At some point during this vigil, I fell asleep.
Someone patted my hand.
I woke up with a start, to find that the hand-patter was a stout nurse. “She’s awake, honey.”
My eyes flew to Gran, who was looking around critically. Another nurse raised Gran’s head a few inches, and then held the straw of a water glass, and I saw Gran take a sip. When she swallowed, a little of the water dribbled out on one side. “Dis can’t be good,” she slurred.
At the sound of her voice, my eyes welled. And that was the moment she locked onto me, and I saw her make a sad face.
“Oh, don’t you worry about him,” the nurse said to Gran. “He’s just exhausted because it’s the middle of the night.”
I heaved myself out of the chair and wiped my eyes. “Hi, Gran,” I said. I leaned down to give her a kiss on the forehead, and my stupid eyes filled again.
“Honey,” she said, her voice thick and awkward. “I’m shtill here.”
“I can see that,” I managed. But I was losing my battle with the tears.
“Go home,” she said. “S’late.”
“She’s right, sweetheart,” the nurse who’d awoken me said. “Tomorrow morning she’ll be transferred to a proper room. You can talk then.” She gave me a gentle nudge. “Your grandmother will rest better if she’s not worrying about you.”
I took a minute to mull over that logic, and decided that she had a point. “Okay. I’ll come back first thing.”
The nurse fished a scrap of paper from her pocket. “Your friends left this note for you, in case your phone went dead. Now have a good night.”
I kissed Gran once again, and she looked at me with soft eyes. Then I stumbled out of the ICU, leaving all of its beeping machines behind. The note was from Skippy. “It’s midnight. Taking Graham home with us. Ring if you need anything, or want us there. Or come over. Call my cell or knock on the window to the right of the stoop.”
According to the clock in the waiting room, it was three in the morning. When I passed through the hospital doors, it took me a couple of minutes to get my bearings. I’d toured around the University campus with Skippy before, but I’d never paid much attention to the medical complex. Eventually I figured out where I was, and walked about ten minutes through the quiet little streets to Skippy’s place.
I pulled out my dying phone to verify that I was in front of the right house, because it would suck to accidentally wake a stranger at this hour. Right after I rapped on the window glass, I heard movement inside the room. So I climbed the little wooden stoop, and Skippy appeared at the door in a kimono. He and Ross lived in an old Victorian that had long ago been broken up into cute, creaky little apartments.
Wordlessly, he let me in. When I stepped into the living room, I saw a Graham-shaped lump asleep on the pull-out couch.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“How is she?” he mouthed.
“She woke up, and spoke a little. But she looks awful.”
Skippy winced. “Tomorrow you’ll know more.”
“Yeah.”
He pointed toward the back. “Help yourself to anything in the bathroom. I’m going back to bed.”
“Skippy, thanks,” I said again.
Big parts of the day had been lost in my stressed-out haze. But I knew that the people in this room — the sleeping one, and the kimono-wearing one — had been pulling puppet strings in the background, making my nightmare just a little more bearable. Hours ago, I’d caught Skippy waving maniacally from the other side of the ICU glass. When I’d gone out to see what he wanted, he’d shoved a paper carton of pad Thai into one of my hands, and a pair of chopsticks in the other. Then he’d pointed at a bench. “You can’t go back in there until you eat that,” he’d said. It had been easier to comply than to argue with him.
Now, Skippy leaned in to give me a quick squeeze. “Any time, honey. You’d do the same for me.” He turned away then, heading back to bed. We didn’t have to say anything more, because we both knew it was true.
I kicked off my shoes, and turned my attention to Graham, who had somehow zapped me from Connecticut to Vermont like a superhero. Even though we’d spent four hours in a car together, I felt as though I hadn’t talked to Graham in a year.
Dropping my jacket and jeans, I crawled onto the bed beside him. The pull-out sofa was the usual disaster — a thin mattress over dubious springs. But I’d never been so happy to be anyplace. It would have been polite to just lie down quietly and go to sleep. But that wasn’t good enough for me. I curled into Graham, tugging him into my arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked sleepily. I watched him wake up fast, his eyes snapping open, assessing me. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “I just miss you. Maybe I should have just let you sleep, but I love you too damn much.” If the people in my life were going to start collapsing everywhere, it suddenly seemed important that I let them know.
