The long road home - By Danielle Steel Page 0,134

room, she forgot about it, and had to ask several people for directions. She gave them the professor's name, and it was very confusing trying to find out what was going on. It was nearly an hour before they told her anything, but at least they didn't tell her he had died on the way to the hospital. But when she saw him, finally, she was shocked at his condition. His face was gray, his eyes were closed, there were monitors attached to him everywhere, and a full team was working on him, struggling to keep him going. In order to get in to see him at all, she had to tell them she was his daughter.

No one seemed to realize she had entered the room, and they were talking to each other in staccato phrases. He was getting oxygen and an IV, and they were doing an EKG on him as Gabriella stood silently in the comer. It was a long time before any of them noticed her, and they asked what she was doing there. They had no idea how long she'd been there. And she just stood there with tears coursing down her cheeks, terrified that they were going to lose him.

“How is he?” she asked the nurse who approached her.

“Is he your grandfather?” the woman asked, curt but sympathetic.

“My father.” She decided she'd better stick to the same story, and knew that the professor would be flattered. He always said to her how much he and Charlotte would have loved to have a daughter like her.

“He's had a stroke,” the trauma nurse explained. “He's got a fair amount of paralysis on the right side. He can't speak, and he has no motor control on the right side, but when he's conscious, I think he hears us.” Gabriella was shocked at what the woman told her. How could something so terrible have happened to him? And so quickly?

“Is he going to be all right?” She barely dared to whisper the words, but she wanted some kind of reassurance.

“It's a little early to say, his EKG isn't looking great, and he got quite a blow when he fell, which compounds it.”

“Can I talk to him?” Gabbie said, fighting panic.

“In a few minutes,” the nurse said, and then went back to the others.

But the minutes turned into hours as they did more tests, attached more machines, and by the time they wheeled him into ICU, Gabbie was frantic. She had seen what they were doing, and they were obviously having a rough go of it trying to keep him breathing. But at last, in the ICU, they let her see him.

“Don't say too much to him, and don't expect him to answer you. Keep it short,” the nurse in charge said, as Gabriella approached his bedside. His hair looked wilder than usual, and his eyes were closed, but they fluttered open slowly the moment he heard her.

“Hi,” she said softly, “it's me… Gabbie…” He looked like he wanted to smile at her, and his eyes recognized her instantly, but he couldn't move and he couldn't say anything to her. She gently took his left hand in her own, and lifted it to her lips, as a lone tear rolled down his cheek and onto his pillow. “Everything's going to be okay,” she tried to encourage him, willing him to live. “The doctors said so,” she lied, but he didn't look as though he believed her. And then he frowned as though he were in pain, and scowled at her. She had the feeling he wanted to say something to her, but there was no way he could do it. He was trapped behind a stone wall, and all he could do was hold her fingers. He made little grunting sounds then, and he looked agitated, and the nurse assigned to him spotted it immediately and said she'd have to go now.

“Can't I stay?” Gabriella begged her with imploring eyes, and he tightened his weak grip on her fingers.

“You can come back in a couple of hours. He needs to sleep,” she admonished her, wishing people could understand what the ICU was all about. Having visitors there at all was a hazard and a nuisance.

“I'll come back later,” she whispered, stroking his cheek gently with her hand, and he closed his eyes for just an instant, and then opened them as he made a deep guttural sound. It was obvious that he was trying to speak to her. “Don't try

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