A Christmas Miracle

by Velvet Vaughn

  March struggled on the floor, twisting and crying out for the boy. Matilda March appeared in the doorway, fists perched on rail thin hips. “I insist you explain to me why you are interrupting my very important dinner party.” She addressed Macy. “Get that sniveling brat out of my house.” Then she wrinkled her nose distastefully at Tony. “You bleed on my floors, you’re cleaning it up.” When she spotted her husband bound on the floor, she gasped. “Ernest?” Her eyes narrowed at Tony. “I demand you release my husband this very instant. Why, he’s the next president of the United States. I will have both your heads on a platter. And good grief, put that gun away.”

  Rapidly losing strength, his vision swimming, Tony indicated the scrapbook. “I guess you never really knew Ernie.”

  Matilda’s lips pursed at the nickname, looking as if she just sucked a lemon. She huffed around Tony and glanced at the book. Lifting a small pair of reading glasses from a chain around her neck, she perched them on her beak-like nose. “This? What is it?”

  “Your husband’s twisted hobby.”

  She flipped through a few pages and then shoved the book away with distaste. “And who is the boy?” She indicated Benji.

  “His latest victim,” Macy told her.

  Matilda paced the room, processing the information. “You’re telling me my husband has been abusing and killing children for years?”

  It was all Tony could do to speak. His vision had narrowed to tiny pinpricks. “Just boys.”

  She moved closer to Ernest. “We had it all,” she said calmly to her husband. Almost too calmly for someone whose entire world had just crumbled like a house of cards. “We would have been royalty. Our names would have been forever written in history alongside the Kennedys and Eisenhowers."

  Not hardly, Tony wanted to say but his voice didn't seem to be working.

  "But you couldn’t keep it in your pants, could you?" Matilda reached into a drawer and whipped out a pearl-handled revolver. Aiming at Ernest, she growled “Rot in hell,” and squeezed the trigger.

  Macy spun Benji away and covered his head at the last second. Ernest’s eyes widened, shocked. A growing pool of blood spread from under his body. His chest rose one last time, then deflated permanently, his face forever frozen in a gruesome death mask.

  Tony used what miniscule amount of strength he had left to wrench away the gun. Matilda didn’t fight him. Good thing because he would never live down being bested by a 98-pound senior citizen. Bad enough he hadn’t stopped her from murdering her husband.

  A siren sounded and soon emergency personnel burst into the room. Tony reached for Macy’s hand and relaxed into the beckoning darkness.

  ~10~

  A storm raged outside, thunder cracking and lightning streaking the sky as Lizzy and Will accompanied an unconscious Tony in the ambulance. Macy wanted to ride along but the medics needed all the room to work on Tony, and Benji refused to let go of her. They were following behind in a police car.

  The paramedics tended to Tony’s bullet wound as the driver zipped the ambulance around the slick city streets with precision speed and accuracy.

  “I should have anticipated March pulling a gun.”

  Lizzy leaned her head on Will’s shoulder, her eyes never leaving the too-still form on the gurney. “You couldn’t have known. Neither of us could have.”

  Will wasn’t letting himself off the hook so easily. “Still, I should have reacted sooner.”

  The ambulance braked under the Emergency Room portico and two medics whipped the doors open. Tony’s stretcher was rolled out and the legs snapped in place to wheel him inside. The trailing police car screeched to a stop and Macy flew out, Benji still in her grip. She caught up with Tony, only to be barred from entering the ER.

  A screaming Benji was pried from her grip so he could be examined. Caught between waiting for news on Tony or helping the traumatized boy, Macy was torn. A nurse informed her Tony was being prepped for surgery. With nothing she could do for him, she hurried after Benji.

  Lizzy and Will hovered in the operating room, watching while the doctors dug the bullet out of Tony's chest. When they finished stitching him up and Tony was moved to recovery, they floated back to the waiting room to check on Macy.

  They found her perched in a chair, looking worried and exhausted. Lizzy eased down beside her and placed a hand on her arm. “Tony is going to be okay, you have to believe that.” As if she felt the touch, Macy’s other hand covered her arm, directly over Lizzy’s and she sighed. “He needs you, and so does Benji," Lizzy said. "You need each other…family.”

  “If she hadn’t discovered March’s hiding place, Benji would have never been found,” Will pointed out.

  A woman from social services approached Macy and she jumped to her feet. “They’ve given Benji a sedative and he’s sleeping now. We’ve located his foster parents. They didn’t even report him missing. Figured they could keep on collecting his stipend while having one less mouth to feed.”

  “I want to adopt him.”

  Macy looked as stunned as the social worker at the words that leapt from her mouth. Then she smiled. Nothing had ever felt so right.

  With the promise that she would look into the situation and do what she could to start the process if all the necessary paperwork was approved, the social worker left.

  Will put a protective arm around Lizzy and she rested against him.

  The room was packed with law enforcement personnel, hoping for an update on their fellow officer.

  A loud commotion kicked up outside the Emergency Room doors as an ambulance transporting two critically injured people arrived. Paramedics and nurses rushed around their gurneys as they were wheeled inside, vital signs bantered back and forth while orders for crash carts were issued. Cries of “Flat-lined,” “She’s not breathing,” “He’s gone into cardiac arrest,” and “Start CPR,” rang out. Just another night in an always over-worked ER.

  "Get them into ER, stat," a doctor ordered.

  Lizzy glanced up at the voice and gasped. She tugged urgently on Will's arm. "Will, look, it's Santa, or the man who was dressed as Santa. He's a doctor."

  As if he heard her, the doctor turned to them and smiled. With a wink and a jaunty salute, he disappeared behind the swinging emergency doors.

  "Let's go talk to him." Lizzy jumped up but Will pulled her right back down. "Wait, there’s Tony's doctor. We need to find out about his condition first, then we can come back and talk to Santa."

  Lizzy agreed. The doctor informed the group of policemen that Tony pulled through surgery, no major organs had been hit, and he would recover. Lizzy and Will used the celebration of the officers to slip away and locate his room. They approached the bed to find tubes in his arms and nose, a large white bandage covering most of his torso. Macy was already there, telling a groggy Tony all about Benji.

  “I’m going to adopt him,” she announced, sounding more sure of her decision. “I know they’ll have to do a background check and home studies and all that, but it’s the right thing to do. That little boy needs me.” She hesitated and peered at Tony.

  His eyes drifted shut and then opened again. “You’ll make a great mother. A great wife. Mine.”

  “Is that a proposal?”

  “Think so.” His words slurred.

  Macy smiled and squeezed his hand. “The answer is yes, but we’ll talk about this more when you aren’t hopped up on morphine.”

  He smiled, his eyes closed. “Said yes. Can’t back out now.”

  “Never,” she promised. With one last smile she tiptoed out the door.

  Will and Lizzy moved closer to the bed. “You can’t hear us or see us,” Will said, “but we want to thank you for solving our case and stopping March. You’ve given us justice. We’re even now.”

  Tony’s lids fluttered, then opened.

  “And thank you for believing our story, Anthony.” Lizzy leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  The detective touched the spot, his brows dipping. Then he sm
iled.

  “We did it, Lizzy,” Will announced, tugging her close. His voice sounded far away.

  “Will?” His image started to fade. “No!” Lizzy cried, grasping his hand, but she was fading, too.

  “I love you, Lizzy, always,”

  “I love you, Will, forever.”

  Then there was nothing but air.

  ~Epilogue~

  "It's a Christmas miracle," the nurse pronounced.

  The lawyer’s lids fluttered open and he blinked at the bright lights. Where was he? A constant buzzing of chatter surrounded him, as did several beeps and dings. It smelled like antiseptic.

  He tried to rub his chest, but something in his arm stopped him. It felt like he had been flattened by an elephant, surely he had a broken rib or two, but he also felt gloriously, wondrously alive, better than he’d ever felt in his life.

  Happiness. That was the feeling invading his body, overriding the pain. He was happy to be alive. Swiveling his head, he realized he was in the hospital. He encountered the smiling gaze of the doctor and wasn't completely surprised that he looked like the bell-ringing Santa Claus. It was Christmas Eve, or at least it had been before he ended up a patient in the Emergency Room. "Merry Christmas," he mouthed.

  Then he spotted a small figure on a stretcher beside him. No, it couldn’t be…

  The reporter’s eyes blinked open and she inhaled deeply with a smile, as if she were happy to be alive as well. She must have sensed him staring. In slow motion, she turned her head in his direction and gasped.

  “Will!”

  “Lizzy!”

  Santa, aka the doctor, smiled at them both. “Merry Christmas, you two. It took awhile for it to happen, but I’m happy to have been a part of one of the greatest Christmas miracles ever.”

  I hope you enjoyed A Christmas Miracle and the difficult topic tackled within its pages. If so, I hope you’ll take a moment to share your comments with other readers by posting a review. With hundreds of new books published every month, it’s difficult to stand out in the crowd, and every review helps.

  Thank you for your help.

  From the Highland Press Christmas Anthology

  All I Want for Christmas Is You

  http://www.highlandpress.org