Page 3 of Christmas On Call
Max shouldered her way into the staff break room and let the door swing shut with the satisfying thud of a boundary being reasserted. The lights in here were always dialed up, so she squinted for a second while her eyes recalibrated from the muted NICU twilight. She could still feel the echo of Dr. Patel’s glare on her neck, as though someone had stuck a blood pressure cuff there and forgot to deflate it.
At the battered countertop, Nurse Lee was mid-coffee ritual, weighing the merits of Swiss Miss versus Holiday Mocha from the communal shelf. The ancient Mr. Coffee coughed and hissed in the corner, struggling to keep up with the unit’s caffeine demands. A scattering of granola bar wrappers and a mostly-eaten fruitcake perched on the table, the latter dusted with so much powdered sugar it resembled a crime scene in a bakery.
“Don’t even think about that fruitcake,” Lee said, without looking up. “It’s older than most of our patients.”
Max grinned, but she went for the coffee instead, pouring herself a cup and cradling it between her palms like a hand warmer. “Any port in a storm.”
She plopped onto the blue easy-to-clean vinyl couch, which gave a little wheeze under her, then wiggled until she found a non-sagging spot. A pile of Amazon boxes and gift bags leaned against the wall—donations for the NICU holiday party, all in various stages of unwrapping. There was a faint odor of peppermint, Lysol, and, under that, the persistent sharpness of burnt toast from someone’s failed midnight snack.
“So,” Lee said, stirring in three sugars with what looked like a tongue depressor, “how goes the War on Christmas?”
Max considered a flippant answer but found herself sighing, long and low. “If Dr. Patel gets any more uptight, I think she might snap in half. She basically threatened to write me up for the garland.”
Lee dropped onto the arm of the couch, legs crossed at the ankle. “She thinks anyone who isn’t a doctor is out to kill her babies with joy and forbidden carbs.”
“She acts like a smile might crack her perfect face,” Max grumbled. She sipped her coffee, then made a face. “Ugh, why do we even buy the decaf? Is it for show?”
Lee shrugged. “Maybe it’s like those placebo pills. Comforts the weak.” She sipped her own cup, then shot Max a sidelong glance. “You know, she wasn’t always like this. Patel. Word is, her residency at Stanford was cutthroat even by Stanford standards.”
Max rolled her eyes. “Is that supposed to be an excuse? I’m sorry, but if your first instinct is to squash every shred of joy, maybe you need more than a vacation.”
Lee smirked. “So, what’s the real story, Benson? You trying to impress her or just get under her skin?”
Max felt the heat crawl up her cheeks—probably the coffee, probably. “I just want the parents to have a moment of happiness. They’re stuck in here all night, staring at their tinyhumans through plexiglass. If a little holiday spirit gets them through, who is it hurting?”
“Mm hm,” Lee said. She picked at a loose string on her scrubs. “And it has nothing to do with you always picking the hardest targets?”
“That’s—” Max started, then stopped. She looked around the room, at the crumpled gift wrap and the lopsided stack of holiday cards taped to the lockers. She could see Patel’s reflection in her mind, unsmiling, always moving with that pin-neat efficiency, never lingering except to critique or correct. Her dark compelling eyes. It drove Max nuts. It also fascinated her, in a way she hadn’t quite untangled.
She set her mug down, harder than intended. “She’s like—” Max flailed for words. “A robot, but one of those really expensive Japanese ones that can play chess and do surgery.”
Lee laughed, low and dry. “Yeah, but have you seen her during a code? It’s like she goes into bullet time.”
Max scowled. She had seen it. Dr. Patel’s hands during a line placement: steady as bedrock, calm even when the baby’s O2 dropped and the parents started to panic. Not a flicker of doubt, not even a tremor. Max envied that kind of certainty. She’d never admit it, but in the quiet part of her mind she replayed the image—a surgeon’s focus, the pulse in Patel’s throat, the sharp command in her voice. It was hard not to be drawn to it, even as she bristled at the lack of warmth.
“She could try being human about it, just once,” Max said. “Not everything has to be life and death.”
Lee’s look was all-knowing amusement. “Max, you wear reindeer ears for three weeks in a row and give out free stickers at the blood drive. If you two were any more opposite, the universe would collapse.”
“Ha,” Max huffed, but she felt her own mouth tug at the corners.
She grabbed the nearest gift bag—a blue one with snowmen, someone had scrawled “Winters Family” in Sharpie on the tag—and started rifling through the contents. Stuffed animals, mittens, a novelty mug shaped like a penguin. There was something soothing about lining them up, each gift a small guarantee that tomorrow would be better for someone, even if only for a moment.
“Are you coming to the ugly sweater contest?” Lee asked. “Or is that too much for our Grinch Boss?”
Max grinned, picturing Patel’s face if she showed up in last year’s abomination—a knit monstrosity with blinking LED lights and a Santa riding a llama. “Oh, I’ll be there. Just wait.”
She set the gifts in a neat row, then turned to Lee, her mood lighter, the earlier sting already fading. “You know what? Let her hate it. I’m not letting her kill my holiday.”
“That’s the spirit.” Lee’s eyes sparkled. “Now go save Christmas, Max.”
She scooped up the armload of presents, balanced them against her hip, and made for the door, already composing the message she’d leave for the next shift. Out in the hallway, the light was lower, the decorations glimmering in the dark like little promises.
She paused, for just a second, and thought of Patel, alone in her glass-walled office, probably disinfecting her pen after every use. Maybe she’d bring her a cookie later, just to see if the impossible could be done. Could there be a softness lurking behind that frosty exterior? Max doubted it.
But for now, there were stockings to hang, and babies to cheer, and Max wasn’t about to let anybody—not even the queen of ice herself—ruin the one night a year that even the hardest hearts softened.
She strode back toward the NICU, arms full, whistling off-key, and the echo of her laugh lingered long after she turned the corner.
