The Lost - J. D. Robb [39]
The nurse that day was Hettie, my favorite. Very gentle hands, and she never over-enunciated like some of them, as if their patients were not only comatose but also idiots. “Well, no actual change, though, not on the test scale. But no, I know what you mean, she was pretty alert today,” Hettie added quickly, kindly. “Tracking movements with her eyes sometimes—”
“She looked right into my eyes.” My husband loomed over me, moving his head until we were gaze to gaze. He looked so tired, his eyes so sad. Don’t go, I begged him. Stay with me. “She can’t be completely unconscious if she can open her eyes. Right?”
“There are so many degrees of consciousness,” Hettie started saying, and something about metabolic versus anatomic comas, every case is different, you have to balance hope with practicality—I gave up trying to follow. Too hard. I was a mummy, encased in gauze. If I could get out one feral grunt, raise one scary, wrapped arm . . . but everything was so exhausting. I only had the strength to look back into Sam’s eyes.
He put his cheek next to mine. Oh. Oh. The scent of him. He whispered that he loved me. Was I crying? If I could cry—he’d know. I stared hard, hard, at the lock of his hair that tickled my face, concentrating, wide-eyed.
Dry -ey ed.
“See ya, babe,” he murmured. “Don’t be scared. Everything’s okay. See you soon, sweetheart.”
I had no sense of time. Soon. It was the same to me as later. Or never.
“Benny? Come say bye to your mom. Ben? Come on, guy. Hey, Benny—! ”
Sam disappeared.
If I couldn’t cry now, I never would. What’s the point of trying to get well if your son is afraid of you? You might as well be dead. As dead as I must look to Benny in this stupid chair, these stupid pipes and lines filling and draining me, keeping me in this ugly gray twilight jail I couldn’t break free of, couldn’t penetrate, couldn’t smash my way out of—
“There you go, buddy. Give Mommy a kiss.”
Oh, Sam, don’t make him. He had his arms around Benny’s waist, holding him up, pressing him toward me. Poor Benny! His face looked blotchy with distress. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“It’s okay, it’s just Mom. Come on, pal.”
Don’t, Sam. Oh, but I wanted it, too. If Benny would look at me, really look, I believed I could make it happen—the miracle. Look, darling. It’s Mommy. Please, honey, open your eyes. He had to see me; otherwise I would truly be nothing. I would disappear. Benny, look at me, see me! Open your eyes!
That’s when it happened.
What happened? At first, a period of pure nothing. So pure, if my brain had been working, I’d have thought I had disappeared. But there wasn’t any “me” anymore, no one to think thoughts. No time, no space, and not even darkness this time. Sound, maybe, a low-pitched hum, a comforting whir or drone . . . but then again, maybe not. That would presuppose someone had ears to hear it, and I’m saying I was not there. Laurie Summer: gone.
“Daddy, is she dead? Please don’t die. Is she dead?”
Benny! His beautiful, wide-open brown eyes were looking into mine. “I’m not dead,” I tried to tell him, but nothing came out but a sort of . . . yip. But I could move my legs! It hurt, but they moved, and they . . . they . . .
They were covered with hair?
“Careful, don’t touch her. She’s hurt, she might bite you.”
I might what? Crouched over me, Sam had a pitying but distracted look on his face. This was not how I had pictured our miraculous reunion.
“We have to take her to the doctor, Daddy. We have to fix her up.”
God, not more doctors. Where were we? My ears ached; everything was so loud. And the smell was amazing. Smells, rather, millions of them, all strong and incredibly interesting. Cars were whipping by—that’s what was making all the noise. Why were we outside, in the street? A familiar-l ooking street, too. Weren’t we on Old Georgetown Road? In Bethesda?
“Come on, buddy, back in the car. It’s dangerous out here.”
Sam and Benny got up and left me in the road.
A lot of bad things had happened to me lately, very bad things, but I can say without