If Only Christmas Were Past —With apologies to Charles Dickens

If Only Christmas Were Past

—With apologies to Charles Dickens

Dr. Piedra slapped his hand on the fingerprint pad outside the lock down ward. “Thank God. Last patient of the day” he groaned, shouldering through the security door.

The last patient was usually a blessing, one of his few. But not today—Christmas Eve. Today it was good-bye to the last nut job and back out into the land of Christmas crap. Everyone with a merry this or a happy that on their lips. And for total strangers, for God’s sake. And to what end? Come December 26^th, they’d all be back at each other’s throats, cutting each other off in traffic with raised middle fingers, scratching their way up the corporate or social or whatever ladder without a second thought to who they trample along the way.

Door clanked shut behind him, he made a beeline for his shoe box of an office, eyes down, to avoid seeing that damn tree again. As if that were possible! Preposterous thing stretched all the way to the ceiling, dripping with bling like a cheap hooker, tinsel so haphazardly strewn across its twiggy branches you’d think it had been left there by mental patients on a rampage, which it had.

“Jesus!,” he cried, stubbing his toe on the diminutive menorah parked under the boughs of the tree.

“No, Doc. That’s one thing that’s got nothin’ to do with Jesus,” a man said with a demented giggle, jumping out from behind the tree as if he’d been waiting there for his appointment instead of on one of the ratty couches with the rest of the TV addled patients.

“Merry Christmas!” the man cheered, trotting after Piedra like a puppy.

“What, you too?” Piedra asked, as the man paddled his short legs double time to keep up with Piedra’s long strides.

“I know, I know. I’m a Jew and us Jews, we don’t do Christmas. But hey, what the heffer. Why not get in the spirit of the season, right? And when it comes down to it—no Jews, no Jesus who, as you goyim like to say, ‘is the reason for the season.’

“Aghhh!” Piedra clamped his eyes shut. Maybe he should just stay late and catch up on his notes, avoid the whole damn mass marketed fantasy. What with its saccharine sappy music and everyone forgetting that they’re not actually that fond of Grandma Rose’s fruitcake and deluding themselves into believing another pair of socks is just what they need.

“Hey Doc, you in there,” the man said poking his neck out like a chicken at Piedra to get his attention, nearly braining him with the miner’s lamp strapped to his forehead in the process. “Like I said, why not just get in the spirit?”

Piedra raised his hand to shade his eyes from the glare of the headlamp. “What the hell are you wearing that thing for? Jesus, you about took my eye out.”

The man shrugged. “Again, with the Jesus, Doc? Really? I decided a while back that I’m no longer The Lord Jesus Christ. I put that whole Jesus period down to a bad patch. I’m back to being just plain Eli, a Jew from Brooklyn, who no happens to live in Florida, where all good Jews go, at least at some point in their lives. It’s in the Torah, you know.”

Piedra unlocked his office door and Eli slipped into a guest chair.

“You know what? You need to get a better attitude. All that negativity will kill ya.” Eli said.

“What? You’re the one giving advice now? That’s priceless!”

“I’m here tryin’ to help you and myself is all.” Eli scooted forward to the edge of his seat, eyes flitting this way and that. “Look, Doc. I need to get out of here before midnight. Tomorrow’s Christmas.”

Piedra eyed him like a parent about to smack a tiresome child upside the head. “Funny, maybe it’s me imagining things now, but I thought you said you were a Jew. Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, remember?”

Eli squared his shoulders, a self-satisfied look on his face. “True, but you do.”

Piedra slammed his briefcase down on the desk. “I do not! Whole damn Christmas business is nonsense.” He grabbed a chart of biblical proportions from the top of the tall pile on his desk and started thumbing through it. “So let me get this straight, you think, just because it’s Christmas, I’m going to sign you out of here?”

Eli cracked a crooked smile, his dingy white chipped teeth the same color as his hospital gown. “Yeah. It’ll get me out of your hair. Consider it a gift from me to you.”

Piedra rolled his eyes. “Ha! Maybe I should convert, become a Jew like you, leave this Christmas BS behind. All the holly and bright and Santa and reindeer claptrap.”

Eli’s face darkened. “Doc, you should be home. With your family.” He aimed his headlamp at a photograph of a woman and a child on the window sill in a frame stamped, ‘Happy Father’s Day.’

Piedra stiffened. “We’re not here to talk about me now, are we?”

Eli raised his hands, palms up. “True again, but I meant what I said before. I need to get out of here. I’ve got places to be.”

“Sure you do.” Piedra dropped into his hair. “Let’s get to work.”

Eli pointed a stubby finger at Piedra. “Before we do, can I ask you just one thing?”

Piedra rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What is it now?”

“Why’s it that you hate Christmas so much? You’re a Christian aren’t you?”

Piedra tipped his head from side to side before giving a noncommittal nod.

“So why?” Eli asked.

Piedra swallowed hard. “When I was a boy in Cuba, Fidel Castro canceled Christmas.”

Eli crossed his eyes. “What? Who does that?”

“Someone who can,” he replied. “And he did. In 1969. Before I was born. That cigar chomping megalomaniac banned Christmas forever. Said good comrades had to work on the sugar harvest instead.”

“Jesus,” Eli said.

Piedra’s gaze hardened. “One day, when I was seven, Papi brought home two gifts on Christmas Eve—one for me and one for Mami—all wrapped in red and green paper decorated with Santas and tied up with curly ribbon. They were beautiful. I’d never seen anything like them. We couldn’t wait to open them.” He sniffed. “Then one of the rat bastards in the neighborhood watch brigade ratted him out.”

Eli leaned in, riveted. “And?”

“And we never saw Papi again.”

Eli reeled back. “Jesus.”

“Stop saying Jesus! Clearly, there was no Jesus that day.” His voice cracked. “Or on any other day for that matter. After Mami and I made it to America, Christmas was all for show. She liked to pretend we were Americans. Just like everyone else—what with the tree and the gifts, and the carols.” He grabbed the chart again and flipped through the pages. “I’m tired of the charade.”

Eli reached across the desk and grabbed the sleeve of Piedra’s doctor’s coat. “Like you always tell your patients, Doc, what’s past is past. But the future is not past. The future is yours to change.”

Piedra glanced at the photograph, eyes clouded with tears.

Eli yanked harder on the sleeve this time, pulling Piedra close, the light from the headlamp so bright Piedra had to close his eyes. “Christmas isn’t here yet, “Eli said, his tone soothing. “What is here, is now. And now can change tomorrow.”

When Piedra opened his eyes, the chair opposite him was empty, except for an empty white gown. A headlamp lay on the desk, it’s beam pointed at the photograph, bathing the woman and a small boy, Piedra’s wife and son, in a golden hue.

Piedra sprang up, and ran down the hallway to the nurses’ station.

“Where is he? Where’d he go?”

“Who? Where’d who go?” the nurse asked.

“Eli,” Piedra demanded. “I think he tried to escape.”

“There’s no Eli on this ward,” the nurse replied, but without looking at Piedra, because her eyes were firmly planted on a fat man in a red suit with a huge sack overflowing with colorful packages slung over his shoulder.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa said as the clock struck midnight. “Merry Christmas to all.”