For the Mercy Street Holiday 2016 Prompt Challenge on Tumblr: "Christmas Tree" (Dec 6)
There was no way Jed was getting a tree this year.
First of all, the damn thing probably wouldn't fit in his matchbox of an apartment, not without cutting the top of it off, and besides, he didn't have any decorations, and he wasn't about to go out and buy some cheap drugstore lights and plastic ornaments, just for the sake of a holiday he didn't feel that keen on celebrating anyway.
It was strange, the things he missed, the unexplained nostalgia he felt for the old decorations, which was crazy because he hadn't even picked them out in the first place. But they were gone, having been packed up into a moving box labelled "X-Mas," and were now probably sitting on the floor of some rented storage space on the outskirts of San Francisco. Although maybe by this point in December, she'd have bought a tree, had someone help her strap it to the roof of the Tahoe like he used to, brought it back home and poured a glass of wine and put on the Christmas music while she walked around and decided where each ornament would go.
No, a tree was definitely out of the question.
Plus – and he had never told her this, not once, just because he knew he would get accused of being difficult, of deliberately trying to spoil her enjoyment of the holiday – he really, really hated how the loose pine needles got into everything.
Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him, then – and the way this year was going, nothing should really surprise him – that despite his best-laid plans, he still found himself with a Christmas tree, not at home, but at work, jutting out massively into their tiny lobby, halfway between the nurses' station and the elevators. He didn't need to guess who was responsible, especially as she was right there, standing on a chair, painstakingly draping what were no doubt handmade garlands of popcorn and cranberries across its branches. She had even roped in one of the chaplains to assist, whose job seemed to consist of slowly doling out the additional lengths and quietly reminding her to watch her footing as she moved.
Jed couldn't imagine that someone – Major Summers, or one of the other administrators – hadn't told Nurse Green that the lobby was not an ideal location for a seven-foot tall Douglas Fir. He doubted it would have stopped her, though; she was clearly a woman on a mission. It was almost too bad she had confined herself to the nursing profession, he thought, because she would have made an excellent commander in the field.
"Now, Chaplain Hopkins, don't you be lettin' me fall…" Jed heard her murmur.
"I wouldn't dream of it," the chaplain answered, "but I really wish you'd be more careful – or let me do this part. We've got enough injured patients in this hospital… the doctors probably don't want any more."
She laughed, a soft tinkly sound. "I'm almos' done, I promise."
Jed glanced up to see her rising onto her tip-toes, reaching towards the top branches. The chaplain, for his part, registered a look of moderate panic as he stood behind her and braced his arms widely, perhaps hoping to stave off disaster.
At some point, Jed knew, someone would need to put a damper on the enthusiasms of Nurse Green – there was only so much holiday cheer and goodwill towards man one hospital could take.
Although, even he had to admit, the Thanksgiving dinner had been nice, and he had thoroughly enjoyed tucking into a second helping of stuffing, which was honestly some of the best he'd ever had. He still wasn't sure what was in it – cornbread, maybe?
But, Christ, the break room, he thought with a sigh. She'd turned his tiny refuge for the occasional cup of coffee into a goddamn Miracle on 34th Street. He couldn't go in there anymore without the pervasive aroma of cinnamon-spice-gingerbread-evergreen-forest getting stuck in his nostrils for the remainder of the day.
The stockings were even more ridiculous, stuck up on the wall like some precocious child's art project, although his immediate response to them wasn't much better: he had immediately searched for Hale's, and for minute seriously considered trying to get his hands on some chunks of coal. After locating his own – a cheery set of reindeer antlers sprouting from the "F" – he had turned back towards the coffeemaker, only to have his gaze catch on a different stocking, this one closer to the bottom, her name stark and white against the dark burgundy of the fabric.
He hadn't thought much of it, not really, not until that night, when he had made a quick stop at the drugstore for some toilet paper and deodorant, and at the end of an aisle came across the display of usual tourist knickknacks: Washington, D.C. sweatshirts, refrigerator magnets, sets of shot glasses. The snow globe had seemed pretty unremarkable, set out among the other offerings, but it immediately drew him back to their conversation, that morning when she had come in wearing a slick yellow raincoat, like some kind of old-fashioned Maine fisherman, tendrils of her dark hair damply plastered against the side of her face.
He could tell she was upset – although slightly ruffled might have been a better term for it, as no one could rightly accuse the sensible Nurse Phinney of being anything but self-possessed – just for the way she was talking to him, at such length, about personal things, things that didn't involve patients or dosing schedules or post-op recovery. She was going on about winters in Boston, and he could tell from the edge in her voice that she missed home.
He hadn't known what to tell her – "This city is weird, its weather is weird, you'll get used to it"? – and then the only thing that had come to mind was his memory of the last blizzard, when he and Eliza had wandered downtown to see what everything looked like covered in white.
At that moment, though, for reasons beyond his understanding, the memory hadn't contained Eliza; instead, he was there with Nurse Phinney, all wrapped up in a thick winter coat and scarf, a Red Sox beanie pulled over her hair, and he watched her eyes grow big and her smile widen as she took in the gleaming, pristine expanse of snow.
Maybe that's why he had grabbed the snow globe and dropped it in the bottom of his shopping basket. It was a strange impulse, and he felt even stranger sneaking it into her stocking the next day – normally he wasn't given to such acts of unabashed sentimentality – but for some reason he liked the idea of her having it and looking at it, the closest he would probably ever get to re-creating his vision of her standing in the snow.
Letting himself think like this, though, and talking to her the way he did, with his teasing and sometimes deliberate provocation, the way his eyes always seemed to find her in a crowd – even he could recognize that it was beyond stupid. They worked together, he was at least ten years older than her, he was a doctor and she was a nurse, and, of course, he was still married – or at least until the paperwork went through. He knew he should leave her be, not try to involve her in the accidental quagmire that was his life. That would be the right thing to do, the sensible thing. It was what she would do, were she in his position.
A soft squeal and a rough scrape of chair legs against the linoleum floor quickly turned his attention upwards, just in time to watch the tiny form of Nurse Green as she lost her balance, her hands fruitlessly reaching out for something to grab onto, and began to fall backwards in the air.
For a split second, Jed could feel his heart stilling, his brain quickly calculating the angle of the fall, wondering if it might result in cranial and vertebral damage or if she was going to luck out with just a contusion and a few nasty bruises.
But of course – and he wasn't even sure why he was surprised at this point – she landed directly in the arms of the chaplain, who at that moment looked equally terrified and enraptured.
"Nurse Green… are you alright?" the young man stammered out.
"Oh, my stars," she said breathlessly, as she curled her hands up around his shoulders for support.
And then all Jed could do was shake his head and roll his eyes a little, but not before he noticed that just before she slipped, Nurse Green had managed to finish decorating the tree, setting in place the final lengths of red and white decorative garland. Not even gravity could derail her from her mission.