Door after door, floor after floor, Bill Hildebrandt, Ronnee Haller and Mindy Dunkerley tapped lightly on patient room doors at Butler Memorial Hospital on Christmas morning.

“Good morning,” Hildebrandt, director of surgical telemetry, said cheerfully to each patient. “We’re delivering presents for patients.”

There were 128 patients at the hospital on Christmas morning, and the staff wanted to make sure each and every one of them had a gift to unwrap.

“We wanted to spread some Christmas cheer to those who have to be here,” said Dunkerley, chief nursing officer. “The staff really pulled together to make sure patients got something.”

“I think our staff here is very giving,” said Haller, a nurse educator.

Haller came in on her day off to volunteer for the gift delivery, but was looking forward to getting home to her son, who is home from college in Virginia.

Melissa Conklin, department secretary of medical surgical/telemetry, said she and Hildebrandt collected at least 150 gifts. According to Conklin, the initiative gained traction within her staff and beyond.

“We put a box on each floor — 5 Main, 6 Main, 7 Tower and 6 Tower — and collected the gifts from there and nurses and staff donated,” Conklin said. “I believe some family of staff members donated toward it, too.”

Hildebrandt said it’s the first time gifts have been handed out to patients, but “we’re going to try to make it an annual thing.”

Among the gifts were word-search books, bath salts, lotions, candles and blankets, which were the most popular gift.

While the plan had been to load up a cart with gifts and refill it as it ran out, Haller ran back to where the gifts were piled on a table to grab an armful of wrapped blankets to keep up with demand.

Several patients were in isolation, so many gifts were left on door handles. Other patients were sleeping and would later wake to find a gift waiting for them by their bedside.

But for some isolation patients, including at least one with COVID-19, nurse Ellen Geibel suited up in protective gear and handed gifts to the ill patients.

“There’s a lot of isolation patients,” Geibel said as she prepared to walk into a patient room.

“You’re like Santa,” Haller told Geibel.

On the seventh floor, which had served as the hospitals COVID unit during the pandemic, patients received two gifts. Nurses on that floor gave gifts to patients on Christmas Eve, as has become tradition the last few years.

“The COVID unit was the first to do it” during the pandemic, Hildebrandt said. “So the nurses there had already handed out gifts.”

Dunkerley took a side trip to deliver gifts to the few patients in the obstetrics department, where there weren’t any Christmas babies as of noon.

While things in the department were pretty quiet, Charlotte May was becoming a little fussy.

She is 2 days old and was spending her first Christmas with her parents in the hospital. Mom, Bailey May, was recovering from a cesarean.

“She was a big baby and didn’t want to come out,” said Bailey May.

Dad, Jacob May, a Butler police officer, rocked Charlotte in his arms in an attempt to calm her.

“She starts quiet and gets louder,” Jacob May said.

The couple said they spent their hospital holiday watching Christmas movies, and on Christmas Eve, they read “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” to baby Charlotte.

“Everyone’s been so nice,” Bailey May said of the staff.

Charlotte was wearing a long green-and-white knitted hat given to the family by the nursing staff.

Back in surgical recovery, Rose Krysik was watching Christmas movies in her room. She had hoped to be home on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but decided it was safer to stay one more day.

“This is my first time in this hospital. It is beautiful,” Krysik said after unwrapping a nail care kit.

Krysik, 70, had open heart surgery on Wednesday.

Out the window of her room was a sweeping view of the city. She said a lot of the houses were beautifully decorated with Christmas lights.

Of having surgery around the holidays, she said “it didn’t matter. My kids are grown. They were here yesterday.”

“Everybody’s looking forward to me being home,” she said.