Page 37 of Christmas Kisses

“The original diagnosis was a heart attack, but we think there’s something wrong with the ECG machine. It’s been on the fritz since he was admitted.”

When Jae switches on the electrocardiography to record the electronic signals of Santa’s heart, my shocked eyes rocket to her.

His heart is beating out the tune of “Jingle Bells.”

“You’re an ass,” I mutter under my breath when Jae bursts out laughing before exposing she’d placed one of the pads on her iPhone speaker.

“Don’t be mad. It’s Christmas.” After dragging over a chair to the side of Santa’s bed, she tells me she will be back in an hour to check on him. “If you need anything before then, hit the buzzer on your right.”

I wait for her footsteps to stop sounding in my ear before I take a seat.

Just as fast, one of Santa’s eyes pops open. He drags it to the left before pulling it to the right.

Only once he’s confident the coast is clear does he speak. “Is she gone?”

Although shocked by his quick recovery—he was flatlining only hours ago—I nod. “She said she’ll be back in an hour.”

“She said that five minutes ago, and I was barely alone for a second.” He yanks off the blanket covering his legs, displaying he’s placed back on the boots the first responder officer removed at the scene of his collapse. “I almost got caught.”

“Should you be doing that?” I ask when he commences ripping off the pads of the heart monitor. “You collapsed. Your heart?—”

“Is perfectly fine,” he interrupts as he removes the final pad.

As he enters the cubicle next to us to gather his Santa jacket, he asks, “How’s yours? Looked like it took a bit of a beating earlier as well. Understandable with your whole they’re-better-women-because-of-me speech.”

“It’s good. It’s fine.”Its crumpled remains aren’t up for discussion with a man I don’t know.

I grow panicked I said my inner monologue out loud when Santa breathes heavily out of his nose. “I thought you were ready, but I may have jumped the gun a little early.”

“For?” I ask, confused.

My bewilderment augments when he replies without pause for thought. “For the wish you made when you were ten.”

That was the year Casey told me Santa didn’t exist. I was super pissed, not solely because she had stolen the magic of Christmas from me, but because it meant it was less likely my wish would come true.

I wished not to become my mother. I wanted one true love, not a dozen, because I didn’t want anyone to hurt me how my mother hurt my father when he came to collect us that Christmas Eve to learn she was engaged for the fourth time since their divorce.

Only when I got older did I understand the gap between my mother’s third and fourth marriage. She’d given my father a sliver of hope that we could be a family again before she’dbumped into my little league baseball coach three weeks before Christmas.

Santa squeezes my shoulder, pulling me from my thoughts. “Maybe next year?”

I nod before realizing I don’t know what I’m agreeing to. “Next year for what?”

As he breaks through the curtains of the cubicle meant to keep him alive, he shouts, “To try to re-grant your Christmas wish.”

I lose the chance to tell him I don’t have to wait another year—Kelsey is the best gift I’ve ever received—when my charge through the curtains has me stumbling onto a handful of nurses staring at me as if I am talking to myself.

They’re acting like a patient didn’t just dart past them, and the concern on their faces triples when I ask, “Did anyone see which way Santa went?”

16

ZANE

Casey sighs when I rip at my bow tie with the tenacity of a shark. I’m moody, tired, and wearing a stupid-ass groomsmen suit for the ninth time in my life.

After assuring the nurses from the ICU that I didn’t need a psych evaluation, I raced to Kelsey’s apartment, determined to prove Santa wrong that I wasn’t ready to have my Christmas wish granted.

I’d already met the girl of my dreams, so I only needed to tell Kelsey the truth.

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