This time I felt conflicted, confused, and worried. I thought about how disappointed Max looked when I turned to leave. At thirty-five, my life was unfolding and the road ahead looked lonely. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t let myself be happy? Why couldn’t I reach out to Max as he was reaching out to me? Somewhere deep inside me, my past had drawn a line, one that I didn’t know how to cross. Formed of my pain, of my fears, it separated me from any hope of love.
I could still feel the warmth of Max’s lips on mine when I walked into the ICU and tracked over to Jacob’s room. The drapes on the corridor window were pulled back, and the lights inside glared. I’d thought that perhaps I’d see Jacob’s parents waiting in the hallway, but Michael and Reba weren’t there. I assumed they were inside Jacob’s room, but when I looked in, I saw a woman standing on the far side of the bed. It took me a moment to realize that it was Naomi.
The scene unfolding inside the ICU room looked intimate, as if something very personal were transpiring. I stood and watched as Naomi stared down affectionately at Jacob. His face was turned toward her. I couldn’t be sure from where I stood, but I had the impression that he might be awake. Watching from outside the window, I felt like an interloper.
Then Naomi looked up and saw me. She frowned, and her lips moved. I couldn’t hear her, but I thought she whispered, “Clara’s here.”
Thinking she was alerting Jacob to my arrival, I gave her a slight wave and entered the room. As I did, Jacob’s head rolled lazily back to the center of the pillow. “Is he awake?” I said, but he didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, his expression blank, and the only sounds were the beeping machines and his harsh breaths pulling through the slice in his throat.
“No, no,” Naomi said. “Why would you think that? He’s not conscious.”
“But you were just talking to him,” I said. “I saw you. You told him I was here.”
Naomi smiled at me, just a bit condescending. “Oh, Clara, no. I was talking, but he’s not awake. They say you should talk to those who are unconscious, to let them know that you are with them. I was telling him that I hoped he will wake soon, and that I pray for him.”
I walked over and stood beside Naomi. “So, he hasn’t come to?”
“No,” she said. “There’s been no sign of that.”
“Why are you here again?” I asked.
“I’m covering for his parents while they have a little dinner and freshen up. Then I’ll go home.”
“Did they say if he woke up at any other point today?” I asked.
“If he did, they didn’t mention it, and as I said, he hasn’t shown any inclination toward waking while I’ve been here.”
I said nothing more, just stared at Naomi and thought about how something didn’t seem right. I had such an odd feeling, the sense that something was very wrong. I looked into the eyes of a woman who’d been one of my mothers since I was a young girl, a woman I grew up loving, part of my family, and I didn’t believe her. But why would she lie?
On my way out, I stopped at the nurses’ station. The woman on duty had only come on half an hour earlier, but she checked the file and said no one noted that Jacob had shown any signs of regaining consciousness. “Would you be able to tell from the monitors you have on him if he’s woken up at any point?” I asked.
“No, they’re just tracking his blood pressure, oxygen, and heart rate,” she said. “He’s not hooked up to anything that monitors brainwave activity.”
“And you didn’t see anything happening in the room, like Jacob interacting with Naomi Jefferies or his parents, that would suggest he’d come out of the coma?” I asked.
The woman looked frustrated, as if my questions were an annoyance. “No. I haven’t seen anything unusual in that room at all. No one has told me that he’s woken up.” She pulled out a file and looked over at me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
“I would have sworn that Naomi was talking to him. And she was whispering, which seemed strange. Don’t you think that’s odd?” I told Max on the phone. I was driving back to Alber for