Free The Ghost of Christmas Present by Scott Abbott

people who would probably never know what it was like to be bigger than little? Who would never know what it was like to walk down a high school hallway and suspect that they were the biggest geek God ever bestowed on the world? Who would never know what it was like to come down with the flu the very afternoon of their junior prom and then watch from a bedroom window while their date took a visiting pretty cousin instead? Who would never know what it was like to feel the pain that a full life inevitably brings with the very act of living?
    These were her memories, not theirs. But would they ever get the chance to have memories? Even painful ones?
    Life was full of pain. It was unavoidable, but it was also what gave the joy its own life and limbs. Pain was obligatory. There was no getting around that. But suffering was optional.
    Rebecca stopped walking and let the thought stream through her brain and heart. “Pain is obligatory. Suffering is optional,” she said out loud to herself.
    Here she had been, polishing her guilt and grief over an old mistake whose shelf life had long since expired. She’d given herself a good, self-indulgent dose of suffering. The panhandler was right. “What’s done is done.”
    Rebecca looked ahead down the hallway and saw a child crouched in the corner, busy coloring. She must have passed by the young boy all three times without noticing him. But he was a welcome sight, looking healthy, rosy-cheeked, and clear-eyed. Rebecca approached the boy and looked down to where he was scribbling away with a brown crayon across a hospital pamphlet.
    The pamphlet was a brochure for the treatment options for childhood bone cancer. On the cover, a face no more than three years old smiled out from under a hairless scalp.
    The boy’s crayon drew on hair. He finished the pamphlet, set it down on the pile he had already completed, and moved on to the next.
    Rebecca’s presence finally caught the boy’s attention and he looked up at her, expecting to be reprimanded for defacing the brochures. He met her gaze with quiet defiance. “My sister should be allowed to have hair. They should all be allowed to have hair.”
    The boy returned to his dogged coloring, his hands determined to restore what had been stolen from his sister, his eyes fixed on fixing his world.
    Rebecca studied the child. “Yes,” she said to herself, deciding what would be her daily motto for the rest of her life. “Suffering is optional.”

Chapter 13

    MY SON’S FATHER
    â€œP ain is obligatory. Suffering is optional” was all Rebecca had said to Patrick just before she’d left him at the hospital late last Friday night. That night, her strange farewell played over and over in his mind as he stayed up and stared at his sleeping boy until he fell asleep himself. But when he woke, there was her sentence again, echoing in his mind.
    Monday morning, Patrick arrived early in his costume and passed a new Santa for charity, who banged a tambourine and called out for donations. “Make a donation to Coins for Kids. Care for those who can’t care for themselves.”
    Patrick spent the day working his magic on the corner. Rebecca had come and gone, of course not recognizing him at all, but now he looked at her with new eyes. She really had seemed warmer to him when she’d left last night. Or maybe it was just Patrick’s imagination, or vain hopes dancing around his head like new sugarplum fairies. Ted and his assistant had stopped by as well. Patrick had even been warmer to him. Perhaps Rebecca’s warmth was contagious. But at the end of the day, Patrick stuffed all his bills and coins into his robe and walked past the Coins for Kids Santa, who hadn’t done nearly as well. He felt guilty. Patrick fished out a ten and dropped it in the red bucket.
    â€œThanks!” said the Santa.
    â€œDon’t mention it,” said Patrick as he continued on.
    But still he