Hospitals in December are strange countries. The rules differ. Clocks multiply. People speak softly, as if words might knock into tubes and wires. Down the corridor, a paper snowflake trembles in the air conditioning and pretends to be weather.

On the pediatric floor, the charity van carrying gifts was stuck behind a jackknifed truck and a county’s worth of bad luck. It wouldn’t make it before morning. The nurses tried re-wrapping hope as art projects and extra Jell-O. The kids were kind about it, because children often are. Still—Christmas Eve had a reputation to uphold.

Maria, a firefighter who moonlighted as friend to nurses, arrived with a bag of rope and the belief that solutions can be lowered. “You’ve got windows,” she said. “I’ve got gravity.” She borrowed a Santa suit from the volunteer closet, the one with the better beard, and headed for the roof with her crew.

They tied anchor points to things that never imagined they’d be part of a sleigh team: HVAC units, a ladder cage, the stubborn dedication of shift workers. Snow began to gossip with the wind. Down below, children pressed faces to glass, eyes enormous at the sight of Santa on a skyline.

Maria rappelled one window at a time, waving with mittened certainty. A nurse inside played DJ and set the ward to carols. At each stop, Maria lowered a rope bag, Santa-red and practical, filled with stuffed animals that knew more about comfort than many adults. She tapped twice on the pane, a code that meant present inbound, and grinned when small hands clapped.

One boy, bald and brave in the way that shouldn’t be required of anyone, saluted her. She saluted back, the rope humming with the exchange. At another window, a girl held up a sign: SANTA YOU’RE LATE. Maria shrugged and pointed at the snow as if to say traffic, and the girl forgave her with eight missing teeth.

Down on the ground, the crew warmed hands on thermoses and watched their captain make gravity festive. Inside, phones filmed so grandparents could witness a miracle with decent reception. Someone sobbed in the supply closet and then didn’t. The van arrived eventually, but by then it felt like an epilogue. The story had already happened on the glass.

Maria’s arms ached by the time she unclipped. She peeled off the beard, which had aspirational opinions about sticking to faces. “I look like I wrestled a polar bear,” she said, and a kid at the door corrected her: “You are the polar bear.”

News crews came. Donations followed, a river of toys and blankets and books, enough to overflow into January, which is when people need Christmas more than they realize. Maria shrugged at microphones. “It wasn’t heroic,” she said. “It was logistics, but cozy.”

The hospital added a new annual event to the calendar: Rappel Claus, subject to weather and audacity. Every year since, one window has misted a little less from the inside. Hope, it turns out, is warm.