Chapter Text
“And last but certainly not least,” said Dr. Hildegarde over the flutter of shuffling notes, “we have our friend Claudel—”
A high-pitched squeal of laughter cut her off, and a dozen pairs of smiling eyes glanced up to watch the friend in question whirl like a tornado around a large redheaded man.
“Who is that? Who goes there?!”
The little boy let out another shriek of delight as the man’s booming voice added, with exaggerated indignation, “Heyyy, where did my— who stole my phone?! I ken I had it in my pocket jes’ a second ago!”
With a fond shake of her head, our attending looked back down at her clipboard. “Four-year-old male, admitted with cystic fibrosis exacerbation. Go ahead, Dr. Beauchamp.”
Lips still twitching with amusement, I cleared my throat. “Right, Claudel LaRue, direct admit from home for pseudomonas flare. Got his PICC line on the 16th, we are on day”—a pause to check my notes—“eight of zosyn and tobramycin, and as you can see, he appears to be feeling much better.” A collective chuckle rose from our team as the child bounded onto his hospital bed and began an enthusiastic victory dance, waving the stolen phone over his head.
“G-tube feeds going well?” my attending prompted. “How are we doing on hydration?
“Better,” I confirmed. “He actually surpassed his fluid goal yesterday, and his weight is up by half a kilo since admission.”
Dr. Hildegarde nodded, making a few notes on her paper. “Any word from foster mom?”
My face fell. “The nurses say she calls every few days to check in, but they haven’t heard from her since Monday.”
A humming, noncommittal noise, another mark on her paper. “Par for the course with this one. Be sure she knows he’s being discharged on the 30th. Last time, she forgot to come pick him up.” With a sigh, she clipped her pen to the top of the chart and tucked the file beneath her arm. “No changes to his orders, then?”
“No, nothing for today.”
“Very good. That’s it for the morning, then, everyone. Have a safe holiday, and stay warm out there. Call if you need me, Claire.”
I gave a small salute, exchanging goodbyes and Merry-Christmases with the other members of my team as they dispersed posthaste, eager to get home to their families. As the last of the clacking heels and Oxfords disappeared around the corner, little Claudel let out another squeal, smoothing over the needleprick of jealousy in my heart.
Drawn to the sounds of joy, I sauntered to the open door and leaned against its frame, watching with tender amusement as the Scotsman spun in circles, making a show of trying to find the thief who had stolen his phone. I’d only been on the pediatrics rotation for three weeks, but I recognized him as one of the nurses on the unit; at well over six feet tall, with a mop of russet curls and an unmistakable brogue, he was difficult to miss. His name started with a J, I thought — Jeremy? Jason?...
“Ah, Dr. Beauchamp!” he exclaimed as I rapped my knuckles on the doorjamb. “Thank goodness ye’re here.”
At once mildly (pleasantly) surprised that he knew my name and a bit ashamed that I couldn’t reciprocate, I tried to cover the deficit with a chuckle. “Having a bit of trouble in here?”
“He can’t see me!” Claudel crowed, blue eyes sparkling. “I’m inbisible!”
Catching on to the game, I gasped, jumping back. “Who said that?!”
The little boy howled with delight, flinging himself onto the bed and kicking his legs up in the air. I exchanged warm glances with the Scotsman — Christ, what was his name? — who blinked both eyes at me in a quick, owl-like movement that I only realized belatedly was meant to be a wink.
“He looks so much better,” I remarked, leaning in toward him to speak sotto vocce.
“Aye,” the man agreed just as softly, both of our eyes locked on the boy. “Really turned a corner in the last couple’ve days.”
“Did he get his breathing treatment already this morning?”
“No’ sure.” At my inquisitive look, he smiled a bit bashfully. “I’m, ah… I’m not actually his nurse today. Just here as a friend.”
A quick once-over, and I felt my cheeks burn — so much for my supposed physician’s observational skills, considering the man was wearing street clothes and a bright neon visitor’s sticker — but before I could attempt to bumble my way through an explanation for the oversight, Claudel flipped onto his hands and knees and began bucking like a bronco.
“Can I have another cookie, Jamie?” he asked mid-flail.
Jamie. A thrill of relief lit my neurons, and I silently blessed the boy for sparing me the awkwardness of needing to ask. His name is Jamie.
“I think you’ve had enough sugar for one morning, lad.”
“Aww!” Claudel flopped onto his belly, fixing us both with an endearing pout.
Trying and failing to hold a straight face, I slanted Jamie a look out of the corner of my eye. “It is Christmas Eve, after all.”
The Scotsman gave a low grunt. “Aye, but when he gets this wound up, he starts—”
Right on cue, Claudel drew in a rattling wheeze of a breath and curled up on his side, his whole frame wracked with a painful-sounding coughing fit.
“—coughing.”
Jamie was already halfway across the room as the boy’s pulse ox began to beep with a low oxygen warning. With the poker-faced calm of an experienced nurse, he sat Claudel up and helped the boy position himself with his hands on his knees, opening his lungs to better clear his airway. After a few more barking, wet coughs, the little one spit into the tissue that Jamie held patiently and expectantly over his mouth.
Both of us watched the monitor with furrowed brows as the pulse ox slowly climbed back into the low 90s, dipping once or twice before settling out to the boy’s baseline.
“Do you want me to page the respiratory therapist?” I asked.
Jamie watched the monitor for another few seconds before shaking his head. “Nah, he’s alright.” Tossing the wadded tissue in the bin and reaching instinctively for a squirt of hand sanitizer, he sank down onto the mattress next to Claudel. “We just need to take it easy for a while, right, a bhalaich?”
Chagrined, the boy leaned his head against Jamie’s arm. “Yeah. Sometimes I just get too excited and I jump around and around.”
“And it makes yer lungs angry, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Really angry.”
“So we have tae give them time to calm down a bit, hm? Pick something quiet to do, like coloring, or puzzles, or—”
“XBox?” Claudel suggested, tipping his head up to look at Jamie hopefully.
A knowing, narrow glance, and Jamie sighed in concession. “Aye, alright.” The little one scrambled off the bed with a hoot of triumph, bright eyes intent on the console and pointedly ignoring the second part of the statement: “But we are goin’ tae do something today that doesna involve screen time, understood?”
“I call Yoshi!”
Satisfied that my patient was stable and in good hands, I smiled wistfully and began to turn toward the door. I hadn’t even taken a step of retreat, though, before Claudel’s sweet voice asked, “You wanna play Mario Kart with me, Dr. Bee-Chimp?”
The fact that I even had time to pause and consider the request was a testament to the holiday lull; the past few days had been a veritable whirlwind of discharges as the pediatric unit nearly emptied, with everyone — doctors, nurses, and parents alike — eager to get the children stabilized and home in time for Christmas. Only eleven patients remained out of the thirty-two bed capacity, most of them chronically ill like Claudel and well established in their medical routines.
Which left me with more free time in my work day than I’d ever experienced in my entire residency.
“Och, lad, the doctor doesna have time t—”
“The doctor,” I interrupted, even as I flashed a look of gratitude at Jamie for having my back, “has to go check on one or two things for my other patients.” Lowering into a crouch so that I was at eye-level with Claudel, I smiled and winked. “But how about I come back after I’ve finished and play a few rounds with you?”
“Yayyy!” The preschooler raised balled fists of triumph, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet a few times before darting across the room to shove a controller into Jamie’s hands. “But me and Jamie, um, me and Jamie are gonna play til you get back, though, ‘kay? He’s really good at this game.”
As I stood up again, I folded my arms over my front. “What a coincidence,” I said with a tilted chin and quirked brow. “So am I.”
Jamie’s eyes caught mine, his initial sheepishness giving way to a competitive glint that set the air between us crackling.
“That so?” he murmured, raising his own brow in challenge.
I let a slow, secretive smirk unfurl as I turned to leave, holding eye contact until the last moment. “You’d better get the practice rounds in while you can,” I warned over my shoulder. “You’re going to need them.”
“How?!” Jamie cried out in disbelief, flinging his controller onto the bed as Claudel whooped and cheered for my third win in a row. (And ‘win’ was putting it kindly; I’d absolutely decimated the poor man.)
Shrugging one shoulder smugly, I laced my fingers and stretched them out in front of me until they cracked. “I’m just that good, what can I say?”
“Four years in a fraternity wi’ a bunch o’ gamers,” the Scot marveled, regarding me with equal parts reverence and desolation, “and I’ve never been beaten this badly before.”
With a breath of a laugh, I shrugged again — a bit tighter this time, more defensive. “I… had an unusual childhood. Spent a lot of time on the road or sitting through academic conferences. Suppose that translated to a lot of time on the Game Boy.” Eager to return to a lighter, more playful mood, I leaned conspiratorially toward Claudel. “Grown-ups weren’t so worried about screen time back then.”
The little boy groaned, arching his top half backward onto the bed. “I wanna live back in the olden days.”
“‘Olden days?!’” Unable to resist the opportunity, Jamie reached over to tickle him, fingers skittering over his ribs and belly until Claudel was curled up in a ball, shrieking with laughter. I tensed at the sound, braced for another coughing fit, but the veteran nurse was way ahead of me; he seemed to know instinctively where the line was between play and strain, and I caught the knowing flicker of his eyes over to the pulse ox to confirm that the little one was still safe. “Who’re ye callin auld, wee shrimpie?”
Quite suddenly, a call from the lab intruded on the fun, leaving me time for little more than an apologetic glance as I dashed out to the corridor to answer it. Claudel didn’t even seem to realize that I’d left; rebounding like a wriggling puppy, he tried to tackle Jamie from behind, kneeing his way up the poor man’s spine and pushing down ineffectually on his head. The nurse winced as a stray pinky caught him in the eye, but otherwise seemed insensible to the onslaught; his gaze had followed me out, and he gave a despondent little wave as I answered the phone.
“I’ll be back,” I mouthed to him, and watched a small smile flit across his face.
“I—I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” My voice faltered as I turned away, trying in vain to fend off the involuntary, tingling recognition of how very handsome he was when he looked at me like that.
I hadn’t cried on the job in a very long time.
Perhaps that was the lingering Britishness in me, despite a largely nomadic existence — some deeply ingrained instinct to suppress and soldier on. I couldn’t afford to go to pieces over every devastating medical case, or I would never bloody well stop.
But that Christmas Eve, I locked myself in the bathroom and sank to the floor.
Ava was three. Her parents had brought her in with general malaise and fatigue, worried that she hadn’t been eating or drinking well. Out of an abundance of caution, we’d admitted her for testing and hydration. When our team rounded earlier that morning, the little girl had been stuffing a cinnamon roll in her mouth and laughing at an episode of Bluey. Encouraged, I’d told her parents that so long as her lab work was unremarkable, we would be able to discharge her that evening, get her home in time to open presents from Santa.
Then I got the call.
Her tumor markers had come back so elevated that the technician had thought — hoped — there was an error. A contaminated or clotted specimen, perhaps?
On redraw, they were even higher.
I’d paged the social worker and the pediatric oncologist on call.
We’d told the parents together.
And then I’d sequestered myself away to sob.
Five minutes, I told myself sternly. You have five minutes to get it all out. Then I scrubbed my face with water and a coarse industrial-grade paper towel, patted down the frizzy flyaways around my ears, and smoothed my white lab coat.
I wasn’t sure who I thought I was fooling, but the sparkle in Jamie’s eyes dimmed within seconds of my reappearance.
“Dr. Bee-Chimp!” Claudel cried, blissfully oblivious. “Come on, we’re watching Frozen!”
“What an astonishing change of pace!” I tried for a convincing chuckle — I was pretty sure he’d watched the film every single day since he’d been admitted — and felt the tension in my chest slacken a bit when Jamie followed suit; even if he recognized my distress, it seemed he had the grace not to call me on it.
“Aye, well, for the record, I tried to get him to watch a Christmas movie—”
“This is a Christmas movie!” The boy gave a dramatic eye roll, gesturing to the screen. “Hel-lo, there’s snow eberywhere!"
“Oh, of course.” My smile this time came a bit easier. “How silly of us.”
Satisfied that he’d done his duty in educating the woefully ignorant adults, Claudel set to chattering happily about the movie he’d clearly memorized, parroting the dialogue and singing along with the characters. I listened to him with half an ear as I sank down onto the edge of the hospital bed next to Jamie.
It was only by the juxtaposition of his solidness, his stillness, that I realized I was trembling.
For a while, the two of us simply watched Claudel as he danced and fidgeted and pointed to the screen with the nonstop motion of boyhood. Neither of us looked at the other. Neither of us said anything.
Then, very slowly, Jamie lifted a warm, broad hand and rested it on my shoulder.
He knew.
Without a word of explanation, he knew, in a way that no one else could outside of the medical profession. He knew the burden and the grief, the overwhelming sense of responsibility, the privilege and the trauma of bearing witness to the most vulnerable moments in the human experience.
There was nothing overly forward about his gesture of comfort; it was something any colleague would do, a shoulder touch of sympathy, solidarity. Perhaps it was only my heightened emotional state, and the holiday, and my own loneliness all coming to a head at once — but the bond of understanding I felt with him in that silence, in the gentle steadiness of his hand, settled over my soul like a blanket.
Only when the hand slipped away, leaving my skin cool and prickling in its absence, did it occur to me that perhaps the absurd impulse I’d resisted to reach up and clasp it had not been so absurd after all.
I chanced a glimpse of Jamie’s face, but his eyes were trained on little Claudel, narrowed in thought.
“Never?” he asked the boy, a follow-up question to a statement I hadn’t heard.
“Nuh-uh, never!”
I glanced back and forth between the two of them, trying to decide whether or not to clarify what I’d missed. Before I could even open my mouth to ask, though, Jamie was suddenly rising to his feet, fingertips tapping my upper arm as he stood.
“Dr. Beauchamp,” he said, bobbing his head toward the corridor, “a word?”
Feeling lost and a bit daft, I nodded and followed him nonetheless. “Of course.”
As soon as we’d walked through the door, Jamie pulled me off to the side, out of Claudel’s line of sight. “What d’ye say,” he whispered, leaning his head quite close to mine, “you and I conjure up a bit o’ Christmas magic for the lad?” The twinkle was back in his eyes, and I found myself smiling even though I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant.
“Well,” I hedged, feeling my cheeks warm, “count me in if I can help, but I’m afraid I missed what he said in the first place.”
“Ah.” Jamie’s smile was kind, nonjudgmental. “It was jes’ an offhand comment durin’ one of the songs. He said he’s never actually made a proper snowman before.”
Given what little I knew about the boy’s foster care situation, I supposed I wasn’t surprised. Still, my heart clenched to hear it, and I decided straight away that whatever Jamie was about to suggest, I was on board with trying to make it happen.
“And you want to help him do that,” I finished.
“Aye.” He paused for a moment, blunt fingertips rasping over the stubble of his cheek as he pondered. “Though I’m guessin’ ye’re no’ likely to approve a leave for him tae go off-unit.”
“No.” I shook my head, apologetic but stern. “Not after that desat this morning. He needs to stay on the monitor.”
“Figured as much.” Undeterred, Jamie stood up straighter and folded his arms over his chest. “S’pose that jes’ means we’ll have to find a way tae bring the snow to him.”
The wheels in my head were already turning as I nodded slowly. “I’ll go get my coat.”
Two large pink plastic wash basins heaped with snow later, we were both satisfied that there was more than enough for Claudel to make a proper snowman — just a miniature one, of course — even if it wouldn’t last particularly long in the ambient heat of the hospital room.
“He wants to build a snowman,” Jamie had assured me with a shrug, “no’ keep one as a pet.”
He’d left the snow buckets in my charge while he dashed inside to nab a baby carrot from the salad bar in the cafeteria (for the nose), while I was tasked with finding twigs and pebbles in the hospital courtyard (for the arms and buttons, respectively). Absorbed in the hunt, doubled over at the waist as I sifted through a snow-covered garden bed, I didn’t hear him coming up behind me until it was too late.
His snowball smacked me in the left buttock with enough force to drive me forward onto my hands and knees with a yelp.
“That,” Jamie crowed, “was for beatin’ my arse so badly at Mario Kart.”
It took me a moment to place what had happened, but once I did, I wheeled on the laughing fool with a vengeance.
His laughter turned to a near-soundless wheeze when my own snowball missed by several feet, landing with a lame, harmless plop in the snow between us. Tears of mirth squeezed from the corners of his eyes by the time the next one went high, sailing well over his head.
An abrupt, stunned silence fell over the courtyard when my third snowball struck him squarely in his handsome face, the explosion powdering his scruff with icy white.
“Oh, I see,” he said after a long moment — very quietly, very dangerously. With slow, deliberate movements, he slicked the melting snow from his cheeks and brows, then raised his crystal blue eyes until they locked on mine. “That’s how it is, then, is it?”
A shiver went through me that had nothing to do with the cold.
In the same instant, we both lurched toward the ground with outstretched hands, packing snow as quickly as we could before hurling it at one another. My fingers numbed quickly, reddened at the tips — his must have too, as neither of us were wearing gloves — but we continued on anyway; the glass and steel of the hospital’s exterior echoed with the raucous sounds of play as we dodged and flung, running ourselves breathless with the pink-cheeked enthusiasm of overgrown children.
“Yer aim,” Jamie taunted between pants as he sidestepped an ill-packed and disintegrating snowball, “is much better on the XBox, Sassenach!”
His own aim left something to be desired — the snowball he launched at me splatted into glittering white powder on a tree several feet behind me — but I was too distracted by the unfamiliar word to remind him of it. “What did you call me?!”
He threw his head back on a bark of a laugh, as though he’d surprised himself. “Dinna fash, I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s only what we call the English back in Scotland.”
I snorted, but grinned anyway. “‘Not an insult’ my arse, then.”
With a twinkle-eyed smile, he took a few steps toward me, breath steaming in the cold. “Nah, I didna say t’wasn’t an insult.” There it was again, that strange, endearing double-eyed blink of his; I wondered if he was aware that he couldn’t wink? “I said I didna mean it as one.”
As I closed the last two steps between us, a tingling, fizzy warmth churned deep in my belly, bubbling like a hot spring. “A nickname, then,” I deduced quietly.
“Aye.” I half-expected him to bombard me with another clandestine attack, but his features remained gentle, almost hesitant, as he reached up to brush a melting streak of snow from my hair. “If ye dinna mind it.”
Whatever visions I’d entertained of a well-timed revenge of my own, they were lost in the tenderness of the gesture. Feeling my own countenance soften with his touch, I smiled, watching him through my lashes.
“No,” I said, little more than a whisper, “I don’t mind it.”
I only had time to watch Claudel make the base of his snowman before I was called away again — for something much more benign this time, thankfully; only to put in orders for a stool softener and some pain medicine — but by the time I’d finished, it was coming up on midday rounds, and I needed to check in with the nurses for updates on the other patients. Over an hour had passed by the time I made it back to Claudel’s room, by which point his snowman was a forgotten puddle in a basin by the sink, and the preschooler was already deeply absorbed in his next holiday activity.
My pang of remorse at having missed out on the fun dissolved instantaneously as the little one leaped up from the bed and ran over to fling his arms around my waist.
“Dr. Bee-Chimp, Dr. Bee-Chimp, look!” he cried, pointing emphatically to the piece of red construction paper he’d been coloring before I walked in. “Jamie’s helping me make a list for Santa!”
“How exciting!”
Leading me by the hand to the rolling bedside stand, the child bounced on his tiptoes. “He telled me how to spell all the words and now I’m drawing the pictures. Wanna see?!”
“I do.”
A quick exchange of glances with Jamie made my heart trip over a beat; there was something strange about his expression, something I couldn’t place. I tipped my head, eyes narrowing subtly in silent question, but he only gave a small nod to the paper.
Whatever I thought I’d find on a four-year-old’s Christmas list, nothing could have prepared me for the brightly colored sheet Claudel pressed into my hands.
Dear Santa
I have been a really really good boy this year. Could I please have
- A real life dinosaur
- Legos
- Light up shoes
- Paw Patrol toys
- A mom
- A dad
- A brother
- A sister
- Not be sick any more
Thank you
Claudel
“Dr. Bee-Chimp? Why are you crying?”
Too late, I swiped the burning tears from my eyes and tried for a smile. “Nothing, darling. I just think that’s… that’s a very nice list.”
“That’s what Jamie said,” the boy agreed.
I swallowed several times, nodding.
“Do you think Santa will bring me all this stuff?” he asked hopefully.
At a complete loss, I opened and closed my mouth.
“I think a real-life dinosaur might no’ fit in yer hospital room, a bhalaich.” Although I’d been avoiding eye contact as a means of self-preservation — I would never get my emotions under control if I met Jamie’s gaze again — I did dash him a look of tear-stung gratitude as he added gently, “That might have to wait for next year, hm?”
“That’s right,” I agreed, smoothing my fingers through Claudel’s soft brown curls. The little boy pondered for a moment as he rested his head against my belly, clearly enjoying the physical affection.
“Yeah,” he said at last, “we could only fit just a little dinosaur in here. And I want a big, giant one that I can ride on.” Reaching for a crayon, he asked, “Should I cross it out?”
“No, leave it.” Jamie spread his hand protectively over the list, blocking the onslaught of scribbles. “That way he’ll ken fer next time.”
My shift was done at 7:30 PM.
Visiting hours ended at 9 PM.
I showered in the on-call room, changed out of my scrubs and into street clothes in record time, gathered up my bag and coat and hurried back to the boys.
Jamie had apparently, at long last, convinced Claudel to watch a proper Christmas movie; the two of them were cuddled up underneath a fleece blanket, faces illuminated by the light from the telly as The Polar Express chugged across the screen.
“Hello,” I said softly as I set down my things. “Is there room under there for me?”
“Always,” Jamie murmured, peeling back the blanket with an expression so tender it made my heart ache. We had to do a bit of maneuvering around the multitude of cords that Claudel was hooked up to at night, carefully lifting and readjusting the G-tube feeds and IV and pulse ox so I could slide into bed too. But with Jamie’s expert help, the three of us were soon settled together, one adult on either side of that delightfully warm, snuggly little body. For a while, he couldn’t seem to decide which of us to lay on; his curly head flopped restlessly from Jamie’s arm to my lap to Jamie’s lap to my arm and back again. After about the dozenth readjustment, his cheek finally found the opportune cushion of my breast, and stayed there quite happily.
Feeling a twinge of guilt, I mouthed “sorry” at Jamie, who chuckled soundlessly, shaking his head.
“S’alright. Canna fault the lad for choosin’ the softer cuddle mate.”
“Shh!” Claudel hissed, eyes on the movie.
We exchanged amused glances over his head, then turned back to the screen ourselves. Every now and again, I chanced a glimpse over at him, wondering if he was doing the same when I wasn’t looking.
I’d seen the animated Tom Hanks film once before and enjoyed it, but tonight I couldn’t focus on the plot for the life of me. Every one of my senses was occupied with the sweet little boy who was slowly beginning to droop in my arms — the silken locks of his hair between my fingertips, the steady rise and fall of his ribs, the soft whirring sound of his feeding pump. And perhaps even more so, an acute awareness of every miniscule movement of the gentle giant on his other side.
An awareness of his steady (if somewhat shallow) breaths, his small laugh at something on the screen, a tiny, rumbling sound that struck me as contentment.
An awareness of the precise moment he moved his pinky finger to stroke the edge of mine.
I looked at him directly, then. Openly.
And found him looking back.
His throat rolled with a thick swallow as his eyes fell to my lips, then with great reluctance down to the child cradled against my chest.
“He’s asleep,” he whispered, reaching over to smooth his palm over the boy’s back. Mouth curving in a remorseful smile, he added, “S’pose we should probably let him have his bed back.”
I returned a sad nod, no more eager than he was to let go of the magic of the day, to leave this hospital room and the unexpected sense of rightness, of belonging I’d found with the two of them. But he was right, of course: visiting hours were rapidly ticking toward a close, and we were pressing our luck as it was, lingering with a sleeping child who was oblivious to our presence.
By some unspoken agreement, we began to move in tandem, pivoting and lifting limbs, untangling cords and adjusting bedding until Claudel was safely tucked into a cozy nest of pillows and blankets. I probably wouldn’t have dared it had Jamie not done it first, but after he leaned down, smoothing the boy’s hair back to kiss his temple, I followed suit. We both stood back for a long moment, studying that cherubic little face in sleep, then one by one quietly peeled away to gather our belongings, slip into our coats, and step out into the corridor.
Once I’d eased the door shut behind us, we looked to each other but didn’t speak. It felt a bit like waking up in the middle of a REM cycle, that sense of disorientation as we prepared to go our separate ways after the heady proximity — intimacy, even — of cuddling together beneath the blankets, all those tiny moments of gaze and touch which did not feel tiny to me at all. But as I took a step toward the exit, Jamie fell into stride alongside me, the two of us moving effortlessly in unison even in the strange and unsettled aftermath of a broken spell.
“Longwood garage?” he asked, ending the semi-awkward silence between us as he pressed the button for the lift. I nodded. “Ah, I’m over at Simmons.”
“Not too bad of a walk.”
“Nah, no’ bad.”
“At least the snow held out. The roads should be clear.”
“Aye.”
The elevator doors opened with a dull chime, and Jamie gestured for me to go ahead first before taking his place to my left. I cleared my throat as we waited the several agonizing seconds for the doors to slide shut again, and the Scot tapped his middle and index finger against the hem of his coat.
“So, any big plans for the holiday, then?” he asked as we finally began to descend, the illuminated numbers ticking down the floors.
I breathed out a tight breath of a laugh, shaking my head. “No, uh… No, the only family I have is my Uncle Lamb, and he’s in— Morocco, I think?— at the moment. So.”
I still didn’t dare look over at him, but I could see him nodding slowly to himself in my periphery. “Ah.”
“You?”
“No,” he answered quickly, then amended, “Well, yes — I mean, I plan to come back here in the morning wi’ presents for the lad, but—” The fidgeting of his fingers was becoming almost distracting. It helped, though, to know he was just as nervous as I was, just as uncertain of how to proceed after a single day in which two near-strangers had become de-facto parents together. “My family is all back in Scotland now, so I dinna have any big celebration planned either.”
At last, I dared a brief, sympathetic glance up at him, my lips tightening in a half-smile. “I’m sorry you couldn’t be with them for the holiday.”
“Ach, s’alright.” The corner of his own mouth ticked sweetly, his eyes soft. “I’m glad I could be here for Claudel. He shouldna have to be alone on Christmas.”
“No one should,” I murmured.
Jamie met my gaze then and held it, a thousand thoughts flickering unspoken in the cerulean depths of his eyes. He had just taken a breath, presumably to give voice to one, when the elevator doors slid open with a ding on the ground floor.
Exhaling a tremulous "Have a good night, Jamie," I swallowed against an aching throat and stepped out into the cold.
“Claire?”
My heart skipped several beats at the sound of my name — the first time I'd ever heard it in his voice — then sped up to double time to compensate for the lapse.
Turning back over my shoulder to look at him, I tried to keep the hope off of my face.
It didn’t matter either way; his own features were wide open with vulnerability as he took a tentative step toward me.
“Would ye… would ye like to go fer a drink wi’ me?”
Relief loosened my joints as I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Retracing my steps back to him, I smiled and held out my hand.
“Thought you’d never ask.”