The Doctor's Christmas (16 page)

M
aggie's heart was so full she couldn't speak a word. She could only watch as others realized Nella was there. A wave of joy seemed to pulse through the sanctuary, uniting them.

Willing hands pushed Nella toward the front, with people patting her, hugging her.

Maggie grabbed Tacey, who was nearest to her. “Look.” She pointed. “Look who's here.”

Nella stepped clear of the crowd. Tacey and Robby were a blur of movement as they rushed into her arms.

Maggie started toward Joey, but Grant reached him first. He scooped the boy up and carried him to his mother.

Following them, Maggie saw the expression on Grant's face as he put Joey into Nella's arms. The guarded look had vanished from his eyes. Anyone who looked could see the loving person Grant was inside, and he didn't seem to care.

Thank You, Father.
Somehow the thought that he would leave didn't hurt quite as much, because she could see beyond her own personal pain.
You used us to reach him. No matter what he does or where he goes, he'll be a better person and a better doctor for having been here.

“Maggie.” Nella reached out to embrace her, squishing Tacey between them in a joyful hug. “Thank you. Thank you.”

She looked tired and thin, but her hazel eyes shone with a peace that transcended the external. Nella looked like a person who'd been through fire and come out with a new sense of who she was.

“We're glad you're home.” Maggie gestured toward Grant. “This is Dr. Hardesty.”

“I already told her,” Joey said importantly. “I told her how Dr. Grant took care of me.”

“I'd heard about the doctor. My aunt told me you folks came all the way to West Virginia looking for me.”

Maggie shook her head, remembering the elderly woman who'd shut the door in her face. “She did a good job of telling us she'd never heard of you.”

“I was worried.” A flush rose in Nella's pale cheeks. “Guess about now I'm feeling pretty ashamed of how I acted. I don't know why you went on trusting me.”

“Because we knew you'd do the right thing.” Maggie squeezed her.

Nella wiped away a tear. “I figured I wasn't a very strong person. But knowing you—” Her glance
seemed to gather in the whole village, pressing around her. “Knowing all of you had faith in me, well, I guess that convinced me I should have faith in myself.”

“You have friends here,” Pastor Jim said. “We won't let you down.”

“Probably Mrs. Hadley would still say I can't make it, if I have to depend on other people.”

“Mrs. Hadley isn't human enough to understand.” Maggie realized she could think of the woman now without her childhood's fear. “We all need help sometimes.” Did Grant understand what she was saying? “Sometimes we just have to learn how to ask for it.”

Nella's smile trembled on the verge of tears. “I won't be the person I was in my marriage. Not ever again.”

For an instant Maggie seemed to see her mother's face, and the last faint bitterness slipped from her heart.

She did the best she could, Father. I see that now. Thank You that Nella found herself before it was too late for her and the children.

“Thank you, all of you.” Nella's whisper seemed to penetrate the farthest reaches of the sanctuary. “God bless you.”

Pastor Jim cleared his throat. “That sounds like a benediction to me. God bless us all. And now—” his smile broke through “—I happen to know that a birthday cake for Jesus is waiting downstairs. Let's celebrate.”

Maggie was caught in a flood of goodwill as people moved toward the stairs. As she reached the last pew, Grant caught her arm.

“Come outside with me for a minute, Maggie.” His eyes were very serious. “I have something to say to you.”

Goodbye.

The word pierced her heart. Grant's time in Button Gap had come to an end. He wanted to say goodbye.

She wanted to run downstairs, hide in the crowd and pretend this wasn't happening. But she wouldn't be a coward about it.

She nodded, and they stepped together out into the starlit, silent night.

 

How did he say what he needed to say to Maggie? His heart was so full he felt as if he'd choke when he tried to speak.

They walked down the few steps to the sidewalk. Button Gap lay still around them, its lights flickering bravely against the blackness of the mountains looming above.

Maggie's head was tipped back, and he realized she looked, not at the mountains, but at the sky. It was a paler gray, spread with the crystal light of countless stars. The village's Christmas lights were a simple imitation of the real thing.

“Do you ever wonder what it was really like?” Maggie's murmur barely touched the silence.

“I know,” he said as softly. “It was like this. Dark,
quiet, seeming lonely, but filled with good-hearted people who are open to miracles.”

“You see that now?” She made it a question.

He turned, so that they stood facing each other. He wanted to take her hands, but wasn't sure he should. Not yet.

“Yes.” He took a breath, trying to find the words. “You know what I was doing before I came here. I was trying to deny God's existence, as if that would make my grief easier to control.”

“That doesn't work.” Her voice was gentle. “I know. I tried. You can't box up pain and pretend it's not there.”

“I might never have faced that if I hadn't come here.” He looked inward, probing for the truth. “Jason knew God was with him every step of the way.” He had to smile in spite of himself. “He's probably been bugging God ever since, wanting to know when He planned to make me recognize the truth. That was Jason.”

It was the first time he'd been able to say Jason's name without pain—the first time he could smile in remembrance. Suddenly memories flooded through him in a tidal wave. Happy memories—things he'd locked away with the pain of Jason's death.

“As long as I couldn't deal with Jason's death, I couldn't remember his life.” He did reach for her hands then. Hers were cold, but warmed to his touch. “You've given him back to me, Maggie.”

“Not me. The Father did.” Starlight reflected in
her eyes. “He used me, and I wasn't a very willing tool.”

“You can think of Him as Father, in spite of what your own father did.”

“Aunt Elly helped me see that I could either let my past destroy me or I could let God use it to make me stronger. Seeing Him as a true Father was a big step forward for me.”

She had a way of putting matters of faith into the simplest of terms. Once he'd have thought that naive, but no longer. Now he understood the strength and power of that.

“I almost let Jason's death destroy who I could be. I thought I was handling things better than my parents, because all they could do was give money in his memory. I thought giving my talent to healing was enough.”

“But it wasn't.”

She deserved to hear all of it.

“No. It's not enough. I realized tonight that God doesn't want the little pieces of me I've been willing to give. He wants all of me.” He took a breath, letting the certainty settle deep inside him. “So that's what He's getting.”

Joy lit Maggie's face, and her hands gripped his. “I'm glad. You'll be a better doctor for it, I promise you. When you go back—”

“I'm not going back.”

Maggie's eyes widened. “Your partnership—surely that won't be a problem now. You can explain.”

“I don't want to explain. I want to stay here.” He smiled. “I might not be the doctor you'd have chosen for Button Gap, but I think I'm the one Someone Else picked.”

“You can't give up everything you've wanted professionally.”

“Maggie, listen. It's not giving something up when you've found something you want more. I want to be here. I want to be an important part of people's lives in a way I never could somewhere else. Button Gap needs me, but I need Button Gap just as much. It makes me whole.”

Hope battled doubt in her expressive face. “The county can't afford a full-time doctor. It's been hard enough to get them to fund the clinic.”

He smiled. “Oddly enough, I don't need the county's salary. As a matter of fact, I think I can convince the family foundation to provide us with a better facility. They like giving away money.”

“You'd actually do that? You won't be sorry sometime down the road?”

He knew the answer to that one. “I'll never be sorry. This is what I want.”

The church bells began to chime. Maggie looked up at the starry sky, as if hearing their echo in the stars.

“It's midnight. Merry Christmas, Grant.”

He reached into his jacket pocket for the gift he'd been carrying around all day. He held it out to her.

“Merry Christmas, Maggie.”

The crystal angel dangled from his fingers, glinting with reflected starlight.

He heard the sudden intake of her breath. She took the angel in both hands, and tears shone in her eyes. “It's beautiful.”

It was time to say the rest of it, and he was absurdly afraid she might not give him the answer he longed for.

“I love you, Maggie Davis. Will you be my partner and my wife?”

The bells fell silent, as if the world waited with him for her answer. Then he heard the voices ringing out from the church. “Joy to the world, the Lord is come…”

Maggie's face reflected that joy as she stepped forward into his arms. “I love you.”

His lips claimed hers, and his heart filled with the certainty that he'd finally found his way home for Christmas.

“L
et's put the angel toward the top of the tree.” Standing on a step stool, he smiled down at Maggie. “Just to be on the safe side.”

She glanced at the table, where Nella and Aunt Elly were helping the children string cranberries and popcorn together. “Good idea.” She held the crystal angel up to him with a small, private smile. “I want this one to stay whole.”

“Right.” It had been a year since he'd given Maggie the new angel—a year of changes beyond measure in all their lives. He put the angel carefully on one of the topmost branches and watched it reflect the tree lights.

“I could come up and help you.”

“Absolutely not.” He stepped down from the stool and put one arm around her, then gently stroked the smooth, round curve that was just beginning to show.
“I don't want little Jason or Emily to take any tumbles.”

Maggie leaned against him and put her hand over his. “The baby is fine. Leave it to a doctor to worry ten times as much as a normal father.”

Changes,
he thought again. Beautiful, blessed changes for all of them.

“Aunt Maggie, can I pat the baby, please?” Tacey danced over to them, her small face flushed with the excitement that only Christmas could bring.

“Sure you can.” Maggie made room for the small hand.

Tacey wasn't withdrawn any longer, and Robby no longer looked around in apprehension when he laughed. As for Joey—he'd zoomed to the top of his class in school, determined to become a doctor, just like the person he now called “Uncle Grant.”

With the completion of the new clinic, thanks to the Hardesty Foundation, the old building had been remodeled into two comfortable homes. Nella, proud of her position as the clinic office manager, lived with her children on one side, while he and Maggie would bring their new baby home to the other.

Maggie nestled her head against his shoulder as she looked at the nearly finished Christmas tree. “It's beautiful, isn't it?”

He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “It's beautiful. Just like everything else in my life now.”

“Really?” She smiled at him teasingly. “You mean you like taking care of the whole county practically single-handedly? Taking payment in jars of
jelly and cuts of venison? Crawling out of your warm bed to deliver a baby in the middle of a cold winter's night?”

He cradled her cheek in his palm, wondering at the love that seemed to grow stronger every day.

“I love every bit of it. Even the venison.” He bent his head, his words for her alone. “God gave me everything I ever wanted when He brought me to Button Gap. He brought me home.”

Dear Reader,

I'm so glad you decided to pick up this book, and I hope the story touched your heart. Writing about Grant and Maggie's crusade to save the Bascom children made me smile and cry, and I hope you felt the same.

I know many wonderful children's services workers, and I hope they'll forgive me for making a social worker the villain in this particular story! My prayers are with all those who spend their lives protecting the Father's smallest children.

Please write me at Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, and I'll be happy to send you a signed bookplate or bookmark. You can visit me on the Web at www.martaperry.com or e-mail me at [email protected].

Blessings,