I loved it.
We were fifteen minutes from sitting down when my phone rang. The caller ID said Riverside ER, and my stomach dropped before I even answered.
“Fiona, it’s Tanya. Greg collapsed at home. Loss of consciousness. They’re bringing him in now. We’re down to two nurses tonight. I need you.”
Greg was our charge nurse. Tanya wouldn’t call on Christmas Eve unless it was real.
I stood in my kitchen staring at the lasagna, holding the phone so tight my knuckles ached. Lily was in her room putting on the red velvet dress I’d hand-stitched the hem on because the store version was two inches too long.
She’d made a gift box for her grandmother, painted it herself—golden green—with a card that said, “To Grandma Judith, Merry Christmas, love, Lily,” in her careful fifth-grade cursive.
There was no one else to call. My parents lived in Oregon. Grace was already working the floor. The only option within ten minutes of our house was Judith’s annual Christmas dinner—twenty relatives, a honey-glazed ham, and the kind of warmth that always had conditions attached.
I dialed Judith’s number.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Fiona, how lovely. Of course, bring Lily over. We’d love to have her.”
Her voice was bright. Brighter than usual.
That should have been my first warning.
I knelt in front of Lily, straightened the collar on her red dress, and handed her the gift box.
“Grandma Judith’s going to take care of you tonight, okay? Mommy has to go save someone at work.”
Lily hugged me at the door. Her breath came out in a white cloud—28° and dropping.
“Come back before midnight, Mom.”
“I promise.”
I didn’t keep that promise.
The ER on Christmas Eve is a specific kind of chaos. It smells like antiseptic and cinnamon. Someone always brings cookies, and they sit on the nurse’s station getting stale while we run.
That night, we had a three-car pileup on Route 17, a toddler with a febrile seizure, two alcohol poisonings, and Greg’s empty chair reminding us we were short-handed.
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