As soon as the door clicks shut behind him, Parker takes a seat in the chair. “You need another way to communicate if you don’t feel like writing.” She slides the table stretching across the foot of the bed closer so my sketchbook and pencil are within my reach. “Or if this somehow ends up too far away again.”
I reach for the sketchbook, but the pencil rolls off the table and lands somewhere in the tangle of blankets.
Shit.
For three years, no one heard me. No one talked to me—at least with any kindness—but I still had a voice, even if I chose not to use it. Now…this is so much harder.
Parker holds up her right hand, fingers curled into a loose fist, thumb pointed up. “This is A.” Then she straightens her fingers and angles her thumb across her palm. “And this is B.”
It takes a couple of seconds for the fog swirling around in my brain to clear, but once it does, I copy her first letter.
A.
Her fierce grin holds so much pride, my cheeks flush with heat. “There you go. Okay. We’re gonna go through the whole alphabet, but also a couple of important words. Like yes…and no.”
A flicker of hope stirs in my chest. I grab the pencil, and scratch out, “Need to tell AJ?—”
“You want to skip to the good stuff first?”
I nod, and she laughs. “That’s the Grace I know. All right.” She points to herself. “I.”
Once I’ve copied her, she closes both hands into loose approximations of the letter A, and crosses them over her chest. “Love.”
This is a little harder with the IV still taped to my hand, but I manage.
“You.” She points to me, I point to her, and for a moment, I feel like I’ve just climbed a mountain.
“You need one more. Remember A?” she asks.
I show her, and she nods. “Good. Now stick out your pinky finger, hold your thumb across your other fingers, and draw a J.”
After I struggle through the gesture, her eyes light up, glassy with emotion, but her grin doesn’t falter. “That’s his name. You just said AJ.”
Tears spill, hot against my cheeks. Parker leans closer, carefully wraps one arm around me, and gives me a gentle squeeze.
“You’re still here, Grace. You’re still you. In a couple of days, all this silence will fade into a memory. But until it does, we’ve got you. Always.”
She’s only just pulled back when AJ returns, two cups of coffee in hand, and a small paper bag dangling from his wrist.
Parker practically sashays around the bed, takes one of the cups, and heads for the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m betting AJ forgot that I like sugar in my coffee.”
AJ starts to protest, but Parker cuts him off. “Grace has something to tell you.”
She leaves, and I point to myself, cross my arms over my chest, and point to him. Then…I sign his name.
“I love you, AJ.”
The bag hits the floor. He barely manages to set his coffee down before folding me into his embrace. “I love you too, darlin’. Always and forever.”
AJ
I tried to send Parker home for a couple of hours. As expected, she refused. Isabel dropped off a change of clothes for her—along with a tin of decaf instant Cafe Vienna for Grace—and she’s making use of a shower in one of the empty rooms on this floor.
When she’s done, I’ll do the same. Hardison is patrolling the halls, doing laps around the neuro floor like he’s training for the world’s slowest, scariest marathon. One with a strict “arrest anyone who even blinks suspiciously” rule.
Grace fell asleep less than twenty minutes after we shared a cup of her decaf. The normalcy of that single act almost did me in. Nothing about where we are is normal. Especially not this overwhelming, almost oppressive silence. But knowing she’s still in there—that she’s still her—lets me relax a degree or two.
Until a soft knock at the door puts me on high alert.
