All I Want For Christmas
Santana
The hospital doesn't shut down on Christmas. I should have known this by now. It's probably my fault, anyway, considering I agreed to this. I didn't want this to be my life, I never signed up for this, believe me. I am Santana Lopez, and I am a medical surgeon. I used to be Santana Lopez, aspiring musician.
Sometime along the way, I just realized that my dream of becoming a performer wasn't going to happen. At this point, it doesn't matter who made the decision for me to become a doctor. My parents were right, I needed stability, and even though performing is my passion, dancing on bar stages for nasty old men isn't what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
Correction, it is what I want to be doing. But I can't do it, I'm getting too old to rely on tips from old men and minimum wage from my job as a waitress. Sometimes I truly do not want to accept that this is my life. Sometimes I feel like I am trapped in these walls, expected to cut open human flesh and fill out charts, and then go home and wash the blood off my clothes like nothing ever happened. I'm expected to tell people that they are dying, or that their loved one is dead, or that their insurance won't cover it.
I cannot accept that this is going to be the rest of my life. Even now, when I know that my coat is clean and my gloved fingers are clear of blood, I can feel the bits and pieces of the dead, and the sick, and the dying, clinging to my skin. And there is nothing that I can do to relieve their pain. I try not to think about what I'm doing, especially when I'm doing it. I try to fly into another dimension, where I am on stage, dancing and singing and living a life much different than this one.
I know it sounds dangerous, but it's a lot safer than looking at the blood, at the perfect incisions that I am making on human flesh, and thinking about the mess of codes that becomes a jumbled mess in my head every time I try to follow them. It's much easier to think about song lyrics, about choreography, about being backstage and meeting people who love my music for what it is.
Ideally, I'd be doing a holiday show right now, in someplace much more glamorous than this one. The white walls of this hospital would be transformed into a stadium, and the sirens from the ambulances would instead be the sounds of screaming fans from around the world. My scrubs and generic white Nike's would be replaced with a beautiful red gown and black high-heels that made a rhythmic noise when I strutted across the stage. I would belt out the lyrics to one of my original songs, and the audience would sing them back to me.
Dreams are dreams, aren't they?
"Doctor Lopez! We've got a situation in the east wing!" I hear Nurse Quinn yell as she jogged through the corridor in her own generic outfit. She's perhaps my only friend, the only person I have to give me advice. It's strange, that after such a long time, we still call each other by our formal names at work. It isn't a rule.
"I can't do a surgery right now, I have another one scheduled in thirty minutes."
"We've got Doctor Cohen on call, but we need to calm her down, she's allergic to most of the sedatives we have and he said not to give her anything right now because her immune system is down and she isn't really hurt. She's mostly being kept for observation." Quinn speaks quickly, her cheeks are flushed with color.
"Why can't you try to calm her down?"
"I tried, and the whole hospital knows that you're amazing at that."
"Q—"
"No, Santana. Please, look, I know we aren't supposed to say anything, but I know her and—I really can't watch her like this. Please." Quinn's voice got heavy at the end, and her chin quivered slightly. Fuck. I can't watch pretty girls cry.
"Okay, okay, I'll be there just... don't cry, okay?" Quinn's eyes quickly light up again, and she smiles at me with pearly white teeth.
"Thank you!" She says and I walk through the corridors, my sneakers squeaking against the floor.
When I get to the east wing, I immediately hear a woman struggling against strong arms, yelling for a family member that obviously wasn't there. This is the worst and best part of my job. When I see her face, the world does not stop moving, and the sirens outside do not slow to a stop, and the smell of blood does not leave the building, but I swear—if only for a second—I just saw an angel.
She has cuts on her face, and pieces of glass in her hair, but I see beyond that. She is beautiful, yes. But she's also bigger than beautiful. She looks like art, and I read once that art wasn't supposed to be beautiful, it was supposed to make you feel something. And god, does she make me feel something. In fact, she made me feel more than something, it was like I had been dead for so many years and I felt my heart beat in my chest for the first time in a long time.
Her eyes—I kid you not—they held songs in them. I looked into her panic-stricken eyes and I heard music. I heard soft piano notes begin to play, and a velvety voice begin to sing.
"Move, Finn, I've got this." I say as I snap out of my—whatever that was. He quickly moves away, and he has that look on his face that he gets when he's scared. He looks kind of like a gassy baby.
"Hey. Stop thrashing. It won't help whatever it is you're trying to accomplish here, and by the sounds of it you're trying to see someone. We can't let you in right now, because we are busy trying to save them. If you just wait out here and don't distract the doctors responsible for their lives—and yours, you'll both see each other soon enough." I don't exactly know what came over me, but the girl is quickly rendered speechless. These damn nurses, they never learn that trying to be soft doesn't work.
The girl's lip begins to quiver, and I try to look away. I told you—I really can't watch pretty girls cry. Fuck this, it's Christmas. I can be soft on Christmas.
"Hey, it's okay." I say and put my hand on her shoulder. Her skin is soft, and I can feel the bone behind it.
"I just... I don't want this to be how I spend my Christmas, and especially not with my brother in surgery." Oh, a brother. That's good. No—I mean, it's not good, but I figured it was a boyfriend or something. People act like this when there is a boyfriend involved.
"Don't forget you're preaching to the choir. I'm working on Christmas." It's sad, really, that I'm working on Christmas, but what are the alternatives? I don't actually have that many friends. This is my life now, a land of broken dreams that are out of my reach and working at a damn hospital on Christmas. Death has no place on Christmas, no matter how not-religious I am. Me being gay kind of ruined Christmas for me a long time ago.
"What would you rather be doing right now?" She asks, and I see flashes of light behind my eyelids when I blink. The stage. The fans. The dress. My voice booming and moving a whole stadium to their feet.
"Performing, ideally. I've always wanted to do a show on Christmas." My voice is uncharacteristically soft, and it almost scares me how soft this girl had me in so little time. I don't tell people these things. Not even Quinn. All she knows is that I had a dream that crashed. It's not that different from everybody else here.
"You wanted to be a singer?" The girl asks, as she sits up and runs a hand through her hair. She doesn't seem like she's too hurt, which is good. Not that I care—well I do, but not in a way I shouldn't. Fuck. Fuck shit. This girl has me wrapped around her pinky finger and I don't even know her name.
"Yes."
"I've always wanted to be dancer... Why did you give up on music?" I take another look at her, and I can see the dancer in her. Her muscles are lean and her legs are long. I subconsciously lick my lips, and I know that she noticed, but she doesn't say anything. She's probably too flustered to think anything of it.
"Dreams don't always come true." I say, as I recall her question. Music will always be my dream, but fame is out of reach now. This is my life now, an endless gray haze of white coats and blue scrubs at Lima General. This isn't LA, or New York, this is simply Lima, Ohio, and it's where I live. It's where I will stay for the rest of my life, as my father did, and I will break my own heart every Christmas until the day I give up.
My skin suddenly itches, and I am hit with the need to take a shower. I can feel the pieces of the sick and the dead and the dying sticking to my skin. I can feel their blood on my fingertips, and there is nothing I can do to help them.
"They still can."
"I spent twenty years of my life trying to make it happen. It's not going to happen." I say as I pick at the skin around my fingernails where the blood usually sticks. The girl notices, I can tell, but she doesn't say anything.
"My name is Brittany." She says, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. Brittany. Brittany. Brittany. I feel like I could say her name forever without getting tired of it. Each syllable falls so perfectly after the one that came before it in a way that my name never did.
"Santana." I say, and the name feels a little bit sour in my mouth.
"Pretty. Can you sing for me?" She asks, and my heart does a double take. She wants me to sing? What if my voice isn't what she imagined? What if it isn't any good?
"I—"
"Please. You said you'd rather be performing right now." Fuck. Okay, if I didn't think she had me wrapped around her finger before, she does now.
"Okay. But just because it's Christmas." I take a deep breath and look at her before I start singing. I can imagine the flashing lights and the stage floor below my feet, I can smell Christmas trees and I can see the mistletoe hanging from the ceiling. I can see the holiday decorations on the stage, and the fake snow falling. My mouth opens.
When I open my eyes again, she is staring up at me with a wide smile and her blue eyes are shimmering in the light.
"You're an amazing singer, Santana."
"I'm alright."
"Are you kidding, you're more than alright. I feel a lot better than I did a minute ago... You're really beautiful, you know that?"
"Oh, I—um—"
Before I can finish, I am tasting the skies, and forget God—she is holy, and she is blessing me with her breath. Her lips taste nothing like gray, like blood, or like dust. They are alive, and I am alive, and as the universe slips off it's axis, I can taste the moon and the sun and the water and everything that is right and holy and good. I can taste art on her breath, and I can only form one coherent thought.
Just three words long.