Samuel Scott, a man who despises Christmas, after a terrible fall is paired in a hospital room with Amy Bell, a woman longing for carols and festive decorations.
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It's Only Christmas Once A Year by Norah Jones
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She had not asked about the child's condition. Nor how long she had been inside the walls of the high-end medical facility.
We had progressed from floor to floor; seeing the tree at the entrance adorned with many ornaments, some from the staff, some from the patients. The maternity ward, with babies dressed in Christmas-y onesies with eye-rolling puns. In passing, the corridors changed around every corner, elegant, flamboyant, childish, summery... the last throwing me off. Have you forgotten that in Australia they celebrate Christmas under a scolding sun at the beach? Whether it made sense to me in the middle of a whiteout to have a surfing Santa stuck on the wall or if I thought the decorating team had the need for a psychiatrist, I cannot remember.
We ended up on the floor above ours, in a reading room, and the hurried pace and anxiety roaming the halls disappeared with a slide of the glass door. It was the two of us; her sitting on a recliner, pencils in hand, the sheet out of my view, me, occupying a traditional seat of a circling table with a copy of human anatomy.
It had been forty minutes. Forty minutes of me watching her and Amy pretending that I wasn't. I flipped the page, sighing at the unpronounceable bone names.
"Too advanced for you?" Her bare toes hooked and unhooked, shaking the thighs upon which she brushed colorful strokes. She had a smirk on.
"Too Latin... or Greek..." I frowned.
"You should have gone to the literature section."
My brow raised in disbelief that anything worthy was located on the few shelves dedicated to fiction.
"There are some decently illustrated children's stories." She smirked, leaving the black pen for the red.
"Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted." I pushed the medical tome, so the illuminated wreath went off-center, wiggling to become somewhat comfortable in the chair that numbed my behind. "What have you been drawing, anyway?"
"Are you that bored?"
"I might as well be." I could not stretch, couldn't read, couldn't successfully wheel myself off from the mahogany table and there was no television. A conversation with her was my only entertainment.
"Do you even like art?" She squinted and removed all from her lap, sitting upright.
"I can live with people making lengthy talks about it."
An 'okay' notion with her head. She stood, and collecting her supplies, carried them over.
"Is there anything you do for fun?" She shut the pad, but I fleetingly saw a snowy landmark.
