Opinion

Christmas and a cowbell

By M. E. BOMBOY
By M. E. Bomboy

“It’s quiet on the floor tonight,” I said, nodding at Charlie, the maintenance man.

“Always quiet like this on Christmas Eve,” he replied, “‘cept for that time Millie Fennel rang the bell.”

The hint of a good-natured chuckle had crept into his voice. I remembered Millie. It was Millie Fennel who taught me the meaning of Christmas.

That was a long time ago.

I was a lot younger then, with two small children. Our daughter Molly was seven that year, and I remember she wanted a Baby Wet’n Walk Doll, which was new on the market. And Robbie, who was nine, wanted a silver banana bike. It must have been September when he got out his Christmas list and told us that if he didn’t get the silver bicycle his heart would just break.

It was because of a Baby Wet ‘n Walk doll and a silver banana bike that I was working on Christmas Eve. Even so, how do you make small children understand that their mommy won’t be home with them on the night before Christmas? I remember Molly following me from room to room as I got ready for work that afternoon.

“But Mommy,” she asked softly, “why do you have to go to work tonight? Who will put out the snack for Santa Claus?”

Robbie just looked at me as I came down the stairs in my white uniform.

“Why do they need you, Mom?” he asked. “You’re not a nurse or a doctor.”

I tried to explain that answering the telephones and keeping records, the job I did as a hospital clerk, was necessary, even on Christmas Eve. But the two children sensed my lack of belief in what I was saying.

“I think we need you more!” Molly cried, the tears running down her cheeks as she clung to me.

My husband, Bob, gently pulled her away so I could leave for the hospital, but there were tears misting my own eyes as I drove down Red Lane.

It was a perfect Christmas scene. The weekend snowfall still lay white along the roadside. Tall green pines loomed lovely in the woods. Smoke curled upward from the chimneys. And in the homes I passed I could see the red, orange, green, and blue lights of the Christmas trees.

Bob would have to trim our tree alone after tucking Robbie and Molly in bed. It was a Christmas custom at our house that we didn’t put up the tree until after the children were asleep. Why do I have to work tonight? I thought angrily. It really isn’t fair.

By the time I sat down at my desk, I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was angry and sad, and I didn’t care who knew it. It was unfair, of course, to all of us who had to work on Christmas Eve. But it was especially unfair to me, because, really, they didn’t need me. There would be very few patients on the floor; we always tried to discharge as many as possible the day before Christmas. And our doctors would hold off admitting new patients until after the holiday. Who wanted to be in a hospital bed over Christmas?

With little to do, those and many other bitter thoughts simmered inside me as the hours wore on.

Then, at 8:00, the telephone rang. It was Molly.

“Mommy, I love you,” she sobbed. “This isn’t a nice Christmas without you. Please come home. I wish you would come home.”

Tears were welling up again when I put down the phone.

“It’s such a hard thing to have to work on Christmas Eve, isn’t it dear?” a voice near me said.

It was Millie Fennel. She had wheeled herself down the hall from 310 and was sitting there, white-haired and frail, in front of my desk.

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she added, “but I couldn’t help overhearing. That was one of your children, wasn’t it?”

“My seven-year-old. She wants me home,” I explained.

“Oh, I remember when mine were that age,” a gleam lighting her eyes. “In our house we had a custom we always observed on the night before Christmas. We let the children stay up and listen for Santa’s bells.”

“Santa’s bells?”

“The sleigh bells. And the one who heard them first would get a wish.”

“If I had my wish…” I smiled.

“We all have our wishes. If I could make wishes come true, I know I wouldn’t be here tonight.”

Millie had a wasting illness. She knew she would never have another Christmas, but she often said that she was content with her life. She had raised three children and had seen them happily married and successful. Her daughter Evelyn lived a block from the hospital and was a supervisor on one of the floors. She visited Millie every day.

Millie and I talked on for a while as she remembered Christmas after Christmas. Good times, funny stories, warm evenings together, she in a pink chenille robe, her young ones in sleepers, a Yule log with red candles, spiced eggnog, her son’s first two-wheeler, Evelyn’s white kitten.

“My!” Millie finally said, “this has been so nice. I’ve been remembering things I hadn’t thought about in years. This has been like a real Christmas for me. I could actually see my children in front of me again as I was telling you about them. Oh, it felt so good!”

There was a moistness in her eyes, but I knew her tears were happy ones.

The telephone rang again, not Molly this time, just a routine call to the floor.

Millie Fennel had wheeled herself back down the hall. I returned to the report I’d been working on and tried to forget Christmas Eve.

Half an hour passed. I’d been answering phone calls and filling out blank spaces in the logbook. About nine Evelyn Holmes, Millie’s daughter, whisked by.

“Just stopped in to say good night to Mom,” she called cheerfully, without stopping at the desk.

I was filling out another line in the logbook when I heard the bell.

Clang! Clang! The tinny sound was coming from down the hall. Barbara Caffey, one of the nurses, poked her head out of the room across from me.

“What’s that?” she called.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds like a cowbell.”

“Will you go check on it? I’m a little busy with Mrs. Holt.”

I started down the hall.

At the far end, Millie Fennel came wheeling out of her room. She was ringing a bell, and her thin face was glowing.

“A wish! A wish! Make a wish,” she cried.

“Millie,” I began, “that’s too loud. The other patients….”

“I’m sorry it’s a cowbell,” she laughed, stopping. “Evelyn couldn’t find anything else. But don’t worry about that. Make your wish.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind. I know what your wish is. And it’s granted. Go home and enjoy Christmas Eve while your children are still awake.”

“Millie, I can’t. My shift isn’t over until 11:30.”

Just then, Evelyn stepped out of her mother’s room. She was wearing her white uniform. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m taking the phones. Mom will sit with me at the desk, and we’ll spend Christmas Eve together. You can go home. I’ve already cleared it with the night supervisor.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” Millie told me. “Just go home to your children and your husband. You made an old lady remember what Christmas is all about.”

That was Christmas Eve 2000. I’ll never forget the look on the faces of Molly and Robbie, and even my husband Bob, when I walked in that night. It was as if their wishes had been granted too. As for me, well, it was my most wonderful Christmas ever.

Robert Bomboy is taking a break this week. His wife, Mary Ellen, is filling in with an original Christmas story.

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