Page 24 of Doctor Clause

The playful flirtatious banter.

He never wanted any of it when he wasn’t seeing anyone. Now that he was, his interest levels plummeted even farther.

“It’s for a good cause,” her voice said in his mind.

There was no arguing that point. After taking his first tour of the children’s ward, it was evident they were lacking a lot of things. Children needed mental stimulation to grow. It was as important as diet, exercise, and proper medical care.

The hospital dropped the ball in that regard. Too bad it wasn’t the bouncy type kids were able to play with.

He considered going to the brass, but if Kent wasn’t able to get more funding for the department he worked in, a doctor from another sector wasn’t going to be able to convince them.

Red tape. The stuff was everywhere, sticking to walls, floors, needles, pills, people. There was no escaping it. Cut a piece and a hundred more would appear to patch the spot up.

Eastport General was lucky to have the moms. They were picking up the slack that the hospital left for trash.

He picked up a file.

“Oh.” It was Tommy’s. Kent must have sent it for him to review. “Hmm.” The patient was responding well to the treatment. The cancer showed signs of shrinkage. If the trend continued, there’d be a good chance Leeona would be taking him home come spring.

It was too early to share that sort of news though. Statistics were merely numbers. There were always extreme cases on either side of the spectrum. The only certainty was this diseasewas unpredictable. There were patients diagnosed with a few months left, who went on to live another ten or twenty years. There were also those who should have thrived but died instead.

Getting the hopes up of loved ones was cruel.

He tucked the folder beneath his own stack of files. Each of his patients had families waiting for them to come home. Each of his patients were desperate for good news. There was too little to go around, especially for the most magical time of the year.

If only he was the real deal, pulling cures out of the red sack slung over a shoulder. He wasn’t though. His name was spelled with an e at the end.

“All it takes is to believe,” he said out loud. There was some basis of fact in that statement. It was the same as mind over matter.

It wasn’t a cure-all.

It wouldn’t work for everyone.

But... if a person truly believed in themselves, there was always the chance.

Maybe Saint Nick was just a way to let those hopes manifest. Maybe the idea behind the jolly old man wasn’t a bad one. Maybe sharing the same name wasn’t such a burden, after all.

Chapter Eighteen

Stephen

Christmas Eve.

It was a crisis no one was prepared for. The Santa hired for the children’s ward party cancelled at the last minute and kept the already-paid fee. With only a few hours’ notice, finding another suitable Saint Nick was impossible. There were no options to explore.

“Who was in charge of hiring Santa?” Leeona bellowed. She wasn’t the same meek gal who crocheted items while being belittled just a few weeks ago. Now, her voice was heard. Her opinions mattered. She was a strong, independent woman and everyone knew it.

“I was,” Menerva admitted. “He came recommended by a trusted source. I have no idea what happened.”

“We got scammed,” Gerty, a new mom in the group, hissed. “That’s what happened. You should have checked him out before paying him.”

“Or paid him after the job was done!” Leeona exclaimed.

“He needed the money to buy Christmas gifts for his kids,” Menerva argued. “He was in the same bind as we are. Of course, I believed him. Who goes around thinking everyone is out to get them?”

“Normal people,” Gerty huffed.

He slipped away while the women were squabbling, heading to the dreaded basement and the room of useless items, or mostly useless since one piece of the hoarded garbage was actually needed.