My heart sinks, not because I can't indulge my Conner vice, but because no one should be in an ambulance on Christmas. I haul myself out of bed and out of the break room and rush to the emergency department. The thing about interning at a small-town hospital like Silver Bay is that, even though I have a specialty, I am still floating to any department that needs me sometimes, like on holidays.
It's a horrible situation. A seven-year-old boy tried to climb out his bedroom window and onto the roof of his house to prove Santa Claus was real. He fell. After the initial assessment, I'm asked to handle the parents as the two other doctors on staffstabilize the child and the nurses call Portland and prepare his transfer. He's going to need an orthopedic surgeon immediately and Portland is the place to do that.
Yes, I have the training to work through this kind of crisis with the parents and the child's siblings, of which he has three, which is why the other doctors assigned this task to me but prepared or not, it takes an emotional toll. Luckily the child should make a full recovery after several operations for his broken arms and legs. The parents take little comfort in that right now, which is fair. I make sure they’ve got a way to Portland and then when they head off to follow the ambulance with their son, I call child services, because it’s protocol, so a social worker can meet them at the next hospital.
When that crisis is over, the sun is pushing through a bunch of gray clouds and my shift is about half an hour from completion. All I want is my bed. My phone buzzes as I head to the office I share with another resident and I pluck it from my lab coat.
Joyeux Noel little one. Let us know when we can do a quick FaceTime.
Right. I promised the fam a moment. Might as well be now. I open the door to my office, flick on the lights, and FaceTime my dad. He answers immediately and his big, gregarious smile fills the screen. His face is, as usual, scruffy and covered in nicks and scars from his previous hockey career and his own rough childhood.
“Mac!” he exclaims and then turns his head away from the screen. “Baby, our baby is here. Christmas can start!”
“Oh, hey Mac! We miss you, kid!” My mom scurries over and after some commotion and a second where I’m looking at the ceiling of the kitchen in our Hampton’s house, I see both their faces again. Mom is sitting on Dad’s lap and if I squint realhard I can see the shoreline out the kitchen window behind them.
“I miss you guys too. And Cassia. Where is she?” I ask about my sister.
“Upstairs,” Mom replies and then raises her voice to yell. “Cassia! Mac is on the phone!”
My sister, Cassia, came into the family five years ago. Even though I was long out of the house and a full-grown adult, I made it a point to go home lots that first year and try to bond with her. Cassia, like me, had been a runaway. But unlike me, her birth parents weren't dead. They consideredherdead because she was transgender. They booted her out of the house at just ten years old. After bouncing around a foster system that isn’t always safe for trans people for two years, she ended up at my mom’s charity, which helps teens who have been failed by the system, live independently. Cassia was too young to enroll in my mom’s program so Mom immediately fostered her, which led to adoption within the year. Unlike me, Cassia knew a good thing when she found it. She’s fit in with our family like the link we never knew we were missing.
“You look exhausted, Mac. And thin,” Mom notes. “Is everything alright?”
“Just work,” I say.
“Mom! Don’t tell your daughters they look like crap.” I hear Cassia’s voice as she enters the kitchen and walks into frame behind our parents. She smiles at me, but it immediately turns into a yawn. “I think you lookgreat. Miss you!”
“Miss you too,” I say with a chuckle as Mom looks horrified.
“I didn’t mean itthatway. I just…” Mom looks positively distraught.
“It’s okay. I do feel like crap. It’s six in the morning and I’ve been here since seven last night,” I explain.
“Don’t let her off the hook, Mac,” Cassia says with agrin. Then she leans in and kisses Mom on the cheek to prove she’s just joking. “Also, I’m exhausted too. These two get up way too early. I need my beauty sleep.”
“It’s Christmas!” Dad argues. Cassia rolls her eyes and Dad turns the conversation back to me. “We wish you could have come home.”
“Next year, when I’m an actual doctor, I can close my practice for a few days and be with you guys, I promise,” I say and mean it, but the idea seems so far off. It’s hard to believe I’ll be an actual psychiatrist in less than six months.
“And we won’t miss you so much because we’ll see you all the time because you’ll be back in New York City, right?” Dad goes on. “That’s still the plan?”
It is not exactly the plan anymore. To be honest, I don't know where I'll set up my practice. I had gone into medicine intending to return to New York but now… Beckett aside, I really like Maine. I had started looking at Portland, which is a great, vibrant city a couple hours from Silver Bay close to the ocean and with a need for doctors of all kinds.
“Mac? Are you thinking of not coming back to New York?” Mom asks, and she doesn’t sound upset, just shocked.
“I’ve been thinking of Portland.”
“Oregon?” Dad gasps, and I smile. He doesn’t want me all the way over on the west coast.
“Maine.”
He actually sighs audibly in relief. Cassia laughs in the background. "I guess that means you won't be thrilled if I get into one of those West Coast colleges I applied to."
"I'll be very proud and happy," Dad responds without hesitation. "But not as proud or happy as I would be if you got into an East Coast school."
“Dad!” I bark and shake my head as Cassia laughs at his honesty.
“What? I don’t want empty nest syndrome,” Dad says. “I need you both close. And for the record, I’m good with Portland, Maine. I like the idea.”
