A Christmas Angel

     “I never said I hated Christmas. Christmas is great! I just…don’t feel much like celebrating this year…that’s all. Yes, that’s all. Well, that’s not my problem! Would you stop? Ok? Just give it up already. No, no I don’t. Good. Fine. Goodbye. Bye!”

Sona snapped her cell phone with a frustrated expression. And you knew she was frustrated too, because she scrunched her nose and she always scrunched her nose when she was frustrated. She really didn’t hate Christmas. Who could hate Christmas? She was no Scrooge. Although the friend she’d been talking to on the phone begged to differ. Simply because Sona wasn’t celebrating this year. She really didn’t feel like it. No tree. No lights. No parties. No eggnog. No presents.

What’s the point anymore? I have nothing to be happy about…

She sighed and started down the sidewalk again. Funny thing—she couldn’t talk on the phone and walk at the same time. She stopped again to pull her phone back out. She stared down at the picture of her boyfriend. He smiled back at her with those sparkling eyes and tousled hair that she had loved so much. She looked around her, at the couples walking hand-in-hand and arm-in-arm. Christmas Eve was supposed to be a sort of “Lover’s Day”. What do you do if the only one you could ever love was dead? Her boyfriend, the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, had been killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve last year. She shook her head and snapped the phone closed. She didn’t want to look at it now, she’d call later.

But what if later is too late? She reasoned with herself, and again stopped to open the phone and dial.

“Hello?”

“Hi Mom…”

“Oh, Sona, sweetie, how are you?”

How am I?! What kind of crazy question is that? “I’m fine… Ye-Jin?”

There was a sigh at the other end of the phone. “She’s…missing you.” Her mother tried to sound hopeful, but there was nothing hopeful about the situation.

   Last month, Sona missed a call. A very important cal that a colleague of hers had answered for er. Her friends pulled into a room alone afterwards and told her it was her family. Although Sona’s family lived in America, there was nothing unordinary about them calling her just to check in on her and say hi.

“It’s about your sister.” Her friend looked and sound worried, which triggered something inside her.

Her sister was the most important person in the world to her. What could possibly wrong?

“She’s been admitted into Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital.” Her friend told her.

Just the word “hospital” flipped a switch in Sona’s heart. Then she squinted. She wasn’t a expert on American things, but she was pretty sure…

“Isn’t Saint Jude’s a cancer treatment hospital for kids?”

Her friend just nodded. Sona’s whole, dangerously tilting world turned over that day. Neither she nor her family had enough money to send her to America, and no amount of hoping or wishing and missing or asking “Santa Claus” would change that. And borrowing money was always out of the question.