The Gift

January George

About the Story

An ICU nurse yearns for her family at Christmas…

Contents

The Gift

The Gift

To all the healthcare and frontline workers,

thank you.

The ICU was deceptively quiet, but Annalise had been a nurse long enough not to use that word. The only sound was the swish of her plastic gown, the soft beeping of IV pumps, and the shush of the ventilator filling her patient’s lungs with air. She glanced up at the readings on the monitor, noting them on the flowsheet—blood pressure from the arterial line, oxygen saturation, heart rhythm. Everything was stable. Not good, but stable. She paused at the bedside, glancing down at her patient. The man lay with his eyes closed, the thick intubation tube protruding from his mouth with a wide swath of adhesive wrapped around it and affixed to his cheek, holding it in place. His hair was slightly threaded with grey at the temples; he was only fifty-four.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispered.

It was easier when they were intubated; it was so hard watching them struggle to breathe or to see the fear in their eyes. She’d expected it to be better by now, but it wasn’t. It was worse. Thanksgiving hadn’t helped, and she remembered the apprehension she’d felt over the holiday, watching so many people travel.

“Looks like I’ll be busy at Christmas,” she’d remarked, watching the news after dinner. After fifteen years in hotel management, Ben had been laid off in the summer, and she’d had to leave her small community hospital to become a travelling nurse. A position that paid four times her previous salary. Most of her assignments had been within a few hours from home, but this one was too far to drive just for the day, and they were offering double pay. But Christmas in strange city, in a foreign hospital, was harder than she’d expected. She’d been a nurse for eighteen years and had worked her fair share of Christmases, but she’d always been home part of the day, and there’d always been a plate in the fridge. Tonight, she would go back to her hotel and a room service dinner, alone.

“Why don’t you take a break?” The nursing supervisor’s gruff voice came from the door of the patient’s room. Annalise liked her. She was to the point but fair. She’d told Annalise that she’d gotten the virus in the spring, during the first surge, and how sick and scared she’d been. There was a wariness about her; the same wariness Annalise had started to see in her own eyes.

“I have to get cardiac output readings from bed six in fifteen minutes.” They never used patients’ names, just the room number. It made it easier when they died. She didn’t want to think about Richard Thomas, whose wife, Patty, called every hour. Annalise tried to remember that she would do the same if it were Ben laying there and she couldn’t be with him, but it still frustrated her, pulling her away from her work. And the calls made it harder, thinking of his children, his family, how worried they must be.

A flicker of guilt over her thoughts made her reach out and squeeze Richard’s hand with her double-gloved one.

“I got it,” her supervisor said. “Go take a few minutes. There’s no one in the breakroom right now, and there’s some individually wrapped sandwiches and cookies.” The hospital’s ban on communal food irritated everyone. Usually, break rooms were overflowing with gifted food baskets this time of year. But now, everything was different.

She kept reminding herself that working on Christmas was better than laying in an ICU bed or not working at all. She was lucky, she tried to remember, but it didn’t feel that way.

“You sure?” She hated having to take everything off, and then put it all back on, but the bridge of her nose and her cheeks were numb from the pressure of the N95 digging into her face, and the thought of breathing unencumbered was too tempting to pass up.

“Go ahead, honey. Merry Christmas.”

Annalise paused outside of the break room, doffing the PPE in the prescribed sequence, and hanging each item on her designated hook. When her mask came off, she took a deep, grateful breath. She washed her hands for a full minute before rubbing the grooves on her face as she pushed open the breakroom door. She ignored the dirty mugs and crumbs on the counter, wrinkling her nose at the scent of bitter and burnt coffee. She rinsed the carafe and started a fresh pot then dug through the tray of Panera sandwiches until she found a Mediterranean veggie. Her stomach grumbled, and she was suddenly starving and thirsty. She took her water bottle from the fridge, drinking half of it in a single swallow while trying to remember the last time she’d gone pee.

Her phone vibrated against her hip, and she pulled it out, glancing at the display. She swiped to accept the call as she took a bite. “Hey, I just went on break and was going to call you as soon as I stuffed some food in my mouth.” She chewed for a second and swallowed. “Did everyone have a good Christmas?”

“It was weird without you.”

Ben’s voice, soft and familiar, made her sag against the wall. Annalise glanced at the clock over the sink. Almost seven, but it had been dark for hours. “Next year will be better.”

“How was your day?”

“Not bad.”

He chuckled softly. “Oops. Can’t say it. I know.”

She smiled. “It hasn’t been too busy. All the administrators and support staff are off, so it’s been nice. Don’t jinx me; I only have two hours left.”

“Nurses are as superstitious as sports fans and stage actors.”

She took another bite of her sandwich. Three weeks had passed since she’d seen her family, and she felt the acute pain of missing them, missing the small day-to-day things: homework, spilled cereal, tripping over sneakers left abandoned in the middle of a hallway. Kyle and Wes were thirteen and eleven. They didn’t need her as much as they had when they were younger, but she missed them, their smell, the way they still crowded her on the couch like they were drawn to her gravity. And she missed Ben, missed his dry sense of humor, how he always made her a perfect cup of coffee every morning and set it on the counter without her having to ask. She missed how he would absently rub her feet as they scrolled endlessly through the options on Netflix once the boys were in bed, never figuring out what to watch.

She missed her life before, when things hadn’t been so hard.

“I miss you.” Her voice hitched, and she fought against the urge to collapse and cry. Not here. Not now. Later, when she was back at her hotel. Then she could bury her face in her pillow and sob.

“Look out the window.” His voice held a teasing, gentle softness she didn’t understand.

She pushed off the wall and went to the glass, and for a second, she couldn’t make sense of what he wanted her to see.

Then… Ben wore his blue puffer coat and the fabric mask his aunt Carol had sewn, along with a wool cap with a bright red bow stuck on top of it. He stood with one hand holding his phone to his ear. With the other, he reached out to press against the glass. “Merry Christmas.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, and her hand came up to rest against his, separated by the thick layer of glass. The swell of emotion overwhelmed her. “I don’t understand… What are you doing here?”

“We woke up, opened presents, and then the boys said it wasn’t Christmas without you. We had nothing else to do, so I said, let’s go surprise her.”

“You guys drove five hours just to see me?”

He shrugged. “I got a room at your hotel, next door to yours. So, when you finish your shift, go take a shower, decontaminate, and then we’ll be there. We can order pizza and fight over what to watch on TV. It’ll be like being home, but without the dishes.”

She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the glass, and squeezing her eyes closed. “You have no idea how much I needed this.”

“We wanted to see you. We needed to see you. The boys fell asleep in the car, but I asked your supervisor for help getting you into the break-room to surprise you. I didn’t want to get their hopes up if it didn’t work.”

Her heart felt so full she could barely push out the words against the threat of tears. He was here; Kyle and Wes were here. “It’s perfect.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Anna, you’re…you’re amazing,” he said, his voice cracking. “You’ve taken on this job so you can provide for us, and I know how hard it is on you, being away from us. I’m so grateful for you. I don’t tell you that enough, and I love you so much.”

“I love you,” she whispered. Just seeing him, knowing he was there, felt like a salve on an aching wound. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d needed him until this moment. It wasn’t like any other Christmas they’d had, but they would be together, and that was what mattered.

“Merry Christmas, Annalise.”

She smiled, joy filling her heart. “Merry Christmas.”

The End

About January George

January George has been writing since she was a child and has always had a special love for happily ever after stories. She lives in upstate New York with her husband, children and two cats.

Learn more about January by visiting her website: https://januarygeorge.wordpress.com