Healed Under The Mistletoe

She seemed to have done what she’d planned, now she should get out. The sooner she left, the sooner he could dress and leave, and the sooner she could return and commence Operation: Secret Santa.

“I’m glad he had you,” she said finally, swinging her coat on and hoisting the tote bag to her shoulder to go.

“Sabetta?”

She’d reached the bank of lockers when she heard her name and turned to look back at him. He still had that stoic, measuring manner, but with his arms uncrossed he didn’t look as forbidding. He looked almost open. And even with the strange scrubs-and-button-down-shirt combination, she could tell he could devastate half the female population by putting on a suit.

“If you have questions about diagnoses, you may ask them of me. Use the comm.”

She felt herself smile before she knew it was coming. “Thank you. I will. And I’ll go home and start reading. I don’t have anything on the schedule tonight in terms of sightseeing.”

“Sightseeing?”

Was he actually being polite? Even if the subject was hard, a glimpse of civility gave her hope.

“I’m taking pictures of Christmas in New York to send to my sister.”

“Not going home for the holidays?”

“No.” She shook her head, falling back into the usual way she spoke of Noelle—the only way that let her keep any control over her emotions: by using the present tense. “We usually go somewhere for Christmas, no other family. But not this year.”

“Perhaps next year.” Polite, but the words he’d said in kindness stuck in her chest. There would be no next year. No looking forward to things Noelle would never do. The trips they’d never take. The children she’d never have.

The polite thing for her to do would be to ask if he was going home for the holidays, but her throat had clogged with the boulders of everything that could never be and filled with the sands of regret and grief, feelings she always tried to keep shoved down. It would’ve also been polite to say goodnight now, but no sound could pass through the whole world blocking her dry throat.

All she could do, all she had been doing for more than a year, was try and put it out of her mind until later.

Besides, she had tasks to accomplish. Tonight, she’d start simple, visit the boutique coffee shop near the hospital’s gift shop for a gift card, and pray it fit through the vents on the front of his locker.

Then she’d have the weekend to come up with other gifts she could shove through the narrow openings.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u8d017e6a-eafc-5977-9cad-242469160b70)

FRIDAY MORNING ARRIVED with a winter storm, and Lyons credited the accumulating snowfall with the lightening of his mood, even if it also just made his drive to the hospital perilous.

Most people reacted negatively when heavy snow started to fall, but in Lyons’s experience, weather affected the variety of patients they saw for the better. Shifted the balance from man-made to bad Fate: natural causes or accidents.

Injuries were injuries, logically he knew that, but he’d rather blame the whims of Fate for tragedies to befall a person or family than another situation where he was forced to question humanity. Cold enough weather even encouraged psychopaths to stay in and commit their atrocities on a warmer day.

He stomped his boots on the rug inside the rear entrance of the hospital, knocking off as much fresh powder as he could before heading to the locker room.

Yesterday had been a bad Fate day, a terrible accident by all accounts, but the whole day, he’d been unable to shake the suspicion that someone had caused it. Done something to the train. Messed with the track or the electronics that ran the system. Something.

No one had even hinted at such a situation, but it had still taken him until late in the evening, long after he’d left Sutcliffe, to convince himself he was being paranoid, that no reasonable person would jump to that conclusion with no basis or evidence. That kind of reaction was the stuff of conspiracy theories and unstable minds. Lizard-people-controlling-the-government-videos-online-level paranoia.

But knowing he was probably being paranoid didn’t make the idea he was being foolish comforting, or certain. Ten percent of What if? was stronger than ninety percent of No way in the moment, when even that measly ten percent could result in loss of life.

Before the shooting, he’d never thought that way. Not without cause. Certainly, his wretched, emotionally abusive and manipulative parents had inadvertently taught him people were inherently selfish and would use anyone to get what they wanted, but the idea that someone he knew would take that to the point of murder? Couldn’t happen. Not to him. Not to someone he knew and cared about.

It was stupid.

Every day he saw people who never thought it could happen to them dealing with terrible tragedies, but he still would’ve never believed Eleni’s husband—a man he’d socialized with at hospital events—could turn that violent. Even after she’d confided in him about the abuse and had come to the hospital that day to finally take Lyons up on his offer of helping her get out, he hadn’t thought something like that possible.

That kind of violence was cowardly, and something usually hidden from public view, not the kind that showed up with a gun in a busy ER on Christmas Eve.

He hadn’t thought it could happen to anyone he knew. Not to her. And that was on him.

He jerked opened the door to the locker room, shedding his heavy coat en route to his locker. Early. He always came in early enough to overlap the previous shift by at least an hour, because he couldn’t have another situation like that on him again. He went over the roster of patients, peeked into rooms to see who might set off his internal alarms and kept a sharp eye.

He had to pay better attention than he’d paid at Ramapo Memorial.

If he’d understood the likelihood of an escalation of the violence, he’d have taken precautions. It would’ve never gotten to the point of a madman loose in his ER with a gun. He’d have sent her to his home instead, which was well guarded and safer. He’d have directed hospital security to keep out anyone not authorized to be back there, even spouses and known family. If he’d understood how those kinds of situations could leapfrog over occasional hitting and frequent emotional abuse to murder, he’d have gone about it differently, he wouldn’t have had to step in front of a bullet only to have his friend die anyway, and he would’ve gotten the police involved early, no matter how fervently she’d pleaded with him not to.