Christmas On Call (Pulse Medical #5)
Chapter 1 Asha
ASHA
The exterior glass doors slid open with a mechanical sigh.
She fished out her badge from the breast pocket of her parka and held it, photo side in, between two fingers.
The security scanner’s LED turned from red to green.
Satisfying. She shouldered through the lobby’s recycled air mingling with the sharp perfume of bleach and floor wax.
Her reflection trailed beside her in the wall of windows: tall, thin, motionless except for the efficient swing of her hospital ID.
She wore the new sky-blue scrubs, not because she liked the color, but because her manager insisted it was more “soothing for families.” The lab coat was fresh from the dry cleaner, the white so stark and crisp.
She would have preferred her battered grey North Face, but even that concession to comfort felt undisciplined on the holiday shift.
The corridors were lined with the limp, synthetic tinsel that the hospital’s volunteer committee insisted on stringing along every railing and hand sanitizer dispenser.
Red, green, silver, occasionally punctuated by construction-paper Snowmen with their arms perpetually outstretched as if in need of a hug.
There was one outside the pharmacy with a jaundiced look in his eye and a sorry smile.
Asha walked at her usual brisk clip; her flats skimmed noiselessly over the tile.
No footsteps echoed. Oakridge always ran on skeleton crew this late, and most of the administration had already decamped for the holidays.
She liked the emptiness. She could almost forget that her own apartment sat untouched, her couch neatly vacuumed, and her plants all watered for the next three days.
No one was waiting for her there, or anywhere, really. Which suited her fine.
She reached the third-floor elevator bank and pressed the button with her knuckle.
The up arrow illuminated, and in the brief, lonesome pause, she reached into her tote for her phone.
A single notification glared from the screen: one missed call from “Ma a man in a U.S.
Postal Service sweatshirt hovered behind her, hands buried in the kangaroo pouch, eyes darting from the monitors to the baby’s impossibly tiny hands.
Asha watched as Max, without missing a step in her ladder acrobatics, smiled over her shoulder and called, “Almost done, guys! But I need someone tall to rescue me if I get stuck.” The joke was, of course, that Max was the tallest person in the room.
Except, perhaps, for Asha herself, and that was only when Asha wore her Danskos.
The mother by the bassinet wiped her nose on her sleeve and attempted a laugh. The sound was more ragged than joyful, but it seemed to fortify her. “Can we really touch them?” she whispered, as though testing the boundaries of this new, fragile universe.
“Of course,” Max said, stepping down from the ladder with one hand still gripping the archway.
“Just gel up first. It’s the NICU, not the North Pole!
” She reached for the Purell dispenser, squirted a generous dollop into her palm, and held it out, blue veins prominent under the skin.
The woman copied her, then let Max guide her trembling hand through the slot in the incubator’s side.
The baby, a preemie, still reddish and feathered with lanugo, curled his fingers instinctively around his mother’s. Max winked. “He’s got your grip already.”
Asha’s clinical eye picked up a dozen protocol infractions.
Unsecured ladder, nonstandard attire, parents lingering after hours, but none of these could compete with the surge of humanity that seemed to spread through the room.
The decorations multiplied the effect: every incubator was crowned with a paper snowflake, each one bearing a baby’s name in glitter pen.
Garland draped the vital sign monitors, which blinked in time with the Christmas lights.
The scent of pine, real or artificially conjured, threaded through the sterile air, confusing Asha’s nose and making her skin itch.
She coughed. No one heard.
Max had moved on, now coaxing the father in the USPS hoodie to hang a snowflake on his son’s isolette.
“Right up here, Mr. Sanchez. Just don’t cover the oxygen sensor—Dr. Patel will go bananas.
” She shot Asha a sly, sidelong glance, her eyes crinkling with mischief and, perhaps, challenge. Maybe even a wink?
Asha’s pulse skipped, but she kept her expression as neutral as a mannequin’s.
The father fumbled the snowflake, nearly dropping it, but Max steadied his hand with her own. “Perfect,” she said. “He’ll see it as soon as he opens his eyes.”
The father gave her a look of profound, exhausted gratitude, as if Max’s minor act of crafts project had delivered him from despair.
Asha felt the old, familiar pang. A mix of envy and resentment reserved for people who could produce joy with the flick of a wrist, who could make families believe that hope was as simple as a string of lights and a little extra hand-holding.
She re-gripped her clipboard, hard enough to creak the plastic.