15

Jake carried the flowers tucked under his arm like they were a football, and tried to juggle three cans of tuna fish and two bottled waters. The smell of the hospital was, for the first time, inviting. He was here for the long haul. How could he not be?

The card he brought was folded in two and sticking out the back pocket of his jeans. He caught the elevator just as it was about to close.

When it opened, he hurried toward her room. There wasn’t a second to lose.

Bette was at the nurse’s station. She glanced up at him and he waved.

“Jake, I need to—”

“Give me a minute, Bette. I’ve got to do something first.” He walked right into her room, ready to tell Sam to get lost. He’d rehearsed the conversation a thousand times in his head last night when not a wink of sleep would come. Over the course of the evening, his thoughts turned from anger and rejection to the idea that he didn’t, at this point, have very much to lose. Maybe she would never love him. But how would he know if he didn’t try? Maybe she would never come out of that coma, but somewhere deep inside he had to believe that she heard him. And if she died, she would know that she was loved.

In the room, the first thing he noticed was that her skin was very pale. She didn’t look as peaceful. Her mouth gaped open slightly. Her breathing looked ragged. He quickly set the flowers, tuna, and water down.

“Hope? Hope, can you hear me?”

He pulled the chair, which sat in the corner, right next to her bed.

“It’s me, Jake. I’m sorry I left a few days ago. But I’m back. I . . .” The words, as usual, caught in his throat. He pulled the card out of his back pocket. He’d taped it together early this morning, when he returned to the shop to clean up the mess he’d made. It was a rainbow and a river and a sunset and a storm cloud, all taped up together. Inside, the words were jumbled. Together, they didn’t make sense, but word-by-word, they held weight.

Hope. Healing. Surrender. Love. Strength.

He looked at her. It was time now. It was time to tell her everything she needed to hear. “Hope, I want you to know—”

“What are you doing here?”

Jake looked up. Sam stood in the doorway, his arms crossed.

“I thought I told you to leave.”

“You did tell me.” Jake stood. “I just decided not to listen to you. And I decided Hope needed to hear that she shouldn’t listen to you either.”

He glanced at the bed, where the card sat. “What is that? Your love note to her?”

And then, before he even knew how to stop himself, he rose, approached Sam—and shoved him.

Hard.

Sam stumbled backward, his eyes lit with surprise. Jake knew it was coming, but he couldn’t brace himself in time.

Sam shoved him back.

The next thing Jake knew, he had Sam slammed up against the wall. And then, in a flash, Bette was in their faces, her strong arms throwing them apart from one another. Jake adjusted his shirt, glaring at Sam.

“What are you doing?” Bette said to them both, but her eyes stayed on Sam a little longer, Jake noticed.

Jake stepped forward, pointing a finger at Sam. “What are you even doing here? Taking care of a guilty conscience?”

And then, like they’d triggered an alarm, the monitors began beeping frantically. Bette’s attention snapped to where Hope lay. Another nurse rushed in, nearly knocking Sam over.

“What’s happening?” Jake asked, but nobody answered. A doctor followed the nurse in. Announcements were made over the loudspeaker, codes were being shouted. Jake moved as they brought in a crash cart.

Bette took him by the arm and led him outside. “You have to stay out here.”

Sam was already outside and the two stood flanking the door, staring each other down. Sam sneered. “Flowers and a card for a woman in a coma? That’s priceless.”

“Shut up.” Jake glanced in. His card was on the floor, torn in two by all the feet scurrying around.

All he could hear was the chaos of trying to save a life.

Greetings from My Life

I’m not a fan of the smell of hospitals. It seems like despair and death have a certain stench. The waiting room is not large, but it’s as if my mom is a thousand feet away. She sits in a corner chair by herself, rocking ever so slowly, staring blankly into a TV with bad reception. She won’t be bothered or spoken to.

Jake sits beside me, rubbing my shoulder as I cup Mikaela’s journal as if it is the girl herself. I watch him rise and begin to straighten chairs all around us.

“Are you expecting people?”

“Do you have something else you want me to do?”

I nod, trying not to cry. “Yes. I want you tell me Mikaela’s going to get better.”

Jake stands there, a chair half straightened in front of him.

“Say it!” I cry. “Say it, Jake! You’re the one who knows what to say in times like this. Tell me she will be okay.”

His gaze drops to the floor. I try to wait patiently, but he just stands there, not saying a word.

Finally, he whispers, “I can’t.”

I stand. “Come on, Jake. Here’s your chance for the tiebreaker. We’re two to two right now! Take the lead.”

“I can’t,” he says, his expression solemn.

“Why not?”

“You were right.”

“No. I can’t be right. You have to be right this time.”

“I don’t want to give you empty words.”

“You don’t believe them anymore? That there are good things ahead, no matter what pain you experience? You don’t really believe that?”

“I want to. But life . . . so far, I just haven’t seen it.”

“I’ve spent my life not being able to trust words. But the one person in my life who seems to believe what he says is you!” My words wilt right on my tongue. “Don’t tell me I’ve been wrong about you.”

“I don’t know, Hope.” He glances around, seemingly embarrassed, maybe looking for an escape route. “I know what I’m supposed to believe. I know what I want to believe.” He eyes my mom for a long moment. “But it’s hard.” He steps closer to me, just a couple of feet away. “Hope, do you know what happened to your dad?”

I hadn’t said it in a long time. It is hard to get out. “Last time I saw him, he went out to get us mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

“He has to be. He never would have stayed away on purpose—” My words are cut short by a sudden sob escaping my lips. “Mikaela has to be okay.”

His arms wrap tightly around me. I lean into his chest, comforted by nothing more than the warmness of him.

“She wouldn’t be in there if it weren’t for me,” I say.

He draws me even closer. I didn’t know it was possible.

“Ms. Landon?”

We turn to find a doctor walking toward us in scrubs soaked with sweat. His dark, curly hair pokes out from his surgical cap. “Are you Ms. Landon?”

“Yes.” I meet him halfway.

“I’m Dr. Ryan. We’ve stabilized Mikaela for the moment, but I’m sorry to say she’s in a coma. The next couple of days will be critical.”

“Is she going to wake up?”

The doctor gives a slight shrug. “Only she knows that.”

“Can we see her?” Jake asks.

“Yes, follow me.”

We hurry after the doctor. I glance back once but my mother hasn’t moved. We are in the pediatric ICU and it is a sobering sight. So much sadness. So much illness.

The doctor stops and gestures to the room. There is an orange “P” taped to the door. I can do nothing more than snatch it up and wad it into my pocket. These letters are really starting to make me mad.

Inside the room it’s almost more than I can take in. She looks so small and so lifeless against the big white bed. It engulfs her. Her head is bandaged. A nurse stands nearby holding what looks like a large needle. We watch her stick Mikaela’s foot and suddenly I collapse into Jake’s arm. A pain shoots right into my heel. “Ouch!”

“Are you okay?” Jake asks. The nurse watches me too.

“I’m fine.” I hobble over to Mikaela’s bedside. I can’t help the tears, they are just coming out by the bucketful. “Mikaela, it’s Hope. Listen to me. You don’t have to leave. You have me. You have Jake. Here’s the deal, you haven’t taken that next risk yet, with that next boy, who’s probably really glad you see him behind his weird glasses.” I pause, waiting for my emotions to settle down. They don’t. “You won’t get to kiss him if you don’t wake up. You hear me?”

The nurse joins me by the bedside. She is gentle, I can tell. “A lot of coma patients, if they wake up, tell us they can hear what’s spoken by their bedsides.”

Jake points to the needle she holds. “Does that hurt?”

“Only she can tell us. We’re just testing her sensory reflexes for a reaction.” She pats me lightly on the shoulder, but it is a stabilizing touch. “I’ll be back to check on her.”

We stay there for a long time, Jake and me, just sitting and watching her, the monitors beeping in unison, a gray and glum day setting in outside the hospital windows.

“I should go check on my mom.”

He nods and assures me he won’t leave Mikaela’s bedside.

In the waiting room, Mom is there, still staring at the TV, still not responding to my voice. My mother, from past experience, is not one to handle trauma well. Maybe she needs time. I ask her if she wants coffee and she nods vaguely. Or maybe that’s just the rocking. So I decide to go find some.

I’m directed to complimentary coffee down a hallway. The carafe barely spits out half a cup. I grab a stirrer just for something to chew on. When I walk back toward the waiting room, I glance toward the nurse’s station. And there I see her. Again.

The nurse in the waitress uniform. Or the waitress in the nurse’s uniform. Which is it? She looks at me as I pass, just like she did when we were on the street—a look that slows all things around me. It’s as if only she and I exist in the world.

And then, my shoulder is knocked from behind. I spill some coffee right onto my shoe. I glance up to see the girl. The girl. The one in the purple jacket!

“Hey!” I yell after her, in the exact way nobody would yell in a hospital. “Wait! You! Wait a minute!”

I dump the coffee in a trash and run after her. She darts through an exit door, vanishing once again. But I can’t give up. I push open the door. I am now in a gray, concrete stairwell—the same color, it seems, as Mikaela’s skin tone now . . . the kind of gray that has not an ounce of warmth to it—cold and hopeless.

I shout downward, though I don’t know that’s where she’s gone. “You don’t have to run!” My voice echoes but there is no other noise and I’m left alone. It is not a place I want to be.

I decide to return to Mikaela. I don’t like being away from her and I notice this is a change from who I used to be. Hope Landon, when faced with dire circumstances and an uncertain future, tended to run. And here I am, staying.

As I walk toward Mikaela’s room, I see Dr. Ryan talking to Jake. I hear them clearly even though I am still far away.

“She has some swelling on her brain. She’s not responding to medication as well as we’d hoped.”

“What’s next for her?” There is a strain in the voice that doesn’t match the matter-of-fact question.

“We may have to operate but we don’t know if she’ll survive the surgery. We’re going to watch her a couple more hours and then decide.”

“You have to save her!” I say, but I don’t stop where they are standing. I go straight into her room. I have to be with her. I have to give her strength, love, whatever it is she needs to feel that she has something to come back to.

And then I am astonished at what I see. My mother. She is draped over Mikaela’s tiny body, crying. Weeping. Praying in the most guttural way a human is capable of praying. It’s the kind of prayer that is all soul and no flesh. It renders the human inadequate and the Almighty the only one capable of doing what must be done.

I stand there a moment, my skin shivering. And then I am at the bed. I don’t even recall walking there. My next action, I cannot explain. It is as if I am not even myself. I feel more desperation than I thought a person was capable of feeling.

I grab Mikaela by the arms. I shake her. Not violently, but not in a way that a person with a head injury should be handled.

“Mikaela! Wake up!”

I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is Jake. “Hope, be gentle with her.”

I grab her journal, which I had put at the end of her bed, near her feet. I flip it open, tearing one of the pages by accident. “Mikaela, I’ll get you everything on your Christmas list.” I am flipping frantically through the pages, trying to find her list. And then I notice there is a bookmark sticking out the top. I flip to that page and notice it is an old photo. I scan the list: Love, Colors, More Time.

What does it mean? I wonder again.

An answer about my father.

Hope.

I stare at the words, trying to figure out what it all means, what I can do to fulfill this. I glance at the photo again, wondering if there is a clue there. Under the harsh fluorescent light, the picture is easy to see, but I pull it closer to my face anyway.

It is a picture of . . . my father. His arms are wrapped around a little girl. They are in ice skates, standing near a frozen lake. I bring the picture even closer and I lose my breath, my heartbeat, my sense of space and time.

The little girl is me.

And I look just like Mikaela.

I look at her, lying in that bed. It’s me.

It’s me.

My mom is suddenly behind me. I don’t know when she moved or how she got there. “I remember taking that photo of you and your daddy. That was right before he disappeared.”

And then I am in a tunnel of images, like I am being swallowed by them, like I’m sliding down a throat. I am reaching up, trying to grab something, but I am only offered flashes of clarity that do not seem to stop me from sliding.

The letters that I’ve been seeing everywhere, in every color, taped in the oddest places, all come before me.

W-A-K-E-U-P

I do not know where I am. It is both a dark and light place.

But I call out. Or up. I reach. And I plead. “You want to be alive. To love again. You want to live. You . . . me . . . I want to live. I want to live. Wake up . . .”

Wake up.