“Yeah.”
After another moment, Miss Marva said, “Did I tell you that my friend, Rusty, visited me last night? He brought me an apron as an early Christmas gift.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, I can only please one person a day. Today is not your day, and tomorrow doesn’t look good either.”
“But that’s not true, Miss Marva. You please a lot of people every day.”
Miss Marva laughed again, but this time it was loud enough that Charlee didn’t need the phone to hear the giggles, she could hear her from across the hall. Normally, Miss Marva’s laughter was like the best medicine Charlee had ever tried. But this time, having it so close but still separated by all those stupid bricks, it actually made her lonelier and sadder. She’d give anything to be sitting next to Miss Marva, or hanging laundry with her, or rearranging her apron collection.
She’d even be happy, she thought, to stand on the stump in the backyard of their trailer and be separated by the field she loved so much. Just to see Miss Marva in her yard, even from a distance, would be so much nicer than listening to her scratchy, sick voice on the ugly hospital telephone.
“Miss Marva?”
“Yes?”
“I want to go home for Christmas.”
“I know you do, Charlee.”
“Do you want to be home for Christmas?”
“My. Yes, very much, Charlee.”
“Miss Marva?”
“Yes?”
“If only one of us can be home. I hope it’s you.”
December 23
On the 10th Day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Ten Lords a-Leaping
Dear Charlee:
Our helpers tell us you’re still fighting hard. Please don’t stop. Please don’t give up, Charlee. We need you. We need you to finish the 13 Days of Christmas with us. After that, we need you to finish many, many days and live many, many more dreams.
Keep fighting!
This is Day Ten, and it’s one of our favorites!
The year was 1779. We were celebrating New Year’s Eve with the famous Dick Clark in Times Square. The crowd was having a grand time, firing their muskets into the air and dancing around the wagons. Everything was perfect, until . . .
At exactly 11:50 p.m., the famous Flying Mozart paratroopers were supposed to drop from the sky and make a slow descent into Times Square. But Dick had forgotten to send the appearance fee, and they were all the way in Los Angeles at a grand opening for a new piano store!
What would he do?
In a jolt of inspiration, he picked up his cell phone and called his good friend King George III.
“George, I need you!” Dick said.
“Anything for you,” replied the king.
Dick explained his dilemma and the missing Flying Mozart parachuting act.
“Stand by,” said the king. “Help is on the way.”
A roar was soon heard overhead. Every eye looked heavenward and lo and behold, from high in the sky, we saw ten men, one after another, leaping from an early prototype Zeppelin airship.
You guessed it! King George had sent ten men from his House of Lords to entertain the guests gathered in Times Square. That gesture—though rarely mentioned in history books—is one of the reasons the war would eventually come to an end. Yes, Charlee, it’s true. There were no tears that night; we celebrated the New Year with the king’s own Ten Lords a-Leaping!
We had no choice but to immediately invite them to serve as your gift for tonight. They couldn’t come personally, of course, because of their commitments in England, but they sent along these ten plastic parachuting toy men to remember them by.
Happy 10th Day of Christmas!
The Traveling Elves
25
Mason
Thomas and Zach rode up in the elevator in silence. Zach carried Marva’s house key and a bag of things she’d requested from her home. Thomas carried only the heavy rocks of debt and worry.
Thomas watched the lights in the elevator announce each passing floor. They seemed to move slower than the elevator, as if unsure of where they were headed. Thomas had spent the day negotiating with the health insurance company they’d used back in their old life when both his business and his daughter were healthy on Eyring Avenue.
He’d kept the policy when they lost the home to foreclosure and a bad mortgage and the business to his own decisions and a bad economy. But he’d missed a few payments since they’d picked up the pieces and moved, and a heated debate was brewing over when the coverage lapsed, what the provider would pay, and what bills the Alexanders would at least promise to pay, but would likely have to hide from for years.
The relentless second-guessing was such a present part of Thomas’s daily routine that he didn’t know what it felt like to live confidently anymore.
I’m out of first guesses, he thought. So why bother?
The weight of losing their home and business, of seeing Zach embarrassed and laughed out of school, was a pack of rocks too heavy to carry. But that was nothing compared to the unfair weight of watching his daughter play on death’s teeter-totter while simultaneously worrying which bill collector’s number would hit the caller ID next. They’d escaped to Woodbrook for a fresh start and to lighten their burdens, but they’d settled into a life of less freedom and greater challenges than they’d ever known or asked for.
The elevator beeped and bounced to a stop, and they stepped out onto the sixth floor of Woodbrook Mercy Hospital and took the familiar path to Charlee’s room. They found Emily sitting on the side of Charlee’s bed, reading a book.
“Look who’s here,” Emily said through her mask, as Thomas and Zach appeared at the door. “Masks, boys,” she said, pointing to a disposable box of them hanging on the wall just inside the door. They put their own on and exchanged quick hellos, but then Emily and Zach eased out to visit Marva so Thomas and Charlee could have a few minutes of one-on-one time.
“What do you think?” Thomas asked as he straightened the apron with the C. S. Lewis quote on it so Charlee could read it. The fabric was snug over his winter coat.
“I really, really, really love it.”
Thomas grinned. “Three reallys?”
“Really,” she added. “And I know what it means.”
“You do?”
“It means stories are important.”
Thomas nodded and settled into the warm impression Emily left at Charlee’s side in the bed. Thomas noted that even with him in it, the bed seemed to swallow them.
“Hi, there,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Charlee.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Thomas Alexander.”
Charlee tried to narrow her eyes, and Thomas wondered if she was trying to imitate one of her mother’s looks. “You look familiar, mister.”
The two chatted about Charlee’s day and her growing concern that Christmas would come and go and she would still be in the hospital. Thomas reminded her it wasn’t exactly their decision to make, but that they hadn’t given up hope.
Charlee asked her father about the neighborhood and whether anyone had asked about her. She wondered if he’d been by to greet the porch wavers, or say hello to the kids at the rock pile on the short dead-end street they called the barb in their fishhook-shaped neighborhood.
He hadn’t, he said, but only because he’d been too worried about her to do much else.
Charlee asked about the VW Beetle in the yard and wanted to know if they’d tried driving it around 27 Homes yet.
They had, he said, and Zach had even tried driving it up and down the long shank road.
“Zach’s driving? Cool!”
“Not exactly. He’s sort of driving; he’s not technically old enough yet, but he’s pretty good. I didn’t think anyone wou
ld mind if he practiced in the neighborhood. Plus, I was sitting next to him.”
“Was Mom in the backseat? Mom hates the backseat.”
“Also not exactly,” Thomas said, and he pivoted the discussion to something else; he didn’t want to risk a line of questioning from Emily later. “I heard you got some parachute men today.”
“I did! They’re right there.” Charlee pointed at the chair in the corner. I was playing with them earlier, but Mom didn’t want me to try them in here.”
“Why not?”
“Not safe, she said.”
“Not safe? Let’s see about that.” Thomas edged off the bed and retrieved one of the small plastic men from the chair. He removed the small rubber band securing the parachute to the man’s back and surveyed the room for options. He stepped into the bathroom and almost immediately poked his head back into the room. “I’ve got an idea.”
Charlee answered with wide eyes.
Thomas wiggled his eyebrows in mischief and disappeared back into the bathroom. When he reappeared, he was carrying a small hospital hair dryer he’d unplugged from the wall. The irony of a bald girl having a hair dryer in her bathroom was not lost on him then or later, when he shared the experience with Zach and Emily.
Thomas plugged the hair dryer into an outlet by Charlee’s bed and set the temperature to cool and the fan to low. Then he tossed the paratrooper into the air and aimed the dryer up, sending the man flying across the room and bouncing off a wall-mounted whiteboard the nurses used for messages to and from each other. Thomas couldn’t tell if Charlee was smiling, because she had both hands covering her mouth in surprise, but her eyes had the same wide and curious expression as before. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”
Charlee nodded with gusto.
It took several efforts, but eventually Thomas thought to position the hair dryer blowing upward first, then carefully place the paratrooper over the airflow with his hand supporting the chute from above until it was steady. When he finally removed his hand, the Lord a-Leaping hovered in the air eighteen inches above the hair dryer.
“That’s amazing!” Charlee squealed. She convinced her father to try two, then three, of the men at once, but they found the arrangement could only support one at a time.
The fun ended when a nurse came to check Charlee’s vitals. She plucked the paratrooper from the air and placed it in Charlee’s lap. “You have to be licensed for that kind of flying at Woodbrook Mercy,” she said with a wink.
Thomas returned the hair dryer to the bathroom while the nurse recorded Charlee’s pulse, blood pressure, and several readings from the IV into a handheld computer. When she said good-bye, Thomas nestled back into the spot next to his daughter. He playfully tugged Melvin from Charlee’s firm grip. “Hi, there, you look familiar, too. What’s your name again? Moleson? Koleson? No, wait, Jason? Kason? Mason?”
“It’s Melvin, Dad.”
“It is? It’s not Mason? From our stories?”
“I changed it, remember? He wanted a fresh start, too.”
Thomas was sure he’d heard that, but in that moment, he was embarrassed. Charlee must have recognized it, he realized, because she quickly said, “You’ve been really busy, Daddy. It’s all right. I bet Melvin doesn’t remember your name either.” Her sweet attempt to save him embarrassed Thomas even more.
“You remember our stories?” Thomas asked.
“Sure, Dad. It hasn’t been that long. I miss them.” She reached over and lifted Melvin’s long arm. “So does Melvin.”
Thomas raised Melvin’s other arm. “How about one tonight?”
“Right here?” Charlee asked.
“Sure.”
“Right now? With your mask on?”
“Absolutely. It makes me mysteeeeerious.” Thomas looked around the room, pretending to make sure they were alone. “Ready?”
Charlee nodded and snuggled closer to her father. The warmth distracted him for a moment, and it seemed to Thomas that neither rushed to break the silence.
“Once upon a time, there was a very happy monkey in a big house in a big town like the one we used to live in.”
“Woodbrook?”
“Oh, no. Someplace better, like our old neighborhood. His name was Melvin, and he’d just learned a big challenge was ahead for him and his family. He was about to go on a wild, scary adventure—”
“Dad?” Charlee interrupted.
“Uh-huh?”
“You don’t need to do that anymore.”
Thomas knew what she meant, and he wondered what else she’d learned and how far she had moved along while he was distracted by his life’s bag of heavy rocks.
“No stories from before?”
“No. He wants a new one, and I’d like a new one, too. Something brand-brand-new.”
“Brand-brand?”
Charlee and Melvin nodded.
“All right. Once upon a time there was a monkey named Melvin. But he wasn’t an ordinary monkey, he was also secretly a race car driver.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, and he drives a Beetle. Can you believe it?”
Thomas wove an intricate story that took father, daughter, and monkey on an unbelievable adventure far from Woodbrook Mercy Hospital. Soon they forgot why they were there, or that Charlee was still deep in disease woods, or that Christmas was knocking on their doorstep.
In fact, soon they were so deep in the story, they didn’t even realize that Zach and Emily had joined them for the ride.
December 24
On the 11th Day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Eleven Pipers Piping
Dear Charlee:
Can you believe we’re almost done? It seems like just yesterday we made our first delivery. Now Christmas is just a day away. Are you hanging in there?
The story of the Eleven Pipers Piping started many years ago while we were watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade live and in person! It had always been our dream, and it was finally coming true.
We were sitting on the parade route and coming up with ideas for Day Eleven. Every new float, band, or balloon gave us another idea.
“What about the 11 Snoopys Snooping?”
“Wait! What about the 11 Lip-Synchers Syncing?”
“I got it! The 11 Matt Lauers Looking Lovely!”
There was no shortage of ideas, but a definite lack of good ones.
We had almost given up hope when the final marching band of the day came down the parade route. It featured eleven men playing patriotic music on kazoos. The music was beautiful!
We kept pace with them and were waiting for them when the parade ended. We explained the song, the new verse they inspired, and our special mission. Before we could even ask, they’d offered to donate their kazoos to you, Charlee, as part of this special night.
They promised us that if they could have come in person tonight to Woodbrook, they would have. But they were already committed to another gig in Atlantic City.
But don’t be discouraged! They guaranteed that their pipes—I mean kazoos—would be easy to learn to play and you’d soon be joining in parades, too.
So get better, Charlee, and get practicing! The world needs your kazoo talent!
Happy 11th Day of Christmas!
The Traveling Elves
26
Christmas Eve
“Can I stay? Please?” Zach pled.
Zach watched his parents exchange those serious adult looks that say everything in silence. He usually avoided those looks, preferring to roll his eyes and tune back in when they were done talking about him—or in this case, looking about him.
“Nurse?” Thomas said.
She looked at Zach, and he was encouraged by her smile. “It’s your decision, Mr. Alexander. But I’d say, Why not?”
Thomas put his hand on Zach’s shoulder and winked. It was the first time since moving to Woodbrook that Zach felt trusted. No, he thought, it’s more than that. He felt like a man.
Nurse Becky smiled again before becoming serious and opening a red hospital file folder. “Close in,” she said, and the four of them tightened their circle in the hallway outside Charlee’s door. “I’ve spoken with the team, and they’re willing to sign off on this.”
Emily clapped her hands together and held them in a prayer pose.
“Sweet,” Zach said.
Thomas nodded and kept nodding as Nurse Becky continued.
“But you need to know the risks. All right?”
Three heads nodded in unison.
“The infection is retreating. It’s so much better, but she’s still at risk. She simply does not have the ability to fight the kinds of bugs and viruses that healthy people like us fend off every day. Her immune system remains weak.”
“But it’s normal, right?” Emily said. “Everyone has been saying the treatments would do that.”
“Correct. It happens as part of the process. The fatigue and susceptibility to other, unrelated sickness is completely normal. But it does mean that we have to be much more careful. You don’t want her back here with a fever again.”
“Of course not,” Thomas said.
“So when can we leave?” Emily asked, getting the discussion back to the question they’d been asking for days.
“Soon. We want to get numbers one more time, and then it will take a little while to get the paperwork generated.” Nurse Becky closed the folder and held it against her chest with her arms crossed. “Listen, no guests. No trips outside the house. Lots of liquids—water, water, water. And calories are Charlee’s friend.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and not just her friend, but her best friend. She needs calories, and it doesn’t matter how she gets them. Liquids are good, of course. Gatorade, but not the low-cal kind. Candy, cookies, whatever.”
“So all the things we’re usually supposed to say no to,” Emily said.
“Exactly. Of course healthy foods are best, but she needs the calories, the energy. You must have a house full of Christmas goodies. So say yes to just about everything. Bake cookies together and let her eat the frosting straight from the little tub.”
The 13th Day of Christmas Page 13
