“You the dad?” the ER doctor asks.
“Yes. How is she?”
“Right now, critical. I’ve ordered tests, but we don’t know what we’ll find. As you know, prognosis is guarded with head injuries. We need to know how much swelling of the brain there’s been. You ought to get yourself a cup of coffee and some food. After the tests, they’ll wheel her up to the ICU, and you can be with her then.” The doctor wraps a solid hand around Webster’s upper arm, and the gesture frightens him. Does the doctor know more than he’s telling?
Webster finds his way to the cafeteria and stands in line. All hospital food is the same: fattening and unhealthful. He wonders how much he actually weighs. He might not get back on the scale until he’s been running for a couple of weeks. He passes through the entire line and finds nothing he can stomach except a tangerine and the cup of coffee. He searches for an empty table. He doesn’t want to talk, and the uniform might elicit talk.
He wonders what happened to Rowan’s dress. Where Tommy is and how he’s doing. Maybe later, he’ll call the kid and report and ask him to drive the cruiser up to Burlington. No, Tommy can’t do that; Webster has the keys in his pocket. It doesn’t matter. None of it is important.
The only relevant fact is the nature of the swelling inside his daughter’s head.
Webster holds Rowan’s hand. The low beeps from the IV, the steady signal from the monitor, and the crackling from the blood pressure cuff—all of it make a symphony both horrific and comforting. Proof that she’s still alive, waiting, as he is, for a moment of recognition. He pictures the long fall in the night, the unseen rock protruding, the black water. A boy, standing in his underwear, calling out and begging. Amid the low laughter, the thunk, the odd trajectory, the shallow splash of feet, the audible warning to hurry… hurry…
He imagines the glow of the firelight, the dumbstruck faces, some alert at once while others gape. The boy diving into the inky quarry, calling out again and crying. The resistance as the boy drags the girl to the edge, the weight like heavy cloth moving through the water.
In the ICU, the lights are harsh and unforgiving. Already the purple-blue below her eyes, the gauze wrapped around her head. Webster prays as he hasn’t in years. “Please,” he says aloud.
He brings Rowan’s slender hand to his forehead and whispers.
After a while, he stands up and goes outside into a corridor, where he is allowed to make a call. He rummages in his wallet for a piece of paper Sheila gave him as she left his house. He waits through the rings and is relieved when the phone is answered.
“You’d better come,” he says.
The longer the patient is in a coma, the less likely that patient is to recover. This is a fact Webster knows, and he wonders, as he sits in a chair beside the bed, what kind of healing is happening inside her skull, and why it’s taking so long.
When Sheila comes, she has on a pair of black cotton pants and a white dress shirt and looks as helpless as he feels. She carries a small duffel.
“They said the next forty-eight hours will tell,” Webster reports as they stand in the hallway.
Will tell what? Webster wants to know. He didn’t ask, afraid of the answer. “They said an MRI might be necessary.”
Sheila leans against a wall.
“Today they’re going to attempt surgery on her shoulder. I asked the neurosurgeon whether or not they’d have to drill into Rowan’s head to relieve the pressure, and he said they didn’t expect to have to do that just yet.”
“Yet.”
“Yet.”
“You look utterly exhausted,” Sheila says.
“I am, but I don’t dare leave her.”
When he sits with his daughter, he talks to her, no longer believing that she can hear him. He does it the way an agnostic might say a prayer, hedging his bets. He has told her everything he can remember from her childhood, which isn’t much, his memories limited to the photos he’s taken of her, and most of them celebrating special occasions. According to the pictures, all of Rowan’s life has been a special occasion. He hasn’t talked to her about the last photo he took, of Rowan against the wall in her black dress and stilettos, no smile on her face. He doubts he will ever be able to look at that picture. Should it come to it, he’ll have Koenig print out the pictures on the disk, give him everything but that one.
But it won’t “come to it.” It simply won’t.
“Let me sit with her,” Sheila suggests.
Webster is surprised by the offer. “It might upset her too much if she wakes up and you’re there.”
“We should be so lucky,” Sheila says.
Webster leads Sheila into the room. He watches as his ex-wife gets her first glimpse of their daughter at age seventeen. A thin body under the sheet, attached by lines to different monitors, a head bandaged. The color drains from Sheila’s face.
“I know. It’s terrible,” Webster says.
“She’s beautiful,” Sheila says.
“Sometimes I talk to her. I hold her hand.”
Sheila sits. For long time, she is still. Then she makes a tentative gesture toward Rowan’s hand.
“It’s all right,” Webster says. “The injury is on the other side.”
“My hands are cold.”
“She’ll warm you up.”
Sheila reaches for Rowan’s slender hand. It’s a calm moment, though Webster feels electricity in the room. He remembers his vigil at Rowan’s side fifteen years earlier, the one Sheila couldn’t participate in.
“It’ll be a miracle if I sleep,” Webster says. “I’ll probably be back in an hour. There’s an inn attached to the hospital they tried to get me to go to after I got here. You have my cell phone number. Call me if there’s any change at all.”
“Of course,” she says.
“Are you afraid?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says.
When Webster returns, he tells Sheila that he’s booked her a room at the inn. He gives her the key.
“Did you sleep?” she asks.
“I might have dozed.”
“Well, that’s all right then.”
“Did anything happen here?”
“I held her hand,” Sheila says.
“Oh, God,” Webster says. “This is all wrong.”
“I talked to her.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she was fine.”
Webster smiles at the mild joke.
Tommy and Gina come bearing flowers, which they don’t allow in the ICU. The sight of Rowan makes Gina cry and causes Tommy to look away. Koenig and his wife, Ruth, make the trip, bringing a meal that Webster can’t eat. Even the probie comes straight off his shift, silently standing near the door, awkward in the situation. Webster thanks him before he leaves.
Webster bends to kiss Rowan on the cheek. He wants to feel her breath.
“Your mother is here,” he tells his sleeping daughter. “She came all the way from Boston. Actually, Chelsea, where she lives. She came to watch over you. I think you might like her. She’s an excellent painter. I’ve seen the paintings. You’d like them, too. It seems pretty obvious to me that she’s been thinking about you all this time. She cried when she saw Puppy. No, forget that.”
Webster thinks.
“I forgot to tell you that she has a sense of humor. I thought she’d lost it, but it’s there. Maybe it will come back full force, I don’t know. She sat here with you while I dozed in a room at the inn attached to the hospital. She held your hand. I don’t know if you could feel that or not. She said she talked to you and that you told her you were fine. I hope you were telling the truth…”
Webster is running out of things to say to Rowan. Is she slipping farther and farther away from him with each passing hour? This is what he fears the most. That everything is already lost, and he doesn’t know it.
He panics when he wakes and sees the clock. Rowan is now in hour forty-nine. He’s aware of other people in the room.
He stands,
alert. “What’s happening?” he asks.
“We’re taking her for another CAT scan,” one of the nurses answers.
“She’s already had the MRI. Why?” Webster asks.
“The doctor will be in shortly to talk to you. This is routine,” the nurse adds. “Nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Routine?” Webster asks, incredulous. “What’s routine about a child being in a coma for forty-nine hours?”
“This shouldn’t take long,” the nurse says.
Webster walks to the window and stares at the lit parking lot. It’s still dark, three thirty in the morning. Two solid days since Rowan and the other girl, Kerry, fell into the quarry. He thinks about the other father, living with his own awful news. Webster should have given the parents a call. He doesn’t even know the girl’s last name. Not a friend of Rowan’s that he knew about. He could call Tommy, but he doesn’t want to call only to tell the boy that there’s been no change.
Two days is nothing, he tells himself. He knows of cases in which the patient was out for a week or more and then recovered. Not a hundred percent recovery, but a comeback just the same. No, it’s not the same. Rowan has to come back as herself with all her faculties. He is still praying for that. Maybe there will come a day when he’ll be able to accept less. He can’t imagine it.
“Mr. Webster.”
Webster turns to see the neurologist in the doorway, a guy named Lockhart. He has a sport coat on, a tie loosened. A thick head of dark hair. He looks twenty-two. “We’ve taken your daughter down for a CAT scan,” the doctor says. “It’s been forty-eight hours, and I think it’s time for another look. I don’t have to tell you that the longer it takes for her to regain consciousness, the more difficult the outcome may be.”
No, you didn’t need to remind me of that.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to see something that will give us a clue as to how to proceed. If we need to drill into her skull to relieve the pressure, we will. But it’s not something we want to do.”
Webster is silent. Appalled.
“I’ve personally witnessed a lot of miracles, Mr. Webster. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I’ve seen patients come fully alert after a week, two weeks…”
“What’s taking so long?” Webster can’t help but ask.
“The brain remains a mystery. If we had a drug to wake her up without risk, we’d give it to her.”
Webster thanks the man and makes his way down to the cafeteria. The room, without Rowan in it, is a place of horror.
Later that morning, Sheila arrives to spell him. Webster stands and meets her in the doorway. She asks Webster if there has been any change. He tells her what Lockhart told him. Sheila shuts her eyes and shakes her head.
“Don’t do that to me,” he says.
“Don’t do what?”
“Shut your eyes and shake your head. I can be afraid, but you can’t. I need you to stay strong. Just keep telling me she’s fine.”
“All right.”
Webster stands outside while Sheila enters the room and takes the chair. This time, she reaches for Rowan’s hand at once. Webster can see that she is talking to their daughter.
Webster sleeps for five hours and then returns to the room. Sheila says she’ll get something to eat. When he’s alone with his daughter, he sits and looks at the same impassive face he’s been looking at for more than two days. He tries to remember what it felt like to be her Little League coach.
“OK, Rowan. You can do it. It’s game time. Nothing to be afraid of out there. You’ve gotta step up to the plate. Get into your stance. Take your time. Do not swing at the first pitch. But the next fat pitch you see coming your way, you give it everything you’ve got. I’ve seen you hit it over the fence, so I know that you can do this. The game’s on the line. It’s the bottom of the ninth, your team is down a run, one out. You’ve got a runner on first. All you need is a good solid hit. A good hit gets the runner home. Then you still have two outs to go. I see you winning this game. But it’s up to you. No double plays, right? This game is not going to end with you barely off the plate. I’m your coach, and you need to listen to me.”
Webster pauses.
“Anything?” he asks Rowan.
He waits.
“You got anything to say to me? Questions you need to ask? ’Cause you’re up at bat right now, and you need to do this.”
Webster waits.
“Honey?” he asks. “Sweetie?”
Nothing.
Webster sits with his face close to hers. He’s used Listerine. Maybe that will snap her out of it.
“OK, listen. I’m going to wait here. The game will wait, too. But whenever you’re ready, you just give the signal, and we’ll be ready. I’m going to hold your hand. I’m not going to leave you. You give me the high sign.”
The second CAT scan shows no improvement.
Sixty hours pass.
Sheila and Webster spell each other in six-hour shifts. Once, when he passes by the room, Sheila is sitting close to Rowan’s face, speaking in a soft voice. Another time, Sheila is sitting near the foot of the bed, her head bent to the covers.
On Webster’s watch, Tommy comes with his father. “We brought you a car,” Tommy says.
Webster stands and shakes hands with Tommy’s father, who is shorter than his son. Barrel-chested, going bald. “We’re all waiting with you,” the father says. “We’re all praying with you. Here are the keys. It’s a navy VW and has a pink daisy in the vase on the dashboard.”
Webster looks from father to son. Tommy has eyes only for Rowan.
“My wife’s,” Tommy’s father says. “Sorry about the flower.”
“Thank you,” Webster says. “Tommy, you want to sit there with Rowan a minute? I’m beat. I need some fresh air. I’ll be back in ten.”
Tommy’s father and Webster take the elevator to the lobby. “Why don’t you walk me to the car, so I’ll know where it is,” Webster suggests.
“My son blames himself,” the father says as they set out. “He believes that if he tried harder, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“That’s not how I see it. Your son did everything he could to stop her, but Rowan was drunk and wouldn’t listen to him. You should be proud of your boy. He saved her life with the CPR. I’m proud of him. I’m grateful.”
“He’s useless now,” the father says.
“I’m not surprised.”
“This must be hell for you.”
“On a scale of one to ten, it’s a goddamn ten,” Webster says as they approach the parking lot. “But not as hard as the other girl’s parents have it.”
Tommy’s father shoves his hands in his pockets. The sun sparks off the windshields.
“The funeral is tomorrow. Tommy doesn’t know whether to go or not.”
“I’d go if I were in town,” Webster says. “To pay my respects.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Tommy’s father says. “There’s the car.”
Webster shades his eyes and sees the navy bump. “Got it,” he says. “Thank you again. I can’t say how long I’ll be here.”
“Not to worry,” the father says, shaking his hand. “My wife wanted to do this for you and Rowan.”
“I’ll send Tommy down.”
When Webster makes it back to the ICU, he can see through the glass that Tommy is crying. Good for you, Webster thinks. He waits a minute and then spots a nurse coming his way.
“Do me a favor,” he says to the nurse. “Just go in and pretend to be checking Rowan. That kid there is her boyfriend, and he’s crying, and I want him to be able to collect himself before I go in.”
The nurse smiles. “Done,” she says.
Webster stands out of sight and gives it another minute. When he walks in, Tommy is at the foot of the bed and his nose and eyelids are red.
“Your dad’s waiting in the parking lot. Please thank your mom for me.”
“I will,” Tommy says.
“She’s going to be OK,” Web
ster promises the boy.
Webster can see that Tommy doesn’t believe him.
After five and a half more hours of sitting, the nurses arrive and ask Webster to leave the room while they give Rowan a sponge bath. Sheila finds him in the cafeteria.
“It’s stopped raining?” he asks her.
“It’s hot and sticky.”
She examines the tray before him. “Your usual? Coffee and a pastry?”
“I don’t seem to be able to eat anything else.”
“I’ll be right back,” she says.
Webster picks up his cup, sets it down again. When this is over, he might swear off coffee. Sheila returns with a tray. She removes a bowl of soup and hands it across to Webster. “Minestrone,” she says. She does the same with a small plate. “Ham sandwich.” She gives him utensils and a napkin.
“Thank you,” Webster says.
“You look terrible,” she says.
“You look nice.”
A memory is triggered. Webster tries to grab it. Keezer’s when she was a waitress, and he was just getting off the graveyard shift. Eighteen years ago.
Surprising himself, Webster reaches for Sheila’s wrist. “I don’t think I can take this much longer,” he says. “This is hell, just hell.”
“You have to take it,” Sheila says. “You don’t have any choice.”
He releases her. He’s left pink marks on the inside of her arm. “It must be hell for you, too,” he says.
“It is. But I’m glad to be here. I don’t think it helps Rowan one bit for me to sit with her, but it helps me.”
Webster nods. He understands.
Just after midnight on Wednesday, with his head resting at the edge of the bed, Webster thinks he feels Rowan’s fingers move inside his own. He sits up with a start, not sure if he is dreaming or not. “Rowan?” he asks.
He waits ten minutes before she does it again. He has to be sure it’s not a reflex.
“Rowan, this is Dad. Your hand is in mine. If you can hear me, squeeze my hand or wiggle your fingers.”