I wish all of you a Christmas season filled with hope and joy and peace.
Joy to the World!!
The Swaddling Bands
By Beth M. Stephenson
Gabrielle bustled through the hospital wards one morning in
mid-December noticing things as she went. It was her job to notice and she was
good at it. A call light flashed but the patient was asleep with a grimace on
his face, trays of untouched food returning from the rooms, a nurse with heavy,
bloodshot eyes and serious body odor. She would fix it all. But at the moment,
as the hospital’s customer relations director, she was thinking about Santa
Claus.
Not just any old Santa would do. Hospitals, (at least her
hospital) were honest places. People cried and died in them. They suffered and
sometimes, miracles happened and they healed. Any old fat guy could throw on a
cotton beard and a costume and be good enough for the mall. But not here.
Santas needed real beards and real bellies. Their ‘ho ho ho’s’ must be genuine
and their elves couldn’t look like bored teenagers. They must be discreet
enough to avoid making promises that a candy cane couldn’t fix and their
Toyotas in the parking lot couldn’t be champing at their bits to haul them off
to another gig. Hospitals took time. Hospital Santas were expensive. St.
Nicolas himself was almost never available.
Gabrielle tapped her pen to her clipboard, scanning the
religious affiliations on her list and estimating the man hours. Five Santas
already! It would take at least that many to cover the hospital. They’d have to
be careful not to cross paths, too. At four hours apiece and on Christmas Eve,
at least $2000 so far! But everyone needed Santa. The more jaded the patients
were, the more good a jolly old elf could do.
The elevator stopped at last on the 8th floor.
Oncology at the top of the hospital where the most fragile patients lived. She
pulled the disposable scrubs on over her pantyhose , making her skirt bunch
around her waist. No matter, there was already a bunch around her waist. She
donned the cap and the mask and slipped the clipboard into a plastic sleeve. She
selected extra-large shoe covers to fit completely over her high heels. Even
shrink wrapped as she was, she couldn’t go into the patient’s rooms. She was
sweating already, but monkey suits were better than law suits.
In the pediatric section, bald children unwrapped their
sanitized toys before they played with them. Their chemo-puffy faces wreathed
dark-circled eyes. A mother read a child a story through a plastic-sheathed
book. “I think I can, I think I can the Little Blue Engine puffed.”
A mother and father knelt beside a wisp of a blonde child whose
long eyelashes lay on her cheeks. The steady beep, beep, beep of the monitors
told Gabrielle that the time was not yet.
Bing Crosby crooned “I’ll be Home for Christmas” on the
sound system. She went to the nurses’ station and flipped it off. The hospital
must not wring one extra tear from those parents’ eyes.
Gabrielle was not used to being baffled. But what had Santa
to do here? Would he ask the little child who lay silently suffering if she had
been good this year? He could make no
promises, bring no goodies: even his suit and beard, his rosy cheeks and merry
little mouth must be muffled in protective scrubs. Protect the children from
Santa Claus! Something was wrong with that picture.
She moved through the double doors to the adult oncology
area. Here, even some of the rooms were shrink wrapped. Bone marrow transplants
where the patients looked like flesh and blood but were as fragile as spun
glass. She didn’t linger near their doors. Life was the only gift they wanted
and a team of doctors and nurses were their Santas and elves.
A piece of red tape had been stuck on a chart outside room
819. It meant the patient had been discharged! Gabrielle’s heart leapt. A month
before, she had toured this floor making adjustments and accommodations here
and there. A little lady, (was it Mrs. Wilcox?) had just gotten the news of her
metastasized cancer and had been weeping. After all she’d been through, she’d
still hoped. A month ago, her husband had clutched her white fingers in his and
bathed them with his tears.
Gabrielle pointed a questioning finger at the discharge
tape.
The nurse answered. “We need the bed. Mrs. Wilcox doesn’t
need us anymore.”
Gabrielle was ready for some good cheer. She hurried to the
end of the hall to offer congratulations. But they died away on her lips.
Mr. Wilcox seemed very brown, as though he worked
construction. His strong, sun-baked hands steadied the white porcelain figure
of skin covered bone that lay on the hospital bed. A frizz of light hair had
grown back on her head.
Those large brown hands wrapped a pink fleece robe over her
white night gown. “Don’t worry, May. We’ll get you home without anyone noticing
your nighty,” he murmured.
Gabrielle knew she ought to look away, but she didn’t. The
I.V. pole with its empty bag was pushed aside, the tube draped over the top,
waiting for the waste can.
“They say you must ride in a wheel chair.”
She shook her head slightly “I can’t.” Her voice was thin
and reedy.
Mr. Wilcox put his arm around her back and his other arm
under her knees and lifted her. “You don’t weigh anything anymore. I think you
carried this diet way too far.” She smiled at him. Her face was near his and
she rested her cheek on his chest. He rested his cheek on her forehead and
Gabrielle saw his face crumple. The hospital customer relations director turned
away. But she heard the reedy voice again. Barely a whisper, “I love you, Mike”
Someone had hung a little sign on the nurses’ station.
“Jesus is the reason for the season!” She stared at it until her eyes swam. There
would be no ‘ho ho ho’ here. No jingling bells or spritely songs warning that
we’d better watch out.
“And she brought forth her first born son and wrapped him in
swaddling bands and laid him in a manger.”
Mr. Wilcox still held the living remains of his little wife
when Gabrielle glanced back. “It’s going to be all right, May,” he murmured.
She didn’t raise her head.
Gabrielle turned her full face. Mr. Wilcox seemed less brown
than he had a moment before.
“Go,now May. From my arms to the arms of Jesus. . .”
Gabrielle knew, too, what Mr. Wilcox seemed to know.
I’ll see you there,”
he murmured. He raised his eyes, as though stirred by the passing brush of an
angel’s wing. From his brown, human arms into the strong tender embrace on the
other side of a thin, thin veil.
He kissed the still,
white brow, rocking her body like an infant. He laid her back on the hospital
bed, weeping softly. He composed her hands and feet and straightened her gown and
tucked her soft, pink robe around her. No beeps, no signals, no ringing bells.
Gabrielle pulled her mask from her face as she went to him.
She put her arm around his shoulders, wiping the tears from her own cheeks with
a tissue from the bedside box.
Mr. Wilcox raised his eyes to hers. “It’ll be all right.
She’s gone to our Lord.” He put his arm around Gabrielle’s shoulder and rocked
her slightly, soothing her. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, “Easter follows
Christmas.” Mr. Wilcox’s words sank deep into the center of her body, baptized
by immersion.
The reason for the
season. Good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.
Gabrielle lifted her eyes as Mr. Wilcox had done a few moments
before, startled. Hope! Pure and clean, unpackaged, and unadorned, swaddled in
the soft, simple Truth.
Hope! Glory to God in the Highest!
And on Earth, peace, peace, My peace I give unto you.