An Evergreen Christmas

  He tapped her on her nose. “Apparently you and I listened to the same weather report.”

  “If you don’t like the weather in New Hampshire, then wait five minutes,” they said in unison, laughing at their coincidental timing.

  “Now that the drive is clear and I can find my car, I’m heading out.”

  Her heart sank. First she didn’t want him to stay. Now she didn’t want him to leave.

  Holly reached her hand up and patted his shoulder. “Thank you for coming by with the cookies.”

  They lightly bumped their heads together.

  “You’re welcome. I’ll bring more next time.”

  Holly circled past him. “Let me get your jacket.”

  She plucked Noel’s jacket from the coat stand and handed it to him.

  He slid it on, zipped it, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek.

  Holly blinked. Warmth spread from her stomach to her chest. And when he opened the door, she didn’t flinch despite the winter wind daring her to shiver. She waved to him as he ran to his car. “See you, tomorrow.”

  Noel waved back as he ducked into the driver’s seat. “Bright and early!”

  She slowly eased the door closed and watched him back out into the street. Then she saw it, Noel’s scarf draped over the coat rack. She flung open the door.

  “Hey, Noel,” she called. “You forgot your scarf.”

  But he was gone. She shut the door and leaned her back against it, holding Noel’s scarf. Holly ran her fingers across the smooth, soft wool. She shook her head and smiled. He left that on purpose!

  Holly held his scarf up to her nose and sniffed. It was warm as if he had just worn it. Hugging it, she retreated to her bedroom. She folded it into neat quarters and she laid Noel’s scarf on the dresser next to the framed photo with the ornaments. She’d return it to him tomorrow.

  Holly prepared for bed and slipped beneath the covers. She reached for the lamp on her nightstand when her cell phone buzzed. Her heartbeat jolted. She sprang upright. It’s him! Did he remember he forgot his scarf? Does he want to talk? She licked her lips and grabbed the phone, yanking it to her eyes. Holly sighed as she watched Aunt Mae’s phone number scroll across the screen. Oh shoot! I forgot to call her.

  “Hi, Aunt Mae.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I wake you, dear?”

  Holly shook her head. As if her aunt could see her! She paused. “No. I just got into bed.”

  “Is everything all right? You sound a bit strange.”

  She wiggled between the sheets. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier. I had company after I came home from the party.”

  “I’m so happy you went. How was it?”

  “It was…okay. I did okay.”

  “I knew you would. You need to get out more. Who came over?”

  “Oh, uh, another surgeon from the hospital.”

  “Do I know her?”

  Holly rolled her eyes. She knew Aunt Mae’s M.O. well. “It was a man. He’s new on staff.”

  “That was nice of you to invite him.”

  “I didn’t. He came over to drop off some cookies. I left the party early to attend to a patient.” What a lie!

  Now Aunt Mae paused. “I hope your patient is all right.”

  “She is.”

  “So tell me about this new surgeon. What’s his name?”

  “Not much to say.” Another lie. “His name is Noel. We operated together and then went to the party.”

  “Noel. What a nice name. Very Christmassy.”

  She dared not mention his penguin tie and Santa sticker. That would only spur her aunt into more ‘oohs, ahs.’ “A lot of men are named Noel.”

  “Ooh. Kismet! It being the holiday season and all.”

  “I’m really tired, Aunt Mae.” Liar. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, dear. Sweet dreams,” her aunt crooned.

  “Okay. I’m hanging up now.”

  Holly tapped the “end call” button and turned off the light. Her cell vibrated and then jingled. She sat up and flicked on the light to read the text message.

  “Thanks for a nice night. Got your cell from the hospital, feigning emergency! See you tomorrow. BTW. This is Noel.”

  She grinned and texted back. “Thanks, NOEL, again for cookies and company. Glad you’re home safe. See you tomorrow for sure.”

  Chapter Five

  Holly stood smiling in front of the elevator, her coffee in one hand, and her tote bag with Noel’s scarf in the other hand. Today was going to be a good day. The barista got her order right, she had three O.R. cases today, and she had peeked at Noel’s schedule first thing this morning. He had two surgeries. She’d keep rounds tight. That way she’d invite him to breakfast. She’d bring the scones she had bought at the coffee shop with her, sparing him from the, okay but bland, hospital cafeteria morning menu.

  The elevator doors parted. Holly squeezed inside, bunching up with the morning rush hour nurses and docs. About to turn around to face the doors, she saw a cap of deep auburn hair beyond the crowd. The elevator stopped on the next floor. The people shuffled around, allowing space for the sole person to join them. Holly slipped sideways to make more room. She glanced up. There was Noel with his back pinned against the back of the packed elevator. He smiled and shrugged. Her heart pounded. She gripped her coffee cup so hard that the plastic lid popped off. Clifford caught it. Oh my God! She hadn’t noticed her intern was in the crowd.

  Clifford snapped the lid back on. “Here you go, Dr. Green.”

  “Uh. Hi. Thanks.”

  Heat rose up her face. Monosyllabic words were all she could mutter.

  The throng of medical staff slid out on the sixth floor and dispersed, leaving Holly, Noel, and Clifford standing just outside of the elevator. The doors whooshed closed.

  “Is it always crowded like that?” Noel asked.

  Holly and Clifford nodded.

  Holly stared at Clifford, hoping he’d get the hint and leave before she’d have to tell him to shoo.

  “I’ll get the charts ready,” Clifford said.

  “That would be helpful. Get everybody ready. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Clifford grinned. “Yes, Dr. Green.”

  He lumbered away in his boat-sized loafers. Holly smiled and shook her head. His gait awkward as a puppy, one would never have guessed he had the steadiest hands.

  Holly and Noel stood alone.

  He broke the silence. “That was fun last night.”

  “Yes, it was.” Please say something more prolific. But before she could say anything, the hospital ward secretary interrupted.

  “Dr. Shepherd, your new team is waiting for you.”

  “I’ll see you later, Holly…Dr. Green. Perhaps we can have breakfast before our cases.”

  Hey, I was going to say that, she thought. “That will be great.”

  Noel winked. “I’ll meet you after rounds at the nurse’s station.”

  Holly smiled. “Absolutely.”

  Noel followed the secretary. Holly sighed. She had never been clumsy, until now.

  Holly gulped the last of her coffee and tossed the empty cup into the trashcan. She straightened her lab coat and smoothed her hair before heading to the surgical wing. Her team was waiting for her with quizzical looks upon their faces. Today was the first day she hadn’t been standing on the unit, tapping her toes, and glancing at her watch.

  “Good morning, Dr. Green,” they said.

  “Good morning to all of you.” She strode ahead of her team, not looking back. “Who’s up first?”

  “I am,” Candice said.

  Holly turned to face her and arched her eyebrows. “Go.”

  Candice gave a succinct summary of the first patient, her voice not quivering once.

  Holly nodded. “That was an excellent presentation, Ms. Baxter.”

  Candice gave a curt nod back. Holly looked at Clifford and smiled. He had taught the timid medical stud
ent well.

  One by one, her team performed with precision. They were ahead of schedule, having rounded on every patient except the last one- Mrs. Shale. A nurse exited her room right before Holly and her team was about to enter it.

  “Good morning, Dr. Green,” she said. “I took care of Mrs. Shale last night. Her temperature has been creeping up, and this morning it’s 101.”

  Holly knitted her eyebrows and walked inside Mrs. Shale’s room. She waved to her patient and scooted up to her bedside. The group of residents and medical students surrounded Mrs. Shale.

  “Did my nurse tell on me?” Mrs. Shale teased.

  Holly smiled. “Yes, she did.”

  “I’m fine. The thermometer must be wrong.”

  Holly winked at her. “Let’s see.” She picked up the digital thermometer from the bed stand. “Open wide.”

  Mrs. Shale frowned. “I guess I have no choice. Looks like I’m outnumbered.”

  The team chuckled. Mrs. Shale relented and opened her mouth. Holly slid the probe under her tongue.

  “Close, please,” Holly said.

  Mrs. Shale obeyed. She rolled her eyes while they waited for the verdict. The digital thermometer beeped.

  “Open, please.” Holly read the result. “Aha. Not 101.”

  “See? I told you that thing was off.”

  Holly grinned. “Your temperature is 101 point 2.”

  Mrs. Shale shook her head. “Nah. It can’t be.”

  Holly held the thermometer in front of her doubting patient.

  Mrs. Shale reached for her eyeglasses and pushed them to the bridge of her nose. “All right. I am a tad warm. But I’m feeling well.” She stifled a cough.

  “I heard that,” Holly said. She stuck her stethoscope into her ears and rested her hand on Mrs. Shale’s shoulder. “Lean forward a little.” Placing the stethoscope against her patient’s back, she instructed, “Take some deep breaths.” She listened.

  “I’m all right,” Mrs. Shale protested.

  “Shhh! Just breath. In and out.” Holly frowned at the crackles coming from Mrs. Shale’s lungs. She removed the earpieces. “Your lungs are not expanding enough, a common problem after anesthesia. You have postoperative pulmonary atelectasis. You need to exercise your lungs, to expand them, otherwise you’ll end up with pneumonia.” She picked up the incentive spirometer, the post-operative breathing device, from the bedside stand and handed it to Mrs. Shale. “Show me how much you can inhale.”

  Mrs. Shale blew out a breath and clamped her lips around the plastic tube’s mouthpiece that was connected to a chamber with numbered slash marks and gave a strained inhalation. She barely raised the piston of the flow meter. “I guess I need practice.”

  “Yes you do.” Holly shoved the yellow marker half way up the chamber. “You have the hang of it. I’m sure you’ll get better. I want you to do this ten times every hour. Your goal is to bring that piston up to this yellow marker and beyond. I’ll stop by later and check on your progress. Because you have a fever and crackles in your lungs, I’m ordering a chest x-ray. If your fever persists, I may need to start you on antibiotics.”

  Mrs. Shale clung to the device. “I promise to practice hard.”

  Holly smiled. “I know.”

  She liked her, secretly comforted by her maternal ways. Mrs. Shale reminded her of her Aunt Mae. They could have been sisters. Always keeping a professional and courteous relationship with her patients, her interest in Mrs. Shale surprised her.

  Mrs. Shale waved to the young doctors and medical students. The team grinned at her and said altogether, “Goodbye, Mrs. Shale.”

  Everyone took a shine to her.

  Noel popped his head into the room. “How’s our star patient doing this morning?”

  Mrs. Shale pouted. She raised her spirometer. “I got an “F-minus” this morning. But I deserved it. I have “atillastasis.”

  “Ah. You have postoperative atelectasis,” Noel teasingly corrected Mrs. Shale.

  “Yeah. That’s what I said,” she countered

  Noel and Holly grinned at each other.

  “You can both stop by later,” Mrs. Shale said. “We’ll have a contest to see who has the best lungs.”

  Noel shot a finger at her. “You’re on.” He squinted. “See you at high noon.”

  Mrs. Shale waved at the team. “No offense, but you youngsters go on. I’ve got some serious work to do.”

  Holly and Noel let their teams pass and lingered behind them outside of Mrs. Shale’s room. She slipped her hands into her lab coat pockets as they walked side by side. It was casual enough gesture without seeming eager. Perhaps the scones safely stashed in her locker were over the top. After all, he did bring her cookies. But it was not about the confections. It was about sharing them with Noel. Her life had revolved around the hospital with her heading straight home after long days in the operating room. Aunt Mae had called her a hermit. And Holly acknowledged that. Maybe she was more of a hermit crab, crawling into her shell, it sheltering her from others, others that probably found her aloof. Am I aloof? No. I’m reserved. I’m focused. Okay, they’re the all the same thing. Perhaps she needed to ease up a bit. The party was fun. And she already let Noel into her life, albeit unanticipated. Now she desperately wanted him to stay.

  “Holly?”

  She blinked at Noel’s voice.

  “You seemed a million miles away. Everything okay?”

  “Yes. Yes. I was just worried about Mrs. Shale. Maybe I’m missing something. It was a challenging case.” It was true, but her thoughts had wandered further.

  Noel rested his hand on her shoulder. Her breath hitched.

  Panic struck her. Perhaps others were watching them. Holly lunged straight into her professional and protective mode. “I don’t know, Noel. Her abdomen is non-distended. She has no nausea or vomiting. Her skin is a bit flushed, but her sclera are clear. I don’t detect any jaundice. We dissected the anatomy clearly. I believe she has pulmonary atelectasis. We’ll push her to use the incentive spirometer. She’ll get better.”

  He nodded. “I know how it is. We replay every surgery we do.”

  That would be something she would say, cool and objective. And just as she was about to concur, the corners of his eyes crinkled upward. He gave her shoulder an extra yet gentle squeeze.

  “See you at breakfast, meet you at noon in Mrs. Shale’s room, and pick you up at your house at seven.”

  Holly opened her mouth. “Whaa?” God! She couldn’t even utter a simple word like “What.”

  Noel threw her a smile before catching up with his new team.

  Holly plucked her hand from her pocket and waved to him. Oh, so weak! She had to get her day back on track. Holly hustled down the hallway toward her team with a bounce in her step and a grin on her face. She halted and rocked on her toes. Her team stared at her, some grimacing. She’d surprise them this morning with no stinging critiques.

  “Excellent work, guys!” Holly glanced at Clifford and Candice. “Dr. Jackson and Ms. Baxter, you will assist me on the first case, a breast biopsy-and,” she pointed to a resident and a medical student, “you two will assist me on a port placement. The rest of you finish up with patient care and then join me in the surgeon’s lounge at 10 a.m. I will then choose two more of you for the final case today. If I do not pick you, don’t worry. Everyone will get an opportunity to help me in the O.R.”

  The team quietly chattered amongst themselves, their faces beaming.

  Holly’s chest swelled beneath her lab coat. They did perform admirably, and it felt good to reward them.

  After her team dispersed, she straightened her ponytail and headed to the unit’s station. Noel sat smiling in an office chair while leaning backward with his hands clasped behind his neck, and surrounded by a group of nurses. They were all laughing. Even the stoic unit secretary giggled. The new king was holding court. Holly backed away. The unit nurses were at least ten years younger, nicely made up, and with manicured nails. Holly glanced down at he
r stubby fingernails and her overgrown cuticles. Her hands were chapped and dry from chronic surgical scrubbing. How could she compete with those nurses? She snuck away to the elevator and pressed the button.

  “Hey, wait up, Holly,” Noel called.

  The elevator doors parted. The car was empty.

  “I guess we picked the right one,” he said.

  He waved his arm, motioning for her to step inside first. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, silent for a few seconds.

  Holly looked straight at the closed doors. “Looks as if you’ve got a good team there. And the nurses seems to like you.”

  “Yes, they’re a good group. Being new on staff, I’m getting to know them and they’re getting to know me. But I’m partial to the first one that bumped into me.”

  Holly glanced at him. She cracked a smile. “You were in my way,” she teased.

  “Now you’re going my way.”

  Her heartbeat skipped. “Well that cuts down on collisions.” The accidental kind, she mused.

  He raised a flirtatious brow. “Hopefully not all of them.”

  Another skipped beat! Heat spiraled up Holly’s neck and crept to her earlobes. She prayed for the doors to open before the blush spread to her face. When the doors parted on the operating room level, Holly darted out, unsure how to act around Noel in the hospital. In private, well that was a separate matter.

  “I’ll catch up with you in pre-op holding,” she called.

  Holly sprinted to the women’s locker room and ducked inside, releasing the fire from her face. She quickly peeled off her standard black and white clothes and donned surgical scrubs. Holly grabbed the paper bag with the scones inside, hesitated, and then pulled it from the top shelf of her locker. She stared at Noel’s scarf. Deciding to give it to him during their dinner date, she patted it before shutting the locker door. Holly caught her reflection in the mirror. Her blonde hair was shiny and neatly pulled back. She puckered her lips. With a surgical mask covering her mouth, there was no point wearing lipstick. And her lips would stick to the inside of the mask. Mascara would do, and it was in keeping with her everyday look. Her own natural blush, more so around Noel, precluded any extra attention to her cheeks. She drew a deep breath, grabbed the scones, and headed for the pre-operative holding area.

  Noel was already talking to his first patient and Clifford and Candice were waiting outside the cubicle of Holly's first case. She motioned for them to follow her into the patient's assigned area. Patting the young woman's hand, she introduced them. Her patient's hand trembled. She reassured her that the breast lump in her left breast was probably benign and she empathized with her anxiety. Holly reviewed the operative consent with the woman and asked her if she had any questions. The woman shook her head, tears in her eyes. Holly sat at her bedside and handed her a tissue. The woman blew her nose and thanked her. She reassured the frightened woman she'd be right by her side in the recovery room and would then speak with the her husband.