A Merry Little Christmas

by Catherine Palmer

  “Here. Here, take this baby.” She held Tobias out, and now Jeremiah saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears. “Take him and give him some milk. I’m going home.”

  “Don’t go, Lara. Please. Just talk to me.”

  He tried to maneuver the wailing little boy as he followed Lara into the foyer. Fists clenched and head bobbing, Tobias cut loose with a screech that could wake the dead. Jeremiah struggled to control him and try to prevent Lara from putting on her coat. It was impossible. As the baby wailed, she tugged her hat over her curls.

  “The milk is in the freezer,” she said, sniffling. “And don’t do this to me ever again, Jeremiah Maddox.”

  With that, she pulled open the door and stepped outside. Jeremiah had no choice but to hurry toward the kitchen, baby in arms, praying he could remember how to work the defroster on the microwave.

  Where were the bottles? How hot should the milk be? Did people sterilize things these days? He pulled open the freezer door and spotted the small white bags Lara had brought over from the guest cottage. Grabbing one, he tried to make soothing noises while he opened the microwave door.

  “It’s okay, Tobias,” he murmured. “Don’t cry. I’ve got you, buddy. I’ll have this milk ready in just a second, and you’re gonna be feeling a lot better before you know it. If I could just…set you down for…”

  “Give him to me.”

  Jeremiah turned to find Lara standing in the kitchen with her arms out. “You brought me over here. I don’t have my car. And besides, the roads are covered with ice.”

  He straightened, digested the information and grinned. Well, well, well.

  Lara slept in a recliner with Tobias in her arms until she woke to find him a soggy bundle, still blissfully lost in dreamland. Jeremiah had been right—he didn’t know a thing about babies. At least she’d had some experience with children through her work with the famine relief agency and the families in the international program. Somehow she and Jeremiah had managed to warm the milk, pour it into a bottle and get Tobias to drink from something that was most definitely not his mother. They had changed his diaper and found him a clean dry blanket.

  It had been well after midnight when the baby fell asleep again and Lara sank exhausted into the recliner. Though she had told Jeremiah to go upstairs and get a good night’s sleep, he refused. So they drifted off together in separate chairs, in stocking feet, with the fire warming their toes.

  The sound of a footfall on the staircase brought Lara awake, but Jeremiah slept on. She studied the man beside her, his dark hair and lashes, the planes of his face softened and relaxed. Recalling what he had said the night before, Lara wondered if he really meant those words. Beautiful. Smart. Gifted. Kind. Generous. Did he see her that way, when she had come to think of herself as plain, stoic, evenhanded and professional?

  She could hear someone in the kitchen, and she suspected it was Benjamin, preparing his breakfast before heading off to school. What would he think if he knew what his father had said the night before to the director of Reynolds University’s International Student Program? Had Jeremiah considered his sons at all when he spoke so openly to her? You won’t touch me, and you won’t let me near. Your walls are so high I don’t stand a chance of getting over, he had said. Did he even think about how his two boys might feel if their father breached Lara’s walls?

  Studying Jeremiah again, she listened to his deep, slow breathing. Her heart swelled as she permitted herself to imagine that picture she had dreamed of once, long ago. A man and a woman, united, married, in love. A home. A fire. A family. Arms to hold her in the night, hands to wipe away her tears, ears to listen to her hopes and fears and sorrows.

  “Dad! Hey, Dad! Did you hear the news?” The voice grew louder, and then Benjamin was standing in the living room staring at the two adults. He halted, took in the scene, assessed it.

  Jeremiah blinked and squinted against the morning light. “Huh? What’s going on?”

  “They canceled school.” Benjamin stepped closer. “I ate breakfast and made my lunch and got my backpack ready. Then I looked outside and saw the ice. So I turned on the radio, and every school is closed for the day. I figured you were probably…you’re usually up before me but…Uh, hello, Dr. Crane…how’s the baby?”

  Jeremiah leaned forward until the recliner’s leg rest folded in. He rubbed his face with both hands for a moment. Then he smiled at Lara.

  “Dr. Crane and I were up late feeding Tobias and changing his diaper,” he told his son. “Then the roads iced over. So here we are.”

  Benjamin eyed her. Then he nodded. “Okay. Listen, I’m heading back to bed, Dad. I don’t think you should go to your office. The weatherman said this is the worst ice storm to hit Missouri in years. Maybe ever. Whole trees are cracking in half. Branches have fallen all over the streets. The snowplows can’t even get out.”

  “Then I’ll stay home,” Jeremiah said.

  “Really? You never stay home.” Again Benjamin looked at Lara.

  Uncomfortable, she concentrated on the baby, who was stirring now and beginning to fuss. If he were a good father, Jeremiah couldn’t ignore his sons. Benjamin would want an explanation, and Daniel would demand it. Surely it wasn’t every morning they awoke to find a woman sleeping beside their dad—double recliners or not.

  “I guess we’ll be here together today,” Jeremiah said. “All five of us.”

  “Four,” Lara corrected. “I have to get home. I need to call the hospital and find out about Tabitha’s condition and get the number where Peter and the boys are staying. Then I’ve got to contact the president of the university and see if we can pull together the funds to bring the family back together.”

  “Dr. Crane, you can’t go anywhere today,” Benjamin told her. “You’re stuck with us.”

  “And we have telephones at our house, too.” Jeremiah handed her a cell phone.

  “I can walk home,” she protested. “I need clean clothes, and there’s probably not enough food—”

  Jeremiah cut her off by holding up one hand. “We’ve got plenty to eat. With teenagers in the house, we stay well stocked. We could make it through a nuclear winter, let alone an ice storm.”

  Lara could see she wasn’t making headway. “I need to not be here,” she said finally. “Just not here.”

  With that, Tobias let out a wail and there was nothing to do but focus on the baby. “I’ll teach you three wise guys how to do milk, diapers and mashed bananas,” she said over the din. “Then I’m walking home. Here, Ben, you get the first round of Tobias duty.”

  Lara held out the squirming tot.

  Benjamin backed up. “I’m not changing his diapers.”

  “Come on, big guy. He won’t bite.”

  “You stink,” Benjamin told Tobias as he lifted the baby into his arms. “If you think I’m looking at what you deposited in your diaper, fella, you’re wrong.”

  Feeling as if she had been pounded with a large hammer, Lara edged forward to climb out of her recliner. Before she could get up, Jeremiah pressed the footrest in and took her hands to help her. She stood, realized he was much too close and tried to move away. Impossible. He reached out and brushed a curl from her cheek.

  “She looks beautiful in the morning, doesn’t she, Ben?” he asked.

  Benjamin glanced at them and grinned. “Yeah. No getting around that, Dr. Crane. My dad has a good eye when it comes to women.”

  “I’m not one of your father’s women,” Lara said, pushing past Jeremiah. “I’m here in an official capacity, as a representative of the university. And I hope you have orange juice. I always start the day with a full glass. Now, let’s get some milk down that baby. Wow, what a pair of lungs.”

  She hurried toward the kitchen, praying neither man could read her face. She didn’t want to be just another woman in Jeremiah Maddox’s life. If she ever dared to let a man into her heart again, she intended to be the only woman. The difficult night had made her grumpy, and she ached for a hot shower, a cha
nge of clothes and a long nap.

  But Tobias wasn’t about to let anyone forget him. He bellowed with rage, his single white tooth gleaming in his open mouth. As Lara took a bag of milk from the freezer, Daniel emerged from the hallway into the kitchen.

  He scowled. “What’s all the racket? Dr. Crane, is that you? What’s that smell?”

  “Your turn to change his diaper,” Benjamin said, pushing Tobias into his older brother’s arms. “Dr. Crane is teaching me how to heat the milk.”

  “I’m not changing anybody’s diaper.” Daniel turned to his father. “You do it, Dad. And why is everyone at home? I thought you had school, Ben.”

  “Canceled. I bet we’ll be out tomorrow, too, and that’s the last day before Christmas break. It’s pure ice outside.”

  As if to emphasize his point, a loud cracking sound reverberated through the house. Everyone turned to the window just in time to see an enormous limb fall from the oak tree in the backyard. Daniel handed Tobias to his father and the two boys raced to the back door. Jeremiah held up the howling baby.

  “Young Mr. Muraya, why do I always get stuck with you?” he asked. “Every time I’m anywhere near, someone dumps you into my arms. Well, come on, kiddo. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Lara smiled tiredly as she set the microwave to heat the milk. Everything inside her screamed along with Tobias—let me go, get me home, somebody help me! But at the same time, she couldn’t deny the pleasure of padding around a warm kitchen floor in her stocking feet, pouring herself and Jeremiah glasses of orange juice and listening to the two boys exclaim over the crystalline wonderland that was their yard.

  “There. Done,” Jeremiah said. Lara watched him lift the baby into his arms as she approached. He took the bottle and tipped it up for Tobias. “See, I can be taught, Dr. Crane. Can you?”

  “What do I have to learn? I’m the one who figured out the milk and diapers.”

  He glanced at his sons, then he leaned close to Lara’s ear. “You have to learn how to let me in.”

  “Nobody gets in to see the wizard,” she murmured back.

  “You’re wrong. I’m coming in.”

  “Don’t even try.”

  “I’m already halfway there.”

  Lara focused on his mouth, so close to her own. Diapers and popping tree limbs and the taste of orange juice on her tongue vanished in an instant. Yes, he was. Halfway there, she thought. And if she wasn’t careful, every reason to keep him out would evaporate. Then he would be all the way in, and her heart would hurt, and her mind would get tangled and all the things she didn’t want would come roaring back.

  No getting around it, Lara was stuck. One step out onto the front porch of the Maddox house, and her feet nearly shot out from under her. Jeremiah would not be driving her home, she realized, and she certainly would not be walking.

  Jeremiah sat in the recliner with a peaceful Tobias in his arms as he listened to the weather reporter drone on with bad news. Lara keyed the number of the hospital into her cell phone. The storm hadn’t been confined to Springfield. As it turned out, ice coated every highway, street and road in a perfect arc that swung downward from Missouri through northern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma and ended just south of Dallas, Texas. Snow blanketed the states to the north and rain fell in the south. But in exactly the worst possible place, temperatures continued to plummet, and the ice settled in for a visit.

  “I need to speak to a patient by the name of Tabitha Muraya,” Lara said when someone picked up at the hospital. The phone had rung a long time before anyone answered, and then the breathless receptionist told her that very few workers had been able to make it in that morning. The whole place was understaffed, people who had tried to walk to their cars or drive the icy streets to work were pouring into the E.R. and everything was a mess.

  All the same, in moments Lara was connected to the unit where Tabitha was being kept in isolation. “Are you a member of the immediate family?” the nurse asked briskly.

  “No, I’m—”

  “I’m sorry but government regulations prevent me from giving out any information about our patients. You’ll have to contact a family member, ma’am.”

  “I’m caring for the only immediate family member in Springfield,” Lara said. “I have Mrs. Muraya’s five-month-old baby. I’m not able to reach her husband, because he went to Texas. I need to speak to Tabitha.”

  “That’s not possible, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  “Can you give her a message?”

  “Umm…I can give it to her, but I can’t promise a response.”

  “Okay.” Lara flashed Jeremiah a look of frustration. “Tell her that Mr. Maddox needs the telephone number where her husband is staying in Texas. We need it as soon as possible, so we can tell him about the situation and get him back here.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Jeremiah held out his hand. “Mind if I intervene?” he asked Lara.

  She gave him the phone.

  “Yes, ma’am, this is Jeremiah Maddox,” he told the nurse. “Yes, that Jeremiah Maddox. I’m on the hospital’s board of directors, and we’ve got a very difficult situation here. As you know, the board places top priority on doing what’s best for the patient. May I speak to someone in administration please?”

  Lara gaped as he continued talking. The board of directors? All her life, she had placed money and power at the bottom of the list of admirable qualities for a man. Rock bottom. Jeremiah had both, and she hadn’t trusted him for a second. His big house, fancy car and eye for women had relegated him instantly to her dishonor roll of scumbags. Only his genuinely wonderful sons, his efforts to accept change and his determination to help Miss Ethel had edged Jeremiah out of the muck. She had begun to like him. Admire him. Even respect him.

  But she had still held his wealth and position against him. Now, he spoke on the phone, gently but firmly using his place on the hospital board to come to the aid of the Muraya family. And for the first time in her life, Lara began to appreciate the value of influence.

  Sinking into the recliner beside Jeremiah, she observed him as he went about the business of manipulation. It was a fascinating process. A person had to own a profitable enterprise in order to make money, Lara acknowledged. Money had led Jeremiah to a valuable social position on the hospital board. A feather in his cap. A vanity role for a wealthy man—unless it could be put to use. Position brought power, Lara realized, and power wielded by a godly man could be a good thing. A very good thing.

  Before Lara had time to fully absorb this revelation, Jeremiah was speaking to the president of the hospital. It was a complicated situation, he reiterated. A baby was involved. No immediate family in the state.

  “So exactly how serious is Tabitha Muraya’s medical condition?” Jeremiah asked. Leaning back in the recliner, he flipped up the footrest. “I see. Well, that’s a concern. No, the baby is going to be fine—don’t worry about that. I’ve got that under control. Absolutely. Thank you, then. We’ll be in touch.”

  He set the phone on a nearby table and looked at Lara. “Malaria,” he said.

  Chapter Seven

  “Malaria is the wrong diagnosis,” Daniel announced as he stepped into the living room. He pulled a chair up to the fire where Jeremiah and Lara had set up camp for the day.

  Setting a sheaf of papers on his knees, he began to explain. “The doctor said Tabitha was having a relapse of malaria, right? So, I did some research. There are three kinds of malaria in Africa. Plasmodium falciparum produces severe symptoms and is responsible for most malaria deaths. Plasmodium malariae causes typical symptoms, but it can remain in the bloodstream for years without producing symptoms. Neither one relapses.”

  Jeremiah studied Lara for a moment. She was feeding Tobias again. To everyone’s consternation, the baby had turned out to have a voracious appetite. They were down to the last couple of bags of their frozen milk supply, and no one knew what to do next. Only a few streets had been cleared, the weather reporters were w
arning people to stay home, and nightfall was closing in.

  Jeremiah focused on his son again. “The doctor definitely told me Tabitha’s having a relapse, Daniel. What’s the third kind of malaria?”

  “Plasmodium ovale. It can relapse, but it’s found in West Africa. The fourth strain is only in Asia.” Daniel tapped on the paper. “Tabitha is from East Africa. She can’t have P. ovale, and she can’t have the Asian strain. So this is not a malarial relapse, Dad. I think you should call the hospital and tell them.”

  “Who am I to tell an infectious diseases specialist that he’s wrong? This doctor must have information we don’t.”

  “Got something new!” Benjamin crowed as he hurried into the room with paper in his hand. “I’ve got you beat, Dan-the-Man. In Africa, malarial relapse is seen exclusively in P. ovale, and represents a reseeding of the bloodstream by dormant parasites in the liver.”

  “That’s exactly what I just said,” Daniel protested. “It’s in West Africa, and Tabitha is from East Africa.”

  “Aha, but that’s a relapse. As it turns out Plasmodium malariae can recrudesce!”

  “Recrudesce?” Lara frowned. “What on earth does that mean?”

  “The malaria can renew or become active again. Plasmodium malariae can continue to cause clinical malarial attacks even twenty years after the original infection. And get this. There’s now drug-resistant malaria all over Africa.”

  “Let me see that,” Daniel demanded. He snatched Benjamin’s research.

  Jeremiah rolled his eyes. Nothing worse than the younger brother trumping the older. In the recliner beside him, Lara looked as though she were about to fall asleep with Tobias in her arms. The preceding hours had been long and stressful for everyone—including the baby, who was clearly feeling the absence of his mother and family.