The Christmas Blessing

by VanLiere, Donna

  “The Sullivans are going to need help with the money. They need someone to walk them through setting up a trust or something.” Robert nodded.

  “I know a few firms who would be glad to help. I’ll have Jodie get a package of info to you on each firm, and you can pass it on to the Sullivans.”

  There are some people who go through life seizing whatever they can for themselves; then there are others who, once their lives are touched, cannot help but leave others changed as well. Robert was such a person. No one would ever know who was working so hard behind the scenes for Meghan’s run, and somehow that suited Robert just fine. Meghan was right: Robert’s coming back into my life was one of the small miracles of Christmas.

  I spoke with Robert’s assistant about the package of info he’d pulled together for the Sullivans. “It’s ready,” Jodie said. “How do you want me to get it to you?”

  “I can just swing by and pick it up.”

  “That’ll be out of your way, though. Where do you live? Are you close to the university?”

  “I live on the property, but it can be confusing for someone who’s not used to all these little streets.”

  “I have to drive by Bryan Park on my way home every day. Do you know where that is?” We agreed to meet in the park at the end of the workday. I drove around the parking lot looking for anyone sitting in a car, but when I couldn’t spot anyone I parked my truck and watched people ice-skating on the lake.

  The runner with the neon ball cap made her way around the lake as I waited. I thought about getting out and talking with her, but I didn’t want to miss Jodie, and since I saw this woman running here so often, I knew I’d get another chance. A car pulled in beside me, but a mother and her two young children got out and toted their ice skates down the hill toward the lake. Meghan’s runner made another lap around the lake before she slowed down and walked the hill toward the cars. She banged her hands together and pulled the cap farther down on her head, swinging her arms. She caught me watching her, and I looked away, fidgeting with the buttons on my stereo. I jumped when I heard a small rap on my window. I looked up and saw the neon cap. I rolled the window down and looked at her, wondering what she wanted. “Are you Nathan?” How did she know my name? “Are you Robert’s friend?”

  “Are you Jodie?” I whispered.

  “I am.” She extended her hand through the window. “Nice to meet you.” I reached up, grabbed her hand, and pumped it up and down, laughing.

  FOURTEEN

  Where there is great love, there are always miracles.

  —Willa Cather

  In June, hundreds of runners lined up in front of the courthouse. A banner stretched high above the street, THE CHARLIE BENNETT SCHOLARSHIP RUN—Meghan wouldn’t consider naming the run after herself. Hospital administrators and medical staff were out in force wearing matching yellow Tshirts with the name of the run on the front and the name of the department they worked in on the back. Denise and Claudia were busy corralling the pediatrics department, who were the noisiest by far. Dr. Goetz held on to a streetlight and stretched his quadriceps. “Don’t fail me now,” he said each time he stretched a muscle. “Just get me through this and I promise I’ll take better care of you.”

  Dad, along with Lydia, Gramma, Rachel, and Lorraine (wearing a leopard-print sweat suit—she must have thought the print would at least make her look fast) lined up next to William, Robert and Kate, and Jodie, who was sporting her neon ball cap, of course.

  “I’ll stay with you, Gramma,” Rachel said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You run alongside your father and Lydia. Lorraine and I will stick together and walk across the finish line at midnight if we have to.”

  “Midnight,” Lorraine shouted. “You didn’t say anything about being out here till midnight!” Gramma turned to her in a flash.

  “We’ll stay out here till dawn if we have to, Lorraine!”

  “Well, I can’t walk far, Evelyn. My knees will never let me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your knees, and everybody knows it, Lorraine!” Lorraine stuck her hands in the jacket of her sweat suit and pouted, wishing she’d never answered the phone that morning.

  I felt arms around my waist and looked down at Olivia; she was looking more like Meghan every day. Jim pushed Meghan through the crowd in a wheelchair. It was the only way doctors would let her participate. It would be well over a year before she would run again.

  Earlier in the morning we had gone to Bryan Park, and Jim and I unloaded a bench from the back of my truck and set it under the oak tree by the lake. Rich and Leslie were there along with my family. Meghan tried to speak but couldn’t. Every time she thought of Charlie she cried, and the day of race was especially emotional. She gripped my hand and looked at me for help, but I didn’t need to say anything. Leslie read the plaque on the bench and tears flooded her eyes. It was for Charlie. Meghan had agonized what to put on it; she wanted it to reflect not only her heart, but Charlie’s as well. It read:

  IN MEMORY OF CHARLIE BENNETT

  THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF ALL IS THE

  LOVE OF A TRUE FRIEND

  “I just wish I could thank him,” Meghan whispered, holding on to Leslie.

  “He knows,” Leslie said, wiping tears from her face.

  Jim pushed Meghan to the front of the line, and someone handed her a microphone. She welcomed the runners to the first annual Charlie Bennett Scholarship Run, then paused. I didn’t know if she could get through the few words she wanted to say. “Many of you know that I am blessed to be here today,” she said. “But I am more blessed to have called Charlie Bennett my friend.” She put the microphone on her lap and paused. She had more to say but couldn’t. She lifted the microphone to her mouth. “Let’s run this for him,” she said. She fired the starter’s gun into the air, and the university band struck up a tune as the runners took off, running Meghan’s dream.

  We wound our way through town and into Bryan Park. Leslie had pushed her to the spot where we had positioned Charlie’s bench earlier in the morning. They sat there together watching one runner after another make their way around the lake. I ran around it several times, just so I could kiss Meghan and see that pretty smile. I ran onto the path again with the other runners and grabbed Olivia’s hand as the sun made its way from behind the clouds and shimmered off the water.

  “Look at that,” Olivia said, pointing to the water. “Heaven just opened up, and Charlie’s smiling.” Somehow, I think she was right.

  I watched people cross the finish line, one by one, and I smiled, thinking of what Meghan told me while she sat in the cab of my truck—she had indeed changed her small part of the world. The money raised that day was $100,000, more than anything she had ever imagined.

  EPILOGUE

  . . . let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

  —Paul of Tarsus

  The wind has picked up, spraying a fine powder of snow along the lake’s edge. Carolers are inside the gazebo warming up for a brief concert this evening. I stabilize the bench and shine the plaque that reads, For Meghan Sullivan and all who believe in miracles. I take a seat and look out over the frozen water. It is nice to see that the park hasn’t changed in the three years I have been away, and the grounds are still beautiful, even in December. During the past four years, I finished up my fourth year of medical school with Dr. Goetz, then went to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland for three years of residency. I have moved back into town to take two months off before heading to Boston’s Children’s Hospital for three years of fellowship training in pediatric cardiology, keeping me closer to home. Then, hopefully, I’ll come back and work in the hospital’s cardiology department for a few years with Dr. Goetz before he retires.

  Meghan went back to school on a part-time basis the fall after her transplant, but she chose not to go to Stanford or Georgetown; she stayed at the university and when she was able, she ran for them, “helping to put us on the map,” as Michele Norris said.
Meghan studied education with the hopes of teaching and coaching. She will be unbelievable at both.

  Ice-skaters laugh as they attempt to make figure eights on the frozen lake. Two little girls, who look no older than three, run from the lake and climb up on Charlie’s bench; the tassels on their knit hats bounce up and down. They look at me, and I see that they’re twins. “Hi,” one of them says.

  “Hi.”

  “What are you doing?” the other little girl asks.

  “Just leaving a bench here.”

  “For who?”

  “For Meghan Sullivan.” Their eyes light up.

  “Our brother knew her,” one of them says. I assume their brother was on one of the teams at the university. “He went to Heaven when she got her new liver.” I snap my head to look at them. They are Rich and Leslie’s twins. Soon after Charlie died, Leslie discovered she was pregnant. They had never planned for more children, so the news surprised them, to say the least. On what would have been Charlie’s thirteenth birthday, Rich and Leslie laid flowers on his grave and Leslie felt one of the babies kick for the first time.

  “That little kick brought such light to such a dark day,” Leslie later said to Meghan. “These little girls brought nothing but joy with them when they were born.” I watch them and see what she means. They are adorable, much cuter than the pictures I’ve seen.

  “Come on, we need to get going,” I hear someone say behind me. I turn to see a young man behind me who can’t be older than fourteen but already he is as tall as I am. He motions for the girls to come to him. I look at him and can see the resemblance: the eyes, the nose, the jawline—it is Matthew, Charlie’s brother. “Do you need help?” he asks me.

  “No. Thank you.” During the brief time I knew Charlie, I only met Matthew once, but he was a little boy. He doesn’t remember who I am, and I had no idea he would have grown so much in four years. I open my mouth to tell him what an incredible person his brother was.

  “I’m supposed to meet our parents in a few minutes, and I have to get them out of these clothes or else my mom will kill me,” he says. I smile. They are headed to the same place I am. I shake his hand, and the little girls wave.

  “Hey, what’s your name,” one of them asks, turning around.

  “Nathan. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Abigail and she’s Allie.”

  “Both of those names sound like the name of a princess. Are both of you princesses?”

  “I am,” Abigail says. “She’s not.” I laugh and look down at Charlie’s bench. I often wonder if he ran through the gates of Heaven like he wanted to. I smile. He did. I know he did.

  During my training, there have been other children who have died since Charlie; children who entered my life for only the shortest time; but they have taught me, like my mother said, it’s not about how long you live, but how you live, because before you know it, our time is up and we leave this place. Each of their lives was too short, but they all left their small part of the world changed, leaving this physician with the desire to be a better person, to change the shape of water; but to do that I have to jump into the water first. It’s what my mother wanted me to learn.

  I jump in the truck and drive through town, parking at the side of the road. I run inside the back of the building, and my grandmother and Rachel hurry to fix my tie. Tears are in their eyes as they kiss my cheek. “Thought you were AWOL there for a minute,” Dad says, grinning. Lydia squeezes my arm. She and my father have been married nearly a year now and are very happy together. Lydia is a wonderful woman. She loves my grandmother; they cook together and go for walks and every now and then Lydia will sit down with Gramma and Lorraine and watch the Atlanta Braves play. She’s even learned how to antagonize Lorraine, booing the Braves and cheering for the Indians during my time in Cleveland. For the first time in my life, Lorraine is wearing a skirt and jacket, not a sweat suit with sneakers, and there are no sequins in sight.

  “No sweat suit, Lorraine?” I ask.

  “I’m not trash, doll,” she says, her laughter shaking the rafters.

  Dad and I walk down the aisle toward the front, which has been decorated with red and white poinsettias and a Christmas tree covered with sparkling lights, gold ribbon, and red bulbs. Swags of spruce held together with strings of holly berries hang between each pew. As I pass, I smile at Robert and Kate, Dr. Goetz, Hope, who is now nine and beautiful, the Sullivans and the Bennetts, with Matthew and the twins at their side. The girls look at me, and their mouths open wide. One jumps on Rich’s lap and begins to tell him something, but Leslie shushes her, fussing with her hair. I smile at them and take my place at the front, Dad by my side, along with William, who’s flown in from his residency in Texas.

  It’s been twenty years since I stood on that windy hillside with my mother. “Time in the valley will teach you to be a man, Nathan,” she had said. “It’s where your character will form. I hope you go through the valley so that you’ll learn how to love and feel and understand. And when life wounds you, I hope it is because you loved people, not because you mistreated them.” It was a blessing of sorts; a blessing that forges love in the darkest places.

  There have been times, especially during those early years without her, that I thought time in the valley was anything but a blessing, but now I know otherwise. As I grew, I began to understand what my mother meant: It is those times of struggle and pain that teach us how to live. It’s not really living until you’ve thrown your heart and soul on the line, risking failure and suffering loss. And I have come to realize that we’re never alone; everyone has been through their own valley or is walking through it now: A man fights alcoholism and vows his family won’t live through the sickness and sadness of his own youth, a young woman contracts a disease and parents stand by her bedside praying for a miracle, spouses die, leaving brokenhearted widows or widowers behind, couples fight and separate, cars crash, a young boy dies, leaving a hole in the heart of everyone he touched. There were times when the grief in my life made it impossible to believe that God was alive and working, or the doubts were so great it seemed hopeless to believe anything at all, but as I look at the faces in the seats before me I know once again that we’re all here for a reason, a purpose that is often beyond us.

  The music swells, and I look up to see my bride standing at the back of the church. The wedding is small; many people couldn’t make it into town for Christmas Eve. We knew that as we planned, but Meghan insisted we get married at Christmas, to honor both my mother and Charlie. “Even God’s smallest plan is bigger than any dream we’ll ever hope for,” my father said, dragging our rowboat onto shore so many years ago. Glancing at him now, I still don’t understand why God’s plan couldn’t include saving my mother, or Charlie; I know I never will. I smile as Meghan walks down the aisle and can hear the twins clap and giggle when they see her.

  But I know that although we may never understand it, there is a plan, and though it may be traced in pain, in the end there will be joy, and it will be beautiful.

  ALSO BY DONNA VANLIERE

  The Christmas Shoes

  THE CHRISTMAS BLESSING. Copyright © 2003 by Donna VanLiere. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  VanLiere, Donna, 1966–

  The Christmas blessing / Donna VanLiere.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-429-93676-7

  Date of eBook conversion: 07/17/2010

  1. Physician and patient—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3622.A66C48 2003

  813′.6—dc21

  2003054763

  First Edition: October 2003

  s Blessing