Page 24 of The Nutcracker
As I handed her the bear she caught her breath. “Oh my. I remember you,” she whispered to the bear before hugging him. “He won you at the fair. He won you and gave you to me.”
“Do you remember who ‘he’ is?”
I could see her struggling to locate the memory. “His name is on the tip of my tongue.”
I turned to the record player, plugged it in and lifted the needle off its cradle. “What about now?”
I placed the needle on the groove of the spinning record…
The song started playing…
And suddenly my grandmother gasped, her eyes lost in a snowfall of memories. “Oh Jerry! His name was Jerry. My love! My sweetheart!”
At the sound of his name my heart swelled with joy.
I sniffed back the emotions as I watched a tear of happiness trickle down her cheek.
“Grandma, would you like to dance?”
She nodded emphatically. “Yes. Oh yes.”
Gently I took the teddy from her and sat him in the tree where he belonged. I took my grandmother by the hand and with awkward shuffles we danced in front of the tree, just as she and Grandpa had done every precious Christmas they had together.
“Buddy Holly,” came a voice from the doorway. “One of my personal faves.”
I turned… and almost tripped over my own feet when I saw—
“Curtis!”
The man standing in the doorway dressed in a doctor’s coat looked at me strangely. “Have we met?”
“Yes. No. I guess that’s open to interpretation,” I muttered.
I stopped dancing as the doctor stepped forward to shake my hand. “Doctor Caine. Curtis Caine. If we have met before, I apologise. I’m trying to remember everyone’s names and faces, being new in town and all. Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know Marjorie here is doing well. Sorry, your name is…”
“This is my grandson, Jordy,” Grandma jumped in. “We were just dancing to a song my husband Jerry and I used to dance to every Christmas. It was our very first song.”
“You remember your husband’s name?” Doctor Curtis asked, clicking his pen and making a note on his clipboard. “Well that’s certainly encouraging.”
“Jordy brought in a few things to help remind me. I remember the chestnuts roasting and the soft fur of my teddy and oh the sound of Buddy Holly.”
Doctor Curtis gave me a nod of approval. “Sensory association. It’s the notion that everything is connected. It’s a great practice with patients like Marjorie.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” I mumbled. “Or maybe it was.”
“You sound a little confused.” He noticed the cut on my nose. “Have you bumped your head? Do you need me to look at that?”
Before I could answer he stepped close to me and my heart began pounding outpa-rum-pa-pum-pumagain.
I could smell his skin. I could smell the forest and the pine needles and smoke from a mountain cabin. I remembered Nurse Jillian mentioning the day before that the new doctor was flying in from Colorado.
How had this gentle mountain man managed to pay a visit to my dreams on his way here to Coopers Mill?
“Do you want me to put a butterfly clip on that for you? It won’t take a moment.”
I smiled and shook my head. “No, I’m okay. Thank you.”
“Well the good news is you’re not going to bleed to death from it. You may not even scar. But just for good measure, why not have one of these to make you feel better?”