said to make them understand it wasn’t their fault, because they didn’t remember her.
People who hurt others needed extra kindness to get better.
Their mother’s life had been too hard and her family too bad for her to know how to be a mother. Nanna made sure they understood Mama had become someone who didn’t really know how to love. That it was a tragedy she’d given up before all the love they and Dad had to give could transform her into the person she was always meant to be.
People who hurt others needed extra kindness.
Mama had been too far gone for quick fixes, and even now Belle couldn’t bring herself to consider looking for her. She wasn’t steady enough on her feet to take on that kind of damage. Besides, it felt like a betrayal to Noelle, who couldn’t make that choice anymore.
Was McKeag too far gone too?
The gash on her patient’s leg was deep but flayed open with remarkable precision. It barely grazed the muscle beneath; the only part that needed stitching was the cleanly sliced skin that now stood open.
She had a patient. This patient. The one with a wound she knew she could stitch.
She pulled a light down to see into the wound better, selecting one with a magnifying window so she could be certain the wound was cleaned out before she began stitching it.
Maybe the person who had included McKeag in that gift thing had been trying to be kind to him. Not a bad idea, but the execution was problematic. A gift exchange forced him to do something in exchange for his gift, which wasn’t what someone reticent to participate in the season needed.
She picked out a couple of little pieces of glass with tweezers. “I want to flush this with saline, Mr. Axler, to make sure it’s clean before I stitch it. I’m going to go ahead and numb it, so it’s easier on you when I work a towel underneath your leg.”
“Whatever you think. Just want to go through this once.”
“The shot will be the most painful part. A few quick sticks, and I apologize. I’ll make them as quickly as I can,” she said, prepping the needle and scoping out locations to numb.
“Were you by yourself on the subway this morning?” Distraction was a useful technique for dealing with pain, and she’d use anything to save patients from pain.
“I was on my way to work.”
She injected twice during his answer, his words only pausing or faltering a second for each injection.
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Have kids?”
“Two.”
She finished the last injection and stood up to look down at him. “Injections over, should be feeling better any second. Boys? Girls?”
“One of each,” he said a little more easily, his voice letting her know it was working. Not only did talking help by distracting, but it provided a connection that soothed fear.
She found a couple of towels in a cabinet, got them under his leg and had flushed the wound to her satisfaction by the time Angel came in.
“How’s it going?”
“There was a little glass in the wound, but it’s clean now. I’m about to stitch it up.”
“Great. I’ll go to my next patient and pop back over when I’m done.”
“Is this your first day?” Mr. Axler asked.
“It’s my first day at this facility, but I’ve been doing this for several years now,” Belle answered, smiling at him. “I was an RN before I went back to school. Even if I look like a kid.”
“You do look young.” He chuckled but relaxed back.
She kept him talking as she worked. How did he meet his wife? How old were their children? Was she coming to pick him up at the hospital after this?
It worked. It usually did, and by the time she had him stitched and bandaged, that horrible anxiety from earlier had stopped chewing up her insides.
She met Angel back at the monitoring station, where another nurse walked her through the hospital’s patient system, so the file could be updated. Then they were off to another patient.
The morning continued this way, interspersed with patients and thoughts of McKeag. What had happened to him? Was he grieving too? Or trying not to grieve, like her?
By the time lunch rolled around, the worst of the influx had been handled and Angel returned to seeing strictly children with Belle shadowing.
Being busy always kept her from dwelling too much on the stuff she didn’t need to dwell on. This morning’s failure. Her reasons for coming to New York. The way Christmas now had a mood more suited to Halloween, but instead of ghosts and goblins, it was Christmas trees with teeth and murderous tinsel.
Getting around the department meant she also saw McKeag growling at three other people before the day was up. Which helped shore up her resolve. It also helped negate her earlier estimation of his attractiveness. She might see and understand that he was wounded, and she might want to help him, but it did take the shine off his good looks and make his jaw seem less chiseled, more brutish.
He needed someone to be kind to him, maybe even more than she needed someone to be kind to, to give gifts to this Christmas in New York when she should’ve been buying for her twin.
Because she did need it and wanted to give to someone who might be a colleague for years to come. Someone she might be able to see change.
Whatever the true definition of the twelve days of Christmas, she’d learned last year that the lead-up to the holiday was the hardest to get through.
There were twelve more days left before Christmas Day. He might not be working that whole time, and she certainly wouldn’t be, but it had a kind of symmetry to it that appealed to her, even if she only managed to get him a few secret gifts before he took holiday.
She’d give to him, her stand-in Noelle, an act her family would’ve been proud of. After work and on weekends, she’d visit the quintessential New York Christmas sites to get the pictures she’d need to write to Noelle about, another unnecessary, yet wholly necessary, act.
That was how she’d survive Christmas this year. This second year alone had to be better than the first had been; she couldn’t do that again.
* * *
At the end of her shift, as soon as she could safely see to the handling of her last patient, Belle made her way back to the locker room.
Lyons, which she’d decided to think of him now in an effort to separate him from the feelings she had about McKeag, would be irritated if she made him wait for her.
Even with her new plan of action, the idea of facing him made her nerves tangle.
He’d still been with a patient when she’d exited Emergency so she could
