he looked at his children now, he would break, and the tears that fell from his eyes would scald them all.
“Liam?”
He spun toward the voice. His hip cracked into a crash cart and set the supplies rattling. He reached out and steadied them.
Dr. Stephen Penn, the chief of neurology, stood before him. Though he was Liam’s age—just turned fifty—Stephen looked old now, and tired. They had played golf together for years, he and Stephen, but nothing in their relationship had prepared them for this moment.
He touched Liam’s shoulder. “Come with me.”
They walked side by side down the austere corridor and turned into the ICU. Liam noticed the way the trauma nurses wouldn’t look at him. It was humbling to know how it felt to be the “next of kin.”
At last they entered a glass-walled private room, where Mikaela lay in a narrow bed, behind a pale privacy curtain. She looked like a broken doll, hooked up to machines—ventilators, IVs, monitors that tracked everything from her heart rate to her intracranial pressure. The ventilator breathed for her, every breath a rhythmic thwop-whoosh-clunk in the quiet room.
“The … her brain is functioning, but we don’t know at what level because of the meds.” Stephen produced a straight pin and poked Mikaela’s small, bare feet, saying nothing when she failed to respond. He conducted a few more tests, which he knew Liam could assess along with him. Quietly he said, “The neurosurgeon is on board and up to speed, just in case, but we haven’t identified anything surgical. We’re hyperventilating her, controlling her pressure and temperature. Barring development of any bleeding … well, you know we’re doing everything we can.”
Liam closed his eyes. For the first time in his life, he wished he weren’t a doctor. He didn’t want to understand the reality of her condition. They had a state-of-the-art medical center and some of the best doctors north of San Francisco, all drawn here by the quality of life. But the truth was, there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done for her right now.
He didn’t mean to speak, but he couldn’t seem to hold it all inside. “I don’t know how to live without her …”
When Stephen turned to Liam, a sad, knowing expression filled his eyes. For a split second, he wasn’t a specialist, but just a man, a husband, and he understood. “We’ll know more tomorrow, if …” He didn’t finish the sentence; it wasn’t necessary.
If she makes it through the night.
“Thanks, Steve,” Liam said, his voice barely audible above the whirring of the machines and the steady drip-drip-drip of the IVs.
Stephen started to leave but paused at the doorway and turned back. “I’m sorry, Liam.” Without waiting for a response, he left the room. When he came back, there were several nurses with him. Together they wheeled Mikaela out of the room for more tests.
Courage, Liam thought to himself, wasn’t a hot, blistering emotion held only in the hands of men who joined the special forces and jumped out of airplanes and scaled unnamed mountains. It was a quiet thing, ice-cold more often than not; the last tiny piece you found when you thought that everything was gone. It was facing your children at a time like this, holding their hands and brushing their tears away when you were certain you hadn’t the strength to do it. It was swallowing your own grief and going on, one shallow, bitter breath at a time.
He put away his own fear. Where, he couldn’t have said, but somehow he boxed and buried it. He focused on the things that had to be done. Tragedy, he’d learned, came wrapped in details—insurance forms that had to be filled out, suitcases that had to be packed in case, schedules that needed to be altered. All of this he managed to do without breaking; if he did it without making eye contact with another human being, well, that was the way it had to be. He called Rosa Luna—Mike’s mother, who lived on the eastern side of the state—and left an urgent “Call me” message on her answering machine. Then, unable to put it off any longer, he walked down the busy corridor to the hospital’s lobby.
Jacey was sitting in one of the red vinyl chairs by the gift shop, reading a magazine. Bret was on the floor, idly playing with the toys the hospital staff kept in a plastic box.
Liam’s hands started to shake. He crossed his arms tightly and stood there, swaying