The rest of her family thought Rose’s job was a waste of her time but Rose knew better and so did the many patients she cared as if they were family. As a registered nurse, she would never see the kind of paychecks her brothers brought home but Rose was drawn to her work as a cat is drawn to fresh cream. Furthermore, Rose was convinced that her nursing career was bringing her more happiness and satisfaction than her brothers’ lucrative enterprises would ever bring them.

Rose’s older brother, Frank, at the age of 27, owned his own very successful computer consulting business and had, on more than one occasion, teased Rose with the word “loser”, always extending the “ooo” as far as possible while creating an L with his thumb and index finger and framing it mockingly on her forehead. She knew he thought this was all in good fun, just part of the big brother job description, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, but this knowledge did not soften the slap of it.

Rose’s oldest brother, Steve, almost 30, was already an accomplished corporate attorney. Steve had, with a sickening amount of concern in his eyes, recently told Rose that if she did not go back to school and get a real career, she was going to run out of time. “You’re the smart one, Rosie-O.” She hated when he called her Rosie-O. “You could make a fortune with that brain of yours,” he continued, “and every year you wait makes the possibility of the good life that much more remote.”

Steve was the master of the back-handed compliment. In the space of a few pointed sentences, he could make her feel like the dumb little sister all over again. In her head, she came up with all sorts of responses, such as, “You call working 70 hours a week protecting the big companies from the poor little people the good life?” But she said nothing. As the baby of the family, Rose was accustomed to being picked on. She knew she was supposed to let her brothers’ criticisms evaporate on contact but, after 25 years, each word continued to sear her self-worth. Growing up, she sometimes imagined that she must be adopted because she could not believe she shared the same DNA as these big oafs. The only thing Rose seemed to hold in common with Steve and Frank was the fact that she, like they, was not married.

Her parents had paid for her nursing education but somewhat reluctantly. They too thought that she, the valedictorian of her high school class, the one with the near perfect SAT scores, should be doing something more gainful with her life. They never imagined that she would actually become a nurse. They assumed it was a phase. One of those things idealistic young people do when they imagine they have the power to make the world a better place. But Rose’s parents could not have been more wrong. For Rose, nursing was a passion, a calling that brought more meaning into her life than Steve and Frank would ever know. And based on her experiences, nurses stood among the smartest, kindest, and most real people she knew.

Almost three years ago, Rose became a full time nurse in the oncology wing at Riverside Hospital and, regardless of what her family thought, Rose loved it. She loved the work, she loved her colleagues in the healing arts, she loved the patients. Patients in her wing tended to be hospitalized for extended stays. For some, this was nothing more than a big bump in the road of life. For others, this was the last earthly waypoint on the road to eternity. This Christmas season, her patients included Cole, a fifty-five year old man with a mysterious blood disorder who was being treating with chemotherapy; and Alfred, the sixty-seven year old Casa Nova of the unit, who scarcely had the energy to sit up and eat following a bone marrow transplant but who managed, nevertheless, to charm every female nurse who attended to his recovery; and Beryl, a young woman close to her own age, who was fighting leukemia.

Riverside Hospital, regardless of the cheerful holiday decorations, was rather a sad place in the weeks preceding Christmas. The patients received fewer family visitors as the demands of Christmas took them to Malls and obligatory parties. More strangers came around for a few minutes at a time, singing “Deck the Halls” and “Silent Night” from the safe distance of an outer hallway but, as lovely as this musical gift was, it made the reality of their hospitalizations all the more acute. Rose felt like a doting daughter or a kind sister to them all. In fact, she rather liked the idea that in some countries, nurses were referred to as sisters. It made so much sense. In return, most of the time, her patients adored Rose and were grateful to her, even when she stuck them with needles and even when she disturbed them in the middle of the night to check their vital signs and listen to their hearts and lungs. At Riverside Hospital, Rose was no loser.

She did her best to bring a festive spirit into the oncology wing, to brighten up the place. She wore a blinking necklace of tiny Christmas lights. She draped and taped tinsel on the patients’ I.V. poles. And when, about a week before Christmas, her patients started asking if she would be there on Christmas morning, she began to consider the possibility.

At first she figured the idea to be completely out of the question. Her parents probably would never agree to it and her brothers would undoubtedly offer a joint hissy fit. They looked like young men but, at Christmas, they turned into little boys again, clinging to all of the old childhood family traditions. As Christmas drew nearer, however, Rose wanted more and more to be at Riverside, perhaps to bring a little gift to each one of her beloved patients, certainly to sit with them, to comfort them, to bring a sliver of joy and perhaps even a sprinkle of hope into their often bleak and frightening situations.

Rose had nearly made up her mind when a conversation with the hospital chaplain confirmed her decision. Chaplain Richards spent a lot of time in her wing. Very often, he was helpful not only to the patients and their families but to the nurses as they struggled with their own challenges and sorrows. Rose explained her dilemma to Chaplain Richards and, as expected, he did not tell her what to do. Instead, he encouraged her to search her heart. “And take a look at this,” he said, “handing her a Bible bookmarked to the 15th chapter of Romans. “We who are strong,” it said, “ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor.” The passage went on to speak of encouragement and hope. Rose knew where she was most needed on Christmas morning. If she could make this small sacrifice, surely her big strong brothers could too.

Her parents were surprisingly accommodating. They viewed Rose’s request as an opportunity to sleep a little later on Christmas morning. From the days when Santa Claus was still a childhood fantasy in their home, it was an annual custom for the three siblings to wake by five in the morning, check to see that Santa’s milk and cookies were gone, grab their respective Christmas stockings which had been, of course, hung by the chimney with late-night care, dump the contents of the stockings onto the living room floor, stop to compare loot and swap ogles, and proceed to wake their parents with dramatic urgency. As young adults, the three children continued to reenact the early morning excitement with an energy surprisingly undiminished by their progressing young adult years. And, although Rose was the only one who still lived at home, they all spent the night before Christmas in their childhood home and in their childhood beds with alarms set for 5:00 a.m.

Frank and Steve were incredulous. Why would their sister want to spend Christmas morning with a bunch of sick people? Wasn’t Christmas supposed to be a break from work? Why would their Rosie-O suddenly overturn family tradition? Why would Rosie-O sabotage their fun for the sake of some people who were knocking at death’s door? They tried to talk her out of the ridiculous Riverside Hospital Christmas.

“Rosie, we promise you – these people won’t care,” they said.

“But I will,” she replied.

“They want their own families to be with them on Christmas,” they argued.

“I’m the only family some of them will see this Christmas,” she replied, instructing them to go ahead and open the stockings without her.
They accused her of trying to ruin Christmas. She told them they were acting like a bunch of babies. They told her she belonged with family on Christmas. She told them that, as far as she was concerned, helping your neighbor was closer to the meaning of Christmas than waking up at an ungodly hour to see if Santa had done in the milk and cookies. They told her she was acting like a pruny old church lady. Then her brother added, “That’s fitting since you’re well on your way to becoming an old maid.” Steve pretended to be appalled by Frank’s thoughtless and hurtful comment but Rose was quite sure she saw a wry smirk on his face. She wished she could come up with a snappy come-back but there was no male equivalent of “old maid” by which she might return the disparagement.
Women came in and out of Frank’s life like magazines, about one a month. Steve had a long-term on-and-off relationship with another attorney but both were more interested in advancing their careers than in settling down. Rose was a little plain and somewhat reserved and had not done much dating but was that reason enough for them to make such fun of her?

Rose tried not care what they thought. At least, she tried not to care very much. She imagined she would have a lot more fun at Riverside on Christmas morning than she would with her callous siblings as they ripped wrapping paper from extravagant gifts they did not really need and could not well appreciate. Rose decided that a smile from any one of her struggling patients would mean ten times more to her than whatever expensive electronic gadget or sweater might show up with her name on it at home. With or without their permission or approval, Rose was going to spend Christmas morning at Riverside Hospital. She told her boss that she would take the 24-hour shift that started at 7:00 on Christmas Eve. Her boss was, of course, delighted. It was always difficult to secure enough coverage for holidays.

And so Rose started planning. She collected little stocking stuffers, angel pens and rolls of lifesavers and colorful little packets of tissues. The other nurses chipped in, bringing puzzle books and miniature flashlights and candy canes dressed up like reindeer. Rose’s remarkably supportive parents pitched in, contributing small jars of jam wrapped with tissue paper and red and green ribbon. All of these things were tucked away in a closet in the staff conference room. Then Rose purchased two dozen fuzzy red stockings with fluffy white trim around the tops. That ought to do it, since the hospital did its very best, if at all possible, to get patients home for Christmas. The only ones who would be there were too sick to go home. The stockings were surprisingly full and she could hardly wait to play elf and, then, to see surprised looks on the weary faces of her Riverside patients.

After a family dinner on Christmas Eve during which her brothers remained angry about what was to them an inexplicable break with tradition, Rose left. She had reinvented her own Christmas. Rose may have been the baby in the family but in this decision, she felt very grown up.

There was no doubt that the rooms of patients in Riverside Hospital were very sad places indeed on the evening before Christmas. Old movies played on the televisions of patients who wanted to be almost anywhere but where they were. But the next morning, on the day Christ is born afresh into human hearts, on the day when the birth of the one called the Great Physician is celebrated, Rose’s patients did not disappoint. Each one was thrilled by the unexpected stockings that had been slipped onto their beds as they slept.
When she checked on Cole, he was laughing on the phone, undoubtedly with his wife, as a wind-up penguin that had been in the stocking now hopped about his bedside table. When she looked in on Alfred, it was apparent that he had convinced one of the prettiest nurses, Elyse, to help him solve a Sudoku puzzle from a book that had been in his stocking. Rose sat with pale, thin Beryl, who was so weak from disease and treatment that she needed help opening her stocking, help she was honored to supply. Rose’s heart was warmed once more by the decision she had made as that entire wing of Riverside became, at least for a little while, a glorious place of joy and hope, a place of building up neighbors. This is the good life, Rose thought to herself.

When Rose returned home, Christmas dinner was long over. Hers was the only stocking that still hung by the chimney. The others were on the floor, surrounded by crumpled bits and balls of Christmas wrapping paper and opened packages. Her brothers continued to be disdainful of her absence from the customary commotion and they did their best to convince her that she had missed the best Christmas crack-of-dawn ever but none their smirks or snipes worked this time. They just couldn’t get through to her now because Rose held a deep peace within her that surpassed their understanding. And perhaps for the first time in her life, this day truly felt like Christmas.