her mother’s—who’d had a houseful of her friends hovering over her the entire time.

Violet’s entourage had buzzed around Charli like a hive of bees, busy and industrious and trying to take care of her and her mother’s every need and whim. The incessant chatter had been just what her mother needed—but it was torture for Charli.

She’d escaped out the back door at a near-dead run, accepting the stack of Tupperware containers filled with goodies from one of her mother’s friends just so she wouldn’t be delayed by an argument. Charli hadn’t even had the courage to say goodbye to her mother. She’d go back. Later. She’d call. Later. But for now, she simply needed some quiet.

At that exact moment, Gene Autry started belting out “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Charli banged her head against knuckles that gripped the steering wheel. Neil and his blasted Christmas lights. All they did was remind her that this Christmas was going to be the absolute worst Christmas ever, in a long, long line of horrible Christmases in the Prescott family history.

That wasn’t entirely true. Neil’s Christmas lights reminded her of that. But Neil himself... He’d been so sweet. He’d hung right in there with her and her mom the night her dad had died. He’d come by her mom’s every day, and Charli was so grateful for the way he’d made her mom smile in those early moments.

At the funeral, Neil had waited patiently for the many, many people to greet them at the graveside. There, under the green tent the funeral home had provided, he’d gripped Charli’s hand in a tight comforting squeeze and assured her she could ask for anything she needed. The man had a kind heart—she could tell that.

So maybe if she walked through the gap in the hedge and asked him for this one night if he could forego the music...he might.

She hoisted herself out of the car on legs that still felt wobbly. As she approached the hedge, she saw Neil, his back to her, happily tinkering with a snowman’s lights, adjusting the display with his good hand.

She cleared her throat, but the music drowned out the sound. Somehow it seemed too intimate to watch him without him knowing of her presence as he fiddled with the lights, completely engrossed in his task. His attention to detail rivaled some of the surgeons she’d trained under, and he could have no greater focus to his task than her favorite chief resident.

“Neil?”

The name got his attention. He turned around. A smile lit up his face and warmed her, despite the raucous rendition of “Rudolph” in the background. “Hey! You’re home! How’s your mom?”

“She’s—she’s okay.” Charli’s throat closed up on her as she thought about her mom and how much she’d loved her dad. All her mom had ever wanted was to make her dad happy. And now the main purpose of Violet Prescott’s life was gone.

Neil crossed the lawn to where she was. He stood there, smiling, his eyes full of energy and merriment that the music seemed to fuel. Suddenly Charli thought it way too much to ask him to cut off the Christmas carols—would he think she was some sort of Scrooge? And he got so much joy out of the display.... Would she get that amount of joy out of anything ever again?

“I’ve got some hot cocoa if you’d like,” Neil offered. “Or I could scare up an omelet.”

She shook her head. “No, no, thank you. My mom’s friends have all conspired to make sure I don’t starve to death for the next century. I’ve got a carload of Tupperware filled with food.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, every time I went to visit, it was always packed with people—the funeral home, your mom’s house....”

Charli felt tears burn her eyes. She turned her head, embarrassed that a week after that awful night, she still had to be on guard against her emotions. She was a doctor. She couldn’t be falling apart every minute of every day.

Neil touched her sleeve. “I—I’m sorry.”

For a horrifying moment, she thought she wasn’t going to be able to keep back the tears. His voice was so kind, so gentle, as if he understood exactly the depth of the pain she was going through. She was certain that if she looked Neil straight in the face, she’d surely lose it.

But the will that had gotten her through medical school and the grueling years of residency saved her. She swallowed it all down and promised herself a good cry later when she was alone.

“I—I have a silly favor to ask,” she said when she was able to face him again.

“Sure, anything,” Neil told her.

“Could—just for tonight—could you go without the music? I—I can’t explain it....”

Neil didn’t hesitate. He walked over to a weatherproof box she hadn’t seen before and killed the music. He turned around, palms ups, and said, “That better?”

Charli had been prepared to argue and debate and prove her point—something she had many years of experience doing first with her dad and then with every single one of the professors and doctors who’d trained her. To have a guy not question her, but just give her the thing she asked for, was almost too much. She felt her composure begin to falter.

Neil must have seen something on her face, because he closed the gap between them and steered her to the front porch steps. She sat there, staring at his awful decorations, unsure what she might say that would end the silence but not reveal what was on her mind.

Before she could figure that out, her phone buzzed.

She fished it out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. “My mom,” she said apologetically, and answered it.

“Charli!” her mom exclaimed in greeting. “Honey, where did you go?”

“I—I had to have some air, Mom. I just needed to be alone. I’m sorry. I’ll come back.” The thought of being in that hive of activity nearly undid Charli.

“No, no, don’t come back for me...but, honey, you don’t need to be alone. You need people, people who care about you. Right now, the thing that will do you the most good is— Oh, thank you, Ellen, thank you for the tea. Charli, the thing that will help is to be around people.”

Charli knew her mom meant well, but this was a meeting of the minds that would never happen. It was the same vast chasm of difference that had made her mom think ruffles and lace would suit Charli, when in reality, all Charli had wanted to do was pull on a T-shirt and jeans and tag along with her dad. How could Charli explain to her mother that being among people was the thing she could stand least right now?

It wouldn’t happen. Charli knew that. “I am around people, Mom,” Charli told her. She glanced at the man who sat quietly beside her, looking off into the distance and pretending not to listen. He actually made a move to get up and give her privacy—score more points for him—but she laid a hand on his arm. “I’m with my neighbor, Neil Bailey.”

“Oh!” Her mother’s tone slid from its prior worry straight to relief and delight. “Oh, Charli! That’s good. That’s very good. I should have known you’d need some companionship your own age. And Neil is so nice and so handsome, too.”

Charli couldn’t help but blush at her mother’s words. She knew where this was heading. She tried to cut her off, afraid Neil might overhear her mother’s effusiveness.

“Mom, it’s not like that—”

“He was just too kind! And did you see that beautiful write-up in the paper about your father? Neil did a fine job. Will you tell him that? And tell him to come by and visit me, so I can thank him properly. Oh, Charli! You couldn’t have found a finer gentleman.”

“Mom, I don’t need that sort of—”

“Oh, nonsense! Every woman needs a good man. That’s what we are made for. I had your father.” Here, her mother’s voice sounded choked. “For all these years, he stood by me, when I was so— He could have left me. And he didn’t. All the misery I caused him.”

“Mom...” Charli didn’t need to hear her mother’s regret play out again. She didn’t need to be reminded of her mother’s battles with her shopping addictions.

Her mother, though, pulled out of her sharp dive into moroseness. “You stay. Charli, stay right there. And get to know that young man. Your father would approve.”

And with that, her mother hung up, leaving Charli feeling churlishly contrary, not wanting to do anything that lined up with fitting her parents’ cookie-cutter plans for her. But that, she knew, was childish. Besides, Neil wasn’t anything more than a neighbor, a good guy who’d helped her out in a really rough patch—and one who had extremely tacky taste when it came to Christmas decorations.

Charli dropped the phone into her pocket and rolled her shoulders to ease the tension in them. Beside her, Neil still waited with a patient quiet that seemed restful after her mother’s energy.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I ducked out without saying bye to my mother—my mom has a whole entourage attending her, and I just needed a breather.”

“She has friends from everywhere, doesn’t she?” Neil mused. “Even some ladies from Macon came down. Old college roommates, I guess, right?”

Charli bit her lip. She knew the ladies Neil had referred to. They were members of her mother’s compulsive-shopper support group. She’d been glad they’d made the trip down for her mom, but it did lead to questions Charli wasn’t quite sure how to answer.

“Something like that. They’ve been friends for a long time,” Charli told him, hating that she was lying. To change the subject, she asked, “So how did you get started with all these Christmas decorations?”

Neil seemed taken aback by the lightning-quick subject change. “Oh, well. That polar bear over there was my first one. Saw it at a big-box hardware store and I swear the rascal was so cute I couldn’t leave him there. Got him on sale, too.”

“One little polar bear? Led to all this? Remind me not to put up so much as a Christmas light. I might catch your Christmas spirit.”

“I don’t think it’s contagious, not so much, anyway, without years of exposure. My family has always made a big deal out of Christmas, so I had a lot of encouragement. My mom loved Christmas.” Here, Neil’s words were husky and she noticed his jaw worked a little.

“Your mom...”

“I lost her a long time ago. When I was six. But she always decorated for Christmas—all the lights, all the mistletoe and the popcorn garland. I still smell popcorn and think of her stringing together garland for the tree.”

“Oh, that’s sweet.” Charli swallowed past the lump in her throat. He’d lost his mom so young and still his grief was almost palpable. Whoever said time healed all things was just full of it. She’d never be able to think of the holidays without remembering how she’d lost her dad so close to them.

Neil cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, that’s why I love Christmas. And when I moved here, people just seemed to urge me on.”

“Well, you’re decorating enough for the two of us, so forgive me if I skip Christmas,” she said.

Neil cocked his head and pinned her with a look. “You mean to tell me you don’t plan to put up a single Christmas decoration this year?”

“Nope. Not even a wreath.” It wasn’t really a big stretch, actually. Christmas in the past for Charli had meant huge blow-up fights between her mom and dad over her mom’s secret shopping sprees. Her mom had just wanted to get the perfect gifts for her family, while her dad had simply wanted to stay in the black and out of debt. And then college and medical school and residency had meant Charli had spent the holidays apart from her parents the past few years.

“Come on! Your dad loved Christmas! You can’t skip it!”

She whipped her head around to look at Neil. She wasn’t one to lay out dirty laundry for people. She tried to speak to the truth of her memories without putting in all the details. “My dad? Christmas was just another day for him. I mean, we opened presents, sure, went to the Christmas cantata most years, but Christmas Eve and Christmas morning he spent at the hospital mostly, with patients. I know. I was with him a lot of the time.”

Neil’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “That’s not the guy I got to know. He’s one of the main people who suggested I use my display to raise money for charity. And he was the Christmas parade grand marshal for two years running, plus he served on the Christmas downtown celebration committee. Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

Charli wasn’t. But it irked her that Neil had known a different side of the man she’d thought she’d known inside out. “He always—well, he always said he could take it or leave it,” she said.

Neil shook his head and reached over to tweak an errant light into place from where he sat on the steps. “That’s amazing. Your mom and dad were a force to be reckoned with around the holidays—your mom was a fixture on the Christmas tour of homes. Yeah, maybe their decorations weren’t as—shall we say—dime-store tacky as mine, but they went all out. Your dad even beat me out on the Christmas lights competition last year.”

Charli couldn’t reconcile what she was hearing with the dad she’d known and loved, despite his flaws. She couldn’t help but mutter, “I’ve been gone so long...maybe I didn’t know him at all.”

Neil sprang up and stretched out his arm. “Then let me introduce you to him, the man your father became.”

She hesitated, then placed her hand in his. It was a nice hand, with just the right grip—warm and comforting and sure of itself. Part of her wanted to yank free and run for her house, because she didn’t want to contemplate how she could have missed knowing one thing about her dad. But his hand in hers seemed to reassure her. That, and her curiosity, got the better of her.

“Okay.”

Five minutes later, Neil had parked on the downtown square. “Ready to commence the walking tour?”

On the sidewalk, a brisk wind tugged at Charli’s hair, but her jacket kept her warm in the darkening evening. Neil strolled beside her, in no hurry. As they went, he pointed out various buildings and causes and people that her father had championed. It was a revelation to Charli—she’d known of his fight to keep the hospital, but she’d had no idea he’d worked to revitalize the downtown area or to assist the Boys and Girls Club, or that he’d served on the permanent homes for foster children board.

“No wonder he had a heart attack,” she said as she and Neil came to a stop on a street corner. “He worked himself to death.”

“Oh, no, you don’t think that, do you?” Neil peered at her. “Nah, I didn’t think so. It seemed to energize him, actually. And he’d recently taken on a new project.”

“Yeah? When did he have time?”

“Come on. You’ll like this.” He started off down the sidewalk toward the rougher side of town.

She hesitated. “Neil...things may have changed a lot, but the direction you’re heading in used to be a hotbed of drug sales.”

“It’s okay. It’s cleaned up now—at least a little. Thanks to Dr. Prescott.”

A five-minute walk brought them in front of a new metal building with big glass windows, the lights on and the paved parking lot still dark with crisp yellow lines. The parking lot was overflowing with cars of every shape and size, none of them any newer than a decade. On the building’s metal exterior were simple block letters: Brevis Community Clinic, and underneath, in Spanish, Clínica de la Comunidad.

“Huh?” Charli gawked at the building. “What is this? Why isn’t it near the hospital and the rest of the doctors’ offices?”

“Let’s just say the hospital authority didn’t welcome this addition to the Brevis medical community,” Neil said. “But your dad saw the need for a community clinic. He said that a lot of people were uninsured and couldn’t afford or wouldn’t go to a regular doctor. But they’d come here. He really fought for this place.”

A group of people came out of the building, walking down the painted concrete block steps, talking excitedly in Spanish. Another car door opened and more Hispanic people headed for the clinic door.

“It’s an indigent care clinic? For migrant workers?” she asked. She couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that her father, who’d been so opposed to the migrant workers flocking here when she was a girl, would fight for a community clinic.

Neil smiled. “Yeah—well, of course it’s open to anybody, and a lot of the community’s uninsured use it. But mainly it’s used by the migrant workers. Your dad volunteered as the medical director, but a doctor who comes in a couple of days a week and a couple of nurse practitioners provide most of the care. At least, I think so.”

“Wow. I—I—” She turned to Neil, grabbed his good hand and squeezed it. “Thank you. Thank you. I have to admit, the man you’ve described isn’t one I would have recognized...but he sounds like a great guy.”

“He was. And he must have been with you, too, because...well, you turned out pretty terrific. I’m just sorry that he didn’t get the chance to show you all this. I’ll bet he would have—if he hadn’t been battling the E.R. staffing problem,” Neil told her.

Charli wasn’t so sure. Granted, she hadn’t been home much in the past seven years, but she and her dad had spent time together. Never once had he mentioned any of these things that Neil had shown her. Of course, a lot of that time her dad had spent trying to talk her out of pursuing an M.D., and talk her into getting married—to have some babies and be happy—all the things that she didn’t want to do.

Maybe they’d just spent too much time arguing without ever truly understanding each other.

“So...now you see,” Neil said, interrupting her thoughts. “Your dad loved Christmas—you’ve got to at least let me help you put up a tree and hang a wreath.”

Perhaps it was because she was flat-out jealous that Neil had seen a side of her father she hadn’t known, or maybe Charli simply wasn’t ready to be rushed into anything. Whatever the reason, Neil’s emphatic “got to” grated on her nerves.

“No,” Charli retorted, “I don’t. And I don’t appreciate you trying to guilt me into it. Why can’t you just live and let live?”

Neil put up his hands. “You’re absolutely right. I just thought it might make you feel better.”

“Everybody from my mother on down seems to think they know what’s best for me, including you. I can’t turn around without someone suggesting another way to move on with my life. Well, maybe I don’t want to move on just yet! And maybe seeing a tree in my living room would just make me miss my father even more!” Charli knew the words weren’t fair, but they came tumbling out, anyway.

“Whoa.” A muscle in Neil’s jaw worked. She could see he was angry—or at least trying to bite his tongue. Very carefully, he said, “I lost my mom right before Christmas. So I understand what you’re going through. I know how afraid you are about forgetting your dad, about how guilty you feel—”

“I don’t have anything to feel guilty about,” she snapped. “Not a thing.” It was a lie, a big one. She did feel guilty, horribly, horribly guilty, especially now that Neil had shown her the father she’d never get the chance to know. Still, she wasn’t about to let Neil Bailey know it. “And I think I want you to take me home now.”

CHAPTER FOUR

CHARLI SAW LIGE WHITAKER, the bank president who also served as the hospital authority board chair, come out of his office when she approached the bank’s customer service desk. Today he was in banker’s garb, but usually, even to the hospital authority board meetings, he wore jeans and a flannel shirt.

“Charli, how’s your mama? Neil called me, wanted a quote for the paper. I hope I did all right.”

Charli couldn’t help but frown at the mention of her neighbor. The night before was still bothering her. She was angry at herself for the way she’d acted, but she still felt a little resentful toward Neil. She pushed down her emotions and smiled at her father’s old friend.

Lige was thin to the point of boniness, about the same age as her father. Where her father had put on a little weight—all those coconut cakes, after all—Lige had kept the rangy build he’d had as a young man. “Thank you,” she said to him. “You said just the right thing. My mother was so grateful. You and my dad made a great team.”

Lige waved away the comment. His rural twang seemed so out of place for a bank president, but Lige had always prided himself on being just another fellow. “Darlin’, last week, you saw me at my worst, tryin’ to deal with that staffing situation in the E.R. I hope that didn’t contribute to...well, to the heart attack. All the stress, I mean. Your father’s a hard man to lose. He helped me keep this hospital here when I didn’t think it was possible.”

The smile on his lips was matched by his bright blue eyes, but she could see his jaw tense. He changed the subject. “What can we do for you? Do you need another loan against the practice? Your dad had just paid the last one off. I can understand if things are tight. Your father never was, bless his heart, much of a businessman. He was always way too generous with his skills and talents.”