Epilogue

Gabby and Mike and Ceebee

Memorial Hospital

“EXACTLY MIDNIGHT!” crowed the delivery room nurse as she hastened to wrap the newborn baby boy.

Mike bent and kissed Gabby’s forehead. “Another Christmas baby, honey.”

She glanced at where the nurse and the doctor were tending to their new son. In a whisper, she said, “You knew he’d be born tonight.”

“Yes.” He went to where a two-year-old Ceebee was asleep on one side of the room. Gently he woke her. “Do you want to see your new brother?”

Gabby savored the happiness that filled the room. The delivery hadn’t been easy, but she didn’t care now that the nurse was placing her son, swaddled in a light blue blanket, in her arms.

As Mike picked up Ceebee and brought her over to the delivery table, the nurse asked, “What are you going to name him?”

“Leon.” She smiled up at Mike. “That’s ‘Noel’ backwards.”

“Naming him Noel would be an invitation for the other kids to beat him up.” Mike laughed.

The nurse and Dr. Travers, the obstetrician, did, too.

“What do you think of your baby brother Leon?” the nurse asked Ceebee.

“I know a song about him,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Do you? What is it?”

“Leon, Leon,” sang Ceebee to the tune of The First Noel. Her lyrics were a jumble of words that fit her two-year-old vocabulary.

The nurse applauded before getting Gabby ready to go to her room along the hallway.

Dr. Travers wore a puzzled expression.

“Is there something wrong, Dr. Travers?” Gabby asked as Ceebee began to sing her song over again. No surprise, because she’d been singing it nonstop for the last two months.

“I would have sworn that I’d heard two heartbeats during that sonogram we did early on, but there’s just one baby.” He patted her arm. “I hope you aren’t disappointed.”

“I’ve got two wonderful and healthy children. How could I be disappointed?” She didn’t add that she hadn’t been surprised to have the double heartbeat and then a single birth. She looked at Ceebee and smiled. The answer was simple when she and Mike had realized that the second heartbeat was the echo of Ceebee’s, for she would have been born tonight, too, if Jack hadn’t interfered.

“Some things can’t be explained with medical technology,” Mike replied with the “naughty boy” smile that she loved. “Sometimes, when logic doesn’t work, we’ve just got to accept that things are as they are. What we don’t understand, we have to take on faith.”

“DID YOU HEAR that?” asked Jack with a grin so bright that anyone looking up would have thought there was a new star in the sky. “Mike said that!”

Mrs. Lucas smiled as she came to stand beside him. With her were the small angels who’d spent such a short time on Earth as Mrs. Lucas’s daughter and niece. There had been a joyous reunion when Mrs. Lucas arrived shortly after she died in the hospital. “I guess we can learn for as long as we are alive.”

“And after.” Jack sat on the edge of the cloud and watched as Mike took the baby and leaned forward to kiss Gabby with a love that had been truly heaven-sent.

Jack had not realized he still had so much to learn about faith and accepting that things happen as they were supposed to happen. Ceebee’s arrival two years early had not been a mistake. Gabby and Mike’s story had unfolded as it was supposed to unfold. He had been the conduit through which a miracle happened, not just the little girl’s arrival but how she helped bring peace to Mrs. Lucas who needed to be reminded that life was a precious gift that never should be wasted. And the baby had brought together Gabby and Mike who came to realize that love never arrives as planned. They had learned that lesson when a very special Christmas Carol who had been born on the wrong Christmas.

And Jack had learned something from Mr. Shepard. No prayers go unanswered... not even an angel’s.

The End