Their Christmas to Remember
Autor:in
Amalie Berlin
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Chapter One
DR. ANGELICA CONLEY knocked once before pushing into the room of her very first patient at Sutcliffe Memorial Hospital almost a year after that first treatment in Emergency. A patient she’d been saddened to see readmitted earlier in the week.
“Hi, Jenna.” She wasn’t Jenna’s doctor now, she’d just had the sad duty of discovering and diagnosing Jenna’s original nephroblastoma, which had recurred after six months of remission. Jenna was now under the care of a pediatric oncologist and the Scottish pediatric surgeon who unknowingly set Angel’s imagination on fire. At least she hoped he didn’t know but, considering the way women seemed to fall at his feet, he probably at least suspected. She was alive, after all. It was one of the only things she had in common with her colleagues. In almost every other way, she stood apart from them, an oddity who didn’t fit in to the Manhattan scene, and never could.
She really should’ve known that from the start—she’d had three decades to write it into her DNA, but she’d still fallen for the fantasy that things could be different here, that who she was and where she’d come from wouldn’t matter. But within three days at her first New York job, her past had come back to bite her, which was how she’d ended up at Sutcliffe. Fortunate, probably, but still...
Being human was the only thing she had in common with her colleagues and being subject to the emotions that came with it. Like humiliation. If the serial Scottish flirt hadn’t sorted out her pesky reaction to him yet, she just had to hang in there until January and she’d be far enough away it would no longer matter what he or the rest of her New York colleagues felt about the Kentucky bumpkin who’d taken the turnip truck to medical school. She’d never hear them laughing from eight hundred miles away.
And in Atlanta, no one knew her or her history. Especially not old boyfriends she’d once been young and foolish enough to share with. Turned out New York really wasn’t that big if you shared the same profession.
But this was about Jenna. Not about Angel’s own problems. Or the Scotsman.
Although it was hard to fake a smile in the face of bad news, that didn’t mean Angel couldn’t try and put the twelve-year-old at ease, especially since she’d heard there was something more amiss today.
Jenna lay in her hospital bed, swaddled in extra blankets, the dark, sunken shadow below her brown eyes an unfortunate and telling symptom of a wasting disease along with the natural exhaustion and fear that accompanied it.
She didn’t bother turning her attention to Angel, who she usually called her favorite doctor. The lack of response and her dull stare at the television could mean anything; the trauma swirling around her was as much emotional exhaustion as physical.
“I heard you’re not feeling well today.” Angel tried anyway, praying she had some leverage. It was only three days since surgery, and Jenna needed to eat to get better, which had been the day’s report: Jenna’s refusing to eat.
“No.” The one-word answer set her alarm bells to full volume. No matter what was going on, Jenna tended to maintain a generally happy outlook, regardless of her difficult diagnosis and obstacles. Today, there wasn’t even a hint of a smile on her face.
This could take a while. And that was okay. Angel’s shift was over; she had time for however long her quick visit became. Her tiny, half-empty apartment wouldn’t miss her.
The door to the bathroom was closed. Angel tilted her head to listen and look for light beneath, but there was nothing. “Your mom here today?”
“No.” Another single word answer. Whatever was wrong, there would be no quick solve.
Angel snagged a chair and slid it up to the bedside, indicating her intention to stay. “Did she have to work?”
“No.”
“Has she already left for the day?”
“No...” This time the admission came with a little quiver to her lower lip.
The weight and tightness blooming in Angel’s chest had her leaning forward, trying to keep alarm from entering her voice. Something must have happened. Nothing insignificant would keep Mrs. Lindsey away from her daughter’s bedside for even a day.
She took a moment and studied the girl’s position in the bed. She’d considered it a hallmark of weakness and exhaustion, but since they’d started to speak, Jenna’s arms had crossed over her chest. She also avoided eye contact. The teariness wasn’t worry, she was angry. This was not the product of an emergency.
Just narrowing the options away from fear to anger eased the alarm roiling through her. Angel sat back up, allowing a deep breath. Sometimes she was glad for the survival skills her earliest education had given her. She might’ve been born far from any kind of city, but she could read people well enough to catch the first whiff of danger and knew when to depart before situations escalated to the need to run. It also came in handy in normal conversation or treating kids who really didn’t want treatment.
“Where is she?”
“With Mattie.” Jenna looked as far from Angel as she could then, out of the windows to the flurries blowing around in the late November chill.
Did that mean outside? “Where did they go?”
“It’s his birthday,” Jenna murmured, then added, “and it’s on tree day this year.”
The lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center was happening today. Always the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving, which Angel had celebrated last week with the best turkey sandwich she’d ever tasted, purchased the night before from an authentic New York deli.
“Is that what he wanted for his birthday?” Hard to believe—the kid was four. Would be easier to believe if he wanted to visit the tree at the local pizza arcade.
“We always go. Every year.” Jenna’s voice wobbled.
Every year. Except this year she didn’t get to go. This year, which had been a bad year. And this week had started with her losing one of her kidneys along with the tumor that had reached her spine with enough pressure to corrupt her balance and the ability to control her legs. Her second such surgery this year, and it promised another round of chemotherapy after Christmas. Her hair had only just gotten long enough to begin styling again.
It was a lot for a child. It would’ve been a lot for an adult.
“Next year you’ll get to go again.” Angel heard the words come out, knew it was wrong to say it—no one could promise this child she’d be alive next year—but the defeat she saw in the slope of Jenna’s frail shoulders and the pain in her voice had the words flying out of Angel’s mouth before that logical part of her brain kicked in. All there was in that second was the need to comfort, connecting with the part of her own soul that knew bitter disappointment and wished to soothe that hurt so hard that any heart could hear it.
“No, I won’t.” The softly spoken words dropped like stones in the room. “No more holidays after this year. Maybe Valentine’s Day, not that any boy would want to be the Valentine of Baldy.”
“Now you’re just talking crazy.” Angel snagged Jenna’s bony hand and squeezed, and, though she’d yet to get any eye contact from the girl, took it as a small sign of hope when she didn’t pull away. “You know tomorrow you’re going to feel a lot more like yourself. What can I do to make today better?”
“Take me to the tree.”
She’d been told No so much lately, but Angel had to say it again. “Sweet girl, you know I would do that if I could.”
A chirp from the neglected laptop on Jenna’s bedside table interrupted Angel’s train of thought, then she remembered. “They’ll broadcast it tonight, the whole ceremony with the singers and the Rockettes. We could watch it together? I’ll go get us some dinner, and we’ll sit here and soak up Christmas spirit with whatever you want.”
“It’s not the same,” Jenna grumbled. “They do those shots from far away. They don’t get up close and look way up at the top. One time, I even crawled below the barrier rails and almost got to the tree before they caught me.”
The tree could be leverage to get her to eat.
Sometimes she still thought like the criminals who’d raised her, and even if this was a con that was being used for good, that pang of self-disgust still stabbed cold into the back of her neck for the briefest of moments. Before she used that leverage anyway.
“What if I took my phone to Rockefeller Center and went to the base of the tree, and live streamed it for you to watch, right from the thick of things? You could tell me what you wanted to see, and I’d go film that.”
Jenna finally looked at her, and a little zing of triumph negated that lance of less positive feelings about herself.
“You would?” Voice so hopeful, but her expression shouted worry this was just something else she couldn’t have. “Would you bring me a peppermint hot cocoa and a snickerdoodle from the cookie shop?”
Got her.
“I absolutely would do that for you. Would you do something for me if I did?”
“What?”
“Eat some lunch?” Angel phrased it like a question and pretended even to herself that she’d had no ulterior motive for visiting the little patient, that she’d have come and visited anyway because it was the kind thing to do. That was what good people did, and it was something she was working on. Might always be working on. “I’ll tell them to bring up something good. You eat it, and I’ll live stream the tree lighting and bring you goodies afterward.”
Jenna looked for a moment as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but then smiled so wide Angel could ignore the regret she should feel for her terrible adulting skills. “I will!”
She did better in her daily life and in her practice, but Jenna was special. And Angel knew a whole lot about disappointment and deprivation, which colored her actions. She might not be able to cure Jenna today, but she could make today better.
Angel rounded the bed to fetch the laptop, and they took a moment to link to her social media account, then checked the schedule for the tree ceremony.
“Lasses.” A deep, deliciously resonant voice came from the open door behind her, announcing the arrival of the brain-scrambling Scotsman.
He did that on purpose, she was just sure of it—the man’s brogue got thicker when he wanted to pour on the charm, as he apparently now did.
She was yet another weak creature who responded. Oh, she tried not to like it, and usually failed. Like right now, she failed completely to control her smile reflex. No matter how hard she willed softness and relaxation into her cheeks, they fired anyway. The best she could do was try to twist it into a rueful grimace as she made room for the surgeon.
“Jenna, my love, I’m hearing rumors you’re no’ eatin’.” Dr. Wolfe McKeag hit the Rs in his speech so hard they seemed to keep on rolling even after he’d moved on to lavish his attention on other words. Did he do that with his family? Dr. Lyons McKeag, his brother, worked in the ER with Angel, and he seemed to have become much more acclimatized to the sound of American vowels. And Rs.
However Wolfe McKeag liked to live his life, it wasn’t her business. But how strange it must be to be so proud of where he came from that he’d play it up instead of hiding it completely. To not live in perpetual fear of being found out if anyone got close... She’d told one person and lost her first job. The possibility that he’d tell someone here and get her fired again always sat in the back of her mind.
Angel couldn’t imagine life without that edge. Being so comfortable with herself, her past. Even a decade after removing herself entirely from the place and the people of her early life, all that came to mind when she actively tried not to think back was the lone pair of pants she’d had to wear one year.
What kind of demented designer even made camouflage-patterned corduroy? Certainly not one who had ever worn camouflage in a practical sense. Not even the stealthiest hunter could sneak up on a deer if every step announced their arrival. Not that she’d been able to shoot the deer that time she’d tried to help her father hunt when the larder ran bare.
And none of that had any bearing on her day, or the evening’s tasks ahead of her. McKeag could stay here and sweet-talk Jenna all he liked, but Angel had already solved the problem. She might not have had to if she’d waited—even a twelve-year-old couldn’t help but cave when McKeag came cooing.
Shooting the kid a surreptitious smile, she made her way toward the door, greeting him in passing. “Dr. McKeag.”
“Dr. Conley,” he returned, and she chanced a glance to find his pale blue eyes fixed on her. Just for a second. Just long enough to awaken the bitey critters in her belly. Some people had butterflies, Angel had things with teeth. And they roused so infrequently she’d have sworn they’d died off long ago, except for McKeag.
“Dr. Wolfe, I’m going to eat. Dr. Angel is going to get me peppermint cocoa and snickerdoodles.”
Kid made it sound as if that was the food she’d agreed to eat...
“Dr. Angel?” he repeated.
And the bitey belly critters escaped her middle and went instead to biting and sending goosebumps down her arms. The soft hair stood on end, like an ineffective porcupine.
He really needed to never say her first name again. Ever.
“She’s my Angel,” Jenna said, and that was enough to bring Angel’s smile back just as she ducked out of the room and into the safe, antiseptic solace of an empty corridor, where she could breathe.
Body betrayals were something she’d not miss about New York City, or about Sutcliffe. She rather preferred being cadaver-like from the neck down. It was safe. No primordial body signals to contend with meant she could devote her whole body to the list of actual, important problems she managed. Like finding a dietitian and sweet-talking her into a late lunch for Jenna.
And sorting out how to sweet-talk the dietitian before she got down there because, as well as she could read people, she lacked any skills in sweet talk.
* * *
The heavy door swung closed behind Conley, the force of the swing shoving the air and producing a wave of her scent that hit Wolfe dead on. Fruity, and something else. Not a perfume, he didn’t think. Or maybe it was. There was something soft about it. Sweet. Made him think of the first breath of spring on the breeze after a long, cold winter.
A perfumer would make a killing with that scent.
Her bare skin probably smelled even better. Everywhere. Something he’d have to be satisfied imagining—Wolfe had only a few rules, and not dating a coworker sat at the top. After a childhood drowning in the scandals of his parents, he hadn’t followed his older brother across the Atlantic just to invite more drama once he got settled. Not into his life, and especially not at work. Conley was a nonstarter. No matter how fantastic she smelled. No matter how delightfully freckled her skin.
“Dr. Wolfe?”
Jenna’s voice broke through the wrong direction his thoughts had taken, reminding him where he was and what he was supposed to be about. With a patient, preparing to cajole her into eating. He should be joking. Not focused on the sexy-sweet wake left behind the departing southern belle with her long Es and gentle cadence.
“I think I’ve got bad breath,” he said, snapping back into the appropriate mindset as he turned back to face the young girl.
She grinned at him, her cheeks still dimpling no matter how badly her body was failing her. No matter what he’d been told, her spirit still sparkled through the veil of the sickness draped over her. “Why do you think that?”
“She left very quickly, your Angel, didn’t she? And right after I got here.” He lifted one brow, his best Sherlock Holmes impression.
Someone had charted a mountain, but whatever had been wrong with the girl had been a molehill. She seemed in her normal Jenna–high spirits.
He didn’t mention that Conley always left quickly when he was around—that would mean he noticed. Or cared. Maybe she did that when anyone was around. He enjoyed light-hearted chatter with everyone, but, during the year since she’d arrived, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Conley around anyone outside patient consultations and their irregularly scheduled department meetings for Pediatrics, which shouldn’t matter to him either.
“She’s in a hurry because she’s going to the tree lighting tonight.”
“Ah, Christmas. Gets earlier every year, doesn’t it?” Earlier and more obnoxious, but Wolfe knew better than to try and explain his feelings on the holiday to a child, especially one who needed to look forward to the magic he’d heard it held but couldn’t quite remember feeling. Inadequate small-talk about the holiday was the best he could do.
She argued, though with less energy. “No, it takes forever to get here.”
The tree was just the official, publicly agreed as acceptable kick-off to the Lousy Season. Stores had begun pushing Christmas about the same time they began pushing Halloween. Which was when he stopped going to stores and wouldn’t really resume until February. The explosion of tinsel and fairy lights that covered the city? Harder to avoid.
It was on his lips to tell her that time moved faster the older you got, but it sounded like a promise he’d love to make but couldn’t. “Are you waiting for Santa?”
“No.” She rolled her eyes at him and then looked at him far too closely. “Why don’t you like the tree?”
He must’ve made a face...
“It’s just a big tree,” he answered, adding, “and it’s cold out there.”
Just as he was about to ask her about the lunch he’d heard she’d refused, and the breakfast she’d also refused, she started squirming in the bed, trying to shift up higher so that the bend of the mattress fit the bend of her body, and all the color drained from her face.
He knew that look. Pain. Kids could forget they’d had their bodies cut open and that they weren’t yet able to move freely.
“Easy...” he said, stepping in to gingerly help her into a more comfortable lean. “Don’t want to pull a staple. I did a good job there, but I’d like to revisit it about as much as I’d like to go see that big silly tree.”
She settled, and he watched her for a few seconds as her breathing evened out and she lost some of that worrisome pallor. “All right now?”
“I love the lighting and the tree.” She sailed right past his question and got back to what she wanted to talk about. But the fact that she was talking at all answered his question. “We go every year.”
When her little mouth twisted at the end of the statement, he knew it wasn’t physical pain.
Conley had been there before him, and had done something to brighten Jenna’s spirits, but he’d somehow just made her sad again.
Emotions. He wasn’t good at emotions. He could generally identify them, or when there had been an emotional shift, but he wasn’t good at responding. At least, he wasn’t good with all the emotions that weren’t amusement. He was good at that one. But even he failed to amuse when things ran too deep, too real.
Without his usual joking to fall back on, and knowing he’d not made the situation any better, it took him several seconds to come up with something resembling the proper response. “Family tradition?”
She nodded, then swiped her eyes with the arm that didn’t have the IV in it. “Except this year. They’re going without me.”
Joking wouldn’t help this. Even with his limited emotional palette, he could see that.
The location of the door through which he could escape became this presence in his mind, temptation glowing behind him. Hard to ignore. It would be so easy to say something polite, manufacture a reason to dart out and make his escape, maybe summon Conley back to cheer Jenna up again. Easy, but impossible. Good guys didn’t do that kind of thing.
“Aww, lass. I’m sorry you’re stuck here with the like of me this year.”
She sniffed, mustering such a pitiful little smile he felt worse for wanting to leave. “I like you.”
“I like you too.” It seemed the thing to say. Reassuring. Maybe even putting the conversation back to one where he knew how to respond.
Then she asked, “You really don’t want to go to the lighting?”
“Nah.” He waved a hand, made an exaggerated face of dismissal, shook his head, played up what silliness he had in him at the moment.
Then he saw it, a little sparkle returned to her dark eyes. She tilted her head and crooned, “You wouldn’t go with me if I could go?”
The playful and entirely unserious flirting of a twelve-year-old? That he could deal with. Much easier to play than try to solve problems he had no business making worse through his inadequacy. Stick with what he was good at: bodies. He was good at fixing bodies. He wasn’t a neurologist, or a psychologist, although that might’ve been helpful when his brother had been shot. Or now, with a fragile, overwrought twelve-year-old girl.
Ruffling Jenna’s short, dark hair, he teased, “That’s a bit different, isn’t it? I’d be goin’ with you for the company. No’ the silly tree.”
“You would?”
“Course I would,” he assured her, then, trying to make sure this was on proper ground, added, “We’d bring your whole family. And Dr. Angel.”
“Dr. Angel’s going to take me tonight,” she suddenly announced, voice far brighter than it had been. “And you can come with us!”
Her happy, chirruped words set his shoulders to granite, stiff and rigid enough to build on.
Was that how Conley had brightened her mood? The woman who smelled of heaven had promised to take his patient out of the hospital without a discharge order or consultation?
Surely not...
“Dr. Angel said she was taking you to Rockefeller Center tonight?” he asked, just to be sure. Always best to do your due diligence before ripping some hide off a colleague.
“Jenna, don’t fib to Dr. McKeag.” Angel’s voice came from the door at his back, then she came into view and he looked at her fully.
Smiling. She was smiling. This was a joke?
Jenna argued, sullenness drifting into her voice as she folded her arms. “It’s true. Sort of.”
“Yes,” Angel agreed. “But the ‘sort of’ part is important. Look how red his face got.”
Jenna innocently asked, “Are you embarrassed, Dr. Wolfe?”
“Angry,” Angel corrected.
“I’m waiting to decide. After someone explains ‘sort of’ to me.”
Jenna frowned so dramatically it’d have been comical in any other situation.
“I’m going to go to the ceremony and live stream it for her, let her tell me where she wants me to film. That sort of thing,” Conley explained, as if that were an everyday occurrence, nothing special.
“It’ll be almost like I get to go,” Jenna added, but Wolfe couldn’t take his eyes off the angel in the room, living up to her name.
He couldn’t stop himself from smiling either. Nurses went above and beyond all the time for their patients, but Wolfe didn’t see it much in the physicians. Even in himself, which at that moment made him feel like a jerk, so the smile kind of annoyed him. It warmed his cold, anti-Christmas heart. Slightly.
Had to be relief over not having to cause drama at the hospital. “That’s really—”
“My end of the deal,” Angel cut in, then directed her attention back to Jenna. “Speaking of, Dietary will bring you something good any minute. And when we get finished with the tree, I’ll bring you the peppermint cocoa.”
“And the snickerdoodle.”
“And the snickerdoodle,” Angel confirmed. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Bribed with sweets and the ability to boss an adult around for her own amusement? Someone should teach Dr. Angel how to bargain. And maybe take lessons from Jenna.
“Dr. Wolfe is going to go with you,” Jenna said.
Wolfe snapped back to the conversation. “I’m what now?”
“You said you would go with me,” Jenna reminded him, sounding terribly pleased with herself. So much different from the sad little sprite she’d been earlier.
He looked at Angel to get a read on her reaction, but her carefully closed expression and the lack of any sort of verbal response told Wolfe he’d get no help from her. She wasn’t even looking at him.
Did that mean she did or didn’t want him to go?
Dammit. All these emotional landmines. He hated trying to sort this stuff out. He’d much rather deal with actual guts than metaphorical ones.
If he backed out now, that’d probably be insulting a colleague. As a pediatric emergency specialist, she worked more with his brother in Emergency than with him but was actually in pediatrics. Which would violate his rule about causing stress in the work environment. Stress often led to scandal. It was one of his guiding lights to bring as little extra drama to the floor as possible; these kids and their families went through enough without dealing with that kind of selfishness.
“Okay, but I should warn you I have an early bedtime tonight,” Wolfe announced, at least giving himself a plausible reason to leave early. “I can go for the start at least. What time?”
Angel took too long to answer, especially given the way she avoided looking at him, but when she did there were strings of hesitation in the melody of her voice. “Starts at seven. We’ll need to get a cab soon to make it.”
He could smooth this over. Just be extra friendly to banish whatever doubts she harbored.
“Do I have time to change?”
“If you go now.” Angel gave a location to meet and then set about instructing Jenna on how to view the video feed.
Nothing else to do, he directed—just so his trip there wasn’t a total loss, “Eat the food, darlin’. We keep our promises, right?”
“I will.”
He winked at Jenna, then headed out.
This would be all right; it wasn’t a date. The heavenly smelling Dr. Angel was practically mute under most circumstances, even if she was currently trying to melt his Grinchy heart with acts of unexpected kindness with his young patient. She’d revert once they were alone, he was sure of it. Silent and introverted would counterbalance the distracting nature of her scent.
Outside the juxtaposition with the hospital’s natural scent, he might not notice her at all.
