Sara listened as the nurse explained the seriousness of Delilah’s condition, then followed her into the room to see her great-grandmother. The old woman looked so tiny. Machines clicked and beeped. Something wrapped around her legs inflated and deflated. Sara wasn’t sure what she should say, what she should call her.
“Grandmother,” she said. “It’s me, Sara, your great-grandchild. I’m Savannah’s daughter and she was Tamar’s daughter. She didn’t know about you. Neither of us did. She would have come to you years ago if she knew. I would have come, too.”
She was so little, so still. Sara looked at the nurse, who nodded.
“I’m going to stay right here at the hospital until you wake up and can talk to me. Please don’t leave me. You’re all the family I have.”
She touched the old woman’s face, stroked her hair. “Don’t leave me, Grandmother. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you. There is so much you can tell me that 1 don’t know. There’s so much that I want to tell you. Please wake up. Please talk to me.”
The nurse said, “Mrs. Greathouse, your great-granddaughter, Sara, is here. We’re going to let her come in every hour for ten minutes to see you. She’s not going to leave until after you wake up and talk to her.”
The nurse led her out of the room. “We have no idea of what people can hear post-op,” she explained. “Sometimes they tell us things they heard us say. Sometimes they even tell us things that were said in the operating room. So we talk to them and we want you to keep talking to her. But she needs rest more than anything. Ten minutes every hour. I’ll come and get you.”
“And if . . .”
“She has a strong heart and good lungs. She was in good health when she came in. She’s old. She lost a lot of blood. She’s had almost three hours of surgery. That’s a lot of trauma to recover from. It depends on whether or not she can handle the stress from the injury and the surgery. It might be a while before she wakes up. Sometimes even when we know the anesthesia has pretty much worn off, they still need to sleep. Be patient.”
Akiro came to her and held her. “A great-grandmother!” he said. “You have a great-grandmother, Sara.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“Who can say? Maybe she does.”
“Perhaps,” Sara said, but she didn’t think so. Akiro was always the optimist. She didn’t think the old woman could hear her, but how she wished that she could.
“Let’s sit here together,” he said. “It could be a long while yet before she wakes up.”
“I wonder if she’s anything like Ma. They don’t look alike. She’s so tiny.”
Akiro smiled. “And you’re not.”
“So I get my height from her. But she looks so small, Akiro, and so helpless. And Ma didn’t know. She was so close to her and she didn’t know it.”
“But you do.”
“Fate, Akiro?”
“Who knows,” he admitted. “Things happen that seem strange to us that might not be so strange after all.”
“What if she dies without ever waking up? I’ve lost Ma. If I lose her without even knowing her ...”
“Tell her that the next time you go in.”
“The nurse says they don’t know if she can hear me, that sometimes they remember, sometimes they don’t.”
“So just talk to her. Say whatever it is that you feel. You know how it is with my grandmother. She calls sometimes and tells us things like, ’Be careful when you are driving today,’ or ’Don’t go to the grocery store today.’ We don’t know why she does that. We listen and do as she says so we’ll never know if there’s anything to what she tells us. Does she know something we do not? Or does she just like the attention? What’s the difference? It’s like having a sixth sense who lives four blocks away. Some of us humor her. Some of us believe her.”
“I want to hear this grandmother speak,” Sara said. “My great-grandmother.”
She didn’t think she would really believe that was true unless the old woman was able to tell her that herself. Then she would find out about Tamar, and she could talk about Savannah.