Page 1 of Christmas On Call
1
ASHA
Doctor Asha Patel arrived at Oakridge Hospital at 6:58 PM, exactly two minutes before her scheduled Christmas Eve shift in the NICU. The timing wasn’t an accident. It allowed her to maximize efficiency: the prior team had already signed out, but the night shift’s behemoth of paperwork had yet to stack up. Less chance of awkward small talk or, worse, being trapped in a break room serenaded by “Deck the Halls” or some tragic Wham song.
The exterior glass doors slid open with a mechanical sigh. She fished out her badge from the breast pocket of her parka and held it, photo side in, between two fingers. The security scanner’s LED turned from red to green. Satisfying. She shouldered through the lobby’s recycled air mingling with the sharp perfume of bleach and floor wax.
Her reflection trailed beside her in the wall of windows: tall, thin, motionless except for the efficient swing of her hospital ID. She wore the new sky-blue scrubs, not because she liked the color, but because her manager insisted it was more “soothing for families.” The lab coat was fresh from the dry cleaner, the white so stark and crisp. She would have preferred her batteredgrey North Face, but even that concession to comfort felt undisciplined on the holiday shift.
The corridors were lined with the limp, synthetic tinsel that the hospital’s volunteer committee insisted on stringing along every railing and hand sanitizer dispenser. Red, green, silver, occasionally punctuated by construction-paper Snowmen with their arms perpetually outstretched as if in need of a hug. There was one outside the pharmacy with a jaundiced look in his eye and a sorry smile.
Asha walked at her usual brisk clip; her flats skimmed noiselessly over the tile. No footsteps echoed. Oakridge always ran on skeleton crew this late, and most of the administration had already decamped for the holidays. She liked the emptiness. She could almost forget that her own apartment sat untouched, her couch neatly vacuumed, and her plants all watered for the next three days. No one was waiting for her there, or anywhere, really. Which suited her fine.
She reached the third-floor elevator bank and pressed the button with her knuckle. The up arrow illuminated, and in the brief, lonesome pause, she reached into her tote for her phone. A single notification glared from the screen: one missed call from “Ma & Baba Home.” Her thumb hovered, but she silenced it without listening. There would be time for obligatory check-ins after her shift. If she called now, her mother would get on the line and launch immediately into a roll call of family acquaintances who’d either gotten engaged, promoted, or her mother’s personal favorite—knocked up. She’d mention, in passing, that Asha’s cousin in New Jersey had a “wonderful boyfriend, very mature,” and then pivot to her own decades-old disappointment that her daughter was not spending Christmas in Edison with the rest of the Indian diaspora. Or with anyone.
The elevator arrived with a bell ding that made her startle. She stepped inside, hit the button for five, and watched thedoors slide shut. A moment of calm. The elevator’s interior was a mirror, slightly warped, like she was looking at herself through an aquarium wall. She adjusted her bun, which had sagged half an inch during the walk, then scanned her badge at the NICU’s secure entry. Another small, green reward.
Inside, the lights were set to “midnight” mode. A strategic dimness to encourage sleep among premature infants and, maybe, their shell-shocked parents. But even in low light, the decorations assaulted her. Someone had managed to coil battery-operated lights around every computer monitor, and a parade of plush snowmen marched along the edge of the counter, their carrot noses pointing accusatorily toward the nurses’ station. Asha paused, eyes narrowed. She’d emailed her objections about fire hazards and infection control the week before, but her attempts had apparently been rerouted to the “Grinch” folder.
She sidestepped a toppled reindeer figurine and sanitized her hands at the dispenser, counting the seconds as the gel stung and evaporated. She checked her watch. Shift start: on schedule. She rolled her shoulders, then unclipped her sign-in pen and clicked it twice. A nervous tic, perhaps, but it felt intentional. Mechanical.
She scanned the patient list, mouth tightening. Two new admissions since her last shift. Four critical cases. She pulled the schedule closer, recalculated the intervals for rounds, and quickly updated her personal cheat sheet with the new priorities. A microsecond of pride flickered through her: she’d shaved nearly twelve minutes from the prior night’s protocol, thanks to her color-coded tabs and an obsessive devotion to detail.
She drew in a breath and held it, bracing herself. The smell of disinfectant was a comfort, a barrier against chaos. She closed her eyes and tried not to listen for the buzz of holiday music that would, inevitably, seep through the walls. If she waslucky, tonight would be uneventful: a series of routine vitals, an unbroken chain of neonatal stability. If she was unlucky, the decorations would be the least of her worries.
She hung her parka on the staff coat rack, straightened her badge, and checked her hair a final time. The clatter of a coffee mug echoed from the break room. Somewhere, a nurse laughed, the sound muffled but uncontainable. She gripped her clipboard tighter and stared toward the source. The Christmas music was faint at first, just a suggestion of jingle bells.
Asha Patel had survived many Christmases in the hospital. She’d handle this one, too.
The NICU glowed with a calm haze. It took Asha a full three seconds to process that this was neither her corneas failing, nor some catastrophic malfunction of the lighting grid, but rather the handiwork of Nurse Maxine Benson, who, at that moment, was balanced on the second step of a battered aluminum ladder, looping a strand of fairy lights around the doorway to pod 4.
Asha paused at the threshold, a reflex she’d developed as a first-year attending: never cross into a patient area before you’d surveyed every surface for chaos. Tonight, the chaos was of a particular, sentimental variety. Max’s shoes were lime green, with bubblegum-pink soles and were certainly the first thing to catch Asha’s eye, suspended midair as Max reached up, exposing a hint of toned calf between the hem of her navy scrubs and a pair of penguin-print socks. The nurse’s auburn hair fell past her shoulders in loose waves, a few strands escaping to frame her face. A festive pin. Santa with a stethoscope, gleamed from her chest pocket.
On the far side of the room, a huddle of parents slouched around a rolling bassinet, faces worn and drawn from sleep deprivation. One mother blinked through tears at the clear plastic shell that shielded her baby from the world; a man in a U.S. Postal Service sweatshirt hovered behind her, hands buriedin the kangaroo pouch, eyes darting from the monitors to the baby’s impossibly tiny hands.
Asha watched as Max, without missing a step in her ladder acrobatics, smiled over her shoulder and called, “Almost done, guys! But I need someone tall to rescue me if I get stuck.” The joke was, of course, that Max was the tallest person in the room. Except, perhaps, for Asha herself, and that was only when Asha wore her Danskos.
The mother by the bassinet wiped her nose on her sleeve and attempted a laugh. The sound was more ragged than joyful, but it seemed to fortify her. “Can we really touch them?” she whispered, as though testing the boundaries of this new, fragile universe.
“Of course,” Max said, stepping down from the ladder with one hand still gripping the archway. “Just gel up first. It’s the NICU, not the North Pole!” She reached for the Purell dispenser, squirted a generous dollop into her palm, and held it out, blue veins prominent under the skin. The woman copied her, then let Max guide her trembling hand through the slot in the incubator’s side.
The baby, a preemie, still reddish and feathered with lanugo, curled his fingers instinctively around his mother’s. Max winked. “He’s got your grip already.”
Asha’s clinical eye picked up a dozen protocol infractions. Unsecured ladder, nonstandard attire, parents lingering after hours, but none of these could compete with the surge of humanity that seemed to spread through the room. The decorations multiplied the effect: every incubator was crowned with a paper snowflake, each one bearing a baby’s name in glitter pen. Garland draped the vital sign monitors, which blinked in time with the Christmas lights. The scent of pine, real or artificially conjured, threaded through the sterile air, confusing Asha’s nose and making her skin itch.
She coughed. No one heard.
Max had moved on, now coaxing the father in the USPS hoodie to hang a snowflake on his son’s isolette. “Right up here, Mr. Sanchez. Just don’t cover the oxygen sensor—Dr. Patel will go bananas.” She shot Asha a sly, sidelong glance, her eyes crinkling with mischief and, perhaps, challenge. Maybe even a wink?
Asha’s pulse skipped, but she kept her expression as neutral as a mannequin’s.
The father fumbled the snowflake, nearly dropping it, but Max steadied his hand with her own. “Perfect,” she said. “He’ll see it as soon as he opens his eyes.”
The father gave her a look of profound, exhausted gratitude, as if Max’s minor act of crafts project had delivered him from despair. Asha felt the old, familiar pang. A mix of envy and resentment reserved for people who could produce joy with the flick of a wrist, who could make families believe that hope was as simple as a string of lights and a little extra hand-holding.
She re-gripped her clipboard, hard enough to creak the plastic.
“Dr. Patel,” Max called, as if she’d just noticed her, though Asha suspected otherwise, “you’re just in time. Want to do the honors?” She dangled a length of gold tinsel, inviting Asha to finish the arch above the nurses’ station.
