“Are you all right?” his father had asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He went into the house, yanking on one of Pie’s braids as he went past her. Pie wrinkled her nose at him, then smiled.
“Supper’s almost ready, go wash up,” Ellen said.
The telephone started to ring. She went to answer it then called sharply to David as he headed for the down-stairs bathroom to wash his hands, which had been pretty dirty—sticky, sappy, treeclimbing dirty.
He turned and saw his mom holding out the telephone in one fist while she twisted the other restlessly in her apron. She tried to talk, but at first no sound came out when her lips moved. She swallowed and tried again. “It’s Debbie Ross, for you. She’s crying. I think it must be over. For God’s sake be kind to her.”
David crossed the room and took the phone. That feeling of otherness had swept over him again. He
had been sure his mom was at least half-right: something was over.
“Hello?” he said. “Mrs. Ross?”
She was crying so hard that at first she couldn’t talk She tried, but what came through her sobs was just wahh wahh-wahh. From a little distance he heard Mr. Ross say “Let me do it,” and Mrs. Ross said,
“No, I’m okay There was a mighty honk in David’s ear—it sounded like a hungry goose—and then she said: “Brian’s awake.”
“Is he?” David said. What she had just said made him feel happier than he had ever been in his life.., and yet it had not surprised him at all.
Is he dead? Ellen was mouthing at him. One hand was still plunged deep in her apron, twisting and turning.
“No,” David said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece to talk to his mother and father.
It was all right, he could do that; Debbie Ross was sobbing again. He thought she’d do that every time she told anyone, at least for awhile. She wouldn’t be able to help it, because her heart had given him up.
Is he dead? Ellen mouthed again.
“No!” he told her, a little irritated—it was like she was deaf. “Not dead, alive. She says he’s awake.”
His mother and father gaped like fish in an aquarium. Pie went past them, still eating Jell-O, her face turned down to the face of her doll, which was sticking stiffly out from the crook of her arm. “Told you this would happen, she said to Melissa Sweetheart in a forbidding this-closes- the-discussion tone of voice. “Didn’t I say so?”
“Awake,” David’s mother had said in a stunned, musing voice. “Alive.”
“David, are you there?” Mrs. Ross asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Right here.”
“About twenty minutes after you left, the EEC monitor started to show waves. I saw them first—Mark was down in the cafe, getting sodas—and I went to the nurses’ station. They didn’t believe me.” She laughed through her tears. “Well, of course, who would? And when I finally got someone to come look, they called maintenance instead of a doctor, that’s how sure they were that it couldn’t be happening.
They actually replaced the mom-tar, isn’t that the most amazing thing you ever heard?”
“Yes,” David said. “Wild.”
Both parents were mouthing at him now, and his dad was also making big hand-gestures.
To David he looked like an insane-asylum inmate who thought he was a gameshow host.
That made him want to laugh. He didn’t want to do that while he was on the phone, Mrs. Ross wouldn’t understand, so he turned and faced the wall.
“It wasn’t until they saw the same high waves on the new monitor—only even stronger— that one of the nurses called Dr. Waslewski. He’s the neurologist. Before he got here, Brian opened his eyes and looked around at us. He asked me if I’d fed the goldfish today. I said yes, the gold-fish were fine. I didn’t cry or anything. I was too stunned to cry. Then he said his head ached and closed his eyes again.
When Dr. Waslewski came in, Brian looked like he was still in the coma, and I saw him give the nurse a look, like ‘Why do you bother me with this?’ You know?”
“Sure,” David said.
“But when the doctor clapped his hands beside Brian’s ear, he opened his eyes again right away. You should have seen that old Polack’s face, Davey!” She laughed— the cracked, cackling laugh of a madwoman. “Then Bri-Brian suh-suh-said he was thirsty, and asked if h-he could have a drink of wuh-wuhwater.”
She broke down entirely then, her sobs so loud in his ear that they almost hurt. Then they faded and Bri’s dad said, “David? You still there?” He sounded none too steady himself, but he wasn’t outright bawling, which was a relief.
“Sure.”
“Brian doesn’t remember the accident, doesn’t remem-ber anything after doing his homework in his room the night before it happened, but he remembers his name, and his address, and our names. He knows who the President is, and he can do simple math problems. Dr. Waslewski says he’s heard of cases like this, but never actually seen one.
He called it ‘a clinical miracle.’ I don’t know if that actually means anything or if it’s just something he’s always wanted to say, and I don’t care. I just want to thank you, David. So does Debbie. From the bottom of our hearts.”
“Me?” David asked. A hand was tugging his shoulder, trying to get him to turn around.
He resisted it. “What are you thanking me for?”
“For bringing Brian back to us. You were talking to him; the waves started showing up just after you left.
He heard you, Davey. He heard you and came back.”
“It wasn’t me,” David said. He turned around. His folks were all but looming over him, their faces frantic with hope, amazement, confusion. His mother was crying. What a day for tears it had been! Only Pie, who usually bawled at least six hours out of every twenty four, seemed to have her shit together.
“1 know what I know,” Mr. Ross said. “I know what I know, David.”
He had to talk to his parents before they stared at him so hard they set his shirt on fire . . . but before he did, there was one other thing he had to know. “What time did he wake up and ask about his goldfish?
How long after you started seeing his brainwaves?”
“Well, they changed the monitor … she told you that and then . .. I don’t know He trailed off for a moment, then said: “Yes I do. I remember hearing the Columbus Broad fire-whistle just before everything happened. So it must’ve been a few minutes past five.”
David had nodded, unsurprised. Right around the time the voice in his head had told him You’re praying already. “Can I come and see him tomorrow?”
Mr. Ross had laughed then. “David, you can come see him atmidnight , if that’s what you want. Why not? Dr. Waslewski says we have to keep waking him up, anyway, and asking him stupid questions. I know what he’s afraid of-that Brian will slip back into the coma but I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”
“Nope,” David said. “Bye, Mr. Ross.”
He’d hung up the telephone then, and his parents all but pounced on him. How did it happen? they wanted to know. How did it happen, and what do they think you had to do with it?
David felt an urge then-an amazingly strong one-to cast his eyes down modestly and say, Well, he woke up, that’s really all I know. Except … well … He would pause with seeming reluctance, then add: Mr. and Mrs. Ross think he might have heard my voice and responded to it, but you know how upset they’ve been. That’s all it would take to start a legend; part of him knew it. And he wanted to do it.
Part of him really, really wanted to do it.
It wasn’t the strange inside-out voice that stopped him but a thought of his own, one that was more intuited than articulated: If you take the credit, it stops here.
What stops?
Everything that matters, the voice of intuition responded. Everything that matters.
“David, come on,” his father said, giving his shoulders a little shake. “We’re dying here.”
“Brian’s awake,~’ he said, choosing his words carefully. ~- “He can talk, he can remember. The brain-guy says it’s a miracle. Mr. and Mrs. Ross think I had something to do with it, that he heard me talking to him and came back, but nothing like that happened.
I was holding his hand, and he wasn’t there. He was the most gone person I ever saw in my life. That’s why I cried-not because his folks were having a fit but because he was gone. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t care. He’s awake, that’s all I care about.”