Page 3 of Holiday Unscripted
“Your brother is getting married!” my mother shouts. “My son is getting married. I’m already a mess that I’m losing him, and you aren’t helping.”
“Okay, let’s relax and not talk like he’s going off to war. He’s getting married and they bought a house one street over. I think you’ll be fine.”
“That’s right. The only one breaking my heart is you.”
“Smooth,” I say when the oven beeps. “I will get the time off. I will be on the plane and his wedding is going to go off without a hitch.” I smile into the phone. “Now, I have to let you go so I can eat and get my ass to bed. I love you. It’s always nice seeing you.” I blow a kiss and then hang up the phone, and the text comes in right away.
Mom: Text the hospital now for time off.
I roll my eyes but I pull up the rotation for the holidays. I pull my name off and block three weeks off for the insane amount of wedding activities the soon-to-be newlyweds have planned and leave a note that my brother will be getting married. I walk over to the fridge and grab the bottle of wine out and pour myself a glass. “It’s going to be fine,” I tell myself before I take a gulp of it. “So this is Christmas.”
CHAPTER 2
Elizabeth
IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS
“How we doing?” I ask Gayle as I make my way around the nurses’ station, going to the computer and pulling up the patient’s name I just treated in one of the exam rooms.
“We have three more,” she reports and I look up at the clock to see it’s almost eight, and I’m going to be late leaving again today. Nothing new when it comes to the holidays. The number of people who end up in the emergency room during this time is called the “holiday surge.”
“What are we looking at?” I ask her as I fill in the notes for the patient I just saw and had to stitch up because he decided it would be a good idea to cut down his own Christmas tree with a fucking saw that slipped.
“Two of them have broken bones,” she states. “Last one, two sisters were sort of arguing and one punched the other one in the face when she took the last cookie.” My head whips around seeing Gayle, who is smirking, as she holds a paper in her hand and she works on the whiteboard. Her scrubs today have a slew of Santas all over them. Bright and cheerful, unlike mine that are all black. I actually tried wearing the snot-green ones, but they were so bright I just couldn’t take myself seriously.
“Who says holiday cheer is dead?” I snicker as I complete my notes and then get up to walk into another exam room.
The phone buzzes in my back pocket and I ignore it as I greet the patient. “Hi.” I smile at the man lying on the hospital bed. “I’m Dr. Morrow.”
An hour later I’m pushing open the on-call room and moving my neck side to side to get the kinks out of it. It looks like Christmas threw up in here. There is a Christmas tree in the corner of the room that looks like it’s seen better days, and right across from it is a menorah with blue-and-yellow Happy Hanukkah letters right above it.
“Hey,” Ty says, shrugging on his white coat before reaching into his locker and grabbing his stethoscope to put around his neck. “There she is”—he smirks at me—“the Grinch of the emergency room.”
I hold up my hand to flip him the bird. “I’ve been working twelve-to-fourteen-hour shifts straight for the past fourteen days,” I explain to him, “to make up for the three weeks I’m taking off for my brother’s wedding.”
He reaches into his locker and pulls out a small box. “I made you these.” He hands me the red box with HO HO HO written across it.
“What is it?” I ask him, pulling the top off and seeing Christmas cookies in there. “Are these homemade?” I pick up one and bite into it.
“Yeah.” He smirks. “I like baking, it relaxes me.”
“These are really good,” I compliment, putting down one and then picking up one that looks like a chocolate cookie with white dusting on it. “I’m impressed.”
“It’s a family recipe,” he says. “When do you leave?”
“Two days,” I tell him, putting the rest of the cookie back in the box to enjoy when I sit on the couch in a bit.
“You excited?” he asks me and I shake my head.
“I love my family, I do,” I say and he chuckles, “but they can be a bit overwhelming, and then add in my mother is becoming a momzilla and going nuts. My brother is trying to make sure everyone is happy. His future bride is constantly posting videos of updates no one is really asking about. I’ve silenced the bridesmaid chat because I just need to know when to show up.”
“A wedding on Christmas Eve, no less,” he teases me as I open my locker and toss the box of cookies in my bag, “you must be dying.”
“The only thing I know about the wedding,” I inform him, “is the color of my dress. Which is a bright red and not green—thank God for that—and that it’s open bar.” He laughs at me. “And that I’m going to be seeing all my family. So liking two out of three isn’t bad.”
“I’m afraid to ask which one it is you don’t like.” He shuts his locker and nods at me. “I can’t wait to see pictures.”
“I’ll be sure to post them on social media right away,” I joke with him.
