Secret Santa

But her father didn’t wait for her to answer, just headed past her with a slap on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, kiddo. You might make a good doctor one day.”

The door slammed behind him, and for a long minute she stood there. Would this ever work out? She’d either kill herself or kill her dad. But this was the one thing she’d wanted, right? To work by her father’s side, prove to him that she knew what she was doing, prove to him that she could be a doctor—not a nurse as he’d suggested so many times.

Don’t forget that by working here, a good chunk of your student loans will be forgiven, she told herself. It’s a win-win. I’m home with Dad and Mom, and I can work off some of my debt. So suck it up, Prescott.

She went back to see Neil Bailey on her own. “Let me tell you what could happen if you don’t see a specialist,” she said. “Your wrist has what’s called a Colles fracture, and the ulna has a clean break. Either one alone, I wouldn’t be too worried about. But since you broke both bones, and since you’re a writer, they worry me. I want you to have full range of motion with the wrist. It’s your choice. You can do it the—” She bit back “the old-fogey way.” Using that expression, even if that’s what she thought of her dad’s method, would break her own dictates about professionalism. “You can take my dad’s suggestion and follow up with him, since I’m assuming he’s your primary care doctor. Or...”

“I’ll take the referral. No offense to your dad. But I am a writer. Like you say. I’ll figure out how to pay for the specialist some way. How long do you think I’ll be typing one-handed?”

“Hard to say. But probably, if you don’t need any surgery or pins—which I don’t think you will—at least six to eight weeks, depending on if you drink your milk and eat your green veggies.”

Neil nodded. “I will double my intake of both.”

“Now, let’s give you some pain medicine and see if we can get the swelling reduced.”

“That would be ibuprofen or Tylenol—don’t like anything stronger.”

“Okay, tough guy. We’ll see about that.” Charli had seen biker dudes beg for morphine when a bone was being set, but she knew from hard experience you had to let a man figure things out on his own. She headed for the curtain and the other patients who waited for her. “Give us a few minutes while we get you a shot of Toradol—it’s pretty much souped-up ibuprofen. That okay with you?”

“Does the Toradol do a better job? It’s not a narcotic, is it?” he asked her. “Because I don’t want to be zonked out.”

“Nope, it’s not a narcotic, and, yes, Toradol by injection works faster than oral meds like ibuprofen. Did you drive yourself?”

“Nah. I had my buddy drive me.”

Charli paused at the curtain and looked back over her shoulder. “So where was this buddy when you were climbing a ladder all by yourself?”

“Oh, Brinson was there. But he was busy texting Jill—his wife—to get out of the doghouse about being late for supper.”

“Wait...” Charli’s brain turned over the uncommon first name in combination with a wife named Jill. “Brinson Hughes? He’s my neighbor.”

“Yeah? Well, what do you know? It’s a small world.”

“What were you doing on a ladder, anyway?”

“Finishing up my Christmas lights.”

She frowned again. “It’s the first of November.”

“Ya know, that’s what Jill said.”

Just then, Knife Guy started in on a particularly loud rendition of Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds.” It served as a reminder to her that no matter how interesting Neil Bailey was, no matter how she enjoyed chatting with him, she had other patients who needed her.

“I’ll be back,” Charli told him.

“I’ll be here,” he replied. His dimples jumped and she found herself liking the fact that he didn’t whine when in pain.

Outside, she crossed to the trauma bay and checked first on the malodorous Knife Guy, who seemed content enough. She left him warbling on and headed for the nurses’ station. Lainey handed her a phone and a stack of charts, Knife Guy’s on top.

“So do we kick him loose or put him on the floor? We’ve got to do something.” Lainey wrinkled her forehead. “He’s driving us nuts.”

Charli scrawled a signature on the admissions order. “Send him to serenade the floor nurses.” She put the phone to her ear. “Dr. Charlotte Prescott speaking.”

“Charli!” Her mother’s greeting was a mix of relief and irritation. “Neither you nor your father have been answering your cell phones. You have to send your father home! He’s sixty-seven years old, and he’s not in any shape to be staying at that hospital all night long.”

“Mom.” Charli sagged against the counter and let her forehead sink into her palm.

“He’s an old man, Charli. He needs to be home.”

Charli cast a sideways glance down the hall, where her father was doing some shadowboxing with a tree trunk of a man in a camouflage coverall. Her father’s fists were light and fast, and his face glowed with merriment. He was in his element.

“I think he’s okay, Mom.”

“What do you know?”

“Oh, I dunno. Maybe a few years of medical school and residency? Mom. Trust me, if he looked really tired, I’d send him home—I’d have to bind and gag him first, but I’d do it. You don’t need to worry, okay?”

“But you and he need to come home. I’ve got a surprise for him! And for you, too, of course.”

Her mother’s words caught Charli off balance. She straightened up and pressed the phone closer to her ear. “Mom, a surprise? Did you, uh, buy it?”

“No. No, Charli, I made it. I didn’t buy it.” Her mom’s words sounded resigned and hollow. “You know how your father is―he worries so much about my shopping. I’m very careful now. Why everybody always has to obsess about me and my shopping... The surprise is a coconut cake. He’s been working so hard this week, so I thought a coconut cake would be a nice treat. So today I bought a fresh coconut, because you know your Mama Grace’s coconut cake recipe calls for fresh grated coconut.”

“You’re not serious.” Charli knew that her mother was indeed drop-dead serious. If there was anything Violet Prescott was serious about, it was pleasing her man.

To get the most perfect coconut, her mother wouldn’t have thought twice about jumping a plane to Hawaii to pluck it off the tree herself.

That is, if her dad had trusted his wife with a credit card.

Her mother had most likely spent hours on that cake—it was a nightmare of a recipe. Charli looked down the hall at her dad, his face still lit up, and her heart softened. Maybe she could handle the shift until the new E.R. guys showed up—it would only be an hour or so more. “I will tell him what you’ve said.”

“Not the bit about the cake. Let something be a surprise, okay? Just tell him I’m worried about him.”

“How about this?” Her father had left the shadowboxing behind and was grinning as he headed toward the nurses’ station. “You tell him yourself.” Charli jabbed the phone in her dad’s direction. “For you, Dad.”

“Sugarplum!” her dad warbled into the phone once he realized who was on the other end. “Are you worrying your little head about me? Do you miss me, sweetums? Are you lonely?”

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?”