2

BY THE TIME SIMON woke up, it was already noon. His head was throbbing and there was the weight of Stella against him. She was lying in his arms, her skin cool to the touch. Jesus, what happened last night? He felt dark with shame. He only occasionally did drugs with the band, when practice stalled, or they needed to just kick back, and it was always something minor and mild. But he shouldn’t have done anything last night, not after their argument. Not with all that wine. Even worse, he’d told Stella the pill was Darvon when in fact he wasn’t certain. He had to tell her something and that was the first name that popped into his head. Gently, he slid from under her, lowering her head against the pillow. Her hair fell across her neck. Her lashes cast shadows on her face. God, she is so beautiful, he thought.

He stood up, realizing he was totally hung over. His whole body throbbed. His mouth was sandpaper, his vision was blurred. A thick haze encased his thoughts.

Stella had been right there with him last night, but even so, he still felt as though he was missing some part of her. It used to be so different between them, and he wanted that back so badly that all he could do was keep drinking. Finding the pills had been a surprise, and all he could remember about them was that he’d taken them from Kevin and tucked them into his pocket. During his argument with Stella, Simon had felt so desperate that when he dug into his pockets for a match and felt those pills, he thought it might be a lifesaver, a way to knock them back to where they used to be. He would have done anything in that moment to make things right.

But it hadn’t helped. If anything, it had made things much worse. Now, looking at Stella again, he was drained and confused. He felt like a zombie. If he could just stop the thrashing in his head, the roil in his stomach, maybe he could think straight.

He wanted her to go to Los Angeles, but he didn’t want to revisit the argument, pack it along with his luggage, and continue it in California. Every time they were about to leave for someplace, she would bring up the apartment and kids, making everything he thought they had together seem smaller and smaller.

His own father, a partner of a law firm, had been a terrible parent. He was rarely home, and when he was, he wanted to sit silently reading the paper, wordlessly eating dinner, and being left the hell alone. Simon’s father barely noticed Simon’s mother, and he certainly didn’t notice Simon. “My son’s in third grade,” he had said once to company, which deeply wounded Simon, who was in fifth. The one time Simon’s father had come to one of Simon’s school talent shows, Simon looked out into the audience to see his father asleep. And then he wanted Simon to join him at the law firm when he was older.

“I don’t know,” Simon had said at the time, to which his father responded, “There’s nothing to know.”

Why in God’s name would I risk repeating anything like that kind of parenting, Simon thought.

Now he stared out the window. He didn’t want to put down roots here. He was tired of Manhattan. It was too loud, too cold or too hot, too dirty, too expensive. All the cool, funky little shops and mom-and-pop places were gone now, replaced by stores so pricey that no one in the neighborhood could afford them. All that rough, dangerous excitement had vanished. Where were the surprises? The creativity? Manhattan was too familiar. He felt as if he knew every street, every club and concert hall that never paid the band enough. He probably would have left a long time ago if it hadn’t been for Stella, who even after all these years still looked at everything in the city with wonder.

But he was stunned and hurt that she didn’t want to go to LA with him. Did that mean she didn’t want to be with him anymore? Why couldn’t it all be easier?

Maybe he could make it right. Maybe he could wake Stella, bring her coffee and make her some breakfast, and then he might convince her to come with him.

Simon rubbed at the window, trying to see beyond the falling snow. LA, he thought, and his heart zoomed. A whole new world. He swallowed. He still felt like shit, like he hated everything, and all he wanted was not to feel this way.

Maybe we have different dreams now, he had told her.

Maybe he wanted out.

She had told him she wasn’t coming with him to LA, and he had frozen, shocked. She couldn’t mean that, he had thought, but he knew she did.

What would it be like to be in California, just him and the band? What if things were so spectacularly great that they got an LA manager and the band decided to move out there? Would it be so bad? All those sunny days, that hot blaze of weather he loved, just bathing him in gold, the women in their little sleeveless dresses, their legs long and gleaming with tan. It made his stomach tighten just to think about it. He could rent a bungalow in Venice, right by the beach. He could go rollerblading every morning, play his guitar under the stars. Maybe he could get a big, rangy dog to run with him, a conversation starter that would draw people to him.

That might draw other women.

The thought shocked him. Though he’d had opportunity through the years with the band, he never cheated on Stella, never even thought about it.

He glanced back at her. Pale as parchment, she never tanned. She was a city girl, born and bred in a Brooklyn apartment, she always said with pride. She hated the beach and said it was like frying on a skillet. The water was always too cold for her. She knew everything about ocean danger, including box jellyfish stings and shark bites. “The best protection is not to go near them,” she said.

There was so much more in the world than this moment. So many new and different people. He was still young, wasn’t he? He was young enough to grab opportunity, to run with it. But Stella wanted to settle down, to stay put, to be anchored with a child.

He sat down next to Stella, his head in his hands. He loved her, but what if he didn’t love her enough? What if she didn’t love him enough? What if they needed to be apart, even for a little while, to give them a break that might bind them closer together? His thoughts skidded in his head. Slow down, he told himself. Slow down. He didn’t know what he wanted.

He bent over and lifted up a curly ribbon of hair. “Wake up,” he said. “Honey,” he added, his tone sweet. They’d go have breakfast. Things would be clearer. He gently shook her, but she didn’t stir. Her skin felt clammy to him and he lifted up her hand and felt her pulse twittering. “Stella,” he said, lifting her shoulders, shaking her a little harder, his voice rising. She fell back on the couch, one arm flopping against the floor. “Stella!” he cried. He looked at her chest, but it was barely moving with breath, and then he grabbed her up in his arms.

HE CALLED AN ambulance, and when it didn’t show up right away, he wrapped Stella in a blanket and cradled her in his arms and ran outside. NYU Medical Center was a half-hour walk on a good day, maybe twenty minutes by car depending on traffic, but his car was parked blocks away and it would have to be shoveled out. He stood for a moment, confused, knowing he had to do something now. He began to run toward the hospital with Stella in his arms, dodging snowdrifts and the icy slush soaking his sneakers. In this heavy snow, every block seemed like miles. The street hadn’t been plowed yet. Cabs weren’t running, and there were no buses or even a car he might flag down.

“Wake up!” he shouted at her, but she stayed limp in his arms. He ran faster and almost fell. Everything looked so dizzying white.

He heard a motor and turned, frantic, sure it must be the ambulance. Instead, a plow truck was pushing against the snow, but Simon couldn’t drop Stella to wave at the driver, so instead he ran into the middle of the street, trying to get right in front of the truck. He screamed, “Please!” over and over. The plow stopped. A face in a Russian cap frowned out at him and then the driver popped open the door. “What the fuck,” he said. “Is she hurt?”

“We need the hospital—”

The man helped get Stella up into the cab, along with Simon, and then started the plow again.

“What were you doing, walking in the freezing cold and snow?” the driver said. “What were you thinking, doing something that stupid? Look at you. You’re both soaked.”

“I called an ambulance—”

“Why didn’t you wait? How would they find you tromping around in all this mess?”

The driver pulled up to the hospital and got out, waiting for Simon to hit the ground so he could lower Stella into his arms. “I hope she’s okay, man,” the driver told him as Simon pushed through the doors of the ER.

The lobby, usually crowded, was empty. The front desk where the triage nurse sat was empty, too. “Help!” he screamed, and a nurse appeared. Brenda! He knew her! She worked with Stella.

As soon as Brenda saw Stella in his arms, her whole body seemed to lengthen. “Simon,” she said, astonished. “Simon, what happened?” Two steps and she was taking Stella from him, easing her onto a gurney.

“We fell asleep.” He lifted his hands and then let them fall back down. “She won’t wake up.”

“Did she hit her head? Was there alcohol?” Brenda asked, frowning.

“We had wine, a few glasses at the most.”

“What’s a few?” Her hands circled Stella’s wrists.

He tried to remember, but all he could see were the glasses in both their hands, the way they kept filling them and drinking. “Were there drugs?” Brenda asked. She didn’t look at him when she asked, but he heard something steely in her voice.

“She took a pill.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, his mind foggy, and Brenda looked at him. She took out her pager. “A doctor’s coming,” she said. “What pill?”

Sweat prickled his back. “Red,” he said. “Small, oblong. Maybe Darvon?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Darvon’s pink,” she said. She was waiting for him to say more, but his voice was in lockdown. Even if he could speak, no matter what he said, it would feel and sound like a lie. Something acrid and burning was in his throat, and he sucked in more air and then coughed. “I don’t know what it was,” he said. There. It was the truth. As much of the truth as he had. “I can find out,” he said. He touched Stella’s hands, flinching at how cold they were.

“You do that. Now.” The way Brenda clipped her words scared him. He rubbed his hands against Stella’s, trying to warm them up.

“You have to let go,” she told him. He released her.

An orderly snapped into view, taking hold of the gurney, pushing it through a set of double doors that led to the examination rooms. Simon started to follow, but Brenda grabbed his arm. “No you don’t,” she said. “You have to stay here.”

The doors swung open and Simon looked through and saw all the rows of beds, the blue curtains, the IV poles and steel tables. A woman with blood dappled along her face like spray paint was sobbing. A skinny man was sitting up, grabbing for a blanket. Doctors were moving about, talking, voices jamming into one another, and after the silent emptiness of the snow, Simon felt disoriented. And then the doors swung shut again, and Stella was gone.

HE PULLED OUT his cell phone and called Kevin, who hated talking on the phone. He answered with a snarl. “This had better be good,” Kevin said.

“It’s me. Stella’s in the hospital.” He spoke fast, before Kevin could hang up. He heard Ruby, Kevin’s girlfriend, in the background, the molasses drawl of her voice asking him who it was. “What?” Kevin said. “What are you telling me?”

“She’s in the hospital. She’s really sick. I need to know. That little pill you gave me—the red one—to chill out. What was it?”

“She took that pill?”

“What was it, Kevin?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. I always have pills. It could have been any number of things.”

Simon flashed to Kevin dropping acid right before an important interview, giving answers so funny it became a classic story. He remembered Kevin snorting coke before going onstage, grinning wickedly as he did it, his energy winning over the crowd before the first lick.

“It was red,” Simon said insistently.

Kevin was quiet for a moment. “Sort of longish?” he asked.

“Yeah—”

“Reds,” he said. “That’s my recreational stash. It’s just secobarbital. It’s a tranquilizer. Makes you all nice and woozy. High-school kids eat it like candy. It just takes the edge off. Ruby used to take it before she went to her classes. Safe as pie.”

“Who is that? What did I take?” Ruby’s voice sang out. “Kevin, babe, who is it?”

“Shush, Ruby,” Kevin said. “I’m trying to talk here.”

“She’s not waking up,” Simon said.

There was silence again. He heard Ruby. “Babe?” she said.

“Where are you?” Kevin said. “I’m coming right over.”

Simon thought of Kevin talking to Brenda, telling her about the drug, how it was recreational, how he had given it to Simon. All that crazy charm and noise, slick and suspicious. “No, don’t come. The streets are a nightmare.”

“You change your mind, you call me. Doesn’t matter what time, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Simon said.

“Everything will be fine. And we’ll all be on our way to the sun tonight and this will just be a funny story we’ll laugh about.”

There was a roaring in Simon’s head. “Did you not hear me?” he said, panic rising in his throat. “I can’t leave today. I don’t think I can leave tomorrow—”

Simon could hear Ruby singing something low and deep in her throat. He heard Kevin murmuring something to her. “Rick wanted you,” Kevin said. “He talked about your songs. What am I supposed to do, call him up and say you can’t make it?”

“My songs will still be there and Rob’ll sing them and you guys will play them until I can get there,” Simon said. “The concert’s not for four days. A lot can happen between now and then.”

“Who’s going to do the bass guitar?”

“Come on, we each know at least six people who’d kill to do it.”

“Fuck,” Kevin said. “So you’ll come later, then.”

“Later,” Simon said, even though he couldn’t imagine spending a minute outside of the hospital.

SIMON FOUND BRENDA behind the triage desk. She glanced at him with a look that said she wished she didn’t know him, and he felt a flare of guilt. “I know what it is,” he said. “The pill. Secobarbital. Just one.”

Her brow lifted. “Just one with alcohol,” she said. “You both thought that was smart?”

“Please. Tell the doctor. Please.”

She nodded and got up, handing him a sheaf of papers clipped to a board, a blue pen with bite marks along its stem, attached with a small cord. “Fill these out,” she ordered. “I’ll find the doctor.”

He stared at the forms, the words swimming in front of him. All he wanted to do was throw down the paper and barge through the forbidden door and grab Stella and say, Come on, we’re going. Come on, wake up. Everything’s going to be different now. You’ll see.

He didn’t have her insurance card—he’d have to give it to them later. Then he noticed his jeans, wet from the knees down, and his sneakers, soaked. He also realized he was shivering so hard that he could feel his bones knocking. He finished the form and set it on the desk. He looked around the waiting room, not knowing what to do. There were a few old Time magazines scattered about, but they were tattered and unappealing. He glanced at the TV. A cartoon was playing and he didn’t know how to change the channel. He couldn’t stand it, this waiting, the way his mind skittered from terrible scenario to terrible scenario. Stella unconscious. Stella paralyzed.

Stella dying.

He started to pace. What were they doing to her? Were they pumping her stomach? He didn’t know whom he hated more right now, Kevin for giving the pill to him in the first place or himself for being so reckless. Himself, he decided. He definitely hated himself. He had lied to her that the pill was Darvon. He had taken care of himself this morning first, giving in to his crankiness before he noticed her. He had even thought about starting a new life out in LA without her. What kind of person was he?

He knew the answer to that.

He could feel terror rising in his chest, and he jumped up and pushed through the ER doors. No one stopped him. He heard someone vomiting. He saw a young woman sitting on a table, dazed, her nose bleeding onto her blue hospital gown, into her hands. Then he saw Stella’s red socks at the end of a gurney and he ran to them.

A doctor, her hair across her lab coat as bright red as a tomato, was threading an IV into Stella’s arm, flashing a light into her eyes. Simon saw her name tag: Dr. Libby Marks. He didn’t know her, didn’t remember Stella’s ever mentioning that name when she told him about her days at work, but still, she seemed vaguely familiar. “You can’t be back here,” Libby said.

“I’m her boyfriend,” Simon said, and the doctor looked over at him.

“I don’t care who you are.” Libby shut off the light and Simon saw her smoothing Stella’s hair off her face. She might be all procedure, but she cared about Stella, and that made him feel better.

“Was she drinking?” she asked.

“We both were. A little wine.”

“What’s a little?”

“I don’t know. Two glasses. Three. Wait, maybe four. She has this ridiculously low tolerance.”

“Four,” Libby said, her brows rising. “She do drugs with that wine?”

“No. Not Stella. Just aspirin. Sudafed, maybe.” He sucked in a breath, which tasted rusty, like the inside of a tin can. “I told the nurse. She took a secobarbital.”

The doctor finished with the IV. “That’s a barbiturate. Phenobarbital. It’s not great with wine, but it shouldn’t do this. Did she take more than one?”

Simon tried to think, and his mind fuzzed into static. Her hands were in his pocket while they danced and he had shut his eyes, moving with her. What if they’d had more than the two pills and he didn’t even know it? “I don’t know,” he said.

The doctor wrote something on a chart. “I’m admitting her. She’s unresponsive. The tests should tell us a little more.” Libby seemed to dismiss him. Stella had told him once that doctors were abrupt because they had to be. Sometimes they couldn’t waste valuable time being nice or kind or chatty. Not when someone was sick and they had to focus.

“Coma can be complicated,” Libby said.

Simon froze. “What?” Coma. “She’s still alive?” Simon said.

“Of course, she’s alive.”

“Does she know I’m here? Can she hear me?”

“I don’t know that.”

“She’ll get better, won’t she?”

Another orderly appeared and began wheeling Stella away.

“Where are you taking her?” Simon couldn’t breathe. His heart thrashed in his chest. “Is she going to get better?”

“We’re going to get her in a room and cool down her whole body,” Libby said. “There’ll be less brain trauma that way.”

“Brain trauma . . .” All Simon could think about was how cold it was outside, how still and white, and here in this heated hospital they were going to re-create that for Stella.

“Go home,” the doctor told him. “Get some rest. You won’t be any good to her if you don’t.” It wasn’t until the doctor had vanished that Simon realized that Libby hadn’t answered his question: Is she going to get better?

HE DIDN’T GO home, instead returning to the waiting area. A man walked by and banged into Simon’s legs, but Simon didn’t say anything, didn’t complain. He deserved every outrage thrown at him.

He sat on the hard plastic chair watching whatever was on TV, one show sliding into another. He grabbed his cell from his pocket and looked up coma. He learned that only 50 percent of coma patients survive. Only 10 percent come out completely unchanged. There was a Glasgow Coma Scale, 3 to 15. What was Stella’s number? He shut off the phone and hugged his arms around himself. No. No. No.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when Libby pushed through the doors, and as soon as she saw him, she started and then composed herself. “You’re still here?” Libby said coldly.

“I am,” Simon said. “How is she?”

“We won’t know anything for a while. If she comes out of it in the next few days, we’re home free.”

“Her brain . . .”

“Oh no, no. In a coma state, the brain works. We’re just not sure how. She’s responding to some stimuli, too, which is good.”

Simon tried to swallow. “What about the Glasgow scale?”

Libby tilted her head. “Don’t go on the internet,” she said. “You’ll make yourself crazy.”

“What about it?”

“We’ll know more in the next week.”

“A week?” Simon’s body began to shake, and Libby put a hand on his arm.

“We?” Simon said.

“I’m just part of a team of doctors. They’ll do an EEG to assess her brain waves, an MRI for brain atrophy.”

Simon, shocked, couldn’t speak.

“You can’t do any good here right now. Go home.”

“I can rest here,” Simon said. After years on tour, he was used to sleeping on the bus, in chairs, on the floor, and on his feet, sometimes, if he had to. He could sprawl out on this orange plastic bench and be just fine.

Simon noticed the dark rings, like bruises under the doctor’s eyes, a faint stain on the lapel of her lab coat.

“Go home,” she said, like she was giving him a prescription. “I’ll call you if there is any change at all.” Simon looked at her name tag again: Libby Marks.

SIMON WAS SURPRISED by how dark it was outside. The snow had stopped and the streets were now plowed. There were sled tracks on the road where the kids must have played. Someone had made a series of snow angels, all the figures looking as if they might take flight.

He didn’t realize how cold he was until he was back in their apartment, and as soon as he saw the empty wine bottles, two of them, he flung them in the trash. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t keep the image of their drinking out of his mind. And those pills.

To stay sane, he’d have to get busy. He cleaned the whole place, attacking the bathroom and then the kitchen. He did laundry, changing their sheets, trying not to think about what was happening only a few blocks away.

He was wiping down all the surfaces when he noticed the message light on his phone. He picked it up to listen. The first call was Kevin, wanting to know how Stella was. Kevin told him that they got lucky, that they’d all been bumped to an LA flight the next day, and he wanted to know if Simon and Stella could make that.

Simon shook his head. What the fuck was wrong with Kevin, asking that? How could he go now? He’d have to call Kevin. He’d have to call Stella’s and his friends. And then he’d call his parents. He’d also call her mother, Bette, who lived in Spain. He hadn’t been around her much. He’d talked to her on the phone every Sunday when Stella called her, but he didn’t really know her. What would this news do to her? Tomorrow, he thought. I’ll call her then. Tomorrow, when he was supposed to be getting on a plane with the band and going to California. Tomorrow, which was supposed to be the start of his whole new life.

ALL THAT NIGHT, despite Libby’s warnings, Simon stayed on the internet. Coma was an ugly word. He remembered that cheesy old horror film with Michael Douglas and what was her name, the pretty French actress—Genevieve Bujold—lying on a gurney about to be put under permanently. He thought of that book, Girlfriend in a Coma. Like it was something funny, and the whole idea of that made him feel crushed.

He clicked on another link. A fireman had been in a coma for a decade and he woke up speaking Mandarin, then quit his job to teach the language at Stanford. Another man came out of a coma after only a week, but his memory skittered around like a ball in a pinball machine.

Simon studied articles on the brain. Neuroplasticity could make the brain reroute signals and operations, but the personality could change. A person who has gone into a coma could come out completely different.

Simon called the hospital. “Stella Davison,” he said.

“Are you family?”

He couldn’t risk telling them that they weren’t married, so he lied. “Yes,” he said.

“Stable,” a voice said, but what did that even mean? He shut his eyes, but when he started to drift off, he bolted awake. If he slept, would he wake up?

It was four in the morning, but he dialed Kevin.

“What the fuck,” Kevin said.

“You know I can’t leave right now,” Simon said. “You know that. Not for a while.”

Kevin sighed deeply. “Fuck, man. We need you.”

“I need her,” Simon said sharply.

“You know what I mean—”

“Look, if we get the tour, I can be there when things calm down here,” Simon said. “When they get back to normal. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He picked up a pen and drew a series of x’s on the paper. “Did you find a bassist?” He wanted and didn’t want to know.

There was a funny silence. “Yeah. We got someone. A young guy, and he’s good.”

“You told Rick Mason?” He squinched his eyes shut, just imagining. Was Rick mad? Or even worse, did he not care?

“He’s sad about it for you, but he’s also cool with it. He’s a good guy. He knows things can change.”

“You’ll let me know how it goes?”

“We’ll call you from the coast. We’ll keep calling you. Write us some new songs so you stay in the loop.” Kevin hung up, but Simon sat there, the phone pressed against his cheek.

HE COULDN’T SLEEP after the call. He stayed up watching whatever was on TV, unable to concentrate. When he went to visit Stella later that morning, he took her iPod, which was full of songs. The faster he could get her better, the faster normal life could resume. He found her alone in the room, attached to a ventilator, a breathing tube snaking out of her mouth. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, to make his body stop quaking. He turned on the music, and there he was, singing to her, but she stayed motionless.

Libby, her fiery red hair tamed into a braid, whisked in. She nodded at him and he felt suddenly embarrassed about the music. “I read that it helps,” he said, and she waved a hand.

“It does. Sometimes.” She glanced at the machines, tapping her finger on the IV. “Her numbers went down and that’s what you want.” Libby tilted her head for a moment at the iPod. It was playing “You First,” a song he had written for Stella after their first date. He had so wanted her to like him, had wanted to impress her. He had stayed up all night writing it for her, aching for her.

“I always liked that song,” Libby said. “I remember it on Pandora.”

He waited, wondering if she was going to ask him about his music, but she was ignoring him. She didn’t know who he was other than Stella’s partner. She said nothing more and then glided out of the room.

However, when he walked out of the room, everyone at the hospital suddenly seemed to know who he was. A doctor passed by and nodded encouragingly at him. When he sat in the waiting room, staring into space, a nurse came in and handed him a cup of tea. “You need it,” she told him. He was so grateful and lonely he wanted to tug her down to sit with him. Who did he really have now? His parents were old and living in a Florida retirement community. His father had a bad heart and disapproved of Simon and his life decisions. His mother had diabetes and went along with anything his father said.

He walked back into Stella’s room. A new doctor was there with two metal pots, striking one against the other with a loud clang. “What are you doing?” Simon cried. The doctor moved closer to Stella and did it again, and then he placed the pots on Stella’s chest. “Wake up!” he shouted. “Wake up!” The doctor’s face furrowed. “Stella, wake up!”

“Who are you?” Simon said.

“Dr. Alberson. The neurologist. One of the team.”

The doctor turned to Simon. “Sorry,” he said, and his voice was so soft that Simon had to lean forward to hear it. “Sometimes it works to stimulate the person by assaulting their senses,” he said. “We never know what might work, so it’s beneficial to try everything. Strong smells. Loud sounds. Cold. Heat.” Then he picked up the pots and left the room. Simon leaned over Stella. “Wake up,” he said gently.

While the doctors were racing around, brusque in their actions, the nurses seemed more compassionate. Stella had always told him that the one thing she loved about being a nurse was her interaction with patients. “You get to really know people,” she said. Doctors might see a patient for five minutes, but nurses were in and out of the room all day. An obstetrician would deliver the baby, but that would be the end of the doctor’s impact on the baby’s day-to-day life. It was the nurses who fed the infants, wheeled them in to be with the mothers. The joke was that most of the doctors could identify a child by his sonogram but not by a face.

The only one who seemed suspicious of him was the redhead, Libby. When he left that day, he decided that when this was over, when Stella was able to come home, he’d bring chocolates to the nurses’ station, for them and for Stella’s doctors. He’d let them all know how grateful he was for everything they’d done for Stella.

THAT NIGHT, HE called their friends, other musicians he knew, people they went out to dinner with or just hung out with sometimes. When he told them about Stella, there was always a shock of silence, and some of them cried. “Whatever you need,” people told him. The next day, he found casseroles in the building lobby, offers scribbled on note cards to clean the apartment, to visit. People showed up at the hospital and found him in the waiting room, and Simon didn’t have the heart to tell them that their silence just made him feel more terrified.

He finally got up his courage to call his parents that night. “Why didn’t you tell us before?” his mother cried. “Why did you wait so long?”

His father got on the line, a rumbling in his throat. “What’s this about?” he said, and Simon told him. “What can we do?” he said.

“How could this happen,” his mother said, but it was a statement rather than a question. “Will she be all right?”

“They don’t know when or if Stella will come out of the coma,” Simon said.

His parents were silent while he glossed over the details, leaving out the booze, the pills, the argument.

“Oh, honey,” his mom said. “We’re so, so sorry. We truly are. It must be so terrible.”

“Can I have some money?” Simon blurted. “To help with Stella? She’s in the hospital where she works, but maybe a private nurse would help—”

Silence again, blooming around him like a thorny cactus. And then Simon could hear his father’s breath in the phone. “Let me give you some . . .” his father started to say, and Simon felt a rise of hope. His father coughed. “Let me give you some advice. You don’t want it to be five years from now and you’re still struggling for money, still depending on other people. Use the time, for God’s sake. Stella’s in a class A hospital and she’ll be fine, most likely. Think about taking business classes. Don’t let it all be tragic.”

But it all is, Simon wanted to say. “What about a loan? You can’t give me a small loan?” he said. “With interest.”

“Do you know how much this joint costs us?” his father said. “Twenty grand a month.”

“Darling,” his mother cut in. “It’s fifteen.”

“We invested for this. We saved—” his father said.

“Don’t listen to your father. What do you need?” his mother asked. “Certainly we can help. What do you need? Help for a month? For two? Name the amount and we’ll send a check.” Simon could hear his father’s measured breathing. What if it were more than a month? What if it were for a year? He felt a thousand small fires igniting inside him, trapping him.

“Never mind, I’ll take care of it,” Simon said, and he abruptly hung up the phone. Instantly he felt a rise of fear. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he take the money? Why hadn’t he said twenty thousand, or four, which would be nothing to his family? He called back, but the phone just rang and rang.

Simon sat, his head in his hands. He would call Stella’s mother now. Bette had always been polite to him, even though she had a habit of talking about her dead husband, as well as bringing up the names of Stella’s old boyfriends, all of them successful. “Mom,” Stella always said, a warning in her tone, and she rolled her eyes, but it hurt Simon a little. He wanted Bette to like him, to approve of him and Stella as a couple, and he was never sure that she did. He didn’t care what she said to him or how she treated him now. All that mattered was that she come, that she help with Stella, and he knew that she would.

Her voice on the phone sounded as if it were crackling, and when he told her about the coma, she screamed into the phone. “I’m flying in,” she cried. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

He’d dig out his car so he could pick her up at the airport. He’d make up the bed in the alcove. At least he’d have another person here with him, and that should be a good thing, right?

BETTE ARRIVED THE next evening, and it stunned Simon to see how old she looked. Her hair was white, cut into a workaday pixie, and she was in track pants and a sweatshirt and wearing none of the jewelry she usually draped herself in. Her face was crinkled, her jawline smudged. She now walked with a cane. Bette, he realized, was nearly eighty.

“Let me hold your arm,” she said, and he felt the slight pressure of her weight. “Take me right to her,” she said, and he drove to the hospital, neither one of them talking. Finally Simon couldn’t stand it any longer, and he began to talk, to tell her what the doctors were doing, how much he loved her daughter. “Do you want to know how it happened?” he said quietly, and she reached over and touched his hand. “I only want to know about her getting well,” she said. “There’s no need for anything else.”

At the hospital, when Bette first saw Stella, she drew in her breath sharply. He expected her to cry, to fall apart, but instead she pulled up a chair and sat beside her daughter. She took Stella’s hand. “You’re getting better every second,” she said quietly. “I’m not leaving until you do, and we know how much you like your privacy.” She tried to laugh, but it came out more of a sigh. She began talking quietly, telling Stella family stories that Simon had never heard.

Simon sat listening to the waves of Bette’s voice, as if Bette were introducing this sleeping Stella to the old lively one. Then suddenly the stories stopped, and he saw that Bette’s eyes were closed. She was asleep. He took her hand and warmed it between his, but she didn’t stir. He looked at Stella, who somehow seemed calmer, like she knew her mother was there. “Thank you,” he whispered to Bette, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him.

SIMON DROVE BETTE to the apartment and helped her settle in. She put her suitcase next to the daybed in the alcove, then sat quietly on the living room couch, knitting. Simon was glad Bette was there. Having another heart beating in the apartment, especially one connected to Stella, comforted him. It would be a reason for him to get up in the morning, to not fall apart. It would make him feel so much better to be able to do something, if not for Stella, then for her mother.

They spent the following day at the hospital, coming home so exhausted that Bette went immediately to sleep. Simon, though, couldn’t. It wasn’t just that he was so worried about Stella. Tonight was the LA concert. He paced the apartment. All he had to do was shut his eyes, and he was there. He felt the thump of the amps, the sweat on his forehead from the stage lights, and the intoxicating roar of the crowd, the way sometimes, when things quieted, you could hear someone shouting your name, all the outstretched hands shimmying and waving like a field of wheat. He thought of the way Kevin always sashayed toward him on the stage, bending into Simon for harmony, how Rob would wink at him when he wailed. We’re all in this together.

He was not there with them, but at least he wasn’t alone. Instead of the thumps of the amps, he could hear the staccato bursts of Bette’s snoring. There weren’t any spotlights, but there were streetlights outside. No roar of the crowd, just the same incessant honks of taxis, the squeal of brakes and the shouts of people going by. It was all passing him by. He put his head in his hands.

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, while Bette and Simon were cleaning up after an early dinner, Kevin actually picked up his phone to tell Simon the concert had been outrageous. Kevin was so excited that his words skimmed against one another, but Simon felt numb. Kevin said Rick had introduced them as one of his greatest influences. He had even stepped up and played with them on their last song.

“What, you’re not psyched?” Kevin said. There was laughter in the background, the clink of glasses.

“Who’s there?”

“Everyone—Ruby, the band, some other guys—a manager, too, I think—maybe I can grab him—”

Simon couldn’t concentrate. Kevin’s voice seemed to echo, and he gripped his phone harder.

“I’m sorry. I’m just so exhausted,” Simon said.

“Well, wake up, buddy, because this is happening and I don’t want it to happen without you. When are you coming out here? Rick wants us on the whole leg of the tour!”

“What? He does? He knows I’m still here?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure he knows, and he feels bad. Whenever you can come, come.”

What did that look like, he wondered, Rick feeling bad? No one other than Kevin had called him.

“Where’s our songs?” he said. “You know that you can pull your weight from the East Coast.”

“Kevin,” Simon said. He shut his eyes. A headache pounded.

Then there was a jolt of silence. Kevin cleared his throat. “How’s Stella?” he said.

“The same.”

“Oh, man,” Kevin said, his voice trailing, but he didn’t offer any help or supply suggestions. Instead, there was just the silence, stretching out like a straight line.

“I’ll do what I can,” Simon said.

He hung up the phone. Bette was now settled on the couch, knitting something that looked like a blanket out of soft blue yarn. She looked at him but said nothing, and when he didn’t say anything about the call, she went back to her knitting. Stella had told him that when Bette designed a dress, she paid attention to every detail, right down to the extra stitching on the hemlines, but this knitting looked uneven, and there was even a hole or two that he could see. Bette must have felt him watching her because she laughed. “Oh, I can do better than this, honey,” she said to him. “If I wanted to. This is just Zen. It soothes me to knit, and when I’m done, I’ll rip it out and start all over again.” She slid the stitches off the needles, balling the yarn. “It calms the mind,” she said.

But Simon’s mind couldn’t calm. He tried to imagine Kevin and the band out there in the sun, or working in the studio, Kevin bossing everyone around as usual. Or maybe that was what Rick did now. Maybe they were all bonding into pals, the age difference nothing because the music was what mattered.

Simon went to the computer and looked up the review of the concert. In the early flush days, the band had gotten reviews, and then they had petered out, but none of them had cared really. Not as long as they still could get gigs, still play in front of people.

As soon as he saw the review, he felt a pull. There was a photo of Rick, triumphant, hands waving toward a huge crowd. Simon scanned:

Opening for Rick Mason were veteran performers Mighty Chondria, whom Rick introduced as “my biggest influence.” Though Mighty Chondria haven’t been in the foreground of the music scene for years, they proved they can still grab an audience and hold them hostage, especially charismatic front man Rob Cross, who reminded everyone why he was once a major player—and could be again—reprising his old hit, “Charlatan Eyes.”

Simon felt nauseated. “Charlatan Eyes” was his song, not Rob’s. Simon wasn’t mentioned in the article at all. Nor was the bass guitarist they had hired to replace him, but that didn’t count. Simon wasn’t missed. He shut off the computer. Kevin had told him that Simon could still be a part of the band, writing songs, feeding them material until he could get there himself. But could he?

He picked up his guitar from the corner of the room, but it felt wrong, like he had never played before. G sounded like F. E-flat was now sharp. The notes seemed to have escaped or tricked him. He picked the strings, but he couldn’t even manage a simple scale. Everything he had ever written a song about—sex, music, cars, even love—seemed like lousy subjects, unworthy of anything or anyone, and instead of feeling soothed, he wanted to jump out of his skin. He put the guitar back into its case, which was covered with stickers from all the places he had been while touring, all those shiny cities, all the applause and autographs.

He snapped the case shut. Bette looked up at him. “Come on,” she said quietly. “Let’s you and me take a walk and clear our heads.” She chose one of Stella’s warmest coats and bundled it around her.

He liked walking with her. They headed down Seventh Avenue to Le Pain, where they had tea, and then back to the apartment again. She didn’t comment on how stressed he was or how dire Stella’s condition seemed. Instead, she told him how nice it had been to have tea with him, to hear him play his guitar. “I’m glad you have something to occupy you now,” she said.

“My band doesn’t seem to need me anymore.”

“Oh yes they do,” she said, and he started, because she had never been so kind to him before, and then he thought, Well maybe she knows that she needs me as much as I need her.

But it wasn’t just kindness. Maybe he had misread her before, because she brightened in the morning when she saw him, and it was clear that she genuinely wanted to be with him. “Come on, I’ll teach you rummy,” she told him, and the two of them sat at the dining room table, her keeping score, playing for hours. She never let him win, and he never let her win, and he liked that. It showed that they each respected the other.

Later that day, Bette went to the hospital with him. She held Stella’s hand and told family stories. The stories bolstered him. When Bette stopped talking and began to nod off in her chair, Simon texted one report to all their friends: Stella’s the same.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, he was at the hospital without Bette, who was still asleep in the apartment. He walked to Stella’s room, and there was Libby in purple scrubs, a red bandanna tied about her hair. She glanced at him.

“You’re here again,” she said evenly.

“Of course I am.”

“You getting everything done that you need to get done? Are you taking care of yourself?”

She was staring at him now. He saw a glittering white stud in her left ear, poking out from the fire of her hair.

“I don’t. I just come here.”

He thought she was going to tell him again that he should go home, pay the bills, and go to work, that it was important to act normal, even when you didn’t feel that way. Instead, her eyes narrowed. “For how long?” she said quietly, and then she walked out of the room.

As soon as she vanished, he felt irritated. How fucking dare she talk to him like that? Like she expected him to be one of those guys who run when there’s trouble? Like she knew him? Well, she didn’t.

He pulled out a chair and sat next to Stella. Someone had drawn her ringlets into a pineapple at the top of her head, tied with a ribbon. She’d never wear her hair like that in real life. She hated hair decorations or fuss, but the ribbon was what kept him from undoing it. Someone else besides him cared about Stella enough to give her a ribbon, and that had to matter. Her lids fluttered, but with what? Dreams? A simple neurological sensation? “Stella,” he said.

A new doctor came in with a clipboard. “Simon Stein?” he asked, and Simon nodded. “Dr. Warren,” he said. “I want to talk to you about coma therapy.”

“Where’s the other doctor? Dr. Marks?”

“Stella has many doctors.” He sat down in another chair.

Simon didn’t know there was such a thing as coma therapy, but at least there was the word therapy, and didn’t that indicate getting better? “The evidence is anecdotal, but sometimes patients do come out spontaneously when they smell something familiar, or they hear something familiar. The sooner they do, the better. But there’s so much we don’t know. Even patients in so-called vegetative states are not vegetables. They’re still alive, still communicating in some way.” He nodded encouragingly at Simon. “Would you be willing to try, or do you want to leave it to us?”

Simon felt flushed with nausea. Vegetable. But Dr. Warren hadn’t said that was Stella. “No, I want to help.”

“Make a lot of noise, talk to her constantly. Time is on our side here.” Dr. Warren bent over and pinched Stella so hard that the skin was red when he removed his fingers. “No need to be gentle here.” He held up fingers in front of Stella’s face. “How many?” he shouted. “How many, Stella!” He grabbed her fingers and ordered her to squeeze them. Stella’s fingers flexed and moved. Dr. Warren looked at Simon, and his whole body seemed like a beam of light. “You see that?” he said.

Dr. Warren stood up. “You do it now,” he said.

“Stella!” Simon shouted. He felt strange yelling at her, like he was Brando calling for his Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. That hadn’t worked on the movie character Stella at the end of the film. And his Stella didn’t move.

“Much louder.” Dr. Warren nodded encouragingly.

“Stella!” Simon felt as if he were screaming, but Dr. Warren bent close to Stella as if listening to her breathe. He put a hand on her stomach and then he shook his head. “Not this time, but maybe next,” he told Simon.

After he left, Simon began talking to Stella. He told Stella about their first date, how much he had wanted her, but he didn’t want her to think that that was all he was after, so he hadn’t even kissed her but instead had kept his distance. He told her how scared he was about what was going on with the band, how they were moving forward without him, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He played “This Little Piggy” on her toes six times, and then he kissed each toe.

HE STAYED AT the hospital all day, taking breaks to call Bette, to grab something to eat in the cafeteria. By the time he left the hospital, it was around midnight. No one ever mentioned visiting hours to him, though he always tensed when he heard the announcements. The staff were all kind to him about that. Good night, they said to him as he left, their faces soft with compassion. Good night. Good night. Please not goodbye.

Outside, the air felt and smelled different, like it had been drenched with motor oil. He stretched, exhausted, and then he saw that doctor, Libby, standing outside in front of the hospital, leaning into a guy in a black leather jacket, who was perched on a motorcycle. The guy said something to her that Simon couldn’t hear, but it made Libby throw back her head and laugh. The guy handed her an extra helmet and watched her put it on. He helped her onto the bike, and when she threw her arms around his waist, she held on tight, resting her head against him, her mouth curving up, her eyes closing with pleasure.

Simon watched, amazed. It now seemed impossible to Simon that people could have relationships and love, that a thing as simple as laughing and getting on a motorcycle could be anything other than a miracle he had once had and had been too stupid to cherish, too blind to consider it might ever be gone.