Healed Under The Mistletoe

The words resonated in Belle’s head, bouncing off her guilt centers and disrupting her presently cursing him to a month of upper lip and tongue burns from the morning’s first over-eager sip of too-hot coffee. It took effort to focus on the other important things Angel had said.

“I’m supposed to get it this afternoon. They said I wouldn’t need it since I’d be shadowing today,” Belle said, ceasing her ever ineffective but frequently cathartic cursing because it’d been useless at soothing her ruffled feathers.

Christmas was hard for him. Hard enough to affect his behavior. It hurt him.

He lashed out because he was suffering.

“Right. Well, you’re shadowing me. I’m just going to be in and out with a couple other patients while you stitch. But if you need anything, come to me. Really. I’ve almost been here a year, but I’ve pretty much sorted out the people to see to get things done. I also know all the best places to hide if you need a minute to practice a completely silent, faux primal scream because they might sedate you if you actually let your feelings out.”

“My locker.” Belle wanted to laugh at the image of her screaming soundlessly into some cabinet because she was stressing out, but facing Lyons again was right there in the front of her mind, taking the humor out of living. “My locker is stuck. The emergency call came, and McKeag tossed my things into his locker so we could get down here. It’d be really nice to have it working for tomorrow.”

It wouldn’t save her facing him this evening to get her stuff back, but it would allow her to start tomorrow with some distance.

“I can do that. What’s the number?”

A moment later, Angel was on her comm, walking off in the other direction, and Belle had a folder in hand, and slipped into the room of a man with a large leg gash to stitch.

“Hi, my name is Ysabelle Sabetta and I’m a nurse practitioner. I’m going to help you get that gash sorted out,” she said to the man sitting with his trouser leg ripped open and a bloody wad of gauze keeping it from bleeding too much. After confirming his identity, she got started.

“Please numb it.” Mr. Axler said three words to her, and then laid back on the table. No comments on her qualifications or ability to do the job, no doubts.

In that way, outside the jerky way he’d gone about it, McKeag had a point. People accepted you’d be able to help them when you came in wearing scrubs. They deserved that confidence.

Washing up, she gloved, got supplies—some of which had been laid out for her by nursing staff—and moved over to get a look at what was going on with the patient’s leg.

Christmas was hard for McKeag. It was still there in her head, behind her duties to her patient, but still there.

She didn’t want it.

She gingerly lifted the bloody gauze to see beneath, causing her patient to draw a sharp, pained breath. It hurt; she knew it hurt.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s hard, but I need you to be still for this. I’ll be as gentle as I can to make it as easy as possible, but it’ll go quicker and cleaner if you lock that leg in place as best you can.”

That was part of her job, even if it wasn’t technically codified in rules of conduct—to make the painful things easier for those who were suffering.

Christmas was hard for McKeag. She’d seen that. Anyone could see that. But hearing Angel put it into words—now she couldn’t hold his behavior against him. Couldn’t curse him to a lifetime of mushy pasta or underwear that snuck into uncomfortable arrangements at inopportune moments.

Before Angel, he’d just been someone who hated the holiday, now he was someone struggling with it.

An important difference. If she’d had any distance, she should’ve seen that on her own. Nanna had said it to her and Noelle so many times, it was practically a family mantra, even if it’d started out as a way to explain to two hurt little girls why their mother had left them.

Words 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.