I threw open the back door and fumbled with the receiver before clapping it to my ear. I knew the caller’s voice immediately—Dr. Max—but he sounded tenuous and strained. Not like himself.
“Sam is awake,” he said. “Come right now.”
Forty-seven
I GUNNEDthe Jag up Highway 50, tapped the brakes to take a right onto 67, and sped on. All of my thoughts were on Sam, so I didn’t notice that Henry was following me. Not until his pickup truck pulled alongside me in the hospital parking lot and Henry cranked down his window. “She’s been —”
“Sorry, what, Henry?” I yelled back to him. “I didn’t hear you!”
“Sam’s not in the ICU anymore. She’s on the second floor. Twenty-one B.”
“Thanks!” I shouted. Then I had a thought—Could Henry be Doc?He had brought up two children himself. He might even have a doctorate. I thought I remembered something about that.
Then I was too busy running and semipolitely elbowing my way through the milling crowd in the hospital lobby. I took the fire stairs two at a time. I found Sam’s new room at the end of a gleaming linoleum hallway. I pushed open the swinging door. I even had a wisecrack ready: “It’s about time you rejoined the living!” But I never got to say it.
My heart sank. Sam was lying absolutely still in the bed. Her eyes were closed tight. Dr. Max was bent over her, taking her vitals.Oh God, I was too late.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “I got here as fast as I could.”
Max turned and saw me. “Let’s talk outside,” he said. “C’mon with me.”
“She’s gone back into the coma, hasn’t she?”
Max held up a hand to stop me from coming farther into the room. “No, Jennifer. She’s out of the coma. But this is a good time for me to fill you in on some things.”
We went to his office again, a beige square with prefab furnishings and interoffice memos tacked to the walls. As he’d done a couple of weeks before, Max led me to his swivel chair, then sat on the desk ledge, facing me.
“She’s just sleeping,” he finally said. “She was awake earlier. We tried to find you. Nobody answered the phone.”
“But she’s out of the coma?” I asked.
“Coma is not a restful state,” Max continued, as if I hadn’t asked him a question. “Even though they’re unconscious, they still worry about stuff like who’s feeding the dog, watering the houseplants, whether they’ve left the lights on. It’s good for the patient to be reassured—that’s why we stopped the hospital from shipping Sam off to St. Luke’s in Milwaukee. We wanted her friends—especially you—to talk to her.”
“Ship her off? This is the first I’ve heard.”
“I know. Look”—Max waved a dismissive hand—“there was no need to get into it with you. A lot of people around here love Sam.”
As I turned over that piece of news, Max explained that his father was on the hospital board. The two of them had pulled a few strings to keep Sam in Lake Geneva. Dr. Max went on to say that Lakeland Medical wasn’t big enough to give patients long-term care. “Samisout of her coma, but the trauma might have left her with physical or psychological difficulties.”
“Did it?” I asked. “C’mon, Max, give me something here.”
“She’s talkative, but she doesn’t always make perfect sense. She’s weak. We’ll keep her for a little while longer. Then she’s going to need patience and a lot of care.”
Max was staring at me, but why? In a flash of clarity, I realized what he was seeing. Smudged mascara under my eyes, sleep-smooshed hair—andI was wearing last night’s rumpled clothes at 10:00 on a weekday morning.
Still, I maintained my dignity. “I want to see Sam,” I told him. “Okay?”
“Absolutely. I just wanted to prepare you.”
Max went with me back to Sam’s room, then he left and I quietly approached her bed. I gently touched her arm. Suddenly Sam’s eyelids flew open, and I jumped back. But her eyes twinkled as she looked me up and down.
“Jennifer,” she said, and then smiled. “My girl is here.”
Forty-eight
I BURSTinto tears and placed my arms around Sam’s neck. It was so incredible, so unbelievable to feel her arms on me, to hear her voice again. I had almost given up hope that I would ever talk to her again.
She gently patted my back, just the way she’d done from the time I was two years old. I loved Sam so much that it was beyond scary to think of losing her. I’d wanted to see her again, to talk to her, and now it was happening.
