So, she nursed me back to health at the hospital. Sure, she was a doctor in the hospital's pediatric ward . . . and I wasn't a kid. But she would visit and check on me every day, usually a couple times a day, even on her weekend off. On the day I was released from the hospital, I just couldn't find myself saying goodbye to her, and neither could she.
"Would you like to go for a train ride?" I invited as we stood at the hospital's front door, both of us not quite knowing what to do next.
She just hugged me.
Luckily, she was able to take the day off. So, I treated her to a ride on the South Shore line that morning as our first date outside the hospital. I even pointed out my house in Beverly Shores as we went by it on the train.
We went by my house because I had planned to take her to lunch in a classic café I knew of beside the line a little further east in Michigan City, Indiana, where we could continue watching the silver and orange electric interurban trains go by, right down the middle of the street, just like we remembered the Polar Express doing. Having never been there before, she practically fell in love with the town and its classic brick buildings and tree-lined streets. Her falling in love with me I wasn't worried about right then.
Over lunch however, I eventually confessed to her where I was in life at the moment . . . job and money-wise. I almost cringed as I told her, suddenly fearing it could cause her to lose interest in me — at least put a damper on our day.
" . . . I just felt you should know this about me . . . where I'm at right now," I said, concluding my confession as I looked down. "I just care enough about you to want to be honest with you."
"Don't worry about it," she just responded with a smile, to my surprise. "Give me that check, please."
"But . . ." I replied, wanting to be a gentleman and pay for our lunch anyway.
"You don't want to screw up the wish now, do you? . . . Our Polar Express wish?" she simply replied.
"No . . ." I said with a growing smile as I passed, more like surrendered, the bill for our lunch to her. I had a feeling she would come to use that question on me again in the future. Possibly a lot!
"If you don't mind my saying so . . . it seems to me you've just been in the wrong line of work," she then suggested, suddenly seeming to know and have a better perspective on me than I did! "It has got you part of the way. But now, you just need to change tracks — get on a different train in life. I'd like to help . . . if you'd let me. Don't worry, you can return the favor though. I'm not exactly liking hospital work myself."
I just kissed her across the table, right there.
"Thank you . . ." we both just said together, at the same time.
"What for?" I then asked. "What am I doing for you here?"
"Just making my wish come true," she replied with a tear in her eye again.
"I'm sorry I missed your train years ago," I said, almost sighing with regret. "I could have been making your wish come true a long time ago."
"And I'm so sorry I didn't take the 'second chance' train I was being given last Christmas," she replied, knowing what I was referring to. "I've been haunted by that dream for a year now, and I've had to wait this whole extra year, too." She stopped and looked down. I could tell how she was now feeling over missing that run of the Polar Express.
"It's okay . . . it's all okay," I assured her as I held her hands across the table, trying to keep her from crying with regret.
"I am just so glad I listened to that idea inside me the other night to take that walk to Van Buren Street Station," she continued, trying to focus on the positive now. "I just suddenly felt I needed to be by, or on, a train that night, right then."
"I'm glad you did, too," I said warmly, "and so's the back of my head!"
"Could I tell you something crazy though?" she then quietly asked as she leaned forward closer towards me. "Something that just would seem to make no sense?"
"Tell me," I invited with a smile.
"Right now, I'm feeling the way I felt when I only heard and felt you as light," she said, almost whispering across the table, "up north . . . at the North Pole, years ago."
"I'm feelin' just as wonderful," I assured.
"Thank you . . . for urging me to let go of you though, and get back on the Polar Express that night," she said. "I like being here with you even better."
"Wait . . . I said that to you?" I replied in surprise. "I heard you say that to me — when I was up there Christmas Eve!"
She gave me a warm smile. "Maybe we were both hearing it, standing together closer than we thought," she suggested. "Good advice though, wasn't it? Glad we both took it. Maybe it's just part of the magic. But hey, since time seems to mean nothing there . . . let me just tell it to you right now."
"Go, my love," she then just up and said as she gently tightened her hold on my hands across the table, "Go. Get back on that train. And then get ready . . . 'cause I'm gonna find you."
There it suddenly was . . . that voice, and those words, together . . . right in front of me.
"Go, my special one . . ." I echoed back to her as I looked into her eyes, without thinking of what I was now saying. "Go. Get back on that train. And then find me. It will take a while. But don't stop searching. Just listen to your heart and mind, and do what feels right. That's how you will find me. You'll recognize me by my needing your help . . . and by something I'll have for you. I will make up for all the waiting, and the searching though. I will . . . I promise."
"What happened after Billy let go of his present," we both just added together, "and allowed the elves to put it back in Mr. C's bag? Go, please. For me . . . for us, now . . ."
We then could only stop and look at each other for a moment. There it was — that marvelous moment when we just knew . . . that it was right, and it was real, all real. The circle for us was now complete. Our final words and messages of encouragement to each other had been sent, right there in that café.
"I can't just sit across this table from you any longer," she tearfully whispered.
"Ready to enjoy some more magic?" I then suggested as we both then got up, and she drew close to me. "Let's go catch another train. I don't care where it's going."
She smiled, just before she buried her face against my shoulder and cried. Cried for joy as I held her tightly, just like we did together in the light.
— — — — —
We spent the rest of the afternoon riding the South Shore line that day, running all the way east to South Bend and back through the Indiana dunelands along Lake Michigan . . . both ways. Several times! We began making up for lost time, lost chances, lost Christmases, right there, on those trains we rode together.
"Would you mind if we did dinner, too?" she asked as we finally made it back to Chicago that evening, sealing her invitation with a kiss as we sat together on a train as it approached the end of the line at Randolph Street Station.
"We're in your town now," I smiled. "Lead the way."
She proceeded to treat me to dinner that evening at a grand restaurant along the city's Magnificent Mile, as we talked more. A lot more. We capped the night with a chilly but wonderful moonlight walk and kiss on the Navy Pier along the Lake Michigan shore. Although I'd done a lot of sitting during the day, she insisted on hailing a taxi to get us the short distance to the pier, so that I wouldn't overdo it on my first day out of the hospital.
"Merry Christmas, my Polar Express guy," she said to me as we ended our kiss at the Navy Pier, even though it was now several days after December 25th. But it was just the fifth day of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
"Merry Christmas, my Polar Express . . . partner," I replied, openly hinting where I wanted to go with all this — knowing then that not only did I have a fellow appreciator of train travel in my arms, but a kindred, Christmas-loving spirit as well, even a Santa's helper of my very own. With yet another one of her tearfully grateful smiles, and even a soft "yes" from her . . . two of them, actually . . . she let me know she now had such a person in her life, too.
"Just to be sure," I cautioned, " . . . you don't think all this is too soon? Too quick?"
"What do you think?" she asked me as we continued to hold each other, throwing it right back to me, almost the way the hobo would.
"I think we have us quite a Christmas to plan this coming year," I replied.
"Yeah . . ." she agreed smiling, as she gave me another powerful, soul-melting kiss that I now knew so well.
— — — — —
By the next Christmas, we decided to run our own 'Polar Express' — renting a whole classic train complete with a 2-8-4 Berkshire steam locomotive, to get married on. During the reception afterwards, and after we had each changed out of our wedding clothes, I had even arranged for her to drive the locomotive for a while as a surprise. She is still fondly recalling that highlight of our wedding day. We ran the train on the South Shore line, right past my house . . . well, it's our house now.
She's still a pediatrician, but now she runs her own clinic just two stops from our Beverly Shores home east along the South Shore line in her adopted and beloved Michigan City. And when she's not healing children, she's taking in and repairing toys at a toy rescue clinic she helped to establish in a vacant storefront right next to her clinic, inspired by the neglected toys both she and I had seen in the toys car of the Polar Express, as well as by the doll that had helped her to find and recognize me. That clinic now helps forgotten and neglected toys to 'recover' and find new homes, bringing joy to children who could really use some.
The doll that helped us to recognize each other is bright and clean now herself, but never seems to stay in the same place in our home for long. So, she's anything but just forgotten and neglected on a shelf. And my bell, it hangs from its small leather straps in an archway between our dining room and living room — there to be rung by either one of us whenever we want a lift, or some Christmas spirit at any time of year, or to let the other know through its sweet tones that we love each other. Passing trains sometimes manage to ring it as well!
And me? Instead of trading commodities, I now help manage and run the railroad. And every year, I make sure that there is a 'Polar Express' that runs on my line at Christmastime — big steam locomotive and all. We sell tickets to anyone who wants to take part in the magic, as well as give away tickets to deserving children and their families, along with a fair number of the toys that my wife . . . well, both of us, really . . . rescue and heal at the toy clinic each year. I now even get to play the seemingly 'gruff' Conductor, but I make sure everyone has a good time. My wife and I also take turns driving the steam locomotive every once in a while — having each earned full engineer certifications, of course! It is now the thrill of a lifetime for both of us though, when I'm the Conductor and she's the Engineer of our 'Polar Express'. I love looking forward, waving my lantern, and seeing her look back from the cab with a knowing smile on her face, just before she pulls on the whistle cord.
In all this, my wife and I fully realize that we're just helping Mr. C to do his job. That's what we're doing now . . . together, and with more shared fun and joy than either of us could have ever imagined, or wished for.
On Christmas Eve though, I always see to it that space is left on the tracks, and that a running slot at a certain time is kept open in the railroad's official timetable. Even with our first child asleep, and another one now on the way, my wife and I are keeping our annual tradition together, watching out a trackside window of our home, right at five minutes before midnight, in case the real Polar Express shows up, even to pass by at speed.
Actually, we just call it to us now — closing our eyes as we hold each other tightly, just as we did in the light, with the rich tapestry of our shared Christmas all around us. Together, we feel the train's thunder on the tracks outside our house, and hear its whistle cry out loudly into the night.
We can't wait until it's time for our children to take a ride . . .