“I don’t know,” she said carefully; then, when Lisa’s eyes turned suddenly frightened, she went on: “I said I don’t know. That doesn’t mean he’s not going to wake up. All it means is that I don’t know, and no one else does either.”
“If he wakes up, will that mean he’s going to be all right?”
Barbara shrugged. “We don’t know that, either. All we can do is wait and see.”
“Then I’ll wait,” Lisa said.
“You could go home and try to get some sleep,” Barbara suggested. “I promise I’ll arrange for someone to call you if anything happens. Anything at all.”
Lisa rubbed at her eyes, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “I want to be here. Just in case.” She looked at the nurse beseechingly. “He might wake up.”
Barbara started to speak, then changed her mind. She’s right, she decided. He damned well might wake up. And as she absorbed the thought, she realized that she, like most of the staff at the clinic, had only been going through the motions of administering to Alex.
For all of them, all the trained medical people who had seen injuries like Alex’s before, it was a hopeless case. You did what you could, tried not to overlook any measure, no matter how drastic, that might save the life, but deep inside you prepared yourself for the fact that the patient wasn’t going to make it.
And at the end of your shift, you went home.
But Lisa Cochran wasn’t going home, and Barbara Fannon decided she wasn’t going home either, even though her shift had ended long ago. Coming to that decision, she stood up. “Come on,” she said.
The Cochrans looked at her uncertainly, but followed her down the hall. Without knocking, she opened the door to Marshall Lonsdale’s office and led them inside. “If we’re all going to stay, we might as well be as comfortable as possible.”
“This is Marsh’s office,” Jim Cochran said.
“Nobody else’s.”
“Should we be here?”
“You’re his friends, aren’t you? It’s been a long night, and it’s going to be an even longer one. I was going home, but if you can stick this out, so can I. But not out there.” She lowered the lights a little, and closed the blinds to the windows. “Make yourselves comfortable while I go find some coffee. If you want something stronger, you might poke around the office while I’m gone. I’ve heard rumors that sometimes there’s a bottle in here.”
Jim eyed the nurse. “Any rumors about just where it might be?”
“No,” Barbara replied. Then, as she left the office, she spoke once more. “But if I were you, I’d start looking in the credenza. Bottom right.”
Ellen Lonsdale sat in a straight-backed chair that had been pulled close to Alex’s bed, her right hand resting gently on his. He lay as he had been placed, on his back, the cast on his left arm suspended slightly above the mattress, his limp right arm extended parallel to his body. His face, covered with the respirator mask and a mass of bandages, was barely visible, and totally unrecognizable. Around him was an array of equipment that Ellen couldn’t begin to comprehend. All she knew was that the monitors and machinery were somehow keeping her son alive.
She had been there for nearly five hours now. The sky outside the window was beginning to brighten, and she shifted slightly in her chair, not as a reaction to the stiffness that had long ago taken over her body, but so that she could get a clearer look at Alex’s eyes.
For some reason, she kept thinking they should be open.
The night had been filled with odd thoughts like that.
Several times she had found herself feeling surprise that the respirator was still operating.
Once, when they brought Alex back from one of the tests—she couldn’t remember which one—she had been shocked at the warmth of his hand when she touched it.
She knew what the odd feelings were about.
Despite what she had been told—despite her own inner resolve—she still had the horrible feeling that Alex was dead.
Several times she had found herself studying the monitors, wondering why they were still registering life signs in Alex.
Since he was dead, the graphic displays of his heartbeat and breathing should be flat.
She kept reminding herself that he wasn’t dead, that he was only asleep.
Except he wasn’t asleep.
He was in a coma, and despite what everyone kept saying, he wasn’t going to come out of it.
Abstractly she already understood that it wasn’t a matter of waiting to see