Doctor Clause (Doctors of Eastport General)

Chapter Seventeen

Stephen

Time flew by. Things were busier than before. In his profession, work came before anything, and anyone else. Lives were held in the palms of his hands, after all. Dropping the ball had real life or death consequences. Fantasies, on the other hand, were still going to be there when all was said and done. Putting pleasure on hold was a necessity. It wasn’t going to boil away on the back burner, if he turned it off.

The recliner creaked, tilting to a fully laid-back position for a five-minute, well-deserved rest—just enough time for forty winks.

The images on the backs of shut lids were of her. That had been the total extent of their contact over the past few weeks. A situation which couldn’t be helped.

She was just as busy as he was, especially with calendar sales. Apparently, they were going like hotcakes.

Fingers rubbed weary eyes, bringing slightly blurred vision back into alignment. His gratuitous copy was lying in a pile to the right side of his desk; the plastic still intact. There was no desire to look at any of it. He certainly wasn’t interested in seeing colleagues half-naked, and his own photo was his worst nightmare come true.

The whispering in the corridors.

The eyes, picturing him wearing little to nothing but that Santa hat.

The soft giggles.

The playful flirtatious banter.

He never wanted any of it when he wasn’t seeing anyone. Now that he was, his interest levels plummeted even farther.

“It’s for a good cause,” her voice said in his mind.

There was no arguing that point. After taking his first tour of the children’s ward, it was evident they were lacking a lot of things. Children needed mental stimulation to grow. It was as important as diet, exercise, and proper medical care.

The hospital dropped the ball in that regard. Too bad it wasn’t the bouncy type kids were able to play with.

He considered going to the brass, but if Kent wasn’t able to get more funding for the department he worked in, a doctor from another sector wasn’t going to be able to convince them.

Red tape. The stuff was everywhere, sticking to walls, floors, needles, pills, people. There was no escaping it. Cut a piece and a hundred more would appear to patch the spot up.

Eastport General was lucky to have the moms. They were picking up the slack that the hospital left for trash. He picked up a file.

“Oh.” It was Tommy’s. Kent must have sent it for him to review. “Hmm.” The patient was responding well to the treatment. The cancer showed signs of shrinkage. If the trend continued, there’d be a good chance Leeona would be taking him home come spring.

It was too early to share that sort of news though. Statistics were merely numbers. There were always extreme cases on either side of the spectrum. The only certainty was this disease was unpredictable. There were patients diagnosed with a few months left, who went on to live another ten or twenty years. There were also those who should have thrived but died instead.

Getting the hopes up of loved ones was cruel.

He tucked the folder beneath his own stack of files. Each of his patients had families waiting for them to come home. Each of his patients were desperate for good news. There was too little to go around, especially for the most magical time of the year.

If only he was the real deal, pulling cures out of the red sack slung over a shoulder. He wasn’t though. His name was spelled with an e at the end.

“All it takes is to believe,” he said out loud. There was some basis of fact in that statement. It was the same as mind over matter.

It wasn’t a cure-all.

It wouldn’t work for everyone.

But... if a person truly believed in themselves, there was always the chance.

Maybe Saint Nick was just a way to let those hopes manifest. Maybe the idea behind the jolly old man wasn’t a bad one. Maybe sharing the same name wasn’t such a burden, after all.