Secret Santa

“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.

* * *