Mattie.” Jenna looked as far from Angel as she could then, out of the windows to the flurries blowing around in the late November chill.
Did that mean outside? “Where did they go?”
“It’s his birthday,” Jenna murmured, then added, “and it’s on tree day this year.”
The lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center was happening today. Always the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving, which Angel had celebrated last week with the best turkey sandwich she’d ever tasted, purchased the night before from an authentic New York deli.
“Is that what he wanted for his birthday?” Hard to believe—the kid was four. Would be easier to believe if he wanted to visit the tree at the local pizza arcade.
“We always go. Every year.” Jenna’s voice wobbled.
Every year. Except this year she didn’t get to go. This year, which had been a bad year. And this week had started with her losing one of her kidneys along with the tumor that had reached her spine with enough pressure to corrupt her balance and the ability to control her legs. Her second such surgery this year, and it promised another round of chemotherapy after Christmas. Her hair had only just gotten long enough to begin styling again.
It was a lot for a child. It would’ve been a lot for an adult.
“Next year you’ll get to go again.” Angel heard the words come out, knew it was wrong to say it—no one could promise this child she’d be alive next year—but the defeat she saw in the slope of Jenna’s frail shoulders and the pain in her voice had the words flying out of Angel’s mouth before that logical part of her brain kicked in. All there was in that second was the need to comfort, connecting with the part of her own soul that knew bitter disappointment and wished to soothe that hurt so hard that any heart could hear it.
“No, I won’t.” The softly spoken words dropped like stones in the room. “No more holidays after this year. Maybe Valentine’s Day, not that any boy would want to be the Valentine of Baldy.”
“Now you’re just talking crazy.” Angel snagged Jenna’s bony hand and squeezed, and, though she’d yet to get any eye contact from the girl, took it as a small sign of hope when she didn’t pull away. “You know tomorrow you’re going to feel a lot more like yourself. What can I do to make today better?”
“Take me to the tree.”
She’d been told No so much lately, but Angel had to say it again. “Sweet girl, you know I would do that if I could.”
A chirp from the neglected laptop on Jenna’s bedside table interrupted Angel’s train of thought, then she remembered. “They’ll broadcast it tonight, the whole ceremony with the singers and the Rockettes. We could watch it together? I’ll go get us some dinner, and we’ll sit here and soak up Christmas spirit with whatever you want.”
“It’s not the same,” Jenna grumbled. “They do those shots from far away. They don’t get up close and look way up at the top. One time, I even crawled below the barrier rails and almost got to the tree before they caught me.”
The tree could be leverage to get her to eat.
Sometimes she still thought like the criminals who’d raised her, and even if this was a con that was being used for good, that pang of self-disgust still stabbed cold into the back of her neck for the briefest of moments. Before she used that leverage anyway.
“What if I took my phone to Rockefeller Center and went to the base of the tree, and live streamed it for you to watch, right from the thick of things? You could tell me what you wanted to see, and I’d go film that.”
Jenna finally looked at her, and a little zing of triumph negated that lance of less positive feelings about herself.
“You would?” Voice so hopeful, but her expression shouted worry this was just something else she couldn’t have. “Would you bring me a peppermint hot cocoa and a snickerdoodle from the cookie shop?”
Got her.
“I absolutely would do that for you. Would you do something for me if I did?”
“What?”
“Eat some lunch?” Angel phrased it like a question and pretended even to herself that she’d had no ulterior motive for visiting the little patient, that she’d have come and visited anyway because it was the kind thing to do. That was what good people did, and it was something she was working on. Might always be working on. “I’ll tell them to bring up something good. You eat it, and I’ll live stream the tree lighting and bring you goodies afterward.”
Jenna looked for a moment as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but then smiled so wide Angel could ignore the regret she should feel for her terrible adulting skills. “I will!”
She did better in her daily life and in her practice, but Jenna was special. And Angel knew a whole lot about disappointment and deprivation, which colored her actions. She might not be able to cure Jenna today, but she could make today better.
Angel rounded the bed to fetch the laptop, and they took a moment to link to her social media account, then checked the schedule for the tree ceremony.
“Lasses.” A deep, deliciously resonant voice came from the open door behind her, announcing the arrival of the brain-scrambling Scotsman.
He did that on purpose, she was just sure of it—the man’s brogue got thicker when he wanted to pour on the charm, as he apparently now did.
She was yet another weak creature who responded. Oh, she tried not to like it, and usually failed. Like right now, she failed completely to control her smile reflex. No matter how hard she willed softness and relaxation into her cheeks, they fired anyway. The best she could do was try to twist it into a rueful grimace as she made room for the surgeon.
“Jenna, my love, I’m hearing rumors you’re no’ eatin’.” Dr. Wolfe McKeag hit the Rs in his speech so hard they seemed to keep on rolling even after he’d moved on to lavish his attention on other words. Did he do that with his family? Dr. Lyons McKeag, his brother, worked in the ER with Angel, and he seemed to have become much more acclimatized to the sound of American vowels. And Rs.
However Wolfe McKeag liked to live his life, it wasn’t her business. But how strange it must be to be so proud of where he came from that he’d play it up instead of hiding it completely. To not live in perpetual fear of being found out if anyone got close... She’d told one person and lost her first job. The possibility that he’d tell someone here and get her fired again always sat in the back of her mind.
Angel couldn’t imagine life without that edge. Being so comfortable with herself, her past. Even a decade after removing herself entirely from the place and the people of her early life, all that came to mind when she actively tried not to think back was the lone pair of pants she’d had to wear one year.
What kind of demented designer even made camouflage-patterned corduroy? Certainly not one who had ever worn camouflage in a practical sense. Not even the stealthiest hunter could sneak up on a deer if every step announced their arrival. Not that she’d been able to shoot the deer that time she’d tried to help her father hunt when the larder ran bare.
And none
