“I'm not sure someone else can do that for you. I think it's within you, Gabbie, and probably always was. Maybe he just showed you where the key was.”
“Maybe,” she said, and a few minutes later one of the nurses came in. A four-year-old had been in a car accident without a seat belt.
“Oh God, I hate these,” he said, looking at her longingly. He would have liked to talk to her forever. He left her and told her he would see her in the morning.
And after he left, she lay in bed, thinking about him, surprised at the things she had told him. He knew it all now. And he had been so easy to talk to.
He came by later that night, and glanced into her room, and she was fast asleep. He stood looking at her for a long time, and then went back to the supply room to lie on the gurney. But the things she had told him kept him from sleeping. He wondered how any one human being could endure so much pain and disappointment, and why they would ever have to. It was a question she had often asked herself, and to which neither of them had an answer.
Chapter 24
THE WEEKS OF her recovery seemed long to both of them, but both Gabbie and Peter enjoyed the time they spent talking to each other. She needed therapy for her arm, and the ribs took a long time to heal, as did some of her head wounds, but at the end of four weeks, he could no longer find an excuse to keep her. She was almost healthy. And on her last morning in the hospital, Peter came to see her, and brought her flowers and told her how much he was going to miss her. In fact, there was something he had been meaning to ask her, but it had taken him a long time to get up his courage. He had never done anything like this before, and it was awkward for him while she was there, because she was one of his patients. But once she left, he was no longer under any restrictions about seeing her.
“I was wondering,” he said awkwardly, feeling very young suddenly and more than a little stupid, “how would you feel about… if you… if we could have dinner sometime… or lunch… or coffee…” His own apartment was not very far from her in the East Eighties.
“I'd like that,” she said cautiously, but she had been thinking a great deal, and there was something she knew she needed to do first, for her own sake. And when she saw he was bothered by her hesitation, she tried to tell him about it. “I'm going to try to find my parents.”
“Why?” After all she'd told him, he didn't want her seeing them, and he had an overwhelming urge to protect her from them. She was much more beautiful than he had imagined she would be at first, but also far more delicate, and in some ways very fragile. There was a strength about her that carried her on, but a vulnerability at the same time that had come to frighten him for her. “Are you sure that's a good idea?” he asked, looking worried.
“Maybe not.” She smiled at him, braver than most, and much more so than he thought she should be. But that was part of what he loved about her. She was willing to stand up and be counted, to stick her chin out for everything she stood for. But so far, it had cost her a lot of blows that had nearly killed her. And Peter knew better than anyone that she needed someone to protect her. He suspected he knew it even better than she did. He was twelve years older than she was, and wise in the ways of the world, and he understood now what she needed, and wanted to see if he could give it to her. He had made mistakes of his own in his life, and he had failed in his own marriage, but he had learned a lot from it, and he wanted to be someone better than he had been, to Gabbie. “I just know I have to do this, Peter,” she explained to him, wanting to see her parents. “If I don't, if I never get the answers from them, there will always be a piece of me missing.”