CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

TRAFFIC CLOGGED THE NINETY-SIXTH STREET TRANSVERSE. TOTAL standstill. Sean was trapped in the no-man’s-land between Central Park West and Fifth Avenue with no forward motion, as some perky fake newscaster jabbered at him about the best cannoli in Staten Island. He stabbed at the power button on the TV screen until it went black. The quiet was almost worse. He tapped his thumb nervously on his thigh and clenched and unclenched his toes inside his shoes. He bit the inside of his lip and felt his blood pressure rise.

“Stop,” he ordered, though the cab wasn’t moving. “Here. I’ll get out here.” Sean rifled through his wallet, but it was empty.

“But,” the driver protested. “We’re not through the park yet. A few more minutes and we’ll be—”

“Now,” he said, desperately. “I need to get out.”

The driver cut the meter and Sean poked at the screen to pay by credit card. Each time his fingers hit the wrong button his chest clenched a little more. When the Verifone machine couldn’t read the strip on his card, he thought he might have a coronary. Somehow, he managed to execute the transaction and escape onto the narrow sidewalk that bordered the traffic.

Scenic paths threaded the snowy park above him. No one walked down here with the cars. He took a deep breath and coughed out a lung full of exhaust, then ran to Fifth Avenue, clutching the Spiderman suitcase to his chest. When he arrived at the hospital, he was out of breath and covered in sweat. While he waited for the elevator, he called Nicole to tell her what Noah had said. He needed legal advice and he wasn’t going to talk to Ellie about any of this.

He and Ellie would have to talk at some point; there was no way around it. He would put it off as long as possible, obviously. Avoidance was not an adult choice, but it was all he could manage at the moment.

A few minutes later, he was pulling the Spiderman suitcase along the speckled linoleum floors of the PICU. The image of Toby’s smiling face flicked through his mind. He knew he shouldn’t wish it, shouldn’t even think it. He’d jinx the whole thing. But it was too late. Even though he knew Ellie would have called if there’d been any change, he half believed that when he walked into the sterile hospital room, Toby would be propped up on pillows, sipping juice, telling knock-knock jokes. He wiped his palms on his pants.

He stopped just outside the door and listened. He waited to make sure it wasn’t simply a lull between knock-knock jokes. Minutes passed. No jokes. No laughter. Nothing but the robotic beeps of machines telling him Toby was still hanging on.

When he walked in the room, Ellie was curled up against Toby, breathing him in. He knew it then: if anything was going to help Toby pull through this, it was that she was here. And if she could do that, well, who cared about the rest of it?

“There’s something you need to see,” he said to Ellie, and unzipped the suitcase. She looked at him skeptically, then climbed off Toby’s bed to look.

Ellie read through the letters, stopping only to sob quietly until she could find the strength to read some more. Sean sketched Toby’s hand, his cheek, the sheet draping over his chest. He and Ellie didn’t speak for hours.

Finally, Ellie said, “I blame you for this. If he dies, I’ll never get past it.”

He clenched and unclenched his jaw. He would not take the bait. He was not going to fight with his estranged wife at Mount Sinai in front of their comatose son. She blamed him. So join the club.

“For the record,” he said, “I’ll never get past what you did to Toby, either.”

A vertical crease materialized between her eyebrows and she screwed up her features, as if she had no idea what he was talking about. It took five full seconds before her face went slack. She bowed her head almost imperceptibly and nodded.

Neither said anything for a long time. “Oh my God, Sean. What if he dies?” He’d been so careful not to say the words. She started to shake, then put her head in her hands. As she sobbed, she rocked miserably back and forth. He hesitated. Just how mad was he? Could he really fight the Pavlovian response to comfort her? He just wasn’t that much of a jerk. He put his arm around her. She was smaller, frailer than he’d remembered. They sat that way, watching Toby for a long time. When she’d cried herself out, she was exhausted and didn’t seem to have any fight left in her. She blew her nose. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he …”

Sean cut her off. “Don’t say it again, okay? Don’t ever say it.”

She nodded and wiped her nose as delicately as she could with the back of her hand. For the first time since she’d left, he actually felt sorry for her. No one on earth could understand what this was like for him. Except possibly Ellie. No matter what other shit had gone on between them, they were Toby’s parents. They’d become Toby’s parents in this very hospital eight years ago. He and Ellie had vowed to protect him, to love each other, to be a family.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” he said, and forced himself to tell her about how the school had pressured him to give Toby the medication. He told her what Noah had said on the phone.

Ellie’s nostrils flared and the tendons in her neck bulged. “The school didn’t give him the drugs. You did.” She let out a disgusted sigh. “This isn’t the Grassy Knoll. It’s a top-tier school—my alma mater, for God’s sake. Half a dozen supreme court justices went there.”

It was close to the speech he’d expected. “Forget it.” Her condescension was the last thing he needed right now. “You’re right and I’m always wrong.”

He looked at her and tried to see the woman he’d married, but all he could see was an enemy.

“This is all your fault.” She glared at him so hard it hurt.

“I’m not the one who wanted him at that fucking school,” he yelled.

“Jesus Christ, you’re such an infant.”

“Fuck you, Ellie.” It felt great to finally be able to yell at her. “Fuck you if you don’t care why this happened and who did it to him.”

“The only thing I want—and the only thing you should want,” she hissed in a loud whisper, “is for Toby to come out of this fucking nightmare alive and healthy.”

That’s when he heard it. It was barely a murmur.

Ellie was too busy yelling at him to hear. She’d stopped only to suck in more breath. “And if you think that I’m—”

“Shh,” he cut her off, and stared at Toby. It hadn’t even been a sound. It was the start of a sound, combined with the faintest rustle of hospital sheets. Sean had almost missed it, with all the accusations they were hurling at each other. But in that room, where there had been no jumping on beds, no throwing of pillows, no noise or movement of any kind for almost four days, that rustle and beginning of a sound screamed of hope. He held his breath and listened harder.

Ellie, still animated from the fight, turned too. It may have been the only thing on earth that could make her drop an argument midstream. They stayed that way for a moment, frozen with anticipation and the terror that they hadn’t heard what they’d wanted so badly to hear. Then they heard it again. The sound was a little louder this time. Toby was trying to say something, but it was as if his voice were stuck too far down in his throat.

Sean sprinted the four feet to Toby’s side and grabbed his hand. Toby was moving, just a little, like he was disoriented after a deep sleep. Sean realized now that he’d been preparing himself for the real possibility that he might never see his son move again. He gasped out air as if he’d been holding his breath for days. Warm tears rushed from behind his eyes and blurred his vision. Ellie was there a heartbeat later, peppering Toby’s head with kisses and thanking God. “The doctor,” he said, hoping she’d volunteer to get him. He knew that nothing, not even the sensible idea of finding a doctor could force him to let Toby out of his sight right now. Ellie wasn’t budging, so he reached for the buzzer and squeezed the button frantically.

The rest of the night was a blur of doctors, tests, and Toby’s progressive recovery. By late morning, he was sitting up and drinking orange juice from a straw. Sean saw the color return to his cheeks. He finally saw the smile he’d been waiting for, filled with a hodgepodge of adult and baby teeth. Now that he looked so normal, it was hard to believe the last few days had ever happened.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked.

Toby shrugged. “Good.” It was so simple. So Toby. He was good. The doctors ordered endless diagnostic tests, which showed that Toby’s brain was functioning normally. And he’d thought miracles were bullshit. They had him back. Still, there was something different about Toby. Every once in a while his son looked at him with the gaze of an old man, a look devoid of the sweetness and innocence of an eight-year-old. Toby napped throughout the day, and at dinnertime he asked for the Knicks scores. Sean climbed onto the bed and read him every sports page in every paper he could get his hands on. Halfway through the Post’s game coverage, he noticed that Toby’s eyes were closed.

He didn’t know when it had happened, how it had happened, why it had happened. He should have been paying closer attention. How could he have had him and lost him again, just like that? His finger was on the call button before he realized Toby was only sleeping, his warm body curled next to Sean’s, dreaming, resting, living. Nothing vegetative about him. Maybe when Toby woke up his eyes would be clear again and whatever he’d seen—whatever had happened to him over the past few days—would recede with time and be forgotten with the other devastating passages of his childhood, like toilet training and birth.

Over the course of the day, Toby’s room filled with gifts. When Dick and Maureen returned from their cruise, they brought over a dozen silver balloons, and the school sent a huge basket of gourmet food from Dean and Deluca that Sean promptly deposited on the nurse’s station. Cards, flowers, and stuffed animals arrived every half hour, it seemed. Sean wondered how the news had spread so fast. He’d snuck in a call to Jess, but other than Ellie’s parents and Nicole, he hadn’t told anybody. He hadn’t wanted to waste time on the phone when he could be with his conscious, smiling son.

The doctor nodded as if he’d known all along that this was how it would turn out. “Children are resilient,” he declared.

When he announced that Toby was going to be fine and could go home within the week, Ellie threw her arms around Sean’s neck. “He’s back,” she sobbed. “He’s going to be okay.” Her wet cheek against his face, the feel of her hair, her smell—he’d wanted to forget those things, but there they were, as close as the breath on his neck. He squeezed her tightly. The near miss had left him weak, humbled, relieved. Clinging to her, he had the vivid realization that this was a second chance. He knew they should try to be a family again. He knew that if he didn’t try, he would be fucking with some delicate balance of fate and luck and whatever powers existed beyond all that.

The fact that he didn’t want to be with Ellie wasn’t relevant at the moment. What was relevant—the only thing that mattered in fact—was that Toby was awake, alive, healthy.

“Mommy?” Toby had been watching them with a big smile on his face. “Are you coming home with us? To live?”

A smile melted onto Ellie’s face. She turned to Sean. “Dad and I are going to have to talk about that.”