Chapter 1 #2
The ocean roared in his ears. The room spun around, leaving him disoriented and clutching the arms of his chair. Suddenly he wasn’t feeling so brave about taking the news alone.
Jamie found his voice. “It sounds…bad. But she’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”
Dr. Hughes’s dark eyes were blank, his mouth a grim line.
“Your wife had one of the most serious kinds of stroke. Of the many patients I have seen with this massive a CVA, that is, cardiovascular accident, most don’t live long.
It’s usually fatal, perhaps within an hour, a day. It’s hard to determine.”
Jamie stood up, his balance precarious. “There must be something you can do. You’re a doctor. All this instrumentation, these gadgets and machinery…there has to be something that will save her.”
Dr. Hughes touched Jamie’s arm in a silent request for him to sit again. “We have on staff one of the best neurosurgeons in the country. His judgment is that surgery is useless. And possibly dangerous at this point. The worst of the bleeding is already over.”
Jamie sat staring into space, feeling cold turn into the heat of despair and anger. He thought of that warmth, soon to be absent from Hallie’s body. Finally, he tuned into the present and asked, “She’s going to die?”
“Yes.”
Jamie’s heart turned to stone.
The doctor rested his chin on steepled fingers. “Most people go through a whole range of emotions while the realization process takes hold. Give yourself time to accept each one.”
“It sounds so damned clinical.”
Dr. Hughes smiled faintly. “I’m sorry if it seems that way. Comes with the territory.”
“Can I see her?”
“Of course. And I would suggest you call her family and let them know that there isn’t much time.”
“Her mother is on the way now. No one has any idea where her father is. That’s all the family she has.” Jamie’s voice sounded flat, as if it came from a cardboard box.
“Follow me to ICU then.”
He couldn’t believe he was walking down the sterile corridors of the hospital to say what might be his final words to his wife. Their marriage had shattered long ago, but the thought of her dying still ripped him apart.
Dying. Hallie dying.
Hallie lay in a glassed-in room, a fragile creature in a protected environment.
Jamie stood alone by the door for a few minutes, sustaining a hope that perhaps this was the wrong woman.
As long as he didn’t see her face, there was the smallest chance that Dr. Hughes had gotten Hallie mixed up with this dying woman.
But soon he was drawn to her side, and the limp hand he held was definitely Hallie’s.
His mind tried unsuccessfully to erase the tubes from her mouth and nose, the IV stuck in her arm.
The respirator issued a soft, wheezing sound every time it gave her a life-sustaining puff of air.
He couldn’t understand the green scribbles on a nearby monitor but was thankful that something was happening.
Life flowed under the serene exterior, but where was her soul?
Right there, he told himself, still locked inside her body.
He squeezed her hand hard, as if by holding on, he could keep her from slipping away.
He envisioned himself in a tug of war with Death.
Of course, Death would win. Jamie had to keep reminding himself of that; it hadn’t sunk in that she would actually die.
He had heard that people in comas could sometimes hear the sounds around them. So, he would talk to her then and try to pull her back. Starting from the first time he’d ever seen her, he told her how stunning she’d looked in that sparkling blue dress.
Throughout the night, in between the times when her mother spent time alone with her, Jamie went back and forth between forgiving her for the heartbreak she’d caused, and asking her why she had betrayed him.
How he wished he would have asked her before.
Now he might never know why she wouldn’t fully open herself up to him, or give her heart to him.
* * *
Chris swam up from the depths to consciousness, lured by a man’s voice. She didn’t have the strength to open her eyes or respond, but slowly her mind began to recognize his words and put them into logical order.
“You actually died last night. You were gone and then you came back to life. That has to mean something. Dammit, it has to mean that you’re going to come out of this coma.”
I’m here, Alan. Or is it Dad? Then she realized what he had just said.
She had died and come back. She had gotten her second chance!
Only vaguely did the memory of her twisted body return.
She felt no pain, only a spear of panic as she wondered what her life would be like now.
It didn’t matter, she was alive! She clenched her fists, testing.
“You moved again.” He took her hand in his, and his warmth felt good on her chilled skin.
“Oh, Hallie,” he said, drawing it out into a sigh.
“Dr. Hughes keeps reminding me that it’s not unusual for people in deep comas to move or twitch.
He calls it posturing or something like that.
But I can’t help wondering if you’re trying to tell me you’re in there.
“So many times…” He took a deep breath, and his voice sounded more strained when he continued.
“So many times in the last two years I wanted to rip that wedding ring off your finger. I couldn’t, God help me, I just couldn’t do it.
Now that it’s not there, it seems strange.
The hospital sent all your jewelry home with me.
” He forced a laugh. “You’d be hollering how naked you feel without it. ”
Wedding ring? Chris groped for memories of her life.
Alan. They were dating, but not married.
She slowly opened her eyes, focusing in on her surroundings.
The machines didn’t surprise her; she had expected that.
But the man did. His arms were outstretched on the wall opposite her, his head was pressed against the glass.
His breath made a circle of fog in front of him.
He was not Alan, nor her father. She could only see him at an angle from the back, but she already knew she had never seen him before. His straight blond hair tapered down the back of his neck. His wrinkled shirt and jeans outlined a lean, muscular body.
When he started to turn around, her eyelids fell shut under the weight of fatigue. Why was he in her room, talking to her like this? She needed more time to figure it out.
It took little effort for Chris to keep perfectly still. He came close and gently rubbed one hand, then the other. When he laid her hand down, she had to quell a desire to reach for him.
“I guess I should tell you that Mick is not on the list of people allowed to visit you. Maybe you’d be mad at me for that.
I don’t know. As soon as he heard, he came right here.
Then he blew up in the lobby when he was refused admittance.
Family only. Color me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s right, your lover being in here. ”
Chris could hear his shoes scrape the floor as he paced next to her bed. Her lover, Mick? Now she was sure this man had the wrong room. She wanted to open her eyes and tell him he’d made a terrible mistake, tell him how crazy it was, his thinking she was his wife. But all she could do was listen.
“And I know about your plans to take off with Mick. I found the plane tickets when I grabbed your suitcase after the stroke. Even you couldn’t lie your way out of two one-way tickets to France with both your names on them.
” He laughed softly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold that against you now.
Hell, I’m even gracious enough to wish you all the happiness in the world. ”
This is crazy! I’ve got to tell him he’s made a mistake. How can he think I’m his wife? Just when she started drowning in a sea of confusion, she got a reprieve.
After a whoosh sound, Chris could hear a vast array of noises from the hallway: a distant conversation, a doctor being paged. A feminine voice said, “Excuse me, Mr. DiBarto. You’re going to have to leave for a little while. You can come back in about an hour.”
The door quietly closed, leaving the drone of machines to press down on her.
After a few minutes, Chris forced her eyes open, looking everywhere around the vacated room.
She moved her hand again, and smiled to feel it there.
And she smiled just because she could. Then she realized there were tubes in her nose and mouth, and one started to cause a strangling sensation in her throat.
When her hand reached up over her mouth, she jerked her head around, ready to encounter the owner of the graceful fingers with long bright-pink nails.
She had never worn nail polish, nor had nails long enough to paint.
She stared at the hand that hovered shakily over her face, and moved a finger.
One long finger moved. Then another moved at her will.
The hand moved lower, and pulled the tape away before pulling the tube from her throat. The slight gagging sensation was followed by the wonderful feeling of taking a breath on her own. She could breathe! Next came the tubes in her nose. But the hand still looked foreign to her.
Chris tried to remember what had put her there.
An accident. Yes, she could hear the distant memory of crunching metal, screams. Her screams. It hurt to think of anything else.
She had to get up, to see herself and make sure she was whole.
Her arms felt weak, but she pushed herself up a few inches at a time.
The room started to spin, and she closed her eyes and held fast. Finally, it passed, and she tried to still the waves of nausea pulsing through her stomach.