lying flat. And I don’t want you to try to raise your head by
yourself, all right?
Let me lift your head for you.”
Maria put one hand behind his neck and raised his head a few inches off
the thin pillow. With her other hand, she held the glass. Heather
reached across the railing and put the straw to Jack’s lips.
“Small sips,” Maria warned him. “You don’t want to choke.”
After six or seven sips, with a pause to breathe between each, he’d had
enough.
Heather was delighted out of all proportion to her husband’s modest
accomplishment. However, his ability to swallow a thin liquid without
choking probably meant there was no paralysis of his throat muscles,
not even minimal.
She realized how profoundly their lives had changed when such a mundane
act as drinking water without choking was a triumph, but that grim
awareness did not diminish her delight.
As long as Jack was alive, there was a road back to the life they had
known. A long road. One step at a time. Small, small steps. But
there was a road, and nothing else mattered right now.
While Emil Procnow and Walter Delaney examined Jack, Heather used the
phone at the nurse’s station to call home. She talked to Mae Hong
first, then Toby, and told them that Jack was going to be all right.
She knew she was putting a rose tint on reality, but a little positive
thinking was good for all of them.
“Can I see him?” Toby asked.
“In a few days, honey.”
“I’m much better. Got better all day. I’m not sick any more.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Anyway, your dad needs a few days to get
his strength back.” bring peanut-butter-and-chocolate ice cream.
That’s his favorite.
They won’t have that in a hospital, will they?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Tell Dad I’m gonna bring him some.”
“All right,” she said.
“I want to buy it myself. I have money, from my allowance.”
“You’re a good boy, Toby. You know that?”
His voice became soft and shy. “When you coming home?”
“I don’t know, honey. I’ll be here awhile. Probably after you’re in
bed.”
“Will you bring me something from Dad’s room?”
“What do you mean?”
“Something from his room. Anything. Just something was in his room,
so I can have it and know there’s a room where he is.”
The chasm of insecurity and fear revealed by the boy’s request was
almost more than Heather could bear without losing the emotional
control she had thus far maintained with such iron-willed success. Her
chest tightened, and she had to swallow hard before she dared to
speak.
“Sure, okay, I’ll bring you something.”
“If I’m asleep, wake me.”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, peanut. Now I gotta go. You be good for Mae.”
“We’re playing five hundred rummy.”
“You’re not betting, are you?”
“Just pretzel sticks.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to see you bankrupt a good friend like Mae,”
Heather said, and the boy’s giggle was sweet music.
To be sure she didn’t interfere with the nurses, Heather leaned against
the wall beside the door that led out of the I.C.U. She could see
Jack’s cubicle from there. His door was closed, privacy curtains drawn
at the big observation windows.
The air in the I.C.U smelled of various antiseptics. She ought to have
been used to those astringent and metallic odors by now. Instead, they
became increasingly noxious and left a bitter taste as well.
When at last the doctors stepped out of Jack’s cubicle and walked
toward her, they were smiling, but she had the disquieting feeling they
had bad news. Their smiles ended at the corners of their mouths, in
their eyes was something worse than sorrow–perhaps pity.
Dr. Walter Delaney was in his fifties and would have been perfect as
the wise father in a television sitcom in the early sixties. Brown
hair going to gray at the temples. A handsome if soft-featured face.
He radiated quiet authority, vet was as relaxed and mellow as Ozzie
Nelson or Robert Young.
“You okay, Heather?” Delaney asked.
She nodded. “I’m holding up.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard the latest news,” Emil Procnow said, “but