Christmas Choice

Story by Nora Ann Kuehn

“My Christmas is dead!” the little boy had said. And now the boy wanted her to spend Christmas with him.

But she couldn’t—if she did, she might wreck her one chance at happiness.

                                                                       * * * * *

“It’s Bobby Spencer,” Mrs. Rona, the head nurse at Royal Oaks Hospital was telling Doris over the phone. “He seems more upset than usual today. We had to give him a sedative. I just remembered that you are the only one he will really trust.”

Doris felt her disappointment slip around her like a shroud. She had dreamed of a date with Dr. Dawson for such a long time. Now she was being asked to break it.

“I know it’s your day off,” Mrs. Rona was saying. “You don’t have to come in unless you want to. I thought you would want to know because you have been showing so much interest in the boy.”

Doris thought of the lovely new dress and all the lunches she had skipped so she could buy it. I just can’t give up this day, she thought. Christmas is a day for happiness spent with friends. This was her chance for just such a day. I’m going to take that chance, she thought defiantly.

Then she remembered Bobby Spencer’s big blue eyes looking at her beseechingly, his chin quivering pitifully. She had just had to tell him that both his parents had been killed in the accident that had brought him to the hospital. His nine-year-old body, severely injured in the accident, was almost healed now. But it had worried Doris that he had drawn into a world she couldn’t seem to reach.

She thought of her own son, David, who would have been just Bobby’s age, and of her husband who had also drowned trying to save him. She felt a pang of grief, remembering back to that heartbreak four years before. She was so thankful to find work at Royal Oaks when she needed it desperately. It had helped to pull her out of her depression. But little Bobby Spencer had nothing or no one to help him.

I’m alone, too, she told her conscience. If I can keep my date with Dr. Dawson, maybe someday . . . oh, just maybe someday I can find happiness again.

Dr. Dawson was a tall, gentle man. He had deep laugh lines around his dark eyes, and a shock of straw-colored hair. Doris thought he was the kindest man she had ever met. The nurses and patients all loved him and Doris was no exception.

Dr. Dawson’s whole life seemed to be dedicated to the hospital since his wife had died the year before Doris came there to work. “We can understand how Dr. Dawson would feel,” one of the nurses had confided to Doris. “His wife was so sweet and pretty.”

No wonder Doris could hardly believe she was hearing right when he had asked her to spend Christmas at the farm where his folks lived.

She had been in Bobby Spencer’s room that day. Earlier that morning she had gathered up some science fiction magazines to take to him. Remembering how she and her sister used to dream over the Christmas catalogs, she had picked up the one on her table.

Bobby was staring at the door when she walked in. “Were you looking for me?” she had asked cheerfully.

“No,” Bobby had said, looking away.

“I brought you the Christmas catalog,” she had said, putting the book with its brightly-colored gifts into his hand. “Just two weeks until Christmas.”

“My Christmas is dead!” he had said, pushing it aside, and letting it fall to the floor. He turned his face to the wall—not crying, just lying there, staring into space.

Doris had started to put her hand out to comfort him when Dr. Dawson entered the room. He saw the book on the floor and the small form under the sheet, and silently motioned her out of the room. 

A few minutes later Dr. Dawson had joined her in the hall. “You have been spending a lot of time with the boy,” he had said kindly. “So much unhappiness is always hard to see, and especially at Christmastime.”

He had started to walk away, then he turned back. “If you have Christmas off, come spend it with me at the farm. It’s where I go to unwind.”

For two weeks Doris had been marking the days off the calendar by the telephone. This morning she had looked joyfully at the date circled there. Then the phone call wiped all the joy from her heart.

It is just not fair, she though defiantly. There had been little happiness in her life for so long. She had been spending most of her time at the hospital. Since Bobby Spencer’s accident, she had even been spending her day off there. Today, for a little while, she could forget all about the hospital problems.

Christmas—what a jumble of thoughts the word brought to her mind. Bright ornaments on a small evergreen. One small stocking on the fireplace mantel. Then the lonely years when there was no tree, no small stocking to hang. She felt again all the pain, the loneliness, the desperate search for meaning in her life again. Suddenly she was seeing again the hurt in a small boy’s eyes. She heard again the bitterness when he said, “My Christmas is dead.”

“Doris, are you still there?” Mrs. Rona said.     

“Yes, yes, I’m still here,” Doris answered softly. “I’ll be right over.”

Bobby was still asleep when Doris entered his room. She moved a chair beside his bed and sat down to wait. Christmas, she thought sadly, was the time of year she had always loved the best before she lost her husband and child.

Doris sat up a little straighter in her chair. Time to stop thinking about the past. Here in this bed was challenge and new hope. She would work hard to bring back happiness into this young boy’s life. Show me the way to give him happy memories, she prayed silently.

Outside the hospital Doris could hear the soft chiming of church bells. “Merry Christmas,” she whispered, going to the window to look into the bleak winter day below. She wondered if Dr. Dawson was enjoying his day at the farm.

A footstep behind her made her turn. Dr. Dawson was just coming through the door! He was carrying a shiny spaceship model. His rugged face broke into a grin when he saw her.

“We’ll keep our date if we can’t go to the farm,” he said softly. Doris could only stare at him, her heart in her eyes.

“I called your apartment to break our date so I could be with Bobby,” he continued. “Imagine my surprise when they told me that you had left the same message for me.”

Before Doris could answer, she saw Bobby waking up. She saw the fear in his big blue eyes as they searched the room. Then he saw her hurrying toward him and the fear vanished.

“Is it Christmas yet?” he asked softly, and for the first time, Doris saw a tiny smile around his mouth.

She bent to smooth his pillow. “It’s Christmas,” she said around the lump in her throat.

Dr. Dawson handed Bobby the shiny spaceship model. “I have a feeling it’s the first of a lot of Christmases we three are going to spend together,” Doris heard him telling Bobby, but his eyes were looking right into hers.

 

 

“Christmas Choice” was written by Nora Ann Kuehn and published in Christmas in My Heart® 25. It was reprinted here with the permission of Joe Wheeler, editor/compiler and Pacific Press Publishing Association, headquartered in Nampa, Ida.