didn’t care about the wall that seemed to spring up between us whenever the subject of race came up or about the way people looked at us when we walked into a room together? Say I was ready to try again with Eli, the child of glass, and with the shards that pierced all our lives every time his fragile psyche shattered? As I picked up my books and started back towards my office, I knew I wouldn’t make the call. I was fifty-one years old, and, at the moment, I was shouldering all the burdens I could carry.
There were no messages on my voice mail; my e-mail was clear; my desk was empty. It wasn’t quite noon. I stuck my head into the Political Science office to tell Rosalie I was leaving. She was arranging rusty-gold marigolds in an old-fashioned glass milk bottle. She looked up expectantly.
“I love marigolds,” I said. “They always make me think of the September when my older daughter started school. Every morning she’d take her safety scissors out to the garden and snip a bouquet. She always cut the stems too short. I often wondered what her teacher did with all those stubby little flowers.”
Rosalie laughed softly. “And marigolds last forever,” she said.
“One of their charms,” I said. “Anyway, there’s nothing I need to stick around here for, and I have a friend in the hospital, so I’m off.”
“Just a minute.” Rosalie took a handful of the flowers, folded a piece of waxed paper expertly over the stems and handed the bouquet to me. “For your friend,” she said.
As I walked along the hall towards Hilda’s room, I had my copy of Anne of Green Gables in my bag and Rosalie’s marigolds in my hand, prepared for anything. In the room where the young man was recovering from his motorcycle accident, Garth Brooks was singing “Ain’t Going Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up).” Earlier in the week, I had brought in a radio for Hilda, and there was music in her room too. It was Callas singing “In questa reggia” from Turandot. Garth and Maria seemed like a compelling duet to me, yet the nursing station was empty. When I saw Nathan Wolfe leaning over Hilda’s bed, I panicked, but as he turned to greet me, he was smiling. “Good news,” he said. “She’s coming out of it.”
I looked at Hilda. Much as I longed to, I couldn’t detect any sign of change. “Did she regain consciousness?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But remember me telling you about the Glasgow Coma Scale?”
“Yes, but I was so scared, I couldn’t seem to take anything in.”
“Got time for a quick lesson now?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s go out to the desk.”
I followed Nathan to the nursing station. He picked up a pencil and a pad of paper. “Okay, this is how we monitor changes in the patient’s level of consciousness. We look at three aspects of behaviour; the first is –” he printed the words “Eyes Open.” “If the patient’s eyes open spontaneously, that’s a 4; if they open when you speak to them, that’s a 3; if they open to a pinprick, a 2; not at all is a 1.” As he spoke he wrote the numbers in a column opposite the responses. “The second is Motor Responses. If a patient can move what you ask them to move, that’s a 6; if they respond to localized pain, that’s a 5; if they withdraw, that’s a 4; abnormal flexion – that’s this,” he said, demonstrating – “is a 3; extends is a 2; and nothing is a 1. The third thing we look at is Verbal Response. If a patient’s conversation is oriented, they get a 5; if their conversation is confused, they get a 4; if they use inappropriate words, that’s a 3; incomprehensible sounds get a 2; and nothing gets a 1.” He added up the best responses in each category. “Highest possible score is 15; the lowest is 3. A score of 7 or less is generally accepted as coma. Miss McCourt’s been scoring pretty low, but today when I pricked her arm, she opened her eyes and withdrew her arm.”
I looked over Nathan’s shoulder at the column of figures. “So those responses score 2 and 4,” I said. “That’s a 6.”
“And,” said Nathan in the tones of an enthusiastic nursery teacher, “she made some incomprehensible sounds. So 8 in total. She’s moving up.”
I stared at the column of figures. “What can I do to keep