"Next stop, Chicago, Van Buren Street Station. Van Buren Street Station, next stop," the Conductor called on the public address system, even though I was the only passenger onboard.
I sat in the Parlor Car one more time as the locomotive and cars of the Polar Express now rode familiar rails, from the south no less, into Chicago. Rails that I had traveled many times upon in my daily commutes from Indiana. I had never felt so refreshed and renewed from a train trip in my life though, as I was now. It had been better than even my first trip on this magic train. I was feeling wonderful as the train slowed to a stop at the Van Buren Street platforms, the wheels gently squealing as the brakes were applied a final time for me.
"Careful, watch your step," the Conductor warned as he opened the door and I stepped off the Polar Express back at the high-platformed station. Having lost my magic sleigh bell during my previous trip on this train, I double-checked one more time to make sure the doll was still in my left overcoat pocket, as I also made sure that my laptop bag was slung over my right shoulder. As soon as my first foot touched the platform though, it slid out from under me on a fine coating of ice and snow, and I fell flat on my back on the platform again.
Things seemed to go dark once more as I heard the Conductor kneeling over me, calling, "Sir . . . Sir . . ."
"Sir . . . Sir . . ." I now heard, with many more noises around me. I heard people talking, and even sensed a crowd around me. Someone was kneeling over me, calling to me, "Sir . . . Sir . . . are you alright? I'm a doctor," the voice said. All I could tell was that the person talking to me was female.
I began to become aware of my body again . . . of the serious pain now in my head and back. I was aware that the wind hand been knocked out of me, and that I now had difficulty breathing. My arms were stretched out either side of me. I could still feel them as I lay prone on the platform. My left hand now felt something against it . . . what seemed like artificial hair, a small, plastic head, and the lacy frills of a small dress, even a veil. My left fingers could barely touch it. I suddenly became fearful that whatever it was, it might be knocked out of my grasp.
"Left . . . hand . . ." I managed to murmur urgently, still just beginning to regain consciousness.
"Oh my God," I now heard the woman kneeling over me gasp. I sensed the object being lifted out of my left fingers. I turned my head slowly and opened my eyes, trying to focus on the object the woman was now holding and examining. "It's the doll!" the female doctor now said. "The doll . . . that we saw, years ago . . ."
"Do you . . . remember me?" she now said to me as I tried to squint my eyes and focus on what seemed like her dark hair and tan face. I just moaned something and began slightly shaking my head. She then leaned down to me and whispered in my ear, "Are you the boy I couldn't help staring at on the Polar Express? The one who found my ticket? The one I shared those adventures with?"
A shock of amazement ran right through me as I put two and two together . . . her words, with that voice, the sweet scent and feel of her hair, and the warmth and smoothness of her cheek as it brushed against mine. I tried again to look and focus on her, as she pulled her own head back slightly to look at me again.
"Yesss . . ." I now whispered. "Polar Express . . ."
"Do you know how long I've been wondering just how real you and all that were?" she quietly asked with something of a tearful smile now in her voice. "Do you know how long I've wished that you were real? I . . . I gave up hope last Christmas. I even dreamed that I couldn't get on the Polar Express last time because I couldn't take it if you hadn't gotten on again . . ."
"So, it was you . . . You we stopped to pick up . . . this trip . . . But you didn't get on," I whispered slowly, the memories of seeing the crying figure in the apartment from the train coming back.
She looked at me strangely while still kneeling over me. "That was Christmas Eve . . . last year. I thought it was a dream that I allowed the Polar Express to pass me by . . ."
"I was there . . . on that train . . ." I whispered.
"It was real?" she now whispered, almost crying.
"Yes," I assured, remembering her message and our encounter at the North Pole. "It was real . . . and so am I."
She allowed herself to cry for a moment in wonder as she gently held her gloved hands to her face, seeming to try to conceal her emotions while she still looked at me.
"Your message . . . the light . . . North Pole . . ." I added in confirmation, now knowing whom I had found . . . or rather, who had found me.
"Make way! Make way! Paramedics!" we both now heard two men announce nearby.
"Let's get you to a hospital," she gently said, taking a breath and trying to regain her composure as she saw the paramedics approaching. "I'm a doctor," she now told the paramedics, showing her hospital photo ID badge to them as they knelt down and began to check me out. "He appears to have suffered a concussion on the rear of his head, and is exhibiting signs of moderate shock."
She carefully ran her thinly-gloved hands under my shoulders and back from both sides, before adding, "But otherwise there appear to be no major fractures in his shoulders, hips, or back. He appears stable enough for transport. I'll be going with this man to the hospital, though," she added, looking warmly at me.
The paramedics then departed to fetch a stretcher.
"Here," I weakly said, feeling the doll lying once again by my left hand and picking it up. "This is for you . . . Merry Christmas."
She reverently took the doll, dirty and time worn as it was, and looked at it again. She then held it close to her as she looked at me with renewed tears in her eyes, before carefully tucking it inside her own overcoat.
"I'm not supposed to do this for a patient," she said, as she now gently cushioned my head with her gloved hand while the paramedics were still away. "And I haven't ever done this on a first date. But," she said, still hardly able to believe what was happening, "you got my message . . . my Polar Express wish . . ."
"I did," I confirmed, "and I wished it with you."
I could now sense she wanted to hug me tightly with joy. But given my injuries on the platform, I could also sense the physician in her was keeping her from doing so.
"Well . . . Merry Christmas. And thank you, thank you so much," she whispered as tears fell from her eyes and she gently gave me an ever so soft, but soul-melting kiss.
I could only look at her and smile after that kiss of hers.
Seeing the paramedics return with a stretcher, she took a deep breath again, trying to resume her professional demeanor. "Okay guys, let's lift him on three," the doctor now professionally instructed the two paramedics as she gently placed her hands underneath my head and one shoulder. "One . . . two . . . three."
I felt myself being carefully lifted onto the wheeled stretcher. I was then conveyed up the stairs and out of the station to the waiting ambulance.
"You live . . . in north Chicago," I whispered as we approached the ambulance. "What were you doing here? At Van Buren Station? These trains don't serve your neighborhood."
"Now I know you were on that train outside my apartment!" she said with another warm, tearful smile as she gently shook her head. "But you know, tonight I felt led, inspired to take a walk before I went home. I was even about to take a ride on the South Shore . . . for the heck of it. It just felt like the right thing to do. That's when I found you, lying on the platform."
"Sorry you didn't get your train ride tonight," I hoarsely apologized.
"Maybe we can fix that," she suggested. "Later."
All during the ambulance ride to the hospital, and right through admission into the Emergency Room's Triage section, she never let go of my hand once, except to take the gloves off of hers.
Some might say that we weren't really each other's type. There were times when I might have agreed with such an assessment. She later confessed to me that she had wondered about that, too, for a long time. But seeing her light brown hand intertwined with my fairer-skinned fingers in the ambulance . . . nothing had ever looked so right to me now.