Christmas Miracle: A Family
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Dianne Drake
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CHAPTER ONE
FALLON O’GARA glanced at her watch, and the panic in her rose a little more than she’d expected. It was ten after one now, and she was late to meet her good friends and colleagues Gabby Ranard and Dinah Ramsey for lunch. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to open the car door because she was about to take a big step, and it scared her. She’d fretted, paced, worried all night, and now it was time. Time to make a decision about Gabby’s job offer, and finally think about returning to work for the first time since the plane crash. But she couldn’t lay her hand on the doorhandle, let alone open the door and get out.
A loud tapping on the passenger’s side window startled Fallon out of her dilemma. It was Gabby, standing there with Dinah. “I’m coming,” Fallon called without opening her window, without making the slightest motion toward getting out.
“We’ve got the back table reserved,” Gabby yelled. “And you know Catie. She can’t wait to see you. She’s standing at the front door right now, ready to cry.” To prove her point, Gabby stepped back and pointed to the café owner standing with hankie in hand, on the verge of blubbering.
Fallon loved these people! They were the best. But being here at Catie’s Overlook, her favorite restaurant in the world, was suddenly feeling like a mistake. She wanted to go in, wanted to accept that job offer Gabby had made to set up the practical details of White Elk’s new women’s hospital—buy the beds, hire the staff, hire the contractors to make the renovations. It was a kind, generous offer, since she’d told Gabby that she wasn’t ready to go back to nursing at the main White Elk Hospital. But she was afraid to accept Gabby’s offer. Afraid not to. Not sure what to do. Consequently, her hands were shaking, her breath was clutching in her lungs. But surviving an airplane crash…there were always the reminders, and for her one of them was the panic attacks.
Gabby took another step toward the front of the car, and simply smiled at Fallon. “Well, darn,” Fallon muttered to herself. “Having lunch with my best friends should be an easy thing to do. I’ll simply get out, go in, say….” Well, she wasn’t sure what she’d say to Gabby, and Gabby did want an answer. “I’ll eat, chat, go home.” And forty-five minutes later, well into a heaped piece of chocolate cake, she still wasn’t sure what she was going to say to Gabby.
“Well, should I order a celebratory flute of ginger ale?” Gabby finally asked. Gabby wasn’t drinking alcohol as she had a baby on the way. “Assuming your answer to my offer is yes? And if it’s not, could you explain that to little Mary here, because her mommy needs rest at this stage of the pregnancy and if you don’t take this job, little Mary’s mommy is going to be worn out by the time little Mary’s born.”
“Good guilt trip,” Dinah commented, laughing.
Gabby patted her belly, smiling. “Just using what I have to, to get my way.” She looked over at Fallon. “Seriously, I really do need you. Not because of my pregnancy but because of your skills. I trust you to do this job and do it well.”
Fallon sighed. Her back was to the wall now; she had to be fair to Gabby. Yes, or no? She wanted a voice from the heavens to cry out the answer, but when none came, she braced herself, trying to force aside the awkward tension attempting to burrow its way out. It was a job made to order. One where she could build up some confidence, still be close to medicine, and work her life out from that point forward. Also, this was something she could do on her own terms. If ever there was an opportunity to step back into her life, the way it used to be, the way she wanted it to be again, this was it. And it was true what they said about the very first step being the hardest.
Looking into the faces of her friends, and over at Catie, the owner of the restaurant, she realized just how not alone she was in this. And it was time. She’d isolated herself for too long now. Months in rehab then hiding out in her cabin. She’d been through so much. But now was the right time to begin again. Suddenly, it all made sense. Surviving came in steps. It didn’t happen the way most people believed, in one great event or whoosh. It trickled in, a little here, a little there. This was one of those trickles. Although a big one. But when she realized that it was what she had to do and, more than that, wanted to do, a sense of calm fell over Fallon, the first real calm she’d felt in months. So, she reached across the table and squeezed Gabby’s hand. “Order the ginger ale. I’m ready to celebrate. And promise me you’ll tell little Mary that I’ll be making sure her mommy will get all the rest she needs for the rest of her pregnancy.”
“Really? You’re going to take the job?”
Fallon nodded, wondering if what she was feeling now was the calm before the storm. “I’ll try, Gabby. That’s the best I can give you right now. But I’m going to take it a day at a time, because that’s about the only way I can handle my life. So, if that’s agreeable to you and little Mary, I’ll start work as soon as you want me to.”
Gabby winked at Dinah. “Told you so.”
“You were betting on me?” Fallon asked.
“Just the chocolate cake,” Gabby said, “and it’s Dinah’s treat. She was pretty sure you’d eventually say yes, but she thought it would take more persuasion.”
Fallon laughed. “In that case, I’m going to order another piece to take home with me.”
It felt good being there with friends, being involved in something again. She glanced out the window to the Three Sisters. She’d avoided looking at them since she’d been home, didn’t want to be reminded that her plane had crashed on the Middle Sister. Popular Indian lore said these three mountain peaks loomed over the valley, protecting everybody in their shadow. People here truly believed that. To be honest, she’d believed it too, until the accident. Now, to her, the Three Sisters were simply mountains. Yet in the brief glance she allowed herself she was surprised she wasn’t panicking. So maybe going back to work was a good thing. Maybe the calm she was feeling was real. She wanted it to be.
“Bet or no bet, I’m glad you’re doing this,” Dinah said, putting her fork down halfway though her cake. “Eric and Neil are going to be thrilled.” Eric Ramsey was Dinah’s husband and Neil Ranard was married to Gabby; both men were doctors and co-owners of the White Elk Hospital.
The three friends chatted on, until suddenly they were interrupted.
“Fallon?” The familiar, deep voice cut through the talking at the table.
Fallon gasped. Felt her pulse double immediately. She hadn’t seen or spoken to James in months, since just after her accident, when she’d made it clear that she couldn’t be in a relationship with him any more. Because he’d just discovered he had a son, and she’d had plenty of her own issues to deal with, things she couldn’t talk to James about. She’d done what she’d thought was best for both of them. But she was just taking her first steps back into normal life and she didn’t feel like she could deal with James now.
“Fallon, how are you?”
Suddenly, her lungs felt so tight that she couldn’t breathe and her hands were shaking so hard her muscles were practically seizing up. On top of it all, she was breaking out in a cold sweat. Head spinning. Chest aching. Nausea fast on the rise.
“Fallon?” Gabby whispered, leaning into her. “Are you OK?”
“Tell him to go away,” she whispered. “Please, I don’t want to see him.”
Gabby looked back at Dr. James Galbraith, not sure what to make of this. “I don’t know what to tell you, James. She doesn’t want to see you.”
“Please,” Fallon begged, refusing to turn around and look at him. “Just go away, James.”
“You didn’t return my calls,” he said, as if there were no other women sitting at the table. He stepped forward, stood directly behind Fallon and bent down. “We spoke soon after the accident, when I told you about my son. But then I called every day, for weeks, left messages on your voice mail until you canceled that number, and you never returned my calls. E-mails bounced back.”
“I was a little busy,” she said, turning her head away from him. “And I did leave you a message.”
“Once. You said you were fine, that you were in a nice rehab facility, to please not bother you again. Then the next time I called I got the message that your cellphone number was no longer in use.”
She scooted down in her chair, wanted to crawl under the table. “What are you doing in White Elk?” she asked.
“James is the new pediatrician at the hospital,” Dinah commented. “He applied months ago, back when you were…” She stopped, glanced helplessly at Gabby.
“I’m so sorry, Fallon,” Gabby said. “I wanted to tell you…but not yet. Neil and Eric hired James a while back, pending the completion of the new pediatrics wing. Now that it’s completed, James is head of Pediatrics.”
“And no one told me?”
“How could we?” Gabby said. “Fallon, you’d turned your back on everyone. Practically went into seclusion. And you made it clear to everyone that your relationship with James was over. But he was already hired before we knew that, and Neil and Eric weren’t going to go back on their commitment to him. They wanted James from the moment they read his résumé. Knew he was perfect for the job. But with what you’d gone through…how could we tell you he’d moved here?”
Fallon looked up at James. “Why did you leave Salt Lake City? Why did you move here?” she asked.
“White Elk is where I wanted to be, Fallon. The way you talked about it when we were together, then what I found out about the hospital, how good it was, what a dynamic pediatric department they were setting up…”
“And me? Did I factor into that anywhere?”
Taking the cue, Gabby and Dinah slipped away from the table, not even seen by Fallon as they hurried out the door.
“Yes. At first, when I thought we were going to be together… Well, after we drifted apart, I still wanted to be here because the more I learned about White Elk, and the more I knew the reputation of the hospital, the more I wanted to work here. You knew how bad my job was in Salt Lake…the hours, the demands. It was driving me crazy. I wasn’t advancing, wasn’t getting to practice the kind of medicine I wanted because I was always the backup for my medical partners. And this…it was everything I’ve ever wanted in my medical practice and I couldn’t walk away from it just because you’d walked away from me. But I didn’t mean to upset you over it because, well…I thought we could still work things out between us.”
“No, we can’t.” She started to twist, to look at him, but caught herself in time. Oh, how she wanted to look, though. To remember, to lose herself in him. Tall, with sandy blond hair and the most gorgeous blue eyes…eyes as clear as a mountain lake. But she couldn’t. Wouldn’t. She’d loved this man. Had wanted to spend a life with him. Then she’d let him down in ways he could never know about, ways that were so painful to her she didn’t want to be reminded of what she’d done.
James straightened up, squared his shoulders, cleared his throat to break the tension of that awkward moment. “You wouldn’t talk to me, Fallon. Wouldn’t let me talk to you. I know you must have gone through hell after the accident, but you just withdrew from me. All that time we’d spent together in Salt Lake City…all the plans we were making. I thought we had something that would endure. Then after the plane crash…” He paused, swallowed hard. “I know I got busy with Tyler. And I know the timing was terrible, finding out I had a son just a week after the plane crash. One day I’m not a father and the next I’ve got a five-year-old son whose been literally dropped on my doorstop. I’ll admit I was reeling from it, not handling it as well as I should. Is that why you stayed away from me, why you didn’t even let me know where you were? Is it because I had to spend so much time with Tyler when you were facing so many problems? Did I hurt you, Fallon? Because I never meant to.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “I told you at the time that I understood how much Tyler needed you, that I was fine by myself.”
But there were also things that she hadn’t told James… A few weeks before the plane crash she’d discovered she was pregnant. She’d been excited, because they’d even talked about having a family, even though they hadn’t dated for long. And after they’d met when she’d been transferring a patient to the hospital in Salt Lake City where James worked, their relationship had developed quickly. But, still, the pregnancy had felt very soon. So Fallon had waited for the right moment to tell him the news. But the stress level of his job had been on the rise, and he had been working so many hours, had been tired, grumpy… So she’d kept it to herself, waiting for the right moment when things had calmed down for him.
Then the plane crash as she’d been returning home to White Elk, the surgeries, the anesthesia, the doctor’s discouraging prognosis of her pregnancy, and…Tyler. To add to James’s stress, he’d found out he was a father to a five-year-old he’d never known about. Everything had felt so confusing, and she had been in such bad shape. In his defense, James had been too. She had seen it. Felt how he’d been so torn between wanting to be with her and needing to be with his son, a child who desperately needed a good father. So she’d kept her secret, and never told James that she’d carried his son for six months and delivered him stillborn. And now it was too late.
Through those awful months, she’d kept telling herself she couldn’t add to James’s burden. Kept telling herself that she was doing the right thing by him and Tyler. Because if he’d known what she was going through, he wouldn’t have left her side. But Tyler had needed him, too. Needed him more.
“No, you didn’t hurt me, James. You’d never do that. But Tyler had to be your priority. If we’d stayed together, you’d have torn yourself up trying to divide your time between Tyler and me, and it had to be about Tyler. There wasn’t any other choice you could make.” That was something she had come to understand more than anything else about that time. James had to be a father first and if she’d stayed with him, that couldn’t have happened. He’d have been too divided.
“But you couldn’t have told me how you were feeling, how you were afraid I’d spend too much time with you and not enough with Tyler? We couldn’t have talked about it?”
She shook her head, couldn’t tell him that what she would have needed from him would have been too great. She’d survived the plane crash, but in so many little pieces. James would have wanted to be the one to put those pieces back together again, and the timing…it couldn’t be helped. He’d just met Tyler. And only just learned how it truly felt to love a child so desperately.
And she’d lost hers…theirs. Lost her baby before James ever knew he existed. And not telling James, not letting him be part of those few months she carried their baby, was the unpardonable sin. Not letting him be there at the delivery of their son, and hold him the way she’d been allowed to for those brief moments… It was all too late now. What was done was done. She couldn’t go back and change it, and she refused to go forward and hurt James. He didn’t deserve that. And she…she didn’t deserve a man as good as James. “I disappeared because I had issues to resolve, and physical problems to work out.”
“Without me,” he said. “Even after what we’d been to each other, you wanted to do it without me?”
“Our relationship was still new, James. A few weekends. Good weekends, and that unbelievable week together, lots of long phone calls in between. Plans, expectations and excitement. But it was so much, and so fast. After the crash I had time to think about it, to realize that…”
“That you didn’t love me? Because you’d said you did.”
“Maybe we were confusing our emotions.” She hated this, hated saying something that wasn’t true because she’d known quickly into their relationship that James was the one. But she’d gone so far beyond that now, and there was no way back. “Maybe what we thought we had wasn’t real.”
“I don’t believe that, Fallon,” he snapped. “Not a word of it. But if that’s the way you want to do this between us…”
“Not us, James. Not any more. But since you’re in White Elk now, we can still be friends…”
“And you think that’s enough?”
“I think it’s all there is.” Not all she wanted, but all she could have.
“You’re wrong, Fallon. I can see it in your eyes. Something you’re not saying. Something you want to say to me, but won’t.”
She shut her eyes. Drew in a steadying breath, and pushed herself away from the table. “You’re the one who’s wrong. I’ve said everything I want to say. And now there’s nothing else.”
Drawing back from her, he studied her for a moment. “That first time I saw you in Salt Lake City, when you were transferring a patient to the hospital, I knew, Fallon. Knew that if I were the marrying kind, you’d be the kind I’d want to marry. Then you turned me into the marrying kind. I didn’t change my life and my entire outlook on a whim. I changed because I knew you, even in a short time I knew you, and knew you were the one worth making those changes for. You were so amazing and open and honest, and you went after life in such a big way. And I don’t believe you’ve changed. Maybe you believe you have, but you’re not the one standing here, looking at the same woman I saw back then. I am looking at her, though, and what I’m seeing more than anything else is…confusion. Pain.”
The most open, honest woman…well, not any more. But to be honest would be to wound him in so many ways and, no matter what he said, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She just couldn’t. So she stood and left the restaurant without another word. Without looking back. Without letting him see the tears.
