Secret Santa

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!”

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.