The Nightshift Before Christmas

by Annie O'Neil

  Damn. Mistletoe.

  * * *

  Katie heard them, then saw them. A twist of nausea squirled around her stomach as she took in the nervous laughter, the awkward shuffle of feet and the chins tipping up toward the ceiling. Jorja had practically covered the hospital in mistletoe, so it was hardly surprising that the one person who would find a way to put it to use was Josh. He had always been a flirt. It was his nature. To charm, to delight, to dazzle.

  She turned away quickly, not wanting either of them to see the hurt in her eyes, the sheen of tears she’d only just managed to check when she’d spotted them. The last thing she was going to do was stick around and watch her husband kiss someone he’d only just met!

  At least she knew Josh showing up out of the blue wasn’t some clever plot to see her. It was a fluke. A needle-in-a-haystack chance of Yuletide torture. Just terrific. She’d spent two entire years patching the shredded remains of her heart together, and just when she’d come to terms with her play-it-safe, hiding-out-in-Idaho lifestyle, Josh had parachuted in and undone years of exacting damage control.

  Adrenaline began to surge through her. She tugged at the high ribbing on the neck of her sweater, suddenly wishing she had scrubs on. Why hadn’t one of her patients thrown up on her? Then she could have missed this nauseating scene of mistletoe magic. She checked herself. Wishing patients ill wasn’t her style, and thankfully the two gastro cases had turned out to be overindulgence rather than food poisoning.

  Who ate massive portions of something called Chocolate Decadence and didn’t expect a sore stomach? People who weren’t careful. People who were reckless. People who made decisions on a whim—like Josh.

  She made a beeline for the doctors’ locker room and grabbed her winter coat before pushing through the heavy door into the stairwell and pounding up step after step toward the roof, letting out an involuntary wail of relief when she found it was empty.

  Silent screams into blankets while trying to retain her control were one thing—but seeing Josh with another woman... Words couldn’t even describe how much it had hurt. Throat-scraping wail after howl poured out of her throat as the snow bit at her cheeks and the wind swirled through her hair and into her tear-blinded eyes. Why had Josh—of all the people in the world—had to show up? Hadn’t he done enough harm? It was worse than shock. It was Shock and Awful.

  Chest heaving from the effort of purging her sorrow, Katie forced herself to take more level, steadier breaths. Knowing a chill could turn into pneumonia in the blink of an eye at this time of year, she excavated a woolly hat from the depths of her pocket. She hadn’t let those Girl Scout sessions go to waste.

  Prepared at all times. Self-contained at all times. She tugged on her hat and scowled. Which one had she left out?

  “And a smile in the face of adversity.”

  Katie’s frown deepened. She turned this way and that, taking in the roof as though she were a child stuffed into an over-thick snow outfit. The urge to throw a tantrum was welling within her again. Twice in one day? Must be a record! Maybe she should have gone the bad-girl route as a kid. It might have garnered her a bit more attention from her parents.

  She harrumphed. Unlikely.

  She pulled out her phone and trawled a finger along the not-very-long list of names to see if there was anyone on there she could talk to. Colleague. Colleague. Colleague. Mentor. Nanny.

  Alice Worthing! Her shoulders softened. She had absolutely loved her Irish nanny. Alice was the only person she’d told in advance of her elopement, and the second she’d seen the twinkle in the dear woman’s eyes, she’d known she was doing the right thing.

  Wow—had they both been wrong!

  She pushed at the phone symbol anyhow. It would be nice to hear a friendly voice on Christmas Eve.

  After a couple of rings she heard laughter and then the lilted hello she knew so well. Fifteen years in the US, married to an American for ten of them, and her accent hadn’t changed a jot.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  Katie started. “Sorry, Alice. It’s me, Katie Wes—Katie McGann.”

  “Katie! My sweet Katie. Darlin’, how the devil are you? It’s been so long. Too long! What is it? Over a year now since you went out west. Are you all right, love? Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. Fine.” She kicked her boot into the thick rooftop snow.

  “Well, that’s a lie and we both know it.”

  Katie smiled at the phone, double-checking that she hadn’t video-dialed her friend by accident.

  “It’s just—I—um—wanted to wish you a merry Christmas.”

  “Well, that’s a lovely sentiment, Katie, but why not tell me the real reason you called?”

  “I’d forgotten how quickly you see through me.” Katie grinned, now wishing she had video-called Alice.

  “Well, you and I both know how precious life is, so come on—spit it out.”

  “Josh.”

  “Oh, Katie, no—nothing’s happened to Josh, has it?”

  “No! God, no!” Katie felt surprised at how glad she was that was true. She might not want to be married to him, but she couldn’t bear the thought if... “He’s shown up at the hospital as my locum.”

  Another round of laughter followed as Alice called out to her husband, saying Josh had found Katie. She heard the click of the receiver as Alice’s husband got on the line.

  “So he finally tracked you down, did he?” James’s deep voice rumbled down the line. “He tried to plumb us for info but we didn’t breathe a word. We knew you wouldn’t want us getting involved. Want me to come out and beat him up for you?”

  Katie knew he was joking, but James had always been very protective of her. Her relationship with her own father had never been a close one, so she liked James’s concern.

  “What sort of nonsense are you talking, man?” Alice hushed him. “Josh’s dead romantic. Always was. A bit wild, but showing up on Christmas Eve and all...”

  “It wasn’t exactly as if they left things on a good note,” James riposted.

  “Yeah...well...” Katie’s mind whirred, trying to catch up with everything as Alice and James bantered. “He came and asked you where I was?”

  “Course he did. The boy’s mad for you. Always was.”

  Then why was he trying to kiss Jorja?

  Katie and Alice talked for what felt like hours. They had a lot to catch up on. But as the roar of doorbells and barking dogs started to drown out their voices, Katie knew she had to let Alice get back to her own life. She tipped her head to see if she could differentiate between clouds and the falling snow.

  “Sorry, Katie. Our little girls’ choir has just shown up to sing carols. Please forgive me but I need to go. You’ll sort it out for the best. You always do. Lots of love.”

  “Oh! How is Catherine?”

  “She’s grand, darlin’. Must dash, but call again soon!”

  And the line went dead.

  Katie didn’t know if she felt better or worse for having made the call. A thousand questions and no answers added to her frustration. She kicked a satisfying lump of snow up into the glowering sky and watched it float back down to the rooftop.

  The helicopter hadn’t been used in a while, and from the looks of things, the crew hadn’t been up yet with the blower. The snow was a good foot deep where she was standing. The drifts were deeper over by the edges. A good three feet by now. Maybe deeper. Winter had started early in Copper Canyon, and no matter how hard they tried to stay on top of the accumulating snow, they couldn’t. Which, in this case, was all right. Because it was...beautiful.

  She felt the fight go out of her. Maybe that had been her problem all along. Trying too hard to control things. Josh. Herself. She’d even broken down the seven stages of grief, giving herself a month to go through each stage, fastidiously identifyi
ng and eradicating anything that would hold back her progress to—to what, exactly?

  Josh’s angry words came back to her in echoing anvils of self-recognition. Micromanager. Risk-averse. Exacting perfectionist! Control freak.

  The last one wilted her shoulders into a hunch against the buffeting wind. She looked around the roofscape again, as if it would conjure Josh up from the lower reaches of the hospital so he could call her out himself. Except the only voice she heard those words in was her own. She was the one who had shaken off the rest of the words he’d said and turned those remaining into insults. The words she wouldn’t let herself remember?

  Gorgeous. My love. Sweetheart. Angel. Darlin’.

  She blinked away the sting of tears. When things had been good between them, they had been, oh, so good. Josh had given her reserves of strength she hadn’t known she had. Lit her up like a...oh, the irony...lit her up like a Christmas tree!

  She blinked again, feeling a tear drop this time. She swiped it away and tried to shake off the memories. She was in a new place now, and up until the start of this double shift on Christmas Eve, things had been pretty good. Well... She tugged a foot through the snow and stomped toward the roof edge.

  Neutral.

  How pathetic was that? Even she had to snicker at herself. To aspire to have a neutral day? Wow! That elite education she’d aced had really prepared her for life. She scrunched her eyes tight and forced herself to open them with the promise of seeing something that made her smile.

  Not too far away the twinkling lights of Copper Canyon’s main street were glittering away like a perfectly decorated window display. The town council always did well. Never too opulent, never mistaking the decor for any holiday other than Christmas. At the far end of Main Street, where the two-lane road split and circled round the town’s green, an enormous evergreen twinkled and shone like a bejeweled Fabergé egg through the fat snowflakes swirling around it. At the base of the tree, Katie could make out the lit outline of the bandstand, its columns rising in twisted swirls of red and white lights.

  She reached the edge of the roof and eyed the drift. Higher than she’d thought. Enough snow to cloak the thick safety barriers she knew ran around the edges. She should make a note to hospital admin that they really must be raised—

  She checked herself. As far as she knew, she was the only one who was mad enough to come up to the roof in the middle of a snowstorm.

  See, universe? Katie McGann can be just as much of a nut burger as the rest of them!

  She gave the elements a satisfied grin as she pulled her emergency pair of waterproof mittens from the inner pocket of her down jacket.

  Well...pragmatism was useful. And it was hardly a storm. A bit of wind. Thick latticed snowflakes big enough to catch on her tongue. She eyed the split-level roof just below her. The empty administrative offices...

  She pushed her lips in and out as she considered. Without snow...? Maybe a six-foot drop. With snow...? Hmm...two feet of emptiness before she hit several feet of fluffy virgin snow. Her mind shot back to the rare trips up to her late grandparents’ cabin in Vermont, where she, Alice and her grandmother had made endless snow angels.

  “Always room for more angels to look out for us.” That was how her grandmother had put it. So when she was upset and there was some snow to hand...snow angel. Magic recipe for a better mood.

  Would it be fluffy enough to...? Yeah...why not? She could throw caution to the wind as easily as the next person...right?

  She opened her arms wide, eyed the tilt of the snowdrift, turned around and began to press her weight into her heels. She wobbled for a moment...regained her footing...then reasoned with herself that this was precisely the sort of litmus test she needed to pass in order to prove she could well and truly survive without Josh...beyond neutral.

  She sucked in a breath and smiled—at the world for just being there and being all snowy and twinkly so that she could make a snow angel when she sure as hell needed one.

  As she shifted her heels along the edge again and raised her arms, the door to the stairwell burst open. Josh was calling out her name at ten decibels. His face was a mix of horror and fear when his eyes lit upon her. He called her name again, the vowels bending and elongating in the wind.

  “Kaaa-tieee!”

  Their eyes connected in a way they never had before. For the first time she saw he had been through it, too. The harrowing, mind-numbing pain of loss. And in that moment she wished back the two years they had spent apart.

  * * *

  Josh watched in horror as Katie’s arms windmilled for balance. His eyes raced down her legs as she shifted her heels to regain traction on the icy ledge. Each micro-move she made became overexaggerated with her fruitless efforts to stay upright. Their eyes stayed locked as she completely lost her footing and fell helplessly back into the void.

  Never in his life had he felt such searing pain. He had thought the grief at losing his daughter was the worst thing he could have lived through, but losing Katie as well would kill him.

  An infinity of darkness spread out before him as he shouted and stumbled toward the edge, not even sure he was making a single sound above the howling in his skull.

  * * *

  Katie’s comprehension of the world shifted as her body lost its fight with gravity. Apart from the terror she’d seen in her husband’s eyes, she suddenly understood what he meant about the freedom in letting go. Just the release of falling backward was exhilarating.

  She opened her throat and screamed as sensations hit her in surreal hits of slow-motion recognition. The breeze swept past her cheeks. She blinked away a snowflake. With the surprise of the fall she’d lost her sense of where she was actually falling. It might have gone on forever.

  The sky was astonishingly textured with clouds and the odd hit of stars... When was the last time she’d just looked up and enjoyed the sky?

  Before she could take it all in, she hit the powdery snow with a fluffy ploof! and lay utterly still as her breath came back to her.

  A dim awareness of sound came to her. A male voice. Josh! It had to be Josh. Her mind whirled into catch-up mode, her eyes widening as she realized what she was hearing.

  “Katie! No!”

  Ragged. Rough. Grief-stricken. Why was Josh so upset? She was just making a snow angel, for heaven’s sake.

  His face appeared over the edge, his features etched with anxiety.

  “I fell.”

  “Yes!” The air came out of his mouth in thick, billowed huffs of breath. “Yes, you did.”

  “It’s nice down here.” She saw the sheen of tears rise in his eyes before he had a chance to disguise it as something else. Josh had never been a weeper. He swiped at his eyes with his sleeve. Maybe she’d been mistaken.

  “Are you all right?”

  Katie could tell Josh was trying to keep his voice under control. Behave as if he saw his estranged wife fall off the edge of a building every day. It suddenly struck her that his reaction was utterly different from what she would have expected. The old Josh would have just leaped over the edge and joined her. Pulled her into his arms and then, after a deep, life-affirming kiss, would have made snow angels with her. Right?

  “Katie?” Josh knelt on the ledge and began to scan her acutely for injury. “Are you okay?”

  “Pretty good.” She moved her arms and legs just a little bit, suppressing a surprise hit of the giggles as she did so. Nothing hurt. She’d landed on an enormous pillow of snow, for heaven’s sake! “Actually...” She met his eyes properly this time. “It was pretty fun.”

  “Fun, huh? Is that what you think? Near enough giving me a heart at—?”

  He stopped himself and she watched silently as Josh rearranged his features into a long, studied look before visibly deciding to swallow whatever lecture he’d been about to give. She k
new the expression well...and it gave her a hit of understanding she hadn’t known she needed. It was the look Josh must have seen on her face time and again after they’d lost their baby girl and he’d come back from yet another high-octane experience.

  * * *

  Josh looked away from Katie and gave the vista a scan. The early-evening gloaming left hints of light on the tips of the mountains...gave the glittering Main Street more of a festive punch. His lips thinned as he slowly inhaled and exhaled, trying to get his racing heart under control.

  His relief at finding Katie alive and well was morphing into anger. How dare she do this? Take such a huge risk? Didn’t she know how precious she was to him? His anger welled up further into his chest, searing him from the inside out. How dare she?

  “A thank-you for stopping you killing yourself might be nice.”

  “Killing myself?” She pushed herself up to sit and squinted at him through the falling snow. “You think if I—Katie West—Katie McGann,” she corrected herself, annoyed, “was going to do something so stupid as to kill myself I’d do it by jumping two feet into a snowdrift?”

  “That was difficult to see from the doorway.” Josh cleared his throat again and swore under his breath. “So you weren’t—?”

  “Of course I wasn’t. I was just...” She let herself plop back into the lightly compacted drift. “I was just trying to make a snow angel.”

  She spoke softly. More truculent than apologetic, but, hell, he’d take it. She was alive. That was good enough for now.

  He tipped his head to the side and eyed her. “You only make snow angels when you’re upset.”

  “No, I don’t!” she shot back, her eyes anywhere but meeting his.

  Yup! She was upset. He knew his arrival had upset her, but he hadn’t thought launching herself into a snowdrift four floors off the ground would be her response. Maybe he should have called. Scheduled lunch. Done something normal, like she’d been begging him to do all along.

  He knelt on the ledge and hitched up his bad leg before slipping over into the snow mattress Katie was pillowed in. He winced. The old-timers were right about feeling the cold differently once your body had proved itself fallible.